Out of Control: AIDS in Black America-- ABC special

[Toujours_Jolie]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

I don't think condoms are enough protection against AIDS for married women to worry about it. Unless you're only with your husband once a month or so, the odds of a condom malfunction are high enough that they pretty much nullify use in frequent intercourse. If your husband has AIDS, and you have intercourse with him on a constant basis, you are probably going to get AIDS regardless of use of a condom.

Until they come up with a 100% effective prevention of STDs, with one night stands, you're still tossing a coin, but I would hope those would be less frequent then a monogamous relationship.

I'm a Certified HIV Tester and Prevention Counselor, and I would have to disagree regarding your statement about condoms not being effective enough for individuals engaged in frequent sex with one another. If you use a condom correctly, even if you have sex a lot, the odds of your condom malfunctioning don't increase. Studies have shown that individuals who use condoms while engaging in vaginal intercourse with an infected partner are not very likely to contract the virus. It's much easier to get pregnant or become infected with Hepatitis than it is to contract HIV, which is why using a condom is more effective at staving off HIV than it is for preventing pregnancy or Hepatitis. Of course, no method of protection is 100% fail proof. However, its very dangerous to give people the impression that condom use is ineffective at preventing HIV transmission. If more people used condoms all the time, the rate of transmission would drop drastically.

[nonchalant]

Originally Posted by Toujours_Jolie

I'm a Certified HIV Tester and Prevention Counselor, and I would have to disagree regarding your statement about condoms not being effective enough for individuals engaged in frequent sex with one another. If you use a condom correctly, even if you have sex a lot, the odds of your condom malfunctioning don't increase. Studies have shown that individuals who use condoms while engaging in vaginal intercourse with an infected partner are not very likely to contract the virus. It's much easier to get pregnant or become infected with Hepatitis than it is to contract HIV, which is why using a condom is more effective at staving off HIV than it is for preventing pregnancy or Hepatitis. Of course, no method of protection is 100% fail proof. However, its very dangerous to give people the impression that condom use is ineffective at preventing HIV transmission. If more people used condoms all the time, the rate of transmission would drop drastically.

I was waiting on someone to speak on that because I totally disagreed too. I just didn't want to do any research to locate the facts.

Pertaining to the question at hand, I feel that sex education should be more detailed. I feel that people with HIV/AIDS should speak in these sessions and state their view including how/why they got it, how it effects everyday life, etc. I think people put too much trust in their partners. Testing should be done every six months, and paper work should always be requested for proof of the results. Partners should ask for paperwork and still take into consideration the time frame it takes for the virus to show up in the body. There are many things that can be done. People just get caught up in the moment and are too trusting.

[neosoul]

Originally Posted by Toujours_Jolie

I'm a Certified HIV Tester and Prevention Counselor...

I'm working on that righ' now... church!

[Honeykiss1974]

Soblessed already posted a beginning to the REAL reason why this disease is rampant in our communities and here it is.....

Originally Posted by So blessed!

I'm a medical student and randomly happened to see this the night before I met a Black patient who came for an HIV/AIDS follow-up blood test/counseling. She'd had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, who turned out to be bisexual. She found out he had HIV only by chance (he never told her). This woman is young and is the sole parent of a child. When I asked her why she didn't use condoms with this man (he'd behaved aberrantly for years) she looked at me and said, "I was so tired of being lonely." Basically, she *willed* her relationship to be monogamous, and ignored the glaring signs that her boyfriend was engaging in high-risk behaviors. So she didn't protect herself.

Don't get me wrong. I think education of the disease is important, but that has been going on for years and yet in still our infection rates are climbing. Everyone has heard the medical information, they've heard the Rae Lewis Thortons speak on what it's like to live with the disease, they've seen the Girlfriends episode, but yet and still we are dying at alarming rates and the answer (IMO) isn't as simple as throwing blame at the church or more phamlets at it.

Call me old fashioned, but I really believe that destruction of the black family is the root of MANY problems that disproportionately affect the black community today. I really do. Within the confines of a family, there is so much to learn. The way we deal with the opposite sex begins with the relationships that we have with our father. And if he is absent, there is nothing there to fill that void so we are left to fill it with something or someone else, regardless of the consequences. Take the example above, you have a woman that is willing to overlook behavior that SHE KNOW may be putting her in danger all for the temporary sense of feeling loved. It is feeling (of being wanted, to belong, to feel loved) that causes many otherwise sounded minded people to do crazy things.

If you are a person that work or interact with young women today, you can see this. Way to many young women are willing to do ANYTHING in order to get some young knuckle head boy to like them (or because he said that the loved her). In today's world, having a baby by some boy is the equivalent (during out time) of wearing his letter jacket or class ring. Somehow, someway we need to instill in us (women) a sense of self worth and self love. That our lives are worth so much more than a temporary pleasure or a false sense of security or love.

I don't know. I'm sure there isn't necessarily just ONE answer to this epidemic, but I do know that people are educated about the disease.....so why are we ignoring that information? I think that's where we need to start...with the why.

Be blessed yall!

[Lady of Pearl]

Yes I agree with the previous poster-the lack of stability and father figures in the home, play an important part in both young women and men's lives. However, I believe it goes deeper than that- we are facing a moral crisis in our country. We are inundated with sex in society and this carries over into the behavior that we see in society today. Sex is advertised from soda pop to music videos. Is it any wonder that most young people and some older can't escape the hype? Whatever happened to abstincence and celibacy? Old fashioned values, I know -but somehow it seemed to be working in previous generations and we didn't have the rash of unwanted pregnacies, and stds. So I think another message needs to be conveyed to both young and old alike before its too late-or is it?

[So blessed!]

I agree with Lady of Pearl.

My thinking:
1) anyone with children needs to get BET and MTV off of their cable (even if you don't let them watch it, they're sneaking it in)
2) restrict TV watching in the home
3) kick their kids off the Internet unless they are sitting next to them (all kids say they're doing their homework online, but then when they disappear with some man they met online, you find out what the real deal is)
4) turn off the radio... when parents are in the car with their kids, why do I hear so many playing rap and R&B with lyrics that I assume they wouldn't want their children to repeat?
5) talk about sexual responsibility *AND* consequences from an early age so the first time children hear about it isn't from their classmates or their little boyfriends/girlfriends, it's from their parents.

Fractured families, absent fathers, whirlwinds of stand-in daddies, and poor choices have also not helped our young women learn self-pride and independence, or our young men to learn responsibility and respect of women.

Since society won't do it for us, we need to individually and familially find the strength to make a moral stand so that our children grow up with a strong sense of values. It's not impossible, but maybe I'm too idealistic.

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by So blessed!

I agree with Lady of Pearl.

1) anyone with children needs to get BET and MTV off of their cable (even if you don't let them watch it, they're sneaking it in)

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one--parents should WATCH TV with their kids, even BET and MTV, to start a dialogue about self-esteem and proper behaviors.

Granted, it's been at least 10 years since I've watched anything on BET, but a major part of TV during my adolescence was watching "The Real World." Today, it seems that the show is terrible and completely trashy, but the third season, when Pedro was on, ended showing people--especially people of color--that HIV/AIDS is something that happens to people who are smart, educated, comes from a good family, or good-looking. My mother watched the episodes with us, and we usually talked afterwards. My schools certainly weren't talking about it, and when it was discussed, it was alluded to as an issue that only affected deviants. But now, 12 years or so later, I believe that watching that show, followed by healthy dialogue, impacted the way I carry myself today.

There's really no excuse for not getting tested, other than not wanting to know.

[So blessed!]

[QUOTE=Munchkin03;1326212]I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one--parents should WATCH TV with their kids, even BET and MTV, to start a dialogue about self-esteem and proper behaviors."

You note a good exception with Pedro's case, but most of the stuff that I've seen on BET and MTV isn't educational-- it's addicting! And it's garbage. Now, I'm a grown woman so I can choose to watch the garbage if I want to. (let's be real, it's often entertaining.) Children are more impressionable, though, and I think we have to set limits on what they have access to.

So I disagree that a major source of dialogue about self esteem and proper behaviors should be MTV or BET, or TV in general. Why do you have to watch women running around in bikinis or shaking their stuff in the video camera to prompt a discussion about how to carry oneself like a lady? How does Cribs promote hard work and family values?

There are more positive and less-damaging guides for proper conduct. Go to a spelling bee, see a play, demand manners in public and private...

[Munchkin03]

[QUOTE=So blessed!;1326332]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one--parents should WATCH TV with their kids, even BET and MTV, to start a dialogue about self-esteem and proper behaviors."

You note a good exception with Pedro's case, but most of the stuff that I've seen on BET and MTV isn't educational-- it's addicting! And it's garbage. Now, I'm a grown woman so I can choose to watch the garbage if I want to. (let's be real, it's often entertaining.) Children are more impressionable, though, and I think we have to set limits on what they have access to.

So I disagree that a major source of dialogue about self esteem and proper behaviors should be MTV or BET, or TV in general. Why do you have to watch women running around in bikinis or shaking their stuff in the video camera to prompt a discussion about how to carry oneself like a lady? How does Cribs promote hard work and family values?

There are more positive and less-damaging guides for proper conduct. Go to a spelling bee, see a play, demand manners in public and private...

Note how I said "parents should WATCH TV with their kids." Nowhere did I say that MTV/BET should be a major source of dialogue about anything--it's one hell of a jumping-off point, however. OF COURSE I know that there are other vehicles for discussing life issues; but with the barrage of media that this generation faces, we have to at least consider that a lot of kids watch this stuff, often unsupervised. It is our role as adults to at least find out what they're watching so we can discuss how this clashes with our own value system.

There were very few channels that I was allowed to watch unsupervised until maybe middle school or so...among them Disney Channel and PBS. If there was something that we wanted to watch, my parents usually watched it with us, and if there were questions/concerns, they were brought up then. I think that if watching cable TV had been verboten in our household, I would have found other ways to see what I wanted--without the post-viewing dialogue. That to me would have been far more harmful.

[So blessed!]

This month's Essence (with Sanaa on the cover) has the 1st of a 2-part series about HIV/AIDS in the Black community. I thought it was an interesting and pretty powerful article.

[southernelle25]

Originally Posted by So blessed!

Otherwise saying this is a shame, what are the cultural, personal and social steps we all need to take to keep this disease from continuing to ravage the Black community (esp. Black women)?

Pre-marital sex and promiscuity should be made taboo (AGAIN) in our community. I don't believe it is "a given" that people are going to have sex with people they've known for a brief time, no more than it is "a given" that people are going to smoke. The Sex-in-the-City/Desperate-Housewives society in which we live would like us to believe this behavior is normal, routine... but "the devil is a lie" and our falling for said lie has led to the high rates of AIDS, divorce, and illegitimates ( ), just to name a few.

While I DO agree that parents and the church, young adults and older adults alike, have a responsibility to instill values of self-respect, self-worth and self-love (and respect and love for our community) in each generation, I believe "safe sex" education leads only to confusion, compromise, and consequences fatal to our future.

[thesweetestone]

Tomorrow Oprah is having a show about AIDS. I think her show is about women and AIDS. I think it's Oprah will be speaking to a panel of six women infected with the disease.

[black_princess]

Originally Posted by thesweetestone

Tomorrow Oprah is having a show about AIDS. I think her show is about women and AIDS. I think it's Oprah will be speaking to a panel of six women infected with the disease.

I know . .and I really want to see this episode, but I have class at that time. Good thing NY replays Oprah @ 1am

[shinerbock]

Off topic a little, but as for watching MTV and BET with your kids, thats a good idea...I plan on sitting with them and watching it, and any time they express something like "thats cool" or they laugh at something, I'm gonna hit them in the forehead with a rolled up newspaper and say "No." Hopefully this will work.

[neosoul]

Originally Posted by southernelle25

Pre-marital sex and promiscuity should be made taboo (AGAIN) in our community....

I believe "safe sex" education leads only to confusion, compromise, and consequences fatal to our future.

I need further clarification on the above statements before I go off the deep end...