The Global Impact of AIDS on Women

Recently some white feminists in the United States have criticized women AIDS activists and implied that AIDS is not a "women's issue." In the US as of June 13, 1988, there had been 64,896 cases of AIDS diagnosed. Nearly 5,600 of those cases are women. Globally, there have been over 96,000 reported cases of AIDS, and in the African countries, half of those cases are women. According to the World Health Organization, 138 countries have reported 96,789 cases of AIDS. It is important to remember that these are diagnosed AIDS cases, and that AIDS is only the endpoint of HIV infection. HIV causes a number of other diseases much earlier than it causes AIDS. I am often asked about AIDS and lesbians. In the US, there have been 27 reported cases in lesbian women and 42 reported cases in bisexual women. Most of the lesbians are from New York, New Jersey, or Florida, and most appear to have contracted AIDS through use of injectable drugs. I know of three reported cases in the literature in which transmission seems clearly to have been from woman to woman. The obvious conclusion is that lesbians need safe sex too. A particularly dangerous point (for both lesbian and heterosexual sex) is oral sex during or around the time of a woman's menstrual period. ???emember, menstrual blood is still blood, and if a woman has HIV, her menstrual blood will be full of AIDS virus.