for world aids day

first of all, reccing out this insightful post by joeatlarge.

then this recent article by michael tan on HIV treatment in the philippines:

AIDS awareness needs to begin much earlier, in homes, in schools, even in work places. And that awareness must come bundled together with an understanding of sex, sexuality, gender roles. Mar was always reminding my students about how seafarers pushed fellow seafarers at each port to go to the brothels. Not to go meant you weren't a "real man."

These distorted values don't come from mass media. They're propagated in homes, and later in schools, including seafarer training institutions. And there's little being done to correct this situation. When there are attempts to introduce values education around sexuality, as we're doing in the University of the Philippines, conservatives protest. You shouldn't talk about sex in classrooms, they claim. Sure, so let's leave it to mass media, to street talk. And to macho seafarer talk, the men egging each other into the brothels, and scoffing at condoms. Mar told me, too, how some seafarers would claim condoms were useless, that they have holes through which the AIDS virus could pass.

Guess where they picked up such misinformation? The self-appointed guardians of morality rail against talking about sex in schools, yet they do that all the time, in schools, in mass media, even on the pulpit, spreading these hole-y claims about condoms. That's going to mean more people getting HIV, and for whom the 3-by-5 and 10-by-10 programs will mean nothing, absolutely nothing.