The Aids Problem

The Fourth Annual "Just Shut Up" Awards

from metafilter

"Every year, people all over the world say stridently stupid, misinformed or absurd things about HIV and AIDS. Here's a list of some folks who make you wonder what, if anything, they were thinking before they opened their mouths in 2004. Their comments are best met with three little words: Just shut up."

Our Senior Minister of State for Health,Balaji Sadasivan is one of the winners for this award, for his comments on Aids a few months ago.

It is sad that just because "there are conservative people in Singapore, the Action for Aids have to tone down in their publicity. More people have to die of Aids because of this.

In Singapore, we have people who spread FUD about Aids, who say things without thinking, who rant about negative energies, who stick their heads in the sand instead of facing the problem face on.

We cannot apply old solutions to new problems.

Just because Aids was tackled by less aggresive methods in the past does not mean it will work now.

If you think Aids in Singapore are mainly spread by homosexuals, you are ignoring the thousands of Singapore men who engage in sexual services with foreign "tourists". You are ignoring thousands of Singapore men who go overseas (thailand, batam,bintan), for the same purpose.

There are many facets to this problem, and we risk worsening the Aids problem if we fight the wrong battle on the "homosexual" front, so to speak. Homosexuals are an easy target.

Most conservative people will say, "Hah, i always knew gays are the source of the problem", without much thought, when they read the remarks from the minister.

For the typical conservative, little do they know that the Aids problem might hit closer to home, perhaps from the ah peh living next door who goes to batam once every month, or the unmarried uncle who goes thailand once in a while, y'know, to "destress". Do you think the hundreds of men entering Bintan and Batam are going there for the golf and the Banyan Tree spas?

Blaming Homosexuals are easy, they are more often than not, looked upon as "freaks" by most conservative Singaporeans. The perfect bogeyman.

I am not saying they are not part of the Aids problem. I am saying that they are just one of the many causes of Aids proliferation. We should be fighting Aids on many fronts.

The Aids problem is as much a problem for our society as it is a reflection of how "being conservative" can cause us to ignore the main causes of a problem.

Link of the day: Enable two-finger scrolling on pre-2005 ibooks/PowerBooks

It works for my 2004 ibook! Super cool.