Tagged: HIV/AIDS

Gender & Sexuality / Sociology of Culture / Sociology of Media & Communication

Gendering HIV/AIDS Discourse

nmccoy1 Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Africa (see BBC article below) included comments on the AIDS epidemic that has disproportionately affected Africans worldwide.  While staying true to Catholic doctrine and its teachings on abstinence, his insistence that condoms are both ineffective against the spread of HIV/AIDS and can in fact increase the rate of contamination further diminish the gendered aspects of this problem.  The fact that condoms are a cheap and accessible form of birth control has been overshadowed by...

Sociology of Culture

World AIDS Day

Today marks the twentieth annual World AIDS Day, an international day designed to raise awareness of the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS a preventable disease which has killed more than 27 million people globally since its first reported cases in 1981.  Today, an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, many in the developing world where a lack of adequate information and financial resources has resulted in substantially higher mortality rates. Since the focus of World AIDS Day is to...