October 25, 2015 - HIV Equal.
by David Heitz
For so many women with HIV, the violence they live with every day is even worse than the disease itself.
For other women who may not have HIV but who are in violent relationships, a diagnosis may be just right around the corner.
Last Friday was the National Day of Action to End Violence against Women Living with HIV. While it may be hard to believe that, more than 30 years into the epidemic, HIV is still looked upon by many as a gay man's disease, that stigma still is pervasive.
And it’s dangerous because, in fact, women of color are disproportionately affected by the virus. A black woman is 20 times more likely to contract HIV than a white woman, and five times more likely to become infected than a Latina woman.
Why are women of color disproportionately affected? Because many of them grew up in violent homes and now live in their own violent relationships. When they find themselves in those same violent relationships, they often end up making decisions that are dysfunctional and harmful to themselves because it's all they ever knew.
"I just thought I was a chick who got beat up sometimes," explains Gina Brown, a member of the President's Advisory Council on HIV, in a video about HIV and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) among women. The video, produced by Greater than AIDS in conjunction with The Well Project, Planned Parenthood, Positive Women's Network USA and other groups, is hosted by Tonya Lewis Lee, wife of Spike Lee.
The video features five women with HIV who have become "Empowered" to leave behind abuse relationships, get their HIV under control, and pursue the happy, functional lives they had been denying themselves for so long.
More than half of the approximately 300,000 women living with HIV in the U.S. have experienced violence or abuse at the hands of an intimate partner, according to PWN-USA. A third of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to data from the Women's HIV Program at University of California San Francisco, women with HIV today are more likely to die from the effects of lifetime trauma than the disease itself.
Maria Mejia, a community advisory board member for The Well Project, explains in the video that she kept finding herself in abusive relationships because it was her "normal" that went all the way back to her childhood.
Mejia, well known in the HIV community as a symbol of strength and an inspiration to many, displays her own tender vulnerability in the video: "I need help and I'm still going through it."
Breaking the cycle of dysfunction
Women who are in violent relationships often stay in them because they simply don't love themselves. They may have been told that they are not worth much by their partners and if they stray nobody else will want them, especially if they have HIV.
They may not want to bring up condom use with their partner, for example, out of fear that he will be offended by the request and possibly even strike them. For women who already have HIV, they may not want to take their medications in front of a partner because it will make him angry and serve as a reminder of the woman's disease.
Other times, women in abusive relationships who have HIV become so depressed they don't even want to eat, let alone take their medication, Brown explains in the video.
Many women don't seek help, Brown explains, because they grew up in a culture where women of color are expected to be strong. "You don't seek help because you're not 'crazy,'" she said. "I have a therapist. It's about me getting well."
Brown explained the last straw for her before getting out of a violent relationship was when her partner cocked his fist back to strike her when she held her baby in her arms. "I got out," she said. "We've got to stop saying 'What goes on this house stays in this house. You've got to reach out for help and love yourself." Continue reading...
