HEALTH:
Global Village
or Sexual Minority Ghetto?
By Zofeen
Ebrahim
MEXICO CITY , Aug 7 (IPS)
- Dealing with transgenders (TGs) can be
confusing. Even the organisers of the 17th
International AIDS Conference underway in this
city failed to accommodate the third gender by
providing them separate toilets.
"I went to the male toilet
only to be told I should go to the female one,
where again I was told to try the male one!"
Agniva Lahiri, 28, expressed her indignation
while talking with IPS at the Global Village --
the most happening and animated place in the
entire Centro Banamex, venue of the Aug. 3-8
conference.
Lahiri declares that her
‘’political identity is TG’’ and ‘’not gay’’.
She is an MSM (men who have sex with men) and
has a male partner, but takes a passive role in
the relationship. However, she refuses to do the
housework back in Mumbai, India, where she comes
from.
Lahiri admits that things
are changing at international conferences. She
has been to five international conferences over
the last decade and insists: "The visibility of
TGs is much better here than at previous ones.’’
Susan Lopez of the United
States-based Desiree Alliance had similar praise
for the conference. "The sex workers are very
visible and there are a lot of sessions around
their issues, no doubt, than ever before in the
past." A former stripper, Lopez describes
herself as a sex worker, and says she ‘’misses
her work terribly’’.
In fact, for the first
time, in the history of the AIDS conference, a
plenary session had a sex worker for a speaker.
"This is a great achievement," said Elena
Reynaga, from Argentina’s RedTraSex, making a
stirring case for full recognition of sex work
and the rights of sex workers.
Reynaga said the
contribution of sex workers in mounting
effective response to the HIV pandemic cannot be
ignored. She cited the example of Kolkata,
India, where a strong movement of sex workers in
the Songachi red light area of the city helped
increase condom use from only 1.1 percent in
1992 to 90 percent by 1998.
"What did they do? They
fought for their health by advocating for sex
work to be recognised as legitimate work and by
defending sex workers’ human rights," said
Reynaga.
Taking the experts to
task, she pointed out that funding was given
without understanding the "real needs" of sex
workers. "In many parts of the world, sex
workers do not even have access to basics such
as sufficient male and female condoms."
She also pointed out the
times when funding comes with conditions. "I ask
you how do you think sex workers can use ABC
(Abstinence, Be faithful and Condom) as an
effective HIV prevention tool? It is an affront
to our work! The only letter that is of any use
to us is C..."
But there are people like
Dr. Janaki Vidanapathirana, a community
physician from Sri Lanka, who are baffled by so
much attention paid to sex work. "Nobody in his
or her true mind wants to go into this field.
They talk about it as if it was alright!" While
she believes that sex workers should be given
treatment and care and that prevention
programmes should be designed for them, as is
their right, she wonders why, "people here are
not able to find the root cause of why people
are selling sex," which is "poverty and poverty
alone’’.
To Vidanapathirana experts
are talking about behaviour change. But
‘universal action (the theme of the conference)
now’ should also include behaviour development.
They have to talk of those who have not yet
joined the profession of selling sex but due to
extreme poverty are vulnerable to going into sex
work. "Why don’t they talk more of education,
livelihood issues and economic empowerment so
they leave this work?" But then Vidanapathirana
has not met Lopez who emphasises that people
must understand that "some of us have chosen
this as our profession of our free will."
Bhanu Buduk, 23, from
India is a Dalit (a low caste Hindu) and a TG
who earns a living by dancing at weddings. "We
can’t find work so we do this. Not only are we
lowly paid but we face extreme harassment --
from the police, our clients and even at times
from our masters. When we are raped and we
report it, the police ask us how we can be raped
when we are men."
Lahiri has been working
with this group to "reduce violence" in their
work. "These dancers may provide their services
to sometimes a dozen men in one single night,
and if they cannot perform well enough they are
beaten up and subjected to sadistic attacks,’’
she said.
Similar things happen in
the U.S. where, says Lopez, when a prostitute is
found dead, the police files are marked NHI
(acronym for no human involved). "We are
considered trash, less than human."
"Last year a stripper in
Irvine, California, was raped but she lost the
case because she was told by the judge that she
was overtly sexual and got what she wanted!"
narrated Lopez. In another case, an escort was
gang-raped and the judge, that too a woman, said
it was theft of service and not rape!"
Lopez calls the global
village a "global ghetto where all of us are
sequestered’’ and says the "pharmaceutical
companies have been paid to keep us out of
there".
And yet, it is the place
where the experts and the leaders fighting for
an AIDS free world can find answers to the
problems they brainstorm over inside closed,
sanitised rooms.
It is only in the global
village that one can find graphic depictions of
sex practices among men and ways to put on
condoms, male or female. There are women doing
pole dancing and condoms are everywhere, in a
riot of colours and shapes. Few here have time
to hear what the experts have to say or the
steady exchange of information about the
epidemic and its prevention.
A fashion show organised
by Brazilian Davida, an organisation of sex
workers, was a huge success and drew crowds too.
Nets, furs, leather and lace, flying kisses,
suggestive poses and blown up condoms, all made
up the show.
"We want to show to the
world that sex workers are not victims and we
want our rights," said Gabriella. "I have a face
and am not ashamed of my work," she said talking
with IPS backstage. "I want more respect from
people," said 40-year-old Carmen, a commercial
sex worker for the past 24 years. "Grandiose,
spectacular!" is how 44-year-old HIV positive
Palo Gomex, a drag queen, termed the fashion
show of which he was a part.
"I wish Peter Piot,
executive director of the Joint U.N. Programme
of HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) would hang out with us,"
says Tara Anne Sawyer, a TG from the U.S. She
also showed discontent over U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s rather brief
appearance at the official opening of the Global
Village.
(END/2008)
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