I found today that, suddenly, I have reached the end of my tolerance for hearing about “risk groups.”
Perhaps it is because I used it all up listening to Sarah Palin’s speech the other night, in which she found time to tell us about the commonality between herself and pitbulls, and what a character she was for putting a luxury plane on eBay (where oddly it didn’t sell) but didn’t find time to mention the epidemic that she certainly knows poses a risk to her drug-injecting son, and unprotected-sex-having daughter.
Anyway.
When I saw the headline today MSM Remain Most At-Risk Group for HIV in Beijing, Official Says, I was irritated.
The problem is not the group; it is the situation. This applies to all people who are classified as members of “most at-risk” groups, whether they be people who sell sex, have sex with men (whether they are men or women), or inject drugs.
It is not they, but their situations: institutionalized social stigmas and discriminatory laws that force people to hide their practices, poverty, and the shortfalls of housing, food, medical care and education that should long have been recognized as human rights, that are risky.
The risk group is the one that holds the power and the resources to right the inequities that have led to this epidemic, but continue to point at others.
