Wednesday, August 31, 2011

When addressing the challenge of changing behavior, it's "easy to blame the victim"

via Huffington Post, by Simon McCormack

When addressing the challenge of changing behavior, Marjorie Hill says it's easy to blame the victim.

"There's always a tendency to look at the person and say, 'why don't you just stop smoking or eating red meat or start exercising?'" The Gay Men's Health Crisis CEO and HuffPost blogger says.

But when it comes to dealing with HIV and AIDS, Hill says, it's more complicated.

"We think that personal responsibility is important and we certainly encourage it," she said. "But when you look at the numbers and understand the epidemiology, the most common factor that those 33 million people who have the disease share is poverty. Poverty doesn't transmit HIV, but certainly being in a situation where someone has less access to information, resources, education and power -- those are factors that influence HIV."

That's what GMHC, the world’s first provider of HIV and AIDS prevention, care and advocacy, works to change, Hill said.

Read the rest.


[If an item is not written by an IRMA member, it should not be construed that IRMA has taken a position on the article's content, whether in support or in opposition.]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell me about the poor, badly educated, deprived gay men you know and have known over the years in your town...

Anonymous said...

Oh Anon, Anon... Perhaps you know nothing about the thousands and thousands of young gay kids living on the streets of big cities like Chicago, LA and NYC. Many of them kicked out of their homes - many not having finished highschool. They're poor, have a serious lack of education, and are very deprived of all kinds of basic services and amenities. Perhaps you've never noticed?

Anonymous said...

What I noticed is that you ignored my remarks and decided to make a statement about another group of people. My initial remark made you angry, causing you to lash out at me with a remark about a group of people I'm aware of, as I'm aware of the originally mentioned group. But you are free to ignore that first group and spend your time working with must be a group you are interested in. You are spending your time working with that group, aren't you?

Anonymous said...

You make no sense. You didn't know about any deprived gay men, and I just told you about some. When I said kids - that age range goes from 14 to about 24 - so certainly plenty of "men" in that group.

Anonymous said...

          So now you want to argue semantics and math. Congratulations. Meanwhile, Lots of super educated, older, wealthy gay men are caught in this deathtrap. Do you think they will be impressed by your concern about these detailed numbers? How about we just recognize the wide range of people in the death zone, and exactly how they got there, as a first step to coming up with a solution to the problem? So one subgroup of victims is well educated, wealthy rich white gay men. Which tells me education and poverty level might not be the real cause.

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