By Maria Padhila
Hairdressers from Cameroon wore dresses and wigs made of female condoms. An international health organization has a tent in its lobby this week with a display of condoms and wooden dildos. And the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence work their awareness magic, as reports Michelle Boorstein from The Washington Post live blog:
“The language of gender and sexuality has changed through the AIDS crisis, said Sister Vicious, a 66-year-old co-founder of the group who has been HIV positive since 1980 and looked like a cross between a vampy clown and Marilyn Manson, with a red wig, whiteface makeup and black and white ruffles all over her shirt and skirt.”
The International AIDS Conference is taking place in Washington, DC, this week, and while there’s a distinctive circus atmosphere I think I’d enjoy in my home city, I’m out of town on a working vacation with Isaac, hiking around in the Appalachians. They’ve got wifi in these here hills, but I’m still filing earlier than usual this week, so I apologize in advance if something wildly interesting goes down at the conference and I’m not aware of it.
Despite the amazing changes and new openness around HIV and AIDS, there’s a group that’s still being silenced and shunned: sex workers. From a Reuters report:
The United States … has clung to a prohibition on the entry of foreign sex workers established more than two centuries ago … Activists, and some conference officials, say that runs counter to a goal of achieving an end to the epidemic that affects more than 34 million people worldwide. On Sunday, a group of sex-worker activists carrying red umbrellas and noise-making vuvuzelas crashed the AIDS gathering’s kick-off news conference.
Other events planned for the week include daily live video link-ups with the Sex Worker Freedom Festival — an alternative satellite event taking place in Kolkata, India, in response to the exclusion from Washington of foreign sex workers.