Wherein I speak about AIDS seriously

Between reading Alexander Yate’s Moondogs (excellent) and Bernard Lewis’s The Middle East (also excellent) I’ve been reading up on a few cases of legal judgments involving HIV+ people infecting others. I’ve always had an interest in the disease (my sister’s research interest in the 1st half of the PhD, a queer lit. course on Derek Jarman, subsequent research on poetry dealing with the epidemic in the 80s because I didn’t want to write the final paper on Jarman, etc.), specifically the evolving cultural stigma surrounding it through its short history (if you can recommend a book on the historical overview of that, HOLLA FO REALZ). My recent revisitation on the topic has nothing to do nerdy nostalgia though, but was reignited rather by a sorta under-the-radar news item involving an underage HIV+ teen in Edmonton and FB conversations I’ve had about it with a friend of mine who works in public health as a teen sex ed. educator (did I get it right Liz?). But before I go into that, I’ll summarize what I’ve read thus far because I’m nice.

So there’s this girl right? She’s 17 and homeless and HIV+. Po-po is like “hey Girl-Whose-Name-I-cannot-say-because-you’re-underaged, stop fucking dudes.” But she’s like “NO!” So she’s fucking a few dudes in Youth Centres with no ‘dom right, and then two of these guys are like “whaaaat that ho gots AIDS WAAAAAAH” and then po-po’s like “Oh girl I warned you and you still be sleeping around I’s gonna getchu” but the po-po can’t find her so steam is shooting outta their ears right and then they hear that the girl is leaving town so more steam shoots outta their ears and po-po can’t have it no mo’ you see so they dial up ‘em friends “hey yo Crown Prosecutor gimme a court order so I can tell the world how big a ho this girl is all over the news, those chumps at Alberta Public Health said aight” and their main man CP is like “wevs” so her face and her name are all over the place and sooner or later she got caught and after that her face and name are taken off all over the place because her HIV advocate homies are like “yo po-po! That shit ain’t right dawg” all the while the girl-ho-girl is yelling from her cell “I WANT BAIL DOUCHEBAG,” “DOUCHEBAG” being the judge who’s like “no bail for you cuz you got AIDS lolz” and “oh btw you’s getting charged with aggravated assault lolz.”

Now you’re up to speed. If you want to verify this story, googling search terms “hiv positive teen edmonton” should do the trick.

There’s so much to talk about here and the topic in general, but two things stand out:

1) In Canada, three conditions have to be met before someone can be criminally charged for the transmission of HIV through sex: 1) the defendant is HIV+ & aware of the fact, 2) the defendant does not disclose his/her condition to the victim AND 3) the defendant does not use a condom. The discussion I had with my friend revolved around responsibility, namely the joint responsibility of both partners to exercise safe sex. In Johnson Aziga’s case, the first in the world in which someone has been found guilty in 1st degree murder through the transmission of HIV, the court ruled that consent is impossible because the victims didn’t know of Aziga’s status. Does this presuppose then, in the court of law, that sex is to be viewed as something without liability to begin with? I mean, consent here is presented as an absolute term right? There is consent, and its oppositonal absolute, non-consent, and nothing in between, ergo the victim has no responsibility in the resulting injury/death right? Of course I’m not saying that the victim deserves it somehow, but this seems logically suspect to me, as though a messy reality is being clumsily corseted into a structure of language that fails to describe it and thereby fails to assess it properly. There’s a disconnect between a person’s responsibility for his/her own sexual health and the legal description in which the actors must necessarily be defined categorically as plaintiff and defendant, and thereby necessarily absolving the former of any responsibility and placing the entire bulk onto the latter, is all I’m saying. Although situationally, this is tantamount to say, a person bearing some responsibility for getting hit by bus because he made the social contract to walk in a public space. Regardless, there’s something not quite right in my mind that the victim bears no responsibility for consciously agreeing to forego wearing a condom.

Tangential ramification: if we were to uphold the law’s definition, what do we make of HIV+ moms? The first two criteria qualify (aside from the legal definition of a person mabes, but it’s within reason that it’ll be person in this case), and the third criterion seems to be formulated to identify the defendant’s acknowledgment that HIV transmission is possible, which applies in this scenario as well. There’s no way the law will deny a woman’s birthright to give birth, and the motive can’t be compared to people in the cases of aggravated assault or murder one of course but at the same time there’s no denying either that there’s a chance of HIV transmission as well (25% chance of transmission, if you’re wondering), just like its malevolent counterparts. I suppose reducing HIV exceptionalism is the only way to go about this as a culture, but with that we’d have to reduce the severity of punishment for the bad stuff as well.

2) I’m curious how gender and race will play out in this case. In two of the most media-sensationalized cases in North America (the former I’ve already mentioned, the other goes by the name of Nushawn Williams), the perps are both Black males. I don’t have to tell you the cultural narrative associated with that category (or the perfect opportunity for racism & less frequently sexism to find “acceptable” expression when there’s a greater evil afoot, read any comment threads under online news articles about either of the two for proof) or the usual defence strategies used when white female is the bad guyette. The latter, if it really stays the usual course, might fall to less sympathetic ears though, I think, at least to the male jurors, since the imagined threat hits closer to home (how many guys haven’t had unprotected sex at least once before?) and also AIDS! And judging from another high profile case involving a woman, oops nevermind. Part of Benaissa’s defence involves this:

After learning she was HIV positive, doctors advised her it was “highly unlikely” she would spread the virus if she remained healthy. “I trusted those doctors,” she said.

The plea of ignorance tries to shift part of the responsibility onto the medical professional for sure, but it hints also at reduced risk  in rate of infection from W->M (.05% per vag-peen intercourse) compared to M->W (.1%).  Anyhoo it’ll be interesting to see if the defence lawyers in the girl-ho-girl case will employ a similar strategy. Pleading ignorance (and/or alluding to the statistical difference in risk), despite multiple warnings, seems plausible given the girl’s underaged status, multiply that sentiment with her homeless background. On the other hand, I’m wondering if she’ll be bumped up and tried as an adult. She’s on the cusp at 17, and the HIV stigma along with the slut narrative, in this case with possible malicious intent (one article I read paints her in light strokes as a predator at the youth centre by mentioning the number of teens who has to get tested after having unprotected sex with her), and also being tried in the conservative province that is Alberta, well, we’ll just have to wait and see.