Pixies Place Forums - View Single Post - SA lesbians 'targeted for murder'

I actually do understand this.
But that's a hisotrical perspective. Africa, like the rest of the world, has changed, evolved... maybe mutated?
Modern communications, things like phones, TV, radio and the effect of modern travel has become part of the very existence of these otherwise disparate cultures.
The fact that HIV is so prevalent in almost all of these areas, a disease that is spread today only by intimate contact, (dirty needles and blood transfusions included) is partly proof of this. So why would we be shocked to learn that the common misconceptions, myths and superstitions about HIV are going to spread via the same pathways? Add to this the spread of (mostly islamic) fundamentalism and the hugely variable interpretations of religious -based rules of behavior, and you have problems for women, Lesbian and otherwise.
As a whole, with specific rare exceptions, most of Africa has had a really dark history where lesbians are concerned. Probably for gay men too, I have not looked that up. My MSN work dealt with the difficulties, both perceived and real, that women in "alternative lifestyles" had in accessing health care. The issues in Africa were more than just a passing concern for me, as I addressed soci-economic, cultural, (not the same as societal, within this context, at least) and infrastructure limitations. (i.e. no hospital, clinics, laboratories or medical schools, so no doctors to provide care, and no infrastructure to support them. No point in testing for HIV, or scheduling for annual Pap smears if there is no laboratory to perform the tests.)
Single women, even widows, have difficulty living with any kind of dignity in most of theses cultures. In many cases they are considered almost subhuman. So how is a Lesbian going to access limited resource health care? Or escape the fate in the article?
This is only partly an emotional argument for me, as I spent literally years researching this and have a reasonable understanding of the social dynamics.

so there...

*thhhpppp*

WW