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Women Abuse and HIV/AIDS

© Moira Richards

Women abuse can spread HIV/AIDS and it's much easier for a man to pass on the virus to a woman.  There are also social and cultural factors which make it difficult for women to avoid this deadly disease.

1. Rape - Our world's atrociously high incidence of female rape exposes women more and more to HIV infection, as well as to the trauma of rape. I once heard an attorney advise a group of women to always carry a condom in their purse in case they were raped. She says the chances that a would-be rapist would consent to use the condom were small, but better than the chances of him being HIV positive and infecting his victim. Of course, this would later significantly prejudice a woman's case against the rapist when she tried to prove that the sexual encounter was not consensual. However, said the attorney, at least she might still be alive.
2. Child Abuse - As HIV/AIDS becomes more and more of a risk to sexually active men, so does their demand for virginal young women and girls who present no risk to them, increase. This means that very young girls are targeted as the victims of men who travel on sex holidays (I have an earlier article on this subject, if you are curious). Little girls, toddlers and babies even, are often raped by HIV positive men in some countries because the myth abounds that they can cleanse themselves of the virus if they have sex with a virgin.
3. Institutional Power - Various sites on the internet store articles that deal with the sexual abuse of nuns by the Catholic priests. I will write more about this in a separate article next week, but relevant to this article is the argument of some of these guilty priests. They say they need to obtain sexual favours from the nuns because otherwise they will be obliged to have sex with the local village girls and risk contracting HIV/AIDS from them. Therefore, it is much safer for the priests to use the nuns to satisfy their sexual needs.
4. FGM - Female Genital Mutilation (dealt with in all its gory detail in an earlier article) has its own story of tragic repercussions, and not least among them is the increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDS that its victims suffer. These operations may be performed under primitive surgical conditions and often a whole group of teenage girls is circumcised together. Rarely is the piece of metal or glass that is used, sterile. Great are the chances that the bloodied knife that cuts one HIV positive lass, will be used again immediately, on the one lying next to her, and on the one next to her too .... Often, the genital mutilation is of such a nature that these girls will bruise and bleed every time they have sex thereafter. These types of open wounds in their genital area will increase significantly their chances of contracting the HIV virus from an infected lover.

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