New holiday today
The CDC has declared today to be the first ever National Transgender HIV Testing Day.
A 2013 systematic review showed that HIV was prevalent among 22% of transgender women in the United States, and a separate analysis estimated the prevalence was as high as 56% among transgender women who were black, the CDC reported.
The event is sponsored by the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at the University of California at San Francisco and will focus on "expanding HIV testing, prevention and treatment initiatives in the transgender community."
Transgender people often experience barriers to accessing HIV services because of misperceptions and stigma, lack of knowledge about transgender issues, and social issues such as being underinsured or not having adequate housing or transportation.
Eliminating these barriers will help reduce HIV infections among transgender people and provide better care to those living with HIV.
--Jonathan Mermin and Eugene McCray, CDC
Transgender women have been either excluded or ignored in most HIV surveillance systems around the world, resulting in a limited understanding of the burden of HIV among this group.
--Stefan Baral, MD, MPH, director of the key populations programs in the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
One of the central problems is the difficulty researchers have in distinguishing between men who have sex with men and transgender women.
Comments
A step in the right direction
Hooray!
My wonderful husband is on a cmte at work who helps other co-workers before, during and after. He helps with the transition with the transition you might say
Also he thought he'd never get the correct pronoun and such and he was so worried and anxious about using the wrong pronoun. Especially with one co-worker he'd known for a decade. But it's amazing what can happen if a person simply communicates. He now even uses "xe" in speech sometimes.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
If you don't mind dear Robyn
I'd like to share more about this aspect of my spouse's fairly recent role in this cmte.
The committee consisted of several people from various parts of the company. My husband was selected to be advocate for a co-worker. His main role is to answer basic questions from other co-workers and to be able to remind others - this happens mostly in writing or verbal situations revolving around past name and/or pronoun usuage. And be the first person on the team that his co-worker could go to.
I was so grateful that he works for such a company that puts so much effort and thought into such a truly small matter. It shouldn't matter one whit but oh how it can be so huge and become the only thing that does matter. If that makes sense in my jumbled way?
But I was also so saddened that part of this enormous team of support... the most vital was the one that will help this person with the possible violence in their personal life. Transgender people face so much violence from strangers but horrifically it's usually the worse violence is from people they love or call family.
So much needs to change in us all so that we can all just be ourselves.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
Researchers have difficulty
distinguishing between the variations of humanity. When you reduce humans to demographics or statistical units it makes it difficult to even address the those pesky universal human and civil rights that are not only inalienable but self evident. Why do categorize our rights through the filters of gender, race, nationality, religion or any of the other definitions of other. We are all human and all deserve to have our rights as human beings acknowledged and sanctioned by the rule makers who seem to be able to disenfranchise and persecute those who do not fit their definition of normal as defined by the worst of humanity . Thanks Robyn.
here's some good news
Fed Court sides with trans student
With their hearts they turned to each others heart for refuge
In troubled years that came before the deluge
*Jackson Browne, 1974, Before the Deluge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU