Link And Think is an observance of World AIDS Day in the personal web publishing communities. The project involves hundreds of webloggers, journalers, diarists and other personal website publishers, each linking to resources about HIV/AIDS or publishing personal stories about how the AIDS pandemic has affected them.

There’s lots of ways I could address the AIDS epidemic: policy, the gay aspect, the health and research. I already had an early rant about testing, and it definitely worries me that there’s been an increase in the number of reported cases over the past three years.

I think it’s partially a reaction to the late 80’s and early 90’s stigma against HIV positive people. There was such an effort to (rightfully) support people, let them know that you can be truly living with AIDS not dying from it , that HIV kind of lost its edge. Lost its danger for some people. I remember seeing a commercial several years ago featuring some swimsuit model or Ms. America in a boxing outfit talking about how active and strong you can be living with HIV. And there was a woman kayaking in another commercial, probably selling a new drug cocktail. It’s a double-edged sword, I think. You want to support people, but don’t want to spin it like it’s some happy-go-lucky disease that’s easily managed with drugs and has no other side effects or complications.

I don’t know who these not-freaked out people are that decide to have unprotected sex. I generally think people are pretty logical; the only conclusion I can make (and attest to) is some sort of lack of self-esteem and a general self-loathing. If you’re aware of the risks and how the virus is spread, the only reason I can see is that you see no future for yourself, don’t care about your future, or don’t care about yourself enough to protect yourself. (I personally see a correlation to not being able to marry (“partnership,” whatever you want to call it), having children, etc.) If anyone can spread more light on it, I’d love to hear.

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