Psst: my individual education/ coaching sessions for the month of December are 30% off for everyone. ​

When I was in fourth grade in 1988, we had an AIDS education class. I don't remember that much about it, but I do remember one girl wasn't allowed to be present for the lesson because her mother didn't want her to. I wish I could remember what fourth graders in Bellwood, PA learned about AIDS in 1988. I'm grateful we learned anything at all.

I knew AIDS was a sad, scary disease when I was a kid, but I mostly knew that because of Ryan White and a 1988 tv movie about another hemophiliac child with AIDS called Go Toward the Light. I'm sure I also caught snippets of Oprah and Donahue. My favorite singer was Madonna, but I didn't yet know that so many of her friends would die from AIDS and that the disease would impact my life, too.

By 2002, I was living in Philadelphia and working for an adolescent HIV program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Our program provided HIV treatment to adolescents with HIV, and it had started in the 90s because babies born with HIV were living long enough to be teens! By the time I began this work, very few babies were being born with HIV, but teens were acquiring it through sex. Our program, the Adolescent Initiative, provided treatment to those young people, as well as prevention services and a ton of incredible research.

My work was in prevention, and occasionally I worked on a research study. One example: we studied an intervention to help adolescents be more compliant with taking their HIV med​s- which at the the time were multiple pills per day unlike modern, simpler treatments like once-daily single-pill combinations and long-acting injectables. In fact, here's the study from 2006! ​

One of the hardest parts of my work was being present with adolescents as they received a positive HIV diagnosis. One girl I'll never forget- she was a 15 year old trans girl from juvenile detention literally sitting in the doctor's office in handcuffs, learning that she was HIV positive. We were there not just to provide her diagnosis, but to immediately wrap her up in support and a care plan.

Altogether I worked in this HIV/AIDS program for 17 years, right up until I left to start my own business and begin Purity Culture Dropout.™ The landscape of HIV changed SO much during that time. HIV is no longer a death sentence. It's now considered a chronic illness that's more easy to manage than diabetes, but that doesn't mean the stigma has gone away.

I don't fully remember when I understood that HIV/AIDS was associated with people on the margins, people most vulnerable to all of societal's ills (right now that means women of color, queer men of color, and trans women of color). And that the United States government, under president Ronald Reagan and influenced by religious figures like Jerry Falwell, would allow 89,343 deaths. But that's what happened, and that's what the Trump administration would gladly let happen again.

Yesterday, communities across the globe commemorated World AIDS Day, reaffirming a commitment to end an epidemic that has killed more than 44 million. But for the first time since 1988, since I had that fourth grade class about AIDS, the U.S. government decided not to mark the occasion. The Trump administration reportedly barred agencies from commemorating or participating.

We are so close to ending the epidemic, but the United States government does not have our back. The Trump administration has cut funding for dozens of HIV studies, ended all CDC HIV prevention programs, drastically cut international aid to countries most affected by AIDS deaths, and threatened decades of progress in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.

I used to rely on CDC statistics and information in my work, and I don't any longer. The CDC can't be trusted.

In fact, when you go to the CDC page about how HIV is spread, a message at the top says: "Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female...This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it."

All because the prevention information includes information for trans people during a time when, according to one recent international analysis, transgender women have 49 times the odds of having HIV compared to the general population. (Trans men are less likely to be HIV positive than trans women, but their rates of infection are still higher than that of the general population.)

My message to you today is that HIV/AIDS still matters. The most vulnerable of our communities are most at risk. And we are ALL at risk of going backward thanks to this administration's callous handling of decades of progress.

If you want to learn about the early days of the HIV epidemic, which I think everyone should, here are some resources for you:

• ​How AIDS remained an unspoken but deadly epidemic for years ​
• ​AIDS epidemic timeline ​
• Watch And the Band Played On ​
• Watch Angels in America ​
• Watch Pose on FX ​
• Visit the AIDS Memorial Instagram account
• ​How ACTUP changed the face of AIDS activism ​
• ​How ACTUP changed America ​
• ​Read any of these books, including How To Survive A Plague ​

And if you ever want to talk about any of these things- your own HIV risk, preventing unintended sexual health outcomes, stigma around queer sexuality and sexual health- I'm here for that and I'd love to support you.

Right now my individual sessions for the month of December are 30% off for everyone. ​

Thank you for reading and for witnessing my story.

xo

E

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