LOVE IS THE CURE
On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS
C Elton John AIDS Foundation
Publisher : Little Brown and Company
The writing was smooooth; Strunk and White would be proud!
Elton John kept the focus on AIDS, so while some personal information is woven in, it's not the focus, and the focus feels relentless.
The information Elton John has to deliver is appalling. Most utterly appalling is the frequency - normalcy - of RAPE OF WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, where Blacks have extremely high rates of AIDS.
I cannot help but apply my own values; it's horrific and disgusting. Apartheid ended but insane sexism and homophobia has not. South African leader Nelson Mandela appears in ads but maybe these people DON'T WANT LIFE! This is not about Whites oppressing Blacks in South Africa. This is about Blacks doing themselves in. Elton John is too kind to say so.
There are other examples, other countries. In South Africa the women are raped and it's strangly frequent enough to be implied acceptable and yet they are afraid to admit it which means it is not acceptable, so people go without medical treatment until they are about to die, hiding the secret of their rape... and the children... they become orphans... they die too.
Yes, there are other countries where AIDS is taking lives because of ignorance, other examples in the book. Elton's not picking on South Africa.
So, after getting over my fury about South Africa, I took a moment to ask myself the question that that was part of the "prime directive" on the old Star Trek series.
(If you don't remember, on Star Trek the crew beams down to various planets surfaces where they are, by their very presence, going to influence the culture, while trying not to. They are supposed to attend to their business for going there, take care of a problem, and leave.) Can we take our values and try to make another culture conform to them because we think or know that these people would be better off with our values or can we avoid doing that?
How can we as outsiders address RAPE CULTURE in another country on another continent when we still have a rape culture here, though not as horrible as in South Africa? Or does change have to come from the inside, from people there admitting the truth about what's going on and how they are ruining their own lives and the lives of others and stop behaving that way?
Hard question. Left unanswered.
Celibacy still has its charm
C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
