Dear PWN Community,
October 23rd is the fifth National Day of Action to End Violence Against Women Living with HIV. We hope you will join us in taking a stand.
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Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN-USA) called for the Day of Action in 2014 during Domestic Violence Awareness Month in response to the brutal, high-profile murders of Cicely Bolden and Elisha Henson following disclosure of their HIV-positive status. As a national membership body of women and people of trans experience living with HIV, our goal was to propose solutions to address the many forms of violence faced by people living with HIV.
This year’s Day of Action feels particularly timely in light of what is happening on the national stage. Brett Kavanaugh has a lifetime record of taking positions that assail the rights of women, workers, and communities of color. He clearly exhibited an abusive temperament in his final hearing. Despite multiple, credible allegations of sexual assault by women who risked their own safety and that of their families to provide testimony, and despite weeks of sexual assault survivors courageously sharing their personal stories with Senate offices, 49 Republican Senators and Democrat Joe Manchin voted on Saturday to confirm Kavanaugh as a justice of the highest court in the land, in the most divided Supreme Court confirmation vote in 130 years.
Is it really any wonder that many of us never report sexual assault?
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Women with HIV suffer lifetime sexual assault at five times the rate of the general population and are twice as likely to face intimate partner violence (IPV). We also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression at much higher rates than the general population.
Yet women living with HIV frequently do not report the violence perpetrated against us because we know that, more often than not, we will not be believed, or worse: We could face further violence at the hands of law enforcement.
For many women living with HIV, especially women of trans experience, who don’t speak fluent English, or with precarious immigration status, going to the authorities is not a viable option. For people with HIV, the risks are amplified, as stigma and the specter of criminalization based on our HIV status hang over our heads.
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Intimate partner violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. As mostly Black, Latinx, and low-income women and people of trans experience living with HIV, we are survivors of an entire system of structural violence that includes intergenerational poverty; slavery and genocide of our ancestors; and the War on Drugs, which has played out as a war on poor people of color. Financial insecurity can lead us to stay in abusive relationships. Homelessness and desperation can lead us into situations where we are at high risk of violence. Fear of criminalization or deportation can keep us quiet about the abuse we face. All of these structural factors leave us ever more vulnerable to different types of violence and exploitation.
PWN-USA envisions a world where women living with HIV can lead long, healthy, dignified lives, free from stigma, violence, discrimination, or coercion. This weekend, we witnessed just how little our dignity and safety matter to those currently in power—almost all extremely wealthy, white, cisgender, heterosexual men. Yet we have also seen the power we wield when we come together across race, gender, age, ability, geography, socioeconomic class, religion, immigration status—all the wedges white male politicians, desperately clinging onto the last vestiges of their power in a rapidly changing nation, use to divide us.
When we have each other’s backs, when we refuse to be divided, we are truly a force to be reckoned with. When we protect the rights of people of all races, genders, and any immigration status to bodily autonomy, safety, economic security, proper health care, housing, education, and opportunity, suffering violence in silence will no longer be the only option for the most vulnerable among us.
That’s why we ask you to stand with us on our 5th Day of Action to End Violence Against Women Living with HIV this October 23. We are your siblings, friends, neighbors, coworkers, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, cousins, nieces. We need you.
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Tuesday, October 23, PWN-USA will be hosting two online events that we invite you to participate in:
- Join us 10/23 at 12pm EDT/9am PDT for a Twitter chat where we will talk solutions to violence against women living with HIV. Follow @uspwn, #EndVAWHIV and #DVAM to participate! If you work with an organization interested in being a partner on the Twitter chat, please contact [email protected].
- Also on 10/23, at 2pm EDT/11am PDT, we will host a special live video chat with three survivors of intimate partner violence living with HIV: Tiommi Luckett, Venita Ray, and Teresa Sullivan. Register here to join us.
In sisterhood and solidarity,
Team PWN-USA
P.S. Having each other’s backs means doing our part to make sure leaders who represent our communities are elected. That’s why we ask you to join us the following day, October 24, for a National #PWNVotes Get Out The Vote Call Day by calling or texting at least 5 likeminded relatives, friends, coworkers, or neighbors to remind them to vote.
Early voting will be starting in most places. PWN-USA is committed to building power and turning our communities out to the polls this November. Will you join us?
