AIDS and Transmission

The AIDS epidemic has now become a pandemic, as a worldwide community faces its dire challenge. International epidemiologists have attempted to find the biological and social causes of world-wide AIDS. Major patterns of HIV transmission will be examined from a sociological perspective, with particular reference to the social conditions in Brazil. The underlying social forces surrounding the spread of AIDS in Brazil will be contrasted with those of the United States. It will be apparent that the U.S. has been, and will continue to be, a world leader against the HIV virus, in large measure because of economic clout and world-influence.

In Brazil, where gay or homosexual society is less organized than in the United States and Western Europe, the fact that AIDS in these regions affected mostly gay men aroused ambiguous emotions that did little to attract either serious or responsible journalism. Brazil's press was waiting for the first

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slim, since Brazilian men remain reluctant to be cast in a passive (gay-identified) role. Herbert Daniel (1993) observes the blurring of sexual boundaries in Sexuality, Politics, and AIDS in Brazil: Traditionally, categories such as 'homossexualidade' and 'heterossexualidade' have been far less significant within the ideological structure of Brazilian sexual culture than what we might describe as notions as 'atividade' ('activity') and 'passividade' ('passivity'). Particularly among males from the popular sectors of Brazilian society, the so-called 'active' partners in same-sex interactions, for example, do not necessarily consider themselves to be either 'homossexual' or 'bissexual'--designations which are more commonly reserved, if they are used at all, for the perceived 'passive' partners in these interactions. While a heavy stigma has always been attached to male passivity, activity in occasional same-sex sexual relations has been relatively unproblematic. (p. 16) The general lack of a clearly-defined community, with its own institutional structure and self-identified constituency, has severely limited the ability of the population that has experienced the greatest risk of HIV infection to act on its own behalf, as well
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Approximate Word count = 1714
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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