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Slight redesign in honour of the holidays, and I know this is nowhere near as fancy as my old layouts used to be, but I'm still getting the hang of this php busines, so I'mm kinda back to square one on the design stuff. Also, put the drabbles and the wallpaper I've done lately on there, and added new quotes, most of which have not previously appeared in my LJ, and some small updates here and there.
And, of course, a new entry.
I was born in 1980, and I can't really remember when i found out about AIDS -- it was just always there, this kind of looming presence. My parents taught us about sex from when we were pretty young, including about things like pregnancy and AIDS and STDs, and how to prevent them. I was barely twelve when my mother took me to the medcine cabinet and made me promise that if and when I'd be ready for sex, I would use both a condom and the pill, and told me that no matter what she and my dad might think about whether I was really ready, they would always pay for contraceptives, and I could always come to them to talk about this. She didn't have to tell me, because I already knew that, and she didn't have to make me promise, because I understood why.
We had sex ed in my last year of primary school, and classes on condoms and AIDS and contraceptives throughout the first three, four years of high school, and I always found them a little boring, because I already knew these things. Unfortunately, at least half of my classmates didn't. It still amazes me that parents refuse to educate their children about sex, especially children of my generation, for whom AIDS has been a constant reality throughout our lives. It amazes me even more that a lot of people my age still refuse to use a condom desptite that.
It's not that I don't understand them, or the older people, the ones who stopped using condoms because they're tired of it. I sometimes feel resentful about the whole thing, jealous of my parents's generation, for whom sex was completely carefree because the pill took care of the pregnancy risk, and any STDs were either clearly noticable, or (mostly) curable. I wish i had that, but instead, I've grown up knowing that sex could potentially kill me.
On the other hand, at least we knew and know. We know we're at risk, and we know how to avoid it, and it saddens and infuriates me to see people gamble with their lives by not using a condom. I remember some girls in my class who had sex without a condom, sometimes even without any contraceptive, and I didn't then and don't undrestand now how they can think that "But he doesn't like to use a condom," or "It's such a hassle to interrupt sex to put that thing on, it's like a cold shower," or whatever their excuse was, is a valid reason to risk contracting a deadly and incurable disease.
I don't know anyone who has or had AIDS, I've never even met anyone who had as much as a brush with it, but I'm fully aware of the seriousness of the disease. It saddens me that so many people aren't, that they think it can't happen to them, that they still believe despite everything that it's a "gay disease", a punishment from god, that even if they got it, it'll be curable by the time they entre the critical stage, that it's not as bad as it used to be.
AIDS and HIV are still out there, it's still a deadly and uncurable disease, and no one is safe.
Lots of interesting and good links by Katie.
This, especially, is poignant and makes more sense than I ever could.
- Marcus/Terence for
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ronwheezely; - Lee&Fred&George gen (slash) thingie inspired by Silvia's line re: "the dubious honour of being the Weasley Twins' best friend";
- Possibly some more Marcus/Lee -- an actual story, perhaps, as opposed to all the drabbles?
Edit: Also, remember to take other rat cage home from parents next Friday.