Sex and poverty
The geographical distribution of AIDS "hot spots" is neither random nor unavoidable. The main zones of infection are those areas of the world where sexual oppression is most cruelly combined with underdevelopment. Frank Prouhet African AIDS sufferers are not concentrated in isolated villages, with ritual mutilation and superstition worse than even the white settlers' nightmares. AIDS in Africa is a problem of the cities and shantytowns: the Africa of migration, structural adjustment programmes, and the destruction of health and education systems under the watchful eye of the International Monetary Fund. AIDS is not the result of the "backwardness" of the third world, but its modernity.
AIDS is spreading so quickly in Africa because of the oppression of women. Not so much the traditional oppressions, but the new ones: absent husbands turn to prostitutes, while sexual tourism increases the range of diseases on offer. The same is true in India, Thailand and Brazil. The third world has 6% of global AIDS health care spending, 7% of the global AIDS prevention budget, and 95% of the victims.
The oh-so-modern third world AIDS crisis is visible in the metropolises of the North as well. In the United States, the epidemic among white gays, who formed the first wave of anti-AIDS activism, seems to be stabilising. Meanwhile, a third-world type epidemic is developing in the black and Latino ghettos of North America, where drug use is a frequent refuge from social, racial and sexual oppression. In New York, three of AIDS