SELF-INFLICTED MISOGYNY

Give women power to fight AIDS, Gates says (Tom Blackwell, National Post, August 14th, 2006)

Authorities must lose their distaste for prostitutes, premarital sex and drug addicts and give women more power over their own health to effectively combat AIDS -- the world's "public enemy No. 1," Bill Gates and others argued as a huge AIDS conference kicked off yesterday.

Prevention is crucial to controlling the still-growing pandemic, and that means encouraging safe sex, helping sex workers and keeping injection-drug users free of infection, the leaders in disease research and philanthropy said.[...]

"Abstinence is often not an option for poor women and girls who have no choice but to marry at an early age," he said. "Being faithful will not protect a woman whose partner is not faithful."

His wife said opposition to the widespread distribution of condoms is a serious obstacle to ending AIDS. "Some people believe that condoms encourage sexual activity, so they want to make them less available," she said. "But withholding condoms does not mean fewer people have sex; it means fewer people have safe sex, and more people die."

She also said health care must reach out to prostitutes, both to help them and to prevent transmission to their clients, and to the spouses of those customers.

Feminism has certainly come a long way since the late 19th century when it’s focus was reining in men to the disciplines of family and fatherhood. Now it seems the message is that, as sex is bound to be forced on you by the unfaithful and uncontrollable rake you married, you had better at least make sure it’s not lethal.