Keynote at Sex and Stigma Matters conference

In May of 2015, I gave a keynote presentation on my research to the annual Healthy Sexuality and Harm Reduction Conference for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.  Here is the abstract for the presentation:

Globally, Canada is considered a ‘hot-spot’ for criminalizing the non-disclosure and exposure of HIV. With over 155 prosecutions and more cases on the rise, Canada is known for imposing harsh and punitive penalties against people living with HIV who do not tell sex partners their HIV status, or potentially expose others to infection. A majority of those are charged with aggravated sexual assault, one of the most severe charges in the Criminal Code. Social scientists have documented that the law related to HIV non-disclosure and exposure has been applied asymmetrically, leading to a sense of uncertainty among people living with HIV. Criminal cases related to HIV non- disclosure in Canada are strongly patterned by gender, race, and sexual orientation. But how did we get here? Why is Canada so exceptional in how the criminal justice system has responded to HIV? If we look back throughout history, we can see that in the early days of the Canadian settler-colonial state those infected with diseases of “vice” such as syphilis and gonorrhea were subject to similar legal measures and labeled social outcasts worthy of incarceration. Through a historical examination of a number of cases from the past and present, this presentation will examine the Canadian context of criminalization of HIV and other STIs. We will examine the role of public health in supporting or impeding this increasing practice of criminalizing diseases that are sexually transmitted. We will discuss strategies to end stigma, discrimination and start to work towards the decriminalization of HIV exposure and non-disclosure and the decarceration of people living with HIV.

Participatory HIV research on 'sensitive' and 'illegal' topics

Based on the focus of my doctoral research, I participated in the the development of the Learning about illegal, sensitive and stigmatized topics for the HIV CBR Ethics project. Overall the project developed a series of 10 evidence-based fact sheets, we identify key ethical considerations when designing HIV CBR projects and seeking ethics review. We encourage HIV CBR teams to use these fact sheets to assist in project planning and to engage their REBs in a dialogue about a range of strategies for ensuring conventional ethical standards are balanced with diverse community needs. This specific fact sheet covers four key issues for researchers working with sensitive and or illegal topic:

• Supporting participants following the disclosure of sensitive and illegal information
• Research vs.therapy
• Professional and legal considerations (e.g.,duty to report)
• Protecting the well-being of participants and whole communities
• Working with REBs to develop strategies to protect sensitive data
• Framing sensitive research findings

Love Positive Women: From Montreal to Namibia

For the annual International Community of Women Living with HIV solidarity event LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN: The Romance Starts at Home students in my women's studies class 'Sex, Drugs & AIDS in the Era of Global Austerity: Feminist Perspectives' at Concordia University's Simone de Beauvoir Institute made solidarity valentines cards for the powerful women of the Namibian Women's Health Network. The class is examining a range of sociolegal issues facing women living with HIV around the world, including cases of forced sterilization. Forced sterilization of women living with HIV is an occurring practice, where stigmatizing health professionals will often sterilize women without their consent post-pregnancy to prevent future births. The practice presents a massive violation of medical ethics, human rights and interferes with the sexual autonomy of people living with HIV. 

In July 2012, the Namibian Women's Health Network won a landmark case in the Namibian High Court, which found that three women had been sterilized without their informed consent in violation of Namibian law. This case has set in motion similar legal challenges, including in Kenya.

When writing to Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet, founder and director of the Namibian Women's Health Network about our class project, she responded with a special message to the students in the class, which is as follows:

“First and foremost, I am a woman besides my HIV status
I am a lioness
I am wild
I am fierce
I am beautiful and have beauty stirring within me
I am stunning
I was born for this moment
I am not afraid of my strength
I am able to question and I have insights
I am Awake
I am Rising Up and
I dare to realise who I am.
POWERFUL! PERFECTION! BEAUTIFUL!

HAPPY VALENTINES TO ALL WOMEN LIVING WITH HIV”

— Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet

The  valentines sent from our class included a range of messages of support, love, and solidarity and will be distributed to women who are connected to the Namibian Women's Health Network. 

'Lock this whore up’: public health legislation & other ‘risks’ to public safety

Last month I presented at the Canadian Law and Society Association annual mid-winter meeting held in Montreal. For the presentation, I addressed what some perceive as an over-reliance on the criminal law to address the HIV non-disclosure in Canada. There have been calls from social scientists and activists to advance the use of public health legislation, regarded as a more ‘benevolent’ instrument of the state to manage people who have not told their HIV-positive status to sex partners. Using examples from two HIV non-disclosure cases in Ontario, I argued that public health legislation is one component of a diverse assemblage of technological formations of legal governance – comprised of public health law and criminal law, as well as civil law and other extra-legal practices – which have come to order the lives of certain classified people with HIV.

Examining the use of public health orders under Section 22 of the Ontario Health Promotion and Protection Act (HPPA), I discussed that these orders act as the first point of entry into a broader heterogeneous assemblage of legal actors, institutions, mechanisms and practices that act in concert to enable forms of surveillance and governance, constituting something altogether different than the stated benevolent intentions of public health. In the discussion I argued furthermore that public health legislation cannot be understood as easily divorced from this assemblage, or understood as a form of jurisprudence that can be applied in a silo. My analysis is grounded in a detailed examination of how public health orders are taken up in media reports, as evidence to inform court judgements, and in the context of psychiatric testimony by experts to classify ‘offenders’ as future risks to ‘public safety’. With a critical inquiry attuned to the social and historical constitution of the legal, I also discussed how these orders are underpinned by logic of risk mitigation, a logic aimed to protect the ‘public’ through governing the biologically and juridically marked viral underclass: the person with HIV who has come to be known as ‘unwilling’ or ‘unable’ to take the precautions to protect others from HIV transmission.