All That Is Bitter and Sweet by Ashley Judd Page A
Authors: Ashley Judd
Tags: Autobiography
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what I found. I read that PSI was founded in 1970, when it began as an international family planning agency making condoms accessible in hard-to-reach areas. Since then it had grown into one of the most efficient and effective nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the world, focusing on maternal and reproductive health, child survival, malaria prevention and treatment, and HIV/AIDS. It had an obsession for measuring its impact, something that made it popular with donors such as the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Its online brochure said PSI worked with local businesses and citizens’ groups in more than sixty developing countries “to deliver lifesaving medical products and services to the most vulnerable populations.” For such an international nonprofit with an annual budget of $400 million, its overhead was extremely low—less than 5 percent—and it documented measurable results in lives saved. So far so good.
In 2001, Kate Roberts had launched the YouthAIDS campaign within PSI to reach the fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-old age group that frighteningly accounts for half of new HIV infections worldwide—the majority of those being girls who are most often sexually exploited. A former high-powered advertising executive, Kate had decided to treat the AIDS emergency as a business, employing the same strategies she had once used to sell soda pop, bubble gum, and cigarettes to teenagers. She would use this technique, known as “social marketing,” to promote. AIDS education, abstinence, and condom use among vulnerable kids. Because young adults, even in the poorest countries, are influenced by mass media and celebrity, YouthAIDS harnessed pop culture and created “edutainment” to make healthy behavior change sexy and cool.
I read that YouthAIDS partnered with grassroots groups and FBOs (faith-based organizations) to provide peer counseling, drop-in centers (safe, relaxed, often entertaining places where lifesaving information is made available), and voluntary and confidential testing services for teenagers, prostituted women, migrant workers—in other words, those most at risk of infection. (I would later learn to add married women to this high-risk group.) YouthAIDS created hip public service announcements for TV and radio using popular local and international celebrities and athletes and was participating in the MTV World AIDS Day “Staying Alive” concerts. Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message. … um, who? Those names were a red flag. My feminist instincts flared, and my enthusiasm sputtered.
As far as I am concerned, most rap and hip-hop music—with its rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as “ho’s”—is the contemporary sound track of misogyny. I believe that the social construction of gender—the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women—is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world. Gender inequality is implicated in every obstacle to peace and poverty alleviation: lack of access to education, along with early and forced marriage; lack of ability to choose the number of and space the births of one’s children; lack of legal rights, including exclusion from inheritance and land tenure; and lack of access to capital and political power. So how could I join a campaign alongside men who make their living reinforcing the exploitation and oppression of women?
I was so fired up, I didn’t even consider restraint in my reply, such as: “Dear Kate, How kind of you to think of me. I’m busy right now—could you possibly ask again in a month? And by the way, I do have some concerns I hope you will be open to
In 2001, Kate Roberts had launched the YouthAIDS campaign within PSI to reach the fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-old age group that frighteningly accounts for half of new HIV infections worldwide—the majority of those being girls who are most often sexually exploited. A former high-powered advertising executive, Kate had decided to treat the AIDS emergency as a business, employing the same strategies she had once used to sell soda pop, bubble gum, and cigarettes to teenagers. She would use this technique, known as “social marketing,” to promote. AIDS education, abstinence, and condom use among vulnerable kids. Because young adults, even in the poorest countries, are influenced by mass media and celebrity, YouthAIDS harnessed pop culture and created “edutainment” to make healthy behavior change sexy and cool.
I read that YouthAIDS partnered with grassroots groups and FBOs (faith-based organizations) to provide peer counseling, drop-in centers (safe, relaxed, often entertaining places where lifesaving information is made available), and voluntary and confidential testing services for teenagers, prostituted women, migrant workers—in other words, those most at risk of infection. (I would later learn to add married women to this high-risk group.) YouthAIDS created hip public service announcements for TV and radio using popular local and international celebrities and athletes and was participating in the MTV World AIDS Day “Staying Alive” concerts. Along with other performers, YouthAIDS was supported by rap and hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy to spread the message. … um, who? Those names were a red flag. My feminist instincts flared, and my enthusiasm sputtered.
As far as I am concerned, most rap and hip-hop music—with its rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as “ho’s”—is the contemporary sound track of misogyny. I believe that the social construction of gender—the cultural beliefs and practices that divide the sexes and institutionalize and normalize the unequal treatment of girls and women, privilege the interests of boys and men, and, most nefariously, incessantly sexualize girls and women—is the root cause of poverty and suffering around the world. Gender inequality is implicated in every obstacle to peace and poverty alleviation: lack of access to education, along with early and forced marriage; lack of ability to choose the number of and space the births of one’s children; lack of legal rights, including exclusion from inheritance and land tenure; and lack of access to capital and political power. So how could I join a campaign alongside men who make their living reinforcing the exploitation and oppression of women?
I was so fired up, I didn’t even consider restraint in my reply, such as: “Dear Kate, How kind of you to think of me. I’m busy right now—could you possibly ask again in a month? And by the way, I do have some concerns I hope you will be open to
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