\u201cIs it true that on at least one occasion, you had a prostitute come over to your house, who after a sexual encounter went into your bathroom and with a cellphone took an image of your antiretroviral medications?\u201d Lauer asked.<\/p>\n
[During an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, actor Charlie Sheen confirmed rumors that he is HIV-positive<\/a> and was diagnosed four years ago. He says he has been blackmailed for “millions” of dollars over the disease.]<\/p>\n \u201cYes. This is after I had told her, \u2018Thank you for your time. We\u2019re not going to see each other anymore,\u2019\u201d Sheen explained.<\/p>\n Sheen\u2019s quotes have been much dissected over the past week. Missing in that conversation, sex worker rights advocates say, are the fraught power dynamics when an HIV-positive person solicits a sex worker. Even if a client with HIV discloses the disease (and it\u2019s unclear how often that actually happens), many workers in the sex trade don\u2019t have the latitude to negotiate or simply leave the situation. Reasons range from physical to legal coercion to financial necessity.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s really so hard to hear [from] someone like Charlie Sheen with so much power \u2013 especially financial leverage \u2013 to claim he was being victimized by people\u201d blackmailing him, said Lindsay Roth, executive director of Philadelphia-based Project SAFE and a former board president of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. \u201cThe reality is, when it comes to a sex worker, they\u2019re laboring in a job where they have no legal or human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, there have been many studies about the extreme risk of HIV for sex workers: The Center for Disease Control calls HIV prevention outreach to sex workers \u201ca critical effort for public health.\u201d But there are challenges for such prevention, from socioeconomic status (people who have little access to health care) to the \u201cunequal relationship\u201d between sex workers and their clients that lead to inconsistent condom use. Plus, sex work is often criminalized to the point where it can be difficult to get contraception and seek health or legal resources.<\/p>\n Experts warn that you can\u2019t really generalize the sex worker experience because it\u2019s such a vast industry, from the adult film world to strip clubs to people working on the street. And if someone was faced with an HIV-positive client who discloses a diagnosis, each worker can technically decide whether they want to proceed \u2014 though that doesn\u2019t always prove easy.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a situation where a sex worker is in control of their work environment, their health and safety needs met and they\u2019re working in a good situation where they\u2019re in control, they can absolutely demand that a client uses protection,\u201d said Crystal DeBoise, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. \u201cOne of the skills sex workers have is being able to negotiate boundaries and working conditions outside of any established rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, she added, the criminalization of sex workers means it\u2019s still extremely difficult to seek safety if a client is \u201cpersistent or violent,\u201d or they have a manager who insists that they have unprotected sex.<\/p>\n Penelope Saunders, coordinator for the Best Practices Policy Project, said there\u2019s a misconception that sex workers don\u2019t know enough to help prevent against diseases like HIV. \u201cSex workers\u2026tend to be more educated about issues relating to sexuality and that makes them experts,\u201d she said. \u201cThe stigmatizing view is they have no knowledge and are very unaware. Generally speaking, sex workers know a lot about these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Saunders also hopes that Sheen bringing this issue up will also raise awareness about the stigma surrounding HIV in general. As the \u201cToday\u201d show made sure to mention, HIV-positive people with \u201cundetectable\u201d viral loads who are treated and use protection have an extremely low risk of transmitting the virus. However, that\u2019s still an unknown fact to many people.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States has a very poor response to the issue of sex work and HIV, and I hope that this discussion would bring that to people\u2019s attention,\u201d Saunders said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t matter whether it\u2019s a sex worker or a married person not engaged in sex work\u2026.whatever the situation, there\u2019s so little information out there about HIV that most people continue to see having HIV as a death sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n Overall, advocates know that while the initial focus is on Sheen, viewers will recognize the \u201cunsavory types\u201d he referenced in his Today show interview still have rights. And even though Sheen insisted that he has told every sexual partner he has HIV, some workers in similar situations aren\u2019t given a choice either way.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Charlie Sheen to think that simply disclosing his HIV status to someone allows that person to protect themselves in the best way possible \u2013 that\u2019s not always the case,\u201d said Celia Fisher, Fordham University\u2019s director of the Center for Ethics Education and the HIV Prevention Research Ethics Institute. \u201cThey may not have either the economic or social power to say no.\u201d<\/p>\n This article is written by Emily Yahr<\/a> and was originally\u00a0published<\/a> in The Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of Charlie Sheen\u2019s announcement that he was HIV-positive, there was talk of how it would affect the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":7747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,1,557],"tags":[568,245,569,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-7743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blog-roll","8":"category-categories","9":"category-hiv-and-sexuality","10":"tag-charlie-sheen","11":"tag-hiv","12":"tag-risk","13":"tag-sex-work"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7743"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14750,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions\/14750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Charlie-300x168.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n