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VICE Vs Video Games: Game Industry Legend Ian Livingstone Talks About Creating Lara Croft and Why VIdeo Games Are Good for Kids

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Ian Livingstone photographed in his games room, 2015, by Oliver McNeil.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Ian Livingstone is why you played Dungeons & Dragons in the UK in the 1970s. Ian Livingstone is why you adventure-booked your way through the caves and castles of Titan in the 1980s. Ian Livingstone is why you explored tombs and escaped tyrannosaurs in the boots of Lara Croft in the 1990s. Ian Livingstone, CBE, is why your kids might grow up to be computer geniuses in the coming years. And when I say that speaking to him is a career moment, I mean it.

For me, Livingstone's name was burned into my brain courtesy of the Fighting Fantasy game books he created alongside fellow Games Workshop founder Steve Jackson. The first in the series, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, came out in 1982 and established the structure of these pre-teen library essentials—you know, "turn to 302 to open the chest with the key, turn to 141 if you'd rather hit it, over and over again, with an axe, just in case there's a goblin in there," that kind of thing. There was magic and there were monsters. I didn't play/read (and of course I cheated, most of the time) a Fighting Fantasy book until I was around nine years old, some years after Warlock's publication—but once I did I continued to collect them into my early teens, my final acquisition being, I think, 1992's Island of the Undead. I still have all of them in my bedroom, and I'm 35. You might think that's sad. But then, you can turn to 247 to piss right off, mate.

In video gaming, Livingstone was on the board of Domark, and when the British developer and publisher became Eidos Interactive in the mid-1990s, he followed as a part of its foundational team. In 2013 he finally left the company, which had by this point become a subsidiary of Square Enix. Amongst his most famous projects while at Eidos: the creation of a certain series by the name of Tomb Raider.

And that's where our conversation begins.

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The original cover to 'The Warlock of Firetop Mountain,' from 1982. All images and photography provided by Livingstone.

VICE: Ian! You're speaking at Digital 2015 next week (see what else is happening at the June event, held in Newport, here), and the PR I have for that calls you "the father of Tomb Raider." Is that quite the heavy reputation to carry around?
Ian Livingstone: Well, the first Tomb Raider was almost 20 years ago now, so I suppose it's quite a recent thing given my 40 years in the industry. I'm delighted, though, to have been a part of the team that helped launch Lara Croft into the world, and then guided her through her life. She's gone her own way now, though, and I'm onto new things. I've loved every moment of my 40 years in games, and Lara has been a big chapter of that—but before that came Games Workshop and board games, and the Fighting Fantasy books, and now mobile games. I love that my hobby, my passion, is also my job, and I'm very fortunate to have been able to make a living this way. It's been fantastic fun, where there's not been a lot of difference between work and play.

You've a stack of experience in the fantasy genre. We've had a few big-budget, blockbuster-proportioned fantasy games come out in recent years, most recently The Witcher 3. Some of them are great, but they do rely so heavily on the old standards of elves and dwarves and wizards and all that kind of thing. Their "language" is pretty archaic, though the games' plots can represent some very modern concerns. Do you think the genre needs a shake up?
Traditional fantasy seems to come in waves, to be honest. We saw a huge rise in interest in the 1970s, thanks to Dungeons & Dragons, and then when the (Peter Jackson-directed) Lord of the Rings films came out, that caused another swell of interest. But beyond that, we do have science-fiction fantasy, and newer variations on the genre are emerging. But I don't think fantastic worlds will stop being exciting, because they're precisely that: fantasy worlds where anything can happen. There's monsters and magic and all of this wonderful stuff from the imagination, so it's a lot less "structured" than science-fiction worlds, where you do have to have some understanding of technology. In traditional fantasy, anything goes. Fantasy worlds are a lot more escapist.

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Ian (right) co-founded Games Workshop alongside Steve Jackson (pictured, left) and John Peake, and soon imported the first copies of Dungeons & Dragons to the UK, in 1975. This photo dates from 1976.

You mention escapism, but we see in games like The Witcher 3 and shows like Game of Thrones very real, contemporary issues being addressed, and some very mature topics discussed. Like in The Witcher 3, the way that the elves are treated, how they're harassed and ultimately forced out of town, could be seen as a reflection of how some people feel about immigrants. So this is escapist fiction, but it also serves as a lens back onto the world we're watching it from.
Games are stuff of the imagination— Dungeons & Dragons was so popular because it let you do all of these heroic things in your mind that you could never do in the real world. The imagination is a very powerful tool. And you can tackle issues in games, and TV and film, of course, which you couldn't be so open about in real life, perhaps. Grand Theft Auto V is a great example of this—it's a great pastiche of American society in many ways, yet it's a game. You can do a lot in games.

Grand Theft Auto V's satire is pretty heavy handed at times, but that it's taking such steps is surely a good thing for the games medium, isn't it? It's showing that this multimillion-dollar game can take some risks, narratively, by possibly poking more than a little fun at the people actually playing it, or financing it.
The Grand Theft Auto series should be celebrated as a great British success story. The fifth game proper generated over a billion dollars of revenue in three days, and its roots go back to Scotland. It's had a huge cultural impact, to the extent where it's the largest entertainment franchise in any medium. And yet it's more often pilloried in the press, rather than praised. Games are shaking things up, and there's no escaping the cultural, social, and economic impact that they're having. You only have to look up on any public transport to see people playing games on their phones. Games have become mainstream entertainment, largely because of Apple and smartphones and the simple "swipe" technology, which allows anyone to be a player, even if console and PC gaming seemed inhibiting to them. Games are pervasive.

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The opening day of a new London branch of Games Workshop, 1978.

What do we need to do to bring the mainstream press, the outlets who would rather run a piece on Grand Theft Auto V's violence rather than everything it does amazingly, around to this position of realizing the power and potential of modern video games?
The people who criticize games the most have rarely really played one. They've seen other reports, and seen some titles, and just assume that these things poison children's minds. I mean, Grand Theft Auto V does have violent parts, but it's not supposed to be played by children—it's got an 18 rating, and parents should be responsible with games in the same way they are films. But if you park your prejudices for just one second and think cognitively about what's happening when you play a game: You can't get through one without problem solving. Games are all about intuitive learning, and they're motivational and engaging. They can develop social skills, and creativity—look at a game like Minecraft, which is effectively digital LEGO that kids build and share with their friends. There's risk-taking, and games give you continuous assessment. You learn a lot that you can transfer into the real world, and I really believe that video games provide you with great life skills; but because they're seen as play things, they're regarded as trivial. Yet, when we enter this world, we learn through play, and through trial and error, and video games allow you to fail in a safe environment. We traditionally punish kids for making mistakes, but games allow them to succeed eventually, and not be punished for their mistakes. Failure is just work-in-progress success, and games allow you to do that.

You're a great advocate of putting kids in front of computers, aren't you?
Well, we're exponentially reliant on technology, and children have to understand how code works. Not every child is going to grow up to become a coder, but they should all at least know how it works in order to be a digital citizen of the 21st century. Now, for the past 30 years, we've managed to bore kids to death with the ways in which information technology and computing was taught. In the 1980s we had programming in British schools, with the BBC Micro, and people had Spectrums at home, and that ultimately gave rise to the British games industry. And that was formed not because of consumption, but creativity. But with schools being concerned about exposing children to the open web, or viruses on their systems and networks, that creative component got shut down, and all schools were allowed to do was handle other people's software, like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Now, that's entry-level stuff for anyone, and so it's no wonder that ICT became so dull.

During my Lara Croft days, as it were, there simply were not enough good programmers around to hire. So I went and had a whinge to Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, and told him about the problem. He tasked Alex Hope, the CEO of Double Negative, a visual effects company, and I with producing the "Next-Gen" review. We conducted a survey with NESTA and wrote up recommendations, the main one being to have computer science in the school curriculum as an essential discipline. But wasn't until Eric Schmidt's MacTaggart lecture in 2011, in which he referenced our work, that the government actually sat up and took notice. Before that, every time I'd raise the matter, I'd be told there was nothing wrong with ICT. I said that all we were doing was teaching children how to read, but not how to write; how to use an application, but with no tools to make their own. You need to have this creative component to encourage engagement. And the UK, I think, is a naturally creative nation, but children were not being given the right skills to create for the digital world.

But, to the government's credit, they did introduce the new computing curriculum, which came into force in English schools in 2014. But that's just the starting point, because a lot of the teachers we have simply aren't able to teach it, so we need to give them more support. We need to allow children to lead the teaching some of the time, inside the schools, and encourage peer-to-peer learning because it's so important in this area. Today's children are part of a connected generation—they are born onto the internet, so let them connect and share and collaborate and hack their own knowledge. Then they'll become digital makers—they'll build an app, make a game, do something with robotics, design a website. Anything like that, they'll be happy doing it, and they're learning. Literacy and numeracy are incredibly important, of course, but as soon as possible in schools, I encourage learning by doing in computing. This fragmented world we live in requires kids to be problem solvers, to be coders, to be communicators. It's pretty common sense, I think.


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Feeling nostalgic? Watch our documentary on the kids who remade Indiana Jones shot for shot.


Do you think that this lull in programming talent in the UK is why we now think of the US and Japan as being home to the very biggest games studios? Because we didn't nurture enough domestic creativity, for a while?
It wasn't just a question of skills. You need a situation where costs are low and skills are high, and I'd say that for a while in the UK we had the opposite of that, with high costs and low skills. We had to do something about that, and getting computing onto the curriculum is the first thing that had to be done. That's a long-term play, so we won't see its benefit for a few years. We also needed to level the playing field, across mediums, which is why I was part of a group that lobbied government for production tax credits, so that we could compete with France, and Canada, in the same way that film does.

Also, we've needed to get the investment community to understand the value of digital IP. It was often the case that games were not understood, and the creators had to trade away their IP in return for project finance. So if you allow others to buy your IP, that's not good, ultimately, for the UK. And we have seen the demise of many UK publishers—but I'm delighted to see, rising from those ashes, a really vibrant independent community, with over 1,000 studios contributing something like £2 billion [$3 billion] to the UK economy. A lot of those are micro-studios, where one or two people are working, but that's not the point—you can create really big things at really small studios. And I think these are exciting times for indies, as they're driving into new markets, finding new ways of expressing themselves. It's like a second golden era of gaming, to my mind, like it was back in the 1980s when Matthew Smith was creating Manic Miner, and all the exciting stuff that was happening then is doing so again.

Today's young creators can crowdfund their ideas, and then reach global audiences via broadband. They can all find their market. The traditional gatekeepers of the analog world, of creating physical product and selling it at a premium price, are disappearing. Of course, this presents new challenges, like acquiring, retaining and monetizing audiences; but there's enough success out there for people to want to do it, and more power to them.

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Ian photographed with Lara Croft, a.k.a. model and actress Karima Adebibe, in 2006.

Hardware aside, what have been the biggest advances in gaming that you've seen during your career?
The rise of Steam, with 100 million subscribers, has been massive. We've seen people gravitate towards digital consumption, and towards watching games—nowadays, there are 100 million people regularly watching eSports online, with 100,000 of them showing up to live events. The global games industry is changing, still, at an alarming rate. The global market for games, next year, will amount to $100 billion. These are big numbers, and yet gaming is still largely misrepresented in the mainstream media.

Which must drive you nuts.
You can't make people change their attitude towards games quickly. I've been slowly campaigning for the positives about games for 40 years, and I'm delighted with where we're at today. I think games sit alongside film and TV now, rightfully, and are seen in the same light as those mediums. For me, games are even more powerful than those, though, because they're interactive. Going back to my Fighting Fantasy books, they got a whole generation of kids reading, because you were the hero, and you were engaged in where the story went. In the traditional, linear media, the director controls the action, but in interactive media, the player controls the action. It's all about them, and that can make it a more enjoyable experience, which is why gaming is just going to grow and grow. It's more rewarding, I would say.

All of these flashbacks are making me hungry. Fancy a sandwich?

Let's talk about the books. I had a lot of them. I still do.
Now, come on, did you cheat?

Of course I did, all the time. When I tried to write in those little skill and stamina boxes, and then erase the pencil marks, it used to tear the paper, so I stopped doing that altogether. But those days must have been amazing.
Oh, they were phenomenal. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out in 1982, and Deathtrap Dungeon, the sixth book, followed in 1984, and sold 400,000 copies at a time where your typical kids book would sell 5,000. They were busy days, and Deathtrap Dungeon remains one of my favorites. There's actually a screenplay of it being written right now, which we're touting around. So you never know.

There's been a bit of a resurgence in the Fighting Fantasy series, where people who read the books when they were children are now reading them with their own kids. Clearly the world has moved on, and Fighting Fantasy couldn't exist as it did then today, but the principle of the interactive, branching narrative is still very relevant to today's generation. So I'm delighted that it still touches people in a very positive way, and it's amazing, and humbling, to regularly meet people who tell me how they used to read my books. They immediately revert back to their childhoods, remembering some awful moment where "they" fell onto some poisoned spikes, or were murdered by some man-eating beast from hell.

A lot of the books were set in the same world, Titan. Do you think there's the opportunity for some big, or small, games developer to produce a role-playing game, or an MMO, set in that world, featuring a lot of the locations that appeared in the books?
Well, that'd be something that would delight Steve Jackson and myself. If someone wanted to take the books and base an MMO on them, well, there's an amazingly rich world there that's ready to go, with its own culture and economy and legends. It's well known, and well loved, so that would be amazing—it's just a case of finding someone who'd want to do it in the first place.

But a video game wouldn't be quite the same as a book playthrough. You can't keep your little finger between the previous pages when you're playing something on a PC.
But I never minded when people cheated. I'd ride on the Underground, and I'd look around and see people keeping five-fingered bookmarks on the go, and I'd laugh to myself. I think 98 percent of children cheated their way through Fighting Fantasy, but that's fine. It's just peeking around the corner really, isn't it? It's not really cheating. But we did introduce some anti-cheating devices. So, for example, you might be trying to get into a room, and we'd ask if you had a key. But rather than give you a number to turn to, it'd say, "turn to the number stamped on the key." We did put those frustration points in, mostly for our own amusement.

But the thing is, nobody made you read a Fighting Fantasy book. Children wanted to read them. They lit up imaginations. They dealt with problem solving. It was all about you, and killing monsters and finding treasure. It ticked a lot of boxes for kids back in the day.

[body_image width='866' height='1456' path='images/content-images/2015/06/05/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/05/' filename='in-conversation-with-games-industry-legend-ian-livingstone-551-body-image-1433517287.jpg' id='63570']

The original cover to 'Deathtrap Dungeon,' from 1984.

To cycle back to Tomb Raider, the series got a celebrated reboot in 2013. How proud were you to see that this character was still so relevant, and that fresh-feeling games could be built around her?
It was very gratifying to see, and I'm very proud of the continuing love of Lara Croft. She's survived the test of time in the same way as James Bond has in the cinema, and it's great that we'll be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tomb Raider next year. The reboot was a tremendous achievement by (developers) Crystal Dynamics, which went right to the core of Tomb Raider, with adventuring and environmental puzzles, and the combat, and it was a very immersive experience. I think the prequel set-up was perfect, showing how she gained the attributes to become this dynamic archaeologist. It's great to see the continued success, and long may it continue.

And just finally, your legacy—what do you think is the one thing, that you've achieved, that people will best remember you for? Or, rather, what are you asked about the most, now?
That's a difficult question, as it's like asking me to name a favorite child, and I have four of them. I think the Eidos and Tomb Raider thing is maybe a way down, perhaps in third. It's the Fighting Fantasy books and Games Workshop that I speak to people about the most, almost in equal measure. But more and more these days I'm speaking to people about helping kids to become creators, because I am so passionate about kids having more games-based learning, and getting this positive side of games out there. I want people to develop greater skills, and not just the knowledge, and that's so important. That's what I'm really excited about, now. Historically, perhaps Fighting Fantasy just nudges out Games Workshop. We sold 17 million books in 30 languages, so I hear people's memories of them wherever I go in the world. I don't like to look back, though—I like to look forward, and I certainly don't want to retire. Life for me is a game, and long may it continue.

Ian Livingstone appears as a keynote speaker at Digital 2015, the annual festival of digital inspiration and innovation, held June 8-9 in Newport, Wales.

Follow Mike on Twitter.


'United Passions,' FIFA's $30 Million Movie About Itself, Is Even Worse Than You Think

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'United Passions,' FIFA's $30 Million Movie About Itself, Is Even Worse Than You Think

How Horror Movies Helped Me Get Over My PTSD

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Image via the House of the Devil theatrical poster.

It's happened many times: I open Netflix, pick something recommended through their delightfully specific algorithms ("Supernatural Cult Horror Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead") and sink into the couch to watch. Then, either at the beginning but more usually toward the end, someone's house will catch on fire (in The Haunting In Connecticut, the protagonist discovers corpses in the house's walls, and sets them on fire to expel ghosts). Or maybe it's a high school gym (like in Carrie, where the title character telekinetically starts the fire as part of a bully-murdering rampage) or a car (in As Above So Below, a character relives an incident from his childhood where he accidentally killed someone in a car fire). During that scene, my muscles tighten a little. My stomach clenches, maybe I feel a bit sick. It used to be bad, really bad: coming across a scene like that without expecting it might cause me to shake or cry. But I never stopped watching.

When I was numb from pain, horror brought the thrill of adrenaline back, forcibly, like a roller coaster. After my house burned down, the first DVD I bought was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's no ecstasy purer than Sally's laughter when she finally escapes Leatherface.

On July 10, 2010, I was home for the summer after my first year of college. My mom came into my childhood bedroom, wringing her hands, to tell me she'd found my healthy cat mysteriously dead on the back porch. Our tiny shih-tzu was beloved, but he was Mom's dog. The cat was mine. My parents went to bed and I went on a blogging spree, funneling my despair into a LiveJournal entry, sitting cross-legged in a bathrobe on my bed with my laptop plugged into the wall.

A summer thunderstorm rolled in, rocking the house from above. It seemed to me like the weather understood the pain of my cat's unfair and unexpected death. Thunder boomed, a sharp crack rocked the house, and electricity ran from my fingers on the keyboard down my spine—jarring, but not painful, like a gag electric hand buzzer placed on the back of my neck. The lights went out. I thought it was a power surge until I heard my mom screaming. I flung open my bedroom door. The house was on fire.

Everything after that is a bit of a blur—scooping the dog up, running toward the front door, my parents' voices behind me but not following. I stood by the mailbox, the quivering animal in my arms, the rain hammering down and soaking through my bathrobe as I waited for my parents to emerge. A lightning strike had started the fire in my parents' bedroom, and the flames had spread along the back of the brick ranch-style house, creating a dull, flickering red-orange glow. The heavy rain held the smoke low to the ground, obscuring the scene in an eerie fog.

A few days later, I walked into the wreckage. The flames had scorched the walls black and left them peeling, and I thought, This looks like something out of Silent Hill. In the video game and film franchise, a cursed town is ravaged by an underground coal fire, and all the buildings are spookily burnt and crumbling. I'd never seen anything like it in reality.

Horror gave me back my normalcy. In the movies I saw my tragedy depicted constantly, reverently, in all sorts of different forms.

My parents and I were unharmed, but we lost everything. The house had to be gutted. We bounced around hotels until landing in a tiny apartment. I lost my job. I went back to school thinking routine would help—it didn't. I dropped out.

The tragedy was so unexpected, bizarre, and inconveniently timed that none of my friends really knew how to provide any emotional support. And I didn't know what I needed. It was difficult to explain why it hurt so badly—no one died, right? Well, except the cat. So it's all good. You get a whole new wardrobe! And books, films, furniture, toiletries, kitchenware, shoes, photographs, schoolwork, souvenirs, letters.

Though I considered myself fairly minimalist, I had no idea how much I relied on my stuff, accumulated over 18 years. People are social, and it's through our relationships with others that we understand ourselves. And how we relate to others begins with how we choose to present ourselves, using our clothes to create a first impression. Losing all that in one fell swoop is like losing a language. Our belongings are not just utilitarian. By their nature of being used, they carry our personal histories in them. It's raining? Too bad, those perfect galoshes you bought for six dollars on a family trip in Fancy Gap, Virginia, are gone. Chilly? Well, you don't have that sweatshirt you picked up at a thrift store with a friend you haven't seen in two years, but here's one from Target. Grandmother, years sick, looks like she might die soon—uh-oh, you don't have any funeral clothes. It was a constant series of tiny crises. Separately, the crises didn't seem so bad, hence my friends' excitement that I got all new clothes! But it was crisis after crisis, all day, every day, and to my traumatized mind it seemed insurmountable. A few months after the fire, I was diagnosed with PTSD.

When I wasn't spending all day at a mall slowly rebuilding my life with a credit card, I threw myself into learning new skills, seeking a way to define myself that didn't rely on my material possessions. I learned bass guitar and played in a handful of shitty bands. I wrote. I got a new job making jewelry by hand. On bad days, I drank a lot, then woke up and escaped into Supernatural marathons on TNT and whatever horror film was in the Redbox below my apartment.

I made it back to school, and a year or so later I wrote about the experience in a fiction writing class. "A lightning strike?" one classmate scribbled in the margins. "This doesn't seem realistic." I laughed when I saw it. Of course it's unrealistic! Lightning strikes don't happen in real life. House fires don't happen in real life. Except when they do.

I was a horror buff before the fire, but afterward, my fascination ramped up. Art was familiar. My personal tragedy was a plot device in all my favorite stories—like The Haunting In Connecticut, like Carrie.


Watch a documentary on Oregon's Fire Lanes


Burning is a trope in horror because it's powerful: fire destroys, and after destruction, can provide warmth. Fire symbolizes humanity's climb to civilization, a force so powerful it had to be stolen from the gods. It can't be controlled, it has no ideology, no motive. Just burns and spreads and burns some more. Horror taps into that primal knowledge that, if she wants, nature can destroy everything we've built. In horror, the pervasiveness of destruction by fire showed me what I perceived to be a non-reaction in my peers was not apathy, but a simple inability to relate or understand. But since fire appears so frequently in art, I knew that culturally, my experiences were valid and worthy of discussion. Just, to my peers, unreal.

Horror gave me back my normalcy. In the movies I saw my tragedy depicted constantly, reverently, in all sorts of different forms. I saw animals predicting death and destruction, alerting their owners something terrible was on the horizon, like my cat's inexplicable death two hours before the lightning strike. I saw fires as points of exciting narrative climax, moments of terrible understanding, as stories of rebirth.

Talk therapy didn't really help. Horror films were my self-treatment: a kind of exposure therapy. The memories of my house fire became less singular and terrifying. The tragedy lost its power. It's like driving again after being in a bad car accident; the best way to get over the fear from the accident is to get back in the car. It's harder for me to get to the root of my fear (there isn't a surplus of flaming houses) so horror films allowed me to relive, and realize that the story ends. Life goes on. I couldn't find support for my pain, but in horror I found respect for the thing that caused it, and evidence that it isn't the end of the world. And that is close enough.

Since she's moved to LA, my best friend and I continually ping each other horror recommendations. "Watched a Netflix movie that weirdly had Daniel Craig in it the other day that was pretty good," she texted me. "Called Dream Home but it has a house burning down in it..........."

"#tragicbackstory," I texted back.

I ended up watching Dream Home on my friend's recommendation. As Daniel Craig rushed to escape the burning building I thought, Well, that doesn't look so bad.

Follow Kate Davis Jones on Twitter.


'All We Know Is Violence': Seattle-Based Somali Rap Crew Malitia Malimob Talks War and Peace

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'All We Know Is Violence': Seattle-Based Somali Rap Crew Malitia Malimob Talks War and Peace

Hillary Clinton Thinks People Can’t Vote for Her, But Maybe They Just Don’t Want To

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Accusing her Republican rivals of trying to scare voters away from the polls, Hillary Clinton called Thursday for automatic registration that would put every 18-year-old on the voter rolls unless they specifically requested an exemption. The b eleaguered-but-still-inevitable Democratic frontrunner, told an audience at Houston's Texas Southern University that she supports a broad expansion of voting rights—including automatic registration and a minimum 20 days of early voting in every state—and called on Congress to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act that were stricken by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Specifically calling out four likely GOP presidential hopefuls— Governors Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie —Clinton called on Republicans to "stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud," denouncing what she characterized as a conservative effort to reduce turnout among young voters, minorities, and old people—voting blocs that, it just so happens, typically vote for the Democrats.

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"All of these problems voting just didn't happen by accident," she said. "And it is just wrong—it's wrong—to try to prevent, undermine and inhibit Americans' right to vote."

Her criticism isn't exactly new. Ever since 2000, when George W. Bush may or may not have beaten out Al Gore for the presidency, Democrats have been salty about voter access. A mere 15 years later, the party is pushing back against Republican-backed election laws that they say restrict voting rights. But it's not clear that either party is fighting the right fight.

In her remarks Thursday, Clinton tried to pin poor voter participation on Republicans, saying they're "systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of Americans from voting" through laws that limit early voting, require voters to show government-issued ID at the polls, and by avoiding federal oversight of election changes. Conservatives claim they're simply defending the sanctity of the democratic process from the pernicious threat of voter fraud. This plays well with their base because conservatives are very into defending the sanctity of things.

In the meantime, neither party is addressing the grimmer, greater truth: Most Americans who can vote don't vote.

In the November 2014 midterm elections, the US saw the worst voter turnout since 1942. Nationally, just 36 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot; in the three most populous states—California, Texas, and New York—that proportion was less than a third. All but seven states turned out less than half of their eligible voters, and no state broke 60 percent.

From a strictly numerical standpoint, voter fraud—the scourge that Republicans claim they are addressing with new election laws—isn't a problem. But on the other hand, neither is voter suppression.

Statistically, it's pretty safe to infer that conservative efforts to push through voting restrictions have been born, at least in part, of motivations other than a need to stem the lawless, willy-nilly exercise of the Fifteenth Amendment. Take Texas, for example: Many of the recent laws pushed through by GOP state lawmakers only target voter impersonation, an exceedingly rare type of already rare election crimes—but Republican elections officials in the enormous and extra-vigilant state found only two instances of voter impersonation to prosecute between 2002 and 2012—and they were really, really looking for it.

While full access to the vote is obviously important, though, the argument, made by Clinton and other Democrats, that new voting laws have systematically stripped voters of their democratic rights might be founded on similarly thin evidence.

Let's go back to Texas. In 2011, Democrats warned that the state's voter ID law would disenfranchise up to 600,000 lawful voters. But when the law finally took effect, after much courthouse wrangling, turnout rates were comparable to pre-ID elections. In fact, turnout in 2014 was actually higher in some heavily Hispanic counties where voter suppression was expected to be worst. More voters had to use provisional ballots, either because their registered names were different from the ones on their IDs or because they went to the wrong polling location, but those cases amounted to fewer than 400 ballots out of the 284,000 in-person votes cast, and most ended up being counted successfully.

Pundits and demographers have long claimed that deep red Texas—a mostly urban, majority non-white state—is on the verge of turning blue, or at least purple. The reason this hasn't happened yet, though, is low voter turnout: Texas clatters around at the bottom of the state rankings in turnout, placing 48th or 49th in most election years,

The lack of Democratic voter turnout in Texas is not for lack of trying. In January 2013, former Obama campaign strategists launched Battleground Texas, a progressive political action group whose goal was to turn Texas into a swing state. Battleground Texas had money, ambition, and experience, but threw its weight behind gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, a one-time star on the left who got trounced in November 2014. The failure suggests voter disengagement won't be overcome by organization alone.


Watch our HBO Report on the Worst Drought in Texas History


In the end, it's probably not that voters aren't aware of elections, or have been turned away from the polls so often that they've given up on the process. Maybe they just don't like the choices they've been offered. Take Clinton who, while still leading the weak Democratic field, is polling 15 points lower than she did at this time in 2008, when she was running in the Democratic primary against Barack Obama.

Among younger voters the numbers are even more troubling for Democrats. The Pew Research Center recently found that Clinton's support declines among Democratic-leaning millennial voters, with just 65 percent in favor of her candidacy, compared to 79 percent of older Democrats. A poll of 18-29-year-olds released by Harvard's Institute of Politics this spring found that while voters in this age group are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans—55 percent to 40 percent—just 21 percent said they considered themselves politically engaged.

This is all bad news for a party whose path to victory usually relies on a coalition of younger and ethnically diverse voters. To make matters worse, Democrats are expected to nominate a member of the same entrenched dynasties that have turned two thirds of the country away from politics altogether. So while Clinton may want to blame Republican policies for the Democrats' failure to thrive, she might look critically instead at the party poised to hand her the nomination.

Follow Emily DePrang on Twitter.

What Will Happen to British Expats if the UK Leaves the EU?

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Photo by Javier Izquierdo.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"This is my home and the only home my daughter has ever known," says Kate Stables, who's lived in Paris for almost a decade. "We feel part of the community here, and it would be very sad indeed if we had to move back to the UK, especially now that the Conservative government is back in for another term."

Stables is one of 2 million British people currently living and working in Europe whose lives would be turned upside down if Britain voted to leave the EU—a vote that David Cameron said today could be held as early as next May. "It would affect me in the same way as anyone who is forced to leave their home and community," adds Stables, frontwoman of folk rock bad This Is the Kit. "Many people have to flee places for their lives, and that fact alone just makes this whole business seem all the more petty and pointless."

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Conservative MP and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve commented that expats like Stables could become "illegal immigrants" overnight if Britain exits the European Union. While Grieve might be overstating the issue slightly, there are serious and growing concerns over what might happen to these EU residents come 2016. The situation is made worse by the total lack of information currently available to help people like Stables prepare.

Peter Wilding is director of British Influence, a cross-party pressure group campaigning for Britain's continued membership of the EU. He's one of the only figures in British politics offering advice to the expat communities who face increasing uncertainty about what their lives might look like post-referendum. "It's not true that expatriates would instantly become 'illegal immigrants' in their countries of residence, but it is certainly true that their status would change overnight," he explains.

The question is what that new status will actually entail if the people of Britain bid farewell to Europe. A mind-boggling amount of British legislation is tied up with EU membership, and for anyone who's not well-versed (i.e., the majority of people) it's difficult to understand exactly how a "Brexit" is even possible in practical terms, let alone what might happen to Britons who have made another country their home.

"Under Article 50 of the Treaty of Rome, there's a two-year period in which a new settlement would have to be negotiated for a cessation country," Wilding tells me. "Though the impact is not immediate, there'll be fear, uncertainty and a strong possibility that residents in EU countries would face great barriers to having the free and unfettered right to reside."

Steve Anderson, owner of Seu Xerea Restaurant in Valencia, has lived in Spain since 1991. With English, Irish, Burmese, Chinese, and Mongolian heritage, he doesn't identify with any single country in particular, but believes wholeheartedly that a British departure from the EU would be a disastrous move. This perspective is echoed throughout his community. "All the UK nationals I know here are committed Europeans. It's hardly surprising given that we're living as expats in another EU state," he says. "There's a saying in Spanish that broadly translates as, 'It doesn't matter where you're born, it's where you live that counts.' I think that's true."


Related: Watch our documentary, 'The British Wrestler'


Given the Tory agenda of anti-immigration legislation—which has so far included restricting welfare access for EU migrants and new criminal offenses for illegal migrant workers—it seems safe to say that they're not on board with Spain's cosy perspective on the right to reside. As ideas about diminishing the rights of EU citizens in the UK gain more traction, the picture begins to look more and more grim for British expats, too. "Reciprocal legislation in the countries that we have chosen to live in seems an inevitability at this point," says Anderson.

Stables echoes the same concerns, reiterating the need for British expats to have access to information and guidance ahead of next year's referendum. "I don't know what sort of plan or arrangements would be made to minimize the damage of not letting British people move freely in Europe, but I think it'd be a huge shock to the system," she tells me.

A two million-strong group of British citizens living in the EU are being disregarded by Cameron's government on this life-altering issue. To put that number into perspective, this group of EU expats is bigger than the population of every British city apart from London. "It has to be said that this issue is not the government's priority," Wilding tells me. "I don't know of anything being done within government to address the concerns of or communicate with British expatriates in the EU ahead of the referendum."

With no precedent or procedure in place for withdrawal, these Britons are left with almost nowhere to turn. Online communities such as Votes for Expats and UK Citizens in the EU are offering platforms for discussion and support, and Wilding's pressure group British Influence are arranging for politicians to speak on phone-in campaigns with Radio Talk Europe to keep expats informed about what's going on.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Should We Stay or Should We Go? Britain to Decide on its European Future

If Britain does depart from the EU, young people could find themselves among the groups worst affected. Dr. Steve Priddy, Research Director at the London School of Business and Finance, tells me that "a small but significant and growing faction" of young Britons are seeking work or study abroad as a reaction to the perceived lack of opportunities for them in Britain.

Recent graduate Dee Roberts is a member of that faction. After studying languages at university, she moved to Italy last year to work as a freelance English teacher. "I left the UK because there weren't any jobs in my field," she says. "Now the government that's made the youth employment problem so much worse is going to make me move back, then demonize me when I end up on JSA? It's just ridiculous."

Wilding isn't surprised to hear sentiments like this from young British expats; he sees it as a natural reaction given the global nature of society today. "I don't think young people see it as anything other than their fundamental right to study and work abroad," he says. "It's their country that's going to be inherited from the Nigel Farages of this world. Anything that impedes their rights to travel and work is obviously a real barrier to their freedom to live their lives as they see fit."

The potential impact is being felt among staff in the academic community, too. "Several of my faculty colleagues teaching in Grenoble are UK expats with families living in France. Dismay might be a good summing up of their general feelings," Priddy says. The consequences of a vote to leave the EU could see lecturers and researchers from across EU member states subjected to lengthy visa processes and other barriers to continuing their work. In the most extreme scenario, they may be forced to return to the UK, where academic jobs are already scarce.

There's a general hope that the referendum outcome will make speculation over what happens next redundant, but there's a tangible sense of helplessness among expats if Britain does opt out. "When the topic comes up, the general feeling is that it would be pretty bonkers if the UK were to leave Europe," Stables says. "What are the actual arguments for leaving the EU anyway? I've not heard anything convincing enough to justify it, but maybe I'm not reading the right papers."

In terms of mitigating the negative aftermath of Britain's potential exit from the EU, Priddy doesn't even want to think about it, and sees the potential repercussions reaching much further than those affected in the immediate future. "As a Briton and as an academic, departure from the EU would just be too depressing an outcome to consider," he tells me. "In straightforward terms, this so-called 'Brexit' from the EU is not something I would want to leave as a legacy for my son's generation."

Follow Lauren on Twitter.

Scottish Soccer Fans Are Boycotting Tonight's Friendly Game with Qatar

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The Tartan Army. Photo by Ronnie Macdonald.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Poor Qatar. They may be an oil-rich absolute monarchy with more money than they know what to do with, but they've had a pretty tough time recently when it comes to international soccer. Arguably tougher even than Scotland, which is currently trying to qualify for its first tournament since 1998.

Tonight, in a darkly comical display of bad timing, the two sides will line up against each other at Easter Road, the Hibernian ground in Edinburgh, where they'll be competing for something called the "Qatar Airways Cup." Going to the effort of getting an actual trophy made up for a meaningless friendly game played out to a half empty stadium would, usually, seem like an unnecessary extravagance.

But unnecessary extravagance is what Qatar thrives on, which may partly account for the messy situation they're now in. From the country's starring role in the increasingly convoluted FIFA corruption allegations to the mounting global outrage over the appalling conditions their huge migrant workforce is living— and dying—in, the country has rarely been out of the headlines recently.

Not bad for a microstate with a citizenry of about 250,000, with the eyes of the world presumably what the country's PR-hungry rulers were after when they applied for and won the right to host the 2022 World Cup. But it hasn't quite played out as they intended, with their visions of presenting themselves as a shimmering desert dreamland now looking about as likely as the "legacy for humanity" they once proposed. Instead, the country has become a gleaming metaphor for corruption and indentured labor, neither of which are exactly desirable when it comes to building your national tourism brand.

So with all that in mind, it's good to know that the Qatar Football Association still has some friends on the world stage—namely their Scottish counterparts. Although the SFA are keen to reassure everyone that they're against human rights abuses (round of applause guys!) and that they're aware of the "disturbing reports" emanating from Qatari construction sites, they say that it's "important to separate this sporting fixture" from the allegations. Whatever the case, it hasn't stopped them from issuing a joint press release about how thrilled Scotland is to be hosting the game, with manager Gordon Strachan posing for photos next to the "trophy" for this non-event, emblazoned with the branding of Qatar's state airline.

In Scotland's defense, they say that they need a game to prepare for next weekend's crucial Euro qualifier against Ireland (who now has its own FIFA scandal to boot), and Qatar just happens to be nearby. That's mostly because Qatar isn't playing many home fixtures at the moment given that, as even FIFA now concedes, you can't play soccer in 105-degree temperatures, so they've retreated to the slightly cooler climes of Staffordshire for a training camp. The match seemed like the perfect arrangement for both sides—what could possibly go wrong?

Well, things did start to go wrong. On May 27, the FIFA arrests in Switzerland kicked off, with corruption allegations around the awarding of the 2022 World Cup at their center. Later that day the Washington Post published the now famous infographic showing the estimated 1,200 migrant worker deaths that have happened in Qatar since late 2010. If playing a friendly game against Qatar had ever seemed like a brilliant idea, it suddenly didn't seem like such a wise one anymore.

Trade unions and some politicians have been vocal in calls for tonight's match to be boycotted by fans or scrapped entirely, highlighting the conditions of "modern day slavery" and widespread human rights abuses that Qatar seems intent on relying on in their massive drive to build up infrastructure capable of holding a World Cup.


Related: Watch our film about the biggest rivalry in football: Rangers & Celtic


A protest is set to take place outside the ground tonight, with union activists joining with members of the Scottish Football Supporters' Association to raise awareness of the situation, in the hope of putting pressure on the future World Cup hosts. "If the match on Friday was a World Cup 2022 game, 62 workers would have died to stage it," says Scottish TUC General Secretary Grahame Smith, pointing to the grim statistic on how many workers it's estimated will die for each match that's played in Qatar.

Earlier this week, the Qatari government commented on the reports around migrant worker deaths on World Cup construction sites, calling them "completely untrue" and saying that "not a single worker's life has been lost." They appear similarly unmoved by the growing corruption allegations, insisting that they won the tournament fairly, although the clamor from sponsors for action to be taken is growing.

Qatar's troubles may be about to get even worse though—tonight they might face the indignity of getting humped by Scotland.

Follow Liam on Twitter.

The Last-Ditch Effort to Save Abandoned Lab Chimps from Starving

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The Last-Ditch Effort to Save Abandoned Lab Chimps from Starving

Everything We Know So Far About ​the Man Who Was Shot by Cops After Allegedly Plotting to Behead a Conservative Pundit

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Usaamah Abdullah Rahim via Fox25 in Boston

When Usaamah Abdullah Rahim was killed on Tuesday, the 26-year-old's brother, Ibrahim, took to Twitter, claiming his beloved sibling had been waiting for the bus when he was unceremoniously shot in the back three times. Ibrahim, the imam who reluctantly oversaw deceased Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's funeral, added that Usaamah's last words were "I can't breathe." Initial coverage of the young man's death seemed to paint it as yet another case of the police killing someone under suspicious circumstances.

Those early accounts, however, now appear to be inaccurate, and experts are praising law enforcement officials for releasing information and video more quickly than usual to help keep misinformation from seeping into—or at least lingering in—the news cycle. Rather than yet another case of police brutality, Tuesday's shooting appears to be the end result of a long investigation by the FBI of a man reportedly planning to attack a legendarily Islamophobic TV pundit.

That pundit is Pamela Geller, the founder of the blog Atlas Shrugs and the vaguely-named Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller is most famous for her grandstanding opposition to the "Ground Zero Mosque" in lower Manhattan and for organizing a "draw Muhammad" contest in Texas that was attacked by a pair of fundamentalist Muslims who were shot down by an off-duty police officer. (The Islamic State would later dubiously claim credit for that attack.)

Rahim, whom the FBI had been monitoring for some time due to his alleged radicalization, apparently didn't like Geller much—on Wednesday, law enforcement sources told CNN that Rahim was planning to kill the conservative activist.

Rahim, a security guard who moved from Miami to Boston in 2013, apparently explained his plan when met with his nephew David Wright—a.k.a. Dawud Sharif Abdul Khaliq—on a rainy beach in Rhode Island last Sunday. According to a federal affadavit, he told Wright he wanted to travel to New York and behead Geller with a 15-inch Marine Raider Bowie knife he'd purchased on Amazon.

Then, three days later, at 5 AM, Rahim changed his mind.

"And, ah, but I can't wait that long. I can't wait that long man," he explained to Wright on the phone, saying he'd be going after some "boys in blue" instead.

On Tuesday, Rahim reportedly called his father and said, "You're not going to see me again after today." Later that day, a group of officers approached him outside of a CVS pharmacy (he was under 24-hour surveillance because of his cop-killing plan). Rahim reportedly brandished his knife and started running toward the officers, who say they were forced to shoot when he got close. After an initial wave of condemnations, the department aired surveillance video of the incident for local leaders, who have since corroborated the official version of events.

It wasn't until Wednesday that we learned Rahim's original plan was to go after Geller. "Of course I'm not surprised that they would target me," she told CNN. "This is a war." ("We don't know whether they even knew where to find her," one source told NBC News, with another calling it a "fantasy.")

Wright has been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for allegedly trying to destroy Rahim's cell phone. A third man they met with in Rhode Island, who hasn't been named, is reportedly still under investigation.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

What Does Norway's Divestment from Coal Mean for the Climate Change Movement?

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Photo via Flickr user James Ennis

On Friday, Norway's Parliament just voted in favor of a move that's basically a huge middle finger to the fossil fuel industry: It's dumping a bunch of coal-related investments from its pension fund's portfolio. That fund holds around $890 billion in total assets, according to the New York Times, which makes it one of the biggest players in the movement to take money away from the companies that do the most damage from the environment

This divestment movement emerged on a few college campuses in 2011, modeled after the South African divestment movement in the 1980s that was designed to scare business away from the Apartheid regime. Along with other widespread activism, protest, and boycotts, divestment is sometimes credited with speeding up the end of the Apartheid.

Critics call divestment a purely symbolic protest tactic, and even some environmentalists, notably Mike Hulme, oppose it. But in an interview with VICE Bill McKibben, one of the movement's most famous advocates, explained the idea behind divesting from these companies: "It can't in the short run bankrupt them, but it already is politically bankrupting them."


What do you mean you haven't already seen our report on Greenland's melting glaciers?


"The fossil fuel industry is suddenly spectacularly on the defensive, as everyone starts to understand it won't be able to keep accessing its reserves," McKibben added.

Norway makes for an interesting adversary for the fossil fuel industry given its massive piles of oil wealth. The oil and gas industry accounts for a quarter of Norway's GDP. In fact, when divestment activist group Gofossilfree.org published of the top 200 climate-damaging companies, Norway's government majority-owned oil company, Statoil, was number 25 among oil and gas companies.

But according to McKibben, the people of Norway are "beginning to cash in their chips and look for a new casino." Indeed, a story last year from the New York Times reported that activists and some members of parliament had fully turned on Statoil—protests at the University of Bergen called for divestment and to an end to the company's funding of academic research, and the country's parliament took the unusual step of forcing the company to cut its carbon emissions.

With a vote in Parliament on Friday, Norway joined a growing list of organizations that have pledged to give up at least some of their fossil fuel investments. That list includes the Rockefeller family charity, the city of Seattle, the Church of England, and the French insurance company ASA.

In practical terms, the move by Norway will exclude companies from the pension's portfoliio if more then 30 percent of their business activity involves coal, meaning it mostly affects mining and utilities.

According to a statement by Greenpeace Norway, "Norway is also still engaged in Arctic oil drilling, so while this is great news, there is still lots of work to do for Norway before it can brand itself as truly climate friendly."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

The Young Stars of 'Family Tree' Talk About Suicide and Trying to Be Cool in New York City

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Stills courtesy of the director

Anyone can make a movie these days. It feels like going to film school is an even more ridiculous of an idea than it was ten or 20 years ago, but that doesn't stop some people from doing it. There are still passionate young filmmakers out there with a vision, a degree of technical expertise, a Kickstarter, or some funding from a rich uncle (if they're lucky). NYU film grad Sebastian Sommer is one of these visionaries. For his recent film, Family Tree, Sommer hooks up with three of New York City's notable young talents—India Menuez, Claire Christerson, Hari Nef, and Ally Marzella.

Menuez is the best-known of the group. She's a member of NYC's Luck You Collective and has built a name acting in art films, producing art for shows with Petra Collins and others, and maintaining a vibrant presence on Instagram. Marzella's medium of choice is Twitter, producing sexually-charged post-internet vibe art as @artwerk6666. All four women are New York success stories who've figured out a way to make the hyperactive spectacle-obsessed internet of 2015 work in an artistic context. They somehow manage to remain prolific both online and IRL.

For his short, Sommer cuts back to basics and uses a simple, straightforward visual strategy to allow the personalities of these eclectic actresses and artists shine through. The film itself is a weird meditation on suicide, identity politics, and urban disillusionment. I decided to track down the film's actresses to talk to them about it following the film's release last week.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ttJRnCjoho0' width='100%' height='360']

VICE: What is the personal significance of suicide for each of you?
India Menuez: I was really hesitant to take the role, because of the seriousness of this topic. Like the glamorization of drug abuse, I didn't want to be a part of another film that made self-harm appealing. I have been lucky enough to experience the effects of suicide only second-hand. It is a real, tragic, and complicated thing, but art should be able to discuss all issues.

Ali Marzella: It's something one contemplates often enough—a possible means of escape. Suicide and artists go hand-in-hand, unfortunately.

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Do you find yourselves consciously trying to associate with projects that throw people off or shift expectations?
Menuez: Sure, part of a desire for diverse roles and projects is to create a confusing public image, to make people think. But it also comes out of a personal need to be challenged. More then surpassing an audiences expectations, I am interested in also surprising myself.

As you develop your identities in film and art, is "coolness" something you take into account? Or is it an accidental byproduct of what you happen to be doing?
Marzella: Sure, the latter. The "cool" vibe you're getting from this particular film is pretty purposeful.

Menuez: I try to live up to my ten-year-old self's standard of cool. Beyond that, I try not to feel too embarrassed about the word "cool" and its diluting overuse.

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Does this film represent a certain disillusionment with what New York City has become in recent years, or am I reading to far into it?
Marzella: I'm not from the city originally, but I can say NYC has changed me in ways I can't really describe. It's possible Family Tree has something to do with this concept but for me maybe it's more about disillusionment with life rather than a particular place.

Manuez: New York's constant state of change is what gives it its jagged desperation. The character I play in Family Tree is not from New York like I am. I think she feels like the city that made her is dying, and so she must die with it. But growing up here, I don't feel so melodramatic about it. I guess I just get tired of hearing people from elsewhere complain about the city not living up to their dreams. I don't know if New York City can lose its core authenticity no matter how much it's gentrified.

Thanks.

Follow Charlie on Twitter.

Watch Host Danny Gold Debrief Our New HBO Episode About the Origins of Ebola

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We're now almost done with the third season of our showVICE on HBO. Among other stories, we've taken a look at climate change in Antarctica, American militias taking the law into their own hands, and the cocaine highway that leads from the streets of Venezuela to the sinuses of European teenagers.

We just aired a new episode where host Danny Gold went to the Guinea to track how the deadly Ebola outbreak got its start. We sat down with Gold to debrief the trip—check it out above.

Watch VICE Fridays on HBO at 11 PM, 10 PM central or on HBO's new online streaming service, HBO Now.

How FIFA Has Hurt Women's Soccer

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How FIFA Has Hurt Women's Soccer

Living as a Woman with HIV

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Photo courtesy of Erin Dolby

This article is part of a package of stories inspired by our latest documentary, Stopping HIV? The Truvada Revolution.

As a sex writer, sometimes you think you've heard it all. So when I started hanging out with a fellow Scorpio contributor named Casey, who works for Poz magazine, where she spends her days researching and reporting on HIV, I was shocked to discover how many misconceptions about the virus persist. When it came to the reality of HIV, even I didn't know shit.

For instance, with medications today, as an HIV-positive woman, you can have unprotected sex with a 96 percent lower chance of inflecting your partner. If the side effects of the meds get to you, that's what the medical marijuana movement is for. (Though Casey works at Poz, she is HIV negative, in case that was another misconception.)

To educate myself and just get to know some badass ladies, Casey and I talked with three different women living with HIV. Erin Dolby is a former Arizona beauty queen and current activist. Damaries Cruz treated her HIV holistically for 20 years before seeking HIV meds when things began to decline. Malina Fisher has developed a YouTube following for her videos in which she discusses living with HIV, and has been called "too hot" to have the virus. You can't be too hot, or too educated, or too rich to become HIV positive, but you can be HIV positive and still be a powerful, sexy woman. As the "mama bear" of HIV positive women, Tami Haught gave VICE a bit of advice for HIV-positive women: "You can live a full life. Plan your future. Your options are unlimited now. With HIV, you can do whatever you want to do, and you need to plan on it. For [yourself] and the community as a whole."

—Sophie Saint Thomas


Erin Dolby

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Photo courtesy of Erin Dolby

VICE: Hey Erin! So congrats, you recently got married right?
Erin Dolby: I did. We met in the rooms of a 12-step fellowship. I had been asked to be in a fashion show and so had he. He was also DJing that fashion show, and I think that was our first kiss and probably our first everything else. That night before anything happened I sat him down and was like, "Look you already know my story, I'm HIV positive, I have hepatitis C, I have herpes." And he said, "That you're so confident and open about it makes me that much more turned on by you." It encouraged me and made me feel so much more beautiful to know that I could be that open and raw and he wouldn't judge me at all for it. A few months later we were pregnant for the first time and he proposed. I lost the baby. I had a miscarriage. I've had two subsequent miscarriages since.

I'm assuming he's HIV negative then. How do you guys have safe sex?
He's HIV negative. I'm just very adherent to my medications. We don't use condoms. He gets tested every once in a while. I take Truvada, I use treatment, and for a heterosexual couple with a female who is adherent to medications—I mean, I'm even undetectable without meds. There's really very little risk.

So does that mean that you have non­progressive HIV?
You know, my CD4 kept dropping—384 was the lowest I ever got. I think I started taking medication when I was at 410. And the highest my viral load has ever been was 104. So I'm close to being a non­progressor. I also got sober right when I found out. I was in treatment for drug addiction and 21 days sober when I heard the news.

What were you recovering from?
I was a meth addict, and my other drug of choice was GHB. But what I believed happened [to contract HIV] was that I was careless in my sexual choices. I heard rumors about a guy [that] he was an IV drug user and I had condoms in my purse, but at that point, I either just didn't care or didn't think that [HIV] would happen to me. I had even done some sex work during my addiction, but I was always safe in my sex work. It was in real life, in my personal life, that I was careless.


Is the end of the HIV epidemic in sight? Watch part 1 of our documentary on Truvada:



Can you tell us about your transition from pageant girl to addiction?
I was crowned Miss Arizona in 1996. I didn't win Miss America, but I was in the pageant. After my year of service as Miss Arizona was up, I started experimenting more and more with drugs. I started using drugs in May of 1999, and my addiction lasted until February 1, 2010. So I was in active addiction for 13 years.

I had been molested as a seven-year-old by my best friend's father. I just kept that a secret. My parents didn't find out about it until I was 19. My friend, she had pressed charges against her dad and I got subpoenaed to testify against him. I think that was when I fell into my first real depression, where I just couldn't leave the house and I couldn't eat. I think that was the start of disease in my life. I started experimenting with drugs. Within a year, I was cocktail waitressing at a strip club. Next thing you know, I was on the stage. I don't even know how that happened. At the time, strippers and bartenders were kind of glorified and I was dating club owners and feeling popular and falling deeper and deeper into addiction.

What sparked your decision to go to rehab?
I don't think I made that decision myself. I was hanging out with some pretty bad people and my house got raided for credit card fraud, and I was on probation for drugs. I got pulled over and I had drugs in my car. They raided my house that evening—this was January 28, 2010—and that's really when it all started. The eviction notice came and my father was terminally ill with colon cancer, and I had just started seeing a therapist and she said, "You know what, Erin, it's time. You're 34 years old and your life isn't going anywhere."

I was totally unemployable, I wasn't even getting work as a sex worker anymore. My mom said, "Your dad's too ill, but what do you want to do?" So I asked him for a gift and that gift was to go to treatment. I still don't think I had any intention of getting sober. I was just going into treatment to get everybody off my back. But what happened there was totally something else. It wasn't me. I say that being a very spiritual person now. I don't think I was strong enough to ask for an HIV test, but something made me ask for this test and I sat in my room when they told me, and I sat in my room for a couple of days and cried. Because I didn't know anybody who was positive. My fifth grade teacher died of AIDS in '85 or '86. He was one of the first people. And that's what I remember. My fear of dying wasn't even as big as my fear of getting AIDS.

"I do what I can to make myself feel pretty. That's my own responsibility. Nobody else can make me feel beautiful." —Erin Dolby

So, babies! How are you conceiving your child, and what preventative measures are you taking to keep your kid from getting HIV?
I just had a really open dialogue with my doctor, the first time we got pregnant. I saw a specialist and learned that I was going to have to have a planned birth and it was going to have to be a C-section. My doctor kept telling me, "We haven't had an HIV­positive birth in 13 years." So that gave me a lot of hope. When I talked to my perinatal specialist, she said, "You can have a vaginal birth. Why would you think that you can't? As long as you're doing well, and keep adherent to your medications, there's no reason why you can't have a natural birth." I really haven't had any thoughts or fears about that.

What dating and sex advice do you have for other HIV­-positive women?
The most attractive and empowering thing that you can do for yourself as an HIV­-positive woman is be armed with knowledge. Be comfortable in your status. I've really taken control of my body. I listen to it and what it needs and I got really well-educated before I embarked on dating or sex. If I walk into a situation knowing that I'm comfortable in my status and comfortable in my body, that speaks volumes to other people. I'm no different than you. I have a couple of other things that I do to take care of myself. I get my quarterly blood draws and I speak very openly and honestly with my doctor. Having a doctor that really knows women is really important too. I do what I can to make myself feel pretty. That's my own responsibility. Nobody else can make me feel beautiful. But beauty comes from the inside out and once I began feeling pretty on the inside, it just came out.


Damaries Cruz

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Photo courtesy of Damaries Cruz

VICE: How are you doing? I hear you've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Damaries Cruz: Well, I had a diagnosis of cervical cancer in 2011. I went through two major surgeries. And my [doctor] believed that I already had fibromyalgia, but they only diagnosed me three weeks ago.

And you're in a lot of pain from it.
Right now I am. I'm not used to it. I've had neuropathy since 2006 so sometimes I don't know if it's the neuropathy or fibromyalgia. So I keep pushing myself like I always do, because I just think it's going to go away. And then I push myself so much that I can't move.

I read that you were diagnosed with HIV for 17 years without taking any medication.
I think it's been a bit longer now. I started after 20 years. And I started meds because I was exposed to CMV and toxoplasmosis. I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and I needed surgery. The oncologist couldn't do surgery unless I did something. So I had to start medication.

"I just keep my mind positive, because when you laugh, your T-cells go up and your immune system gets a boost." —Damaries Cruz

Why did you decide not to take the antiretroviral treatment?
Last week, they prescribed me Cymbalta. I only took it one time and I almost ended up in the hospital because I had an adverse reaction to it. I've seen a doctor who is holistic, so we're going to do something holistic very soon. I'm a big believer in holistic things. I don't even like Tylenol or anything like that. If I can do things holistic, that's how I'm going to do it. I had to unfortunately begin medication because at that point, I was sick with other things.

What kind of holistic treatments did you do?
Acupuncture. And I do a lot of meditation, and I was on a regimen of vitamins. And I just keep my mind positive, because I know when you are positive, anything that makes you laugh, your T-cells go up, and your immune system gets a boost. So I was doing fine all that time.

And did your HIV doctor know?
For 20 years, I saw different doctors and the last one was just a general practitioner. Of course they didn't like what I was doing. I'm going to be very honest because you're going to publish this and I want to make sure people know: I would never recommend anyone to do what I did. HIV trades information inside your body. So when you're not taking meds, you don't have it under control. It was not denial—I just wanted to do it my way. I'm very strong-minded. And a lot of people in a lot of conferences attack me because they think I want them to stop their meds. I will never tell anyone what to do. I will only share my story. It's really important you listen to your doctor and work as a team.


Watch part 2 of our documentary on the revolutionary drug that may stop HIV dead in its tracks:


Can we go over your diagnosis story?
I didn't know anything about HIV. But we were using protection all the time because I didn't want to get pregnant. I thought it was just for that. So when I met the person I was engaged to at that time I fell in love and I didn't think about anything. You think this person is going to be really honest with you. At that time [20 years ago] they were saying that you had to be a prostitute or use intravenous drugs to be exposed and I didn't fit into that.

My fiancé lay next to me every single night. So we had this conversation and I asked, "Have you been tested for HIV?" And he said, "Yes, I'm negative." I trusted him. And one day I decided to have sex with him and we had sex. I had HIV the year before I was diagnosed because the year before I was having yeast infections for a whole year and they were so bad that I was bleeding. The doctor thought that I had cancer. And he said let's do a biopsy, and then he did HIV, just to rule it out. When I told [my fiancé] that he had to go and get tested, he said "I knew I was going to take someone with me, I never thought it would be you." I realized that he knew. I was still going to marry him, but I wish he would have told me.

Did you keep seeing him?
I was in love. And I thought no one was going to accept me, we might as well have each other. I never hated him; I didn't have time for that. We started planning our wedding, and a week before our wedding he was sleeping with someone else in our bed. He passed away two years later [of AIDS-related complications].


Malina Fisher

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Photo courtesy of Malina Fisher

VICE: So what's dating as an HIV-positive woman like?
Malina Fisher: It's not much different than it was before except for the fact that I have to disclose my status. My disclosure just depends on my interest in a person. If I'm considering sleeping together, then I'll tell them. I don't tell people unless I'm serious about them.

Have you had any bad experiences disclosing your status?
A couple of them have been like that, but for the most part, when I disclose my status, it always ends in a positive way. When I talk to them about my status, sometimes they'll assume that I contracted it in other ways. You know, because of the stigma, people think that I got it from doing drugs. Or they'll think that I got it from sleeping around. That's not the case.

Could we go over your HIV diagnosis story? You were breastfeeding your son at the time, right?
Yes. I went for a routine checkup, and part of my routine checkup included a test for STDs. Everything came back negative except the HIV test. As soon as I got my lab results back, I stopped nursing him immediately. Within days, I tested my son and he tested negative and he kept having blood tests after that. He tested negative every test, so he's fine.

When I found out my status, I was living with my son's father. I told him and he got upset, because I put the baby at risk. He would come back home drunk and start fights with me; it got physical and I had to leave. I had nowhere to go. My family was not supportive of me at all. The best they could do was say, "I pray for you," and I'm like, what the hell is praying gonna do?

"The worst part about living with the virus is not really the virus, it's the stigma." —Malina Fisher

What is it like having "asymptomatic HIV"?
Yeah. I don't have any other health issues. The only other issues are the side effects [from HIV medication], I guess. But I changed medicine, so it doesn't really bother me anymore. At first it was really bad because I was always nauseous and vomiting, and then I had diarrhea.

You've used medical marijuana for some of the medication side effects, right?
Yeah, I'm smoking in one of my videos. It did help with side effects when I was on my other medication because I was on Truvada, Reyataz, and Norvir and it was horrible. But now it helps treat other issues I have. I have anxiety and chronic back pain, and I don't take any medication for it.

What's something most people don't know about living with the virus?
[Theoretically], we're healthier than normal people. We see our doctors whether we like it or not. Normal people don't go to the doctor as much. We are going to outlive everybody else. And just knowing that, it's like a slap in the face when people are like, "Oh, are you going to die?" I might be afraid to cross the street at a busy intersection, but that's my biggest fear, not dying from this.

So obviously you're super out about living with HIV, you have all these YouTube videos. Have you gotten any weird online responses?
Only from perverts. I mean, but who doesn't get weird responses from perverts? A lot of guys will assume that I have no sex life because of this and I'm like, far from it. So they'll like come at me and solicit sex and I'll say, "Sweetheart, if I want to have sex with somebody, I could have anybody I want. Go away."


Watch the final part of our documentary on new hopes for ending the HIV epidemic:


What's something you wish you'd known when you were diagnosed with HIV?
I just wish I knew then what I know now. Thinking that since I was having sex with only one person, I was immune to it. Because I didn't think in a hundred years that [HIV] would happen to me. I wasn't sleeping around or doing anything risky, per se.

I'm OK with living with the virus. I've accepted it. But I would hope that nobody would have to walk in those shoes if they don't have to. The worst part about living with the virus is not really the virus, it's the stigma, and depending upon who you are, the side effects, because they can get really bad.

The first thing I thought when watching your YouTube videos was "Oh my god, she's so hot." You said in one video that people tell you that you're "too hot to be HIV-positive."
Yeah, they assume we're dying and have sores all over us or something. People's perceptions of HIV are still rooted back in the 90s. But it's not the 90s anymore. People will look at me and say, "You're not a toothpick, you're not a skeleton, you're not sickly looking." I'm not supposed to be. I take care of myself.

Follow Sophie Saint Thomas and Casey Halter on Twitter.

A Mother, a Son, and Two Diagnoses

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For a series of stories inspired by our latest documentary, Stopping HIV? The Truvada Revolution, we sought out people whose lives have been directly affected by the HIV virus. Here, contributing writer Harriet Alida Lye talks with her friend Joshua* and his mom Beverley about how two diseases changed—and strengthened—their relationship as mother and son.

I'm late getting to my friend Joshua's apartment in a part of Toronto he describes as "a thriving oxymoron just south of the crack line," but when he comes down to get me, he's wearing a tricky grin. "So," Josh says, "Someone is here, but he won't be here for long! Sorry!"

When we get up to his place—a second-floor walk-up above a cookie store—there's a 22 year-old boy standing in the middle of the room. Mark is lanky, has dark curls, and shoulders that hunch forward. Josh gives a brief gesture of introduction then kisses Mark goodbye before we can even shake hands. As Josh closes the door, he lets out a half-laugh, half-sigh. "I just got back from picking that kid up from the hospital! That's not how I was expecting to spend my Thursday afternoon."

Joshua is a 32 year-old white gay man who grew up between Toronto's "gayborhood" with his lesbian mother and his father's farm two hours north of the city. Josh was diagnosed with HIV when he was 26, and I met him one year later.

As we sit on his balcony, Joshua explains that he met Mark on Tinder on Monday night and, after a few hours of chatting, Mark came over. "I work in an HIV research association," Josh says, "so I know an awful lot about how HIV is transmitted, and we fooled around but didn't do anything that was risky. It was only when he wanted to have some fucking that I said 'Well, that would be amazing, but there is something you need to know.' So everything was paused."

I spoke with Joshua about opening up to his family, dating as an HIV positive gay man, and the unexpected consequences of joining the HIV positive community.

VICE: How did that conversation with Mark go down?
Joshua: Mark started that interaction by asking "Are you clean?" and I laughed and said, "Of course, I just had a shower!" Clean is a very stigmatizing term, because if I reply anything other than yes then it implies that I'm dirty. Anyway, we had this long talk and I told him what I know, my experience, what my numbers are—which is significant when considering the likelihood of transmission. Then we continued fooling around. He slept over, we woke up, and fooled around some more. It was all lovely. I took him for a coffee and then went to work, and three hours later he texted: "I'm starting to feel really nervous..." He asked me what I thought about him taking PEP, post-exposure prophylaxis, to lower his risk of contracting the virus by 80 percent, but I told him that in my opinion the risk was already so low that it wasn't necessary. Despite that, today he went into the hospital for tests.

Is this a reaction you've experienced before?
In varying degrees, yes. I normally use an app to meet people. We all know that there's something about meeting in person that paints a more accurate picture of who you are, but in dancing, drunken environments I might meet someone and we can both think the other is fantastic, but I can't be sure that they comprehend the gravity of what I'm telling them. That's important, because HIV is so criminalized. An ex-boyfriend could sue me saying that I never disclosed, and I don't have a signed affidavit—which is actually recommended by HIV legal services because otherwise you're not protected, there's no evidence. I could be charged with aggravated sexual assault, which is as serious as murder. So I find it easier to use apps, because on my profile I can list that I am positive. That means that I don't meet a lot of people.


In the latest video from VICE Reports, we look into Truvada, a drug that might stop HIV dead in its tracks:


Is being charged for non-disclosure a fear of yours?
Yes.

You think about it regularly?
All the time. So I don't pick up in bars.

You've told me that your mom's reaction to you coming out as gay was saying "don't get AIDS," but was that something that you had thought about for yourself?
No, not before coming out. But after, the fear of contracting HIV was enough to make me afraid to have physical contact. It meant that there was a lot of guilt and shame associated with any kind of sexy-time with another man. It's not the most prevalent STI in the world, but it's certainly the most poignant. It's the only one that stuck with me. It was like a morality clause that impacted all of my sexual thinking.

I spent $20,000 in three months. I maxed out all my credit cards and bought a painting on a payment plan. It tethered me to the world: I had to be around for three years to pay for this painting.

When did you find out you were HIV positive?
I found out for sure on February 26, 2008. A Tuesday, around 4 PM. But I kind of found out a few weeks before that, when I got a panicky message from the clinic saying that there had been a problem with my results and they needed to re-test the samples. I had just arrived in Prince Edward Island and I was alone on the waterfront. I remember the exact moment when I decided not to jump in, and the only reason I didn't kill myself was because I didn't want my parents to have to pay my university debt. That just seemed to me the most immoral situation to force them into—this was my mistake, and they shouldn't have to pay for it. I found out later that in cases like suicide, university debt can be cleared! Thank God I'm terrible with money!

It took a long time to identify the virus because I was so weakly positive. My viral load is so low that I'm in a category called long-term non-progressor, or, believe it or not, Elite Controller. I consider myself very fortunate, and I'm resistant to starting medication because some people, even on medication, don't achieve a viral load as low as mine is now.

What was your life like immediately after finding out?
The first two years I took horrible care of myself because I was convinced I was dying. I'd never been into drugs or alcohol and I'm thankful for that, because I know a lot of people who jumped headfirst into that form of "self-care" when they were diagnosed. They figured "well, I'm going to die anyway, so I may as well do that thing that I love until I do." But the thing that I love is spending money, so I spent $20,000 in three months. I maxed out all my credit cards and bought a painting on a payment plan. It was a form of long-distance punishing myself, but it tethered me to the world: I had to be around for three years to pay for this painting.

But just a couple hours after I got the final result, my mom insisted that we go for dinner because she was concerned about what food to serve at her birthday party three days later. During dinner, she burst into tears because she didn't know whether she wanted chocolate cake or crème caramel, and she was finding this such a stressful decision. That's when I made the choice not to tell my family. I couldn't reconcile this dramatic moment of my own mortality with their daily concerns. I didn't tell anyone in my family for over three years.

Do you feel like not telling them helped you?
I'm not sure. I wanted to wait until it was something in my control. Until it felt like I could fathom it. I did not want what was going on with me to become an issue for anyone else.

Some of my most valued mentors are positive, and they're the coolest, wisest people. It's because they've learned to live with uncertainty.

What provoked you coming out to your family?
When my mom was diagnosed with cancer in 2011. She's always complained about her health: She doesn't have a headache, she has an agonizing verge-of-death head-explosion that is likely fatal and will kill certainly all of those in her near radius. But when she called to say she had a rare lymphoma, I was completely shocked. Her third sentence was "don't worry, think of all the time we'll have together when you're driving me to appointments and with me at the hospital!" That felt like a huge anvil falling on me. I was only just starting to feel like my life was in a place where I could dream, and look ahead, and have something to look forward to, and suddenly all that was gone.

Would you not have told your family had she not been diagnosed with cancer?
It's possible. I felt like I needed to tell her I was HIV positive to lend validity to my taking some distance from her during her treatment. It felt like I needed to compete, because she would say "nothing is as scary as cancer," and I needed to tell her "actually, you're not the only one who is dealing with mortality." When she would complain about everything she was going through, I would tell her that it was important that she not make cancer a part of her identity. It's tempting to go to that place, but I don't feel like it's the best way.

Do you feel like you've been able to do that with HIV, and keep it separate from your identity?
Yes. But then I have experiences where I meet someone, and they're really nice, and we have a discussion and I think it's out of the way, but it's actually only just beginning. I have yet to meet someone where my status is not a factor. And being a lonely person, as I am right now, it's kind of an emotional flare-up every time I meet someone new.

Is being HIV positive what you expected?
No. I crossed over into a part of the gay community that had previously been hidden to me, and it's incredibly loving. Some of my most valued mentors are positive, and they're the coolest, wisest people. It's because they've learned to live with uncertainty. When you are comfortable in the unknown, and in the in-between places, there's nothing scary. There's no stopping you. It's funny to think that something that might physically limit me could emotionally free me. But in many ways, that's what has happened.

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Photo via Flickr users Phil and Pam Gladwell

I met with Beverley, Joshua's mother, in her co-op apartment two blocks from her son's place. Beverley lives on a leafy street lined with brick-townhouses—it's definitively north of the figurative "crack line." She has a soft, glamorous voice like a movie star from the 40s, and she was wearing a T-shirt that her son commissioned a local artist to design. She turned off the air conditioning so we could better hear each other, and sat on the sofa next to a stack of hand-folded Kleenex.

VICE: When did you know that Joshua was gay, and was this a separate moment from his coming out?
Beverly: Yes, they were very different moments. The first time I thought Josh might be gay was when he was eight and dressed up as Mariah Carey and did a lip-sync performance to one of her songs. But he actually came out to me when he was 16, over Pride weekend in Toronto. His recollection is that I cried, and—well, I think I did. I told him I was proud of him for being true to himself, but I was also concerned. I was concerned about AIDS, and that life was going to be more difficult for him.

I myself was a closeted lesbian until I was in my 40s, so I can't address what it would be like going through my 20s and 30s as a lesbian and looking for a lesbian partner. But I knew being out at any age came with a whole new set of misconceptions, stereotypes, and challenges.

But when I heard Josh's diagnosis, that was the hardest day of my life. The cancer was a no-brainer: I was going to live or I was going to die.

When did Joshua tell you he was HIV positive?
In June of 2011. I was diagnosed in April of 2011 with stage-four incurable lymphoma, and my only chance for survival was seven months of chemotherapy followed by radiation and a stem-cell transplant. A period followed where Josh indicated to me that he was going to need some space. I was upset, of course, but I should have trusted that he would have a pretty good reason. And then, when he told me he was HIV positive, I understood.

Do you think that your having cancer and Josh having HIV allowed you to understand each other better, or prevented you from understanding one another's separate experiences with illness?
In terms of mother-son relations, I think that illness exacerbates whatever is right in a relationship, but also whatever is wrong in a relationship. It's all about perspective. When I got my diagnosis, I was scared. But when I heard Josh's diagnosis, that was the hardest day of my life. The cancer was a no-brainer: I was going to live or I was going to die. But he's my son, and I want to be here for him, whether he wants me there or not.


Why are so few people taking Truvada as a preventative measure against HIV? VICE investigates in part 2 of our documentary "Stopping HIV?":


Having had cancer, and having a son with HIV, could you speak to the difference in public perception of these two illnesses?
I think that HIV is much more stereotyped. The main stereotype, of course, is that it could have been avoided. However, many years ago, there was so much fear and mystery surrounding HIV and AIDS, and I don't know if that's ever truly gone away. I think there's so much blame, and guilt as a result. But Josh is so perceptive, and when we've talked about it, I've come to understand that a young man just getting in touch with his sexuality could so easily find himself in a situation where he ends up being at risk without even knowing it.

There's a quote from an end-of-life counselor I met while in treatment who said "You have to fall in love with whatever's happening to you." I learned to embrace the cancer because it was a part of me, it was part of my body. Just as we have National Cancer Survivors Day in Canada and the US, I think we should have National HIV/AIDS Survivors Day. It's all about celebrating life.

When Joshua told you he was gay, you said that your major fear was that he would get AIDS. Now that he's HIV positive, and doing so well, what is your major fear for your son?
I think aging with HIV is going to be hard, but more presently, because of his status, it's difficult for him to enter into a relationship with someone. It's so much more difficult. And that saddens me. It's not a fear, but it saddens me. I do believe that because of the medication that's available now, he will live a long and productive and healthy life, with a normal life span. I just want to see him happy.

Do you have any advice to mothers of children with HIV or AIDS?
Love your child. There is no other advice.

*All names have been changed at the subject's request.

Follow Harriet Alida Lye on Twitter.


The World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund Will No Longer Invest in Coal Companies

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The World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund Will No Longer Invest in Coal Companies

How to Film a Virus: The Evolving Depictions of HIV/AIDS from 'Kids' to 'Precious'

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Rosario Dawson as Ruby and Chloe Sevigny as Jennie in Kids

This article is part of a series of stories inspired by our latest documentary, Stopping HIV? The Truvada Revolution.

Ruby and Jennie are sitting with their friends, cracking jokes about sucking dick. It's 1994, somewhere in New York City, and they are just shy of 17. You can tell how hot it is outside because of the way Ruby's long brown hair is sweating, curdling into gross, wet tendrils that she occasionally stops to slick back.

"Hardcore-pound-fucking, that's the shit right there," she declares. She's spitting the words out as she smacks her gum around her mouth. "There's a difference between making love, having sex," her face just teems with disgust when she describes something as maudlin as having sex, "and fucking."

The other girls laugh, talk, protest, disagree. Semen tastes bad, some say. Sperm gets stuck in your teeth. Sex, when it's good, feels like boom, boom, boom, man. Ruby likes getting fingered. "He was sucking on my tits and I was like, 'You go boy.'"

"The worst is sucking dick," Jennie, a girl with cropped red hair, interjects. She'd been quiet up until that point. The girls nod furiously in agreement. In a few moments, Ruby and Jennie will be sitting in a doctor's office getting tested. Jennie, who's only had sex with one guy, learns that she has HIV. Ruby, who's had sex with many more, learns that she doesn't. Their lives start to feel unbearably, senselessly cruel.

Ruby is Rosario Dawson; Jennie is Chloe Sevigny. They are the girls from Kids, Larry Clark's painful, vital 1995 film about the troubled teens of New York City. Though some of the film's stars would have real-life tragedies on their own, dying within years of its release, the film would make stars of Dawson and Sevigny. They're both actresses who, no matter what the decade is, seem to embody an effortless and eternal breed of cool. Kids was where their cool began.

Both of their performances are, unsurprisingly, superb. Dawson's punchy, staccato line delivery is so abrasive that it's charming. When she speaks you can't help but listen and hang on her every word. She's entrancing in the way some delinquents just happen to be.

Kids was not just a tonic: It was an explosion.

With Sevigny, it's something different. It's in the way her lucid, sad eyes communicate the small earthquakes we endure as we grow older, shedding the skin of adolescence and graduating into adulthood. When the camera glances at her, she glances right back in a way that cuts through the bullshit and gets to the heart of what's ailing her. She's been infected with a disease that will grimace over her for the rest of her life, and she's terrified.

Now that the film is celebrating its 20th birthday, Kids—which director Larry Clark wanted to make into the "Great American Teenage Movie, like the Great American Novel"—has become the stuff of lore, sewn so tightly into our cultural fabric that it seems silly to talk about how important a film it is. Upon Kids' release, critics were up in arms about it, some seeing it as a wake-up call, others thinking it was trash, a lot of people declaring it was close to a masterpiece. Perhaps it's all of those things at once—a brutal, ragged, and crudely effective film about the breathtakingly stupid things we do when we're young, and the awful ways life preys on youth's blind spots.

It's also a film about a vivid cultural moment, one in which HIV, in popular movies, stopped being something stars could suffer nobly through. HIV had a hard time entering movies. For a long time, most frank and brutal depictions existed in the cultural ghetto of arthouse cinema. A Steve Buscemi movie called Parting Glances was, in 1986, one of the more high-profile films to feature the disease. In 1992, Gregg Araki of Mysterious Skin fame, tackled it with The Living End. So did Derek Jarman, another icon of New Queer Cinema, with his final film, Blue (1993), which he made right before he died of AIDS.


Watch our VICE documentary on Truvada, the drug that might prevent HIV:


There were a few "watershed" movies about HIV that captured the populist imagination, but their bleakness was careful and calibrated. One was Norman Rene's Longtime Companion (1989), which got Bruce Davison an Oscar nomination for playing a gay male dying of AIDS. Another was Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993), which featured Tom Hanks in the Oscar-winning role of a sexually castrated man dying of AIDS. The movie needed Denzel Washington to play the audience surrogate in the form of the homophobe whose prejudices ease up as he sees the human face of AIDS. These movies had traces of horror that were implicit, not explicit—all trace and suggestion of some monster that existed in a place we couldn't see.

In that context, Kids was not just a tonic: It was an explosion. Now, the world was seeing that New York City's stoop kids could get HIV, that its agents were reckless, and that it was ugly.

Kids would illustrate this social reality with a frankness that was at once both refreshing and hard to swallow. Today, its devastation feels particularly brutal because we see this disease map itself onto two young actresses, Dawson and Sevigny, who are so appealingly and artfully vulnerable. They make the naiveté of being a teenager seem like the world's most forgivable sin.

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Rosario Dawson as Mimi Marquez in Rent, third from left

An exact decade after Kids, Dawson would enter our greater cultural consciousness playing Mimi, the HIV-infected stripper of Rent. It's a film that is so hopelessly, ridiculously uncool, especially when compared to the gritty iconoclasm of Kids. Kids became an emblem of an American cinema that was daring, original, and a little weird, willing to expose truths in ways that some could cast off as base and tasteless. Rent was only subversive in the context of theater camp.

For me—an outsider to Rent and the cultish, fanatic subculture it left in its spawn—Dawson seemed like the one near-perfect thing about a movie filled with less-than-great elements. She sang with a sweet, milky voice—something like a purr—that had traces of a real bite that made Mimi seem as if she'd seen it all. She was a junkie who seemed to make a ton of bad decisions that came close to destroying her, but she'd always come back. As an actress, Dawson had such a direct, accessible tenderness that Mimi's mistakes didn't seem to matter. You wanted to hug Mimi and take care of her, even if you knew she'd, through some scraggly combination of luck and hard work, be just fine on her own.

But this wasn't Kids. Rent was a film where characters gauzed the pain of HIV away through singing and dancing on tables. And Mimi? She wasn't Ruby. Those girls occupied different orbits—cinematically, culturally.

To care about HIV in cinema, audiences need their compassion to hinge on some imagined moral compass: a character they see themselves inside, usually in the form of a big-name star.

That same year, Sevigny would also be placed in the center of a film about the HIV/AIDS epidemic: American-Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald's 3 Needles, in which she plays a South African nun. Her rebellious saint of a character, Clara, tries desperately to save the workers on a plantation where workers are being infected. The film strives for the grandiose canvas of a Robert Altman film like Gosford Park, but, instead, it achieves the soft symmetry of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel. It is meticulous in construction, but ultimately too tame to register. Its big statements on the global reach of this terrible disease land with a quiet thud.

In 3 Needles, Sevigny would be a symbol of defiant purity, a courageous and soulful nun who risks it all to shield those she unconditionally loves from a destructive disease. And those trademark Chloe eyes—the ones that exposed Jennie's silent screams of fear, ten years earlier—now told the story of a woman moving through her complicated faith.

How odd that, an exact decade after Kids, both actresses would assume roles in movies about HIV that were so decidedly tame, so stylistically unchallenging for a theme so complicated. Both Rent and 3 Needles flooded their narratives with tragedy, but they contained little of the unabashed candor of Kids. Rent softened its blows with the careful, twee artfulness of song and dance. 3 Needles did it through the confines of a failed epic, one that wanted to capture the daunting scope of the disease without probing the intimacies of its horrors. These kids had grown up and into a different world.

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Chloe Sevigny as Clara the Novice in 3 Needles

So what can you say about the fact that these two actresses would fall into films that looked at the epidemic through the gauzy eyes of Hollywood? It's been 20 years since Kids; it's been 10 since Rent and 3 Needles. But when it comes to depicting the HIV/AIDS epidemic on film, it's unclear whether America can stomach another Kids. With Clark's film, Dawson and Sevigny came to embody a kind of iconoclasm: a new kind of cinema that dared to show kids in all their stupid, fucked-up, and vulnerable glory. Is the fact that these two actresses graduated to stuff so milquetoast just a big old sign of our stiffening cultural mores? That Kids was just a one-off, something we'd talk about as if it were a revolution without realizing that movies about HIV didn't really change at all? Was all of this a sign that we were devolving into a culture of pansies who needed to be coddled into understanding the shades of an awful disease?

To care about HIV in cinema, audiences often need their compassion to hinge on some imagined moral compass: a character they see themselves inside, usually in the form of a big-name star. That's the beauty of actors who double as stars. They're grand, but they're also intimately, identifiably human.

"We have a major star, playing a significant role with a visual for HIV, acted out beautifully as a movie that's award winning," Gary Bell, a Philadelphia-based HIV advocate, told NewsWorks in a 2013 interview on Philadelphia's 20th anniversary. When asked about the Denzel Washington character, whose prejudices ease up as he sees the disease rip through Tom Hanks, Bell noted, "He gave voice to the fear and the stigma to all the things that were holding people in getting involved in this or learning more about it." That, Bell argues, is why the film was so deftly able to shift America's attitudes towards HIV: Philadelphia was a baby step for a country that couldn't handle a slap in the face. Washington's character was the film's necessary evil, cushioning the disease's dire message.

Kids, on the other hand, has no moral compass. It gives us a world filled with brats, and the puppets behind these precocious messes aren't Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington.

These are the tidy politics of a movie like Philadelphia: It provides an easy frame of reference for an uneasy subject. America had fallen in love with stars like Hanks and Washington before, so seeing them wrestle with the battle of what was seen as a gay cancer activated their sympathies. Kids, on the other hand, has no moral compass. It gives us a world filled with brats, and the puppets behind these precocious messes aren't Hanks or Washington. This was Chloe before she became Chloe, Rosario before she became Rosario, two actors before they became cultural institutions, stars we now hold close to ourselves. In 1995, these kids were nobodies.

Today, it's unclear whether America could stomach another Kids. We've increasingly developed a cultural propensity to distill HIV's narratives of horror through palatable Hollywood formula. We like to have HIV's narratives of horror delivered through the stylish hypertension of Precious (2009). It's a movie that presents an over-stimulating torrent of bad things, like HIV, happening to people we've seen before—Mo'Nique, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey. We like to see HIV disrupt the disarming Southern twang of Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

None of these popular films dig deep into the skin of this disease, its many shades of terror. The few moments of truth come when the actors punch through the artifice and give it to us straight. In Precious, it's in that stunning final monologue when Mo'Nique unleashes the cycles of hurt that have turned her into a monster. Precious takes a whole movie to reach something close to truth. In that moment, truth is grisly; Mo'Nique's character becomes a beast who makes sense, whose awful behaviors you understand.


Watch part 2 of our documentary on Truvada, "Stopping HIV?":



Of course, it's ephemeral. Soon after, the movie lulls itself back to the tidy comforts of being numbingly miserable. But it's a special kind of thing Mo'Nique does—that distillation of a certain mood that is so painful, so wrenching, it overwhelms everything around her.

Dawson and Sevigny, when they were the Ruby and Jennie of Kids, could accomplish that exact feat with one look at the camera. Maybe it's because they were young, because they didn't have the professional training of actors who'd done this so many times before. But, so often during Kids, they invite us into the headspace of teenagers who are realizing, quite painfully, that their lives will be filled with false promises and dead ends. We cozy up to the grim reality that's dawning on them. They show us the ugly world of an ugly disease, and it is eating their lives.

Follow Mayukh Sen on Twitter.

How a Small Rock Label in Nova Scotia Made an International Impact

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How a Small Rock Label in Nova Scotia Made an International Impact

Power in the Crisis: Kia LaBeija's Radical Art as a 25 Year Old, HIV Positive Woman of Color

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"Aurora." Portrait courtesy of Kia LaBeija

This article is part of a series of stories inspired by our latest documentary, Stopping HIV? The Truvada Revolution.

Before we start talking, Kia LaBeija slips off her shoes and runs her feet through the grass-green Astroturf at the end of a pier at the Hudson River Park Trust, one of the most brutally, beautifully gentrified parts of Manhattan. It's the first spring day that feels like summer, not just hot, but heavy, thick. Everyone here wants to be naked. Thirty years ago, everyone would have been.

Thirty years ago, all that was here was cement and skin, cracked pavement and queer brown bodies turning browner in the sun. "The piers" have been a haven for queer people for decades. These days, it's primarily youth of color drawn to the West Village by its reputation, and driven to its outskirts by its residents. If you watch Paris Is Burning, the controversial documentary about New York City's queer black ballroom and house scene, the piers often appear in the background. Bounded by the West Side Highway on one side and the Jersey skyline on the other, this thin strip of former wasteland was once sovereign queer territory. Now it looks like a backyard in Dwell magazine, that kind of modern, Scandin-Asian design that says nothing about where you are, but looks great in photos. It's been barely more than a decade since the city erected a fence and began "cleaning" the area. Gentrification moves fast in Manhattan—now all the traces of the old erotic and artistic cruising ground are gone.

The queers are still here though, a little more subdued and a lot more policed, but still pumping down the sidewalk and lounging in the shade. Given both its history and its present, the pier seemed like the perfect place to talk with the scion of the most venerable house in all of ballroom, the house that literally started it all: LaBeija.

"That name comes with a lot of history," Kia LaBeija tells me. "And in respecting that name and that legacy, I've made it my duty to know the history." The legacy she refers to is some 40 years of queer black and Latino culture, organized into groups (called houses) and revolving around balls, all-night social events cum dance battles that began in Harlem and now happen in cities around the world. The balls existed long before the houses, but in 1977, Crystal LaBeija announced that her event was hosted by the "House of LaBeija," a phraseology that soon caught on. Once you join a house, you can take on that name, which is how Kia Michelle Benbow became Kia LaBeija. And by using that name in all aspects of her life, that history is represented in everything LaBeija does, as a dancer, photographer, and storyteller, sharing her truth as a young person born HIV positive.

LaBeija was out about her status long before she joined the ballroom scene. In the seventh grade, during an AIDS awareness assembly at her Manhattan middle school, she came out for the first time. Publicly. The presenter was running an icebreaker: Stand up if you know someone who's gay, stand up if you're gay, etc. When he asked for HIV positive people to stand up, LaBeija found herself on her feet before she'd even thought through what she was doing.

"I had this oh shit moment," she recalls. "I did not think I'd be the only person." Her friends were supportive, but there wasn't anyone else who really understood what she was going through first-hand.

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"Kia and Mommy," from Kia LaBeija's "24." Courtesy of the artist

Now 25, LaBeija credits the ballroom scene with helping her find a community that allowed her to develop a positive self-identity as a positive woman. She had a long history as a performer before she ever set foot in a ball, having trained at dance Julliard and the Ailey School. She even left college for a year to travel the world as a back-up dancer with a Michael Jackson tribute tour. But the coworker who invited LaBeija to join her first house knew none of that. "She didn't bring me in to just walk a ball," LaBeija recalls. "She brought me in because of the connection we had."

Soon, LaBeija began meeting other young people like her, positive folks who were making art, going out, and living full and fulfilling lives. She loved that in nightlife, "you create your self." Who and what you are when the function ends matters little compared to what you served on the floor. She loved the costumes and the glamor, the grown-up dress-up life. But even more importantly for LaBeija, her house "acts as family," a function they serve "for a lot of people." She refers to the coworker who brought her to her first ball as her "gay mother."

"I had looked for that for a really long time," she says in a quiet moment in our interview. "A female figure who could mentor me. Help me through difficult stuff." Her mother died of AIDS complications when LaBeija was only 14, but through her house, she found a family, many of whom were dealing with the same issues she was facing. It was a place where she could be young and fantastic. But she waited for more than a year—until she'd won a trophy in her first major ball (Women's Performance, Latex, 2012)—to take "LaBeija" as her name in all public aspects of her life.

"These are the people I call my family," she says, explaining why she waited. She wanted to prove herself, and not come off like a frontrunner. That meant not just learning how to vogue, but learning the history of her house and the LaBeijas who came before her, like Crystal and Pepper. "I needed to know everything," she says.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/HFL5KMGd7ko' width='560' height='315']

Today, LaBeija looks tired. That's not a read, just a reality. Last month, she vogued— old way—across the stage at her graduation from The New School, and in a week, she and her girlfriend Lion will be heading to LA to see LaBeija's photos in the Art AIDS America exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. AAA is Jonathan Katz's follow up to 2010's blockbuster Hide / Seek show at The National Portrait Gallery, the first explicitly queer-themed exhibition ever at the Smithsonian. By phone, Katz described AAA as an historical survey, complete with all the big names you'd expect in an AIDS exhibit (like Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe), but also featuring "younger artists informed by the crisis, as well as artists who potentially would have achieved a great deal of fame had they not died early in their careers."

LaBeija's work fits squarely in the former category. Her photo series, "24," is a set of three large format self-portraits. The photos are beautiful, saturate, and composed, with LaBeija staring frankly out at the viewer. Set in bathrooms and bedrooms, the images are personal, but resist simple voyeuristic appreciation. Her flat gaze reminds us that these "intimate moments" are the staged provocations of an artist, not actual peepholes into her life. Katz, in selecting "24" for AAA, said he was drawn to LaBeija's "wonderful inhabiting of a persona" and the way she plays with the idea of artifice. Each photo in the series explicates part of LaBeija's struggle to come into adulthood as an artist and a woman born with HIV.

Our understanding of long-term survivors is our understanding of the crisis itself. Who we picture today as having survived AIDS is who we picture as having had AIDS.

"If you take the right medications, [it's unlikely you'll give birth to an HIV positive baby]," LaBeija tells me early in our conversation, her voice slipping into the measured tone of someone who's done a lot of public speaking on the issue. "But there are still the ones born to untested mothers. Like myself." These are the people LaBeija is most interested in reaching through her work: Positive women and children born with the virus. She has complicated thoughts on the current debates around Truvada as a preventative daily treatment, in part relating to her own experience of taking it everyday and getting very sick. But she doesn't feel ready to talk about it "because my attention is on the children that are still around, and women, because it's so taboo for women to talk about it."

LaBeija finds many of the current conversations around AIDS to be too nostalgic and backwards facing. "In 2015, people feel they're so removed from it," she said, a hint of exasperation creeping into her voice. "But for those of us who deal with it, it's still urgent." When asked to name other contemporary poz artists doing work that excited her, the first name off her lips is Jessica Lynn Whitbread. Last year, she attended one of Whitbread's "Tea Time" events, in which Whitbread invites positive women to come, share tea, and pass on an anonymous letter to another women. "I'm a big fan of hers," LaBeija says.

LaBeija has a deep knowledge about the virus and various responses to it, which seems surprising in someone so young, until I remember that she's been dealing with this for 25 years.

Nelson Santos, the Executive Director of the art-activism organization Visual AIDS, believes this is part of what makes LaBeija's voice so crucial to the current dialogue around the virus: She complicates our idea of what a long-term survivor looks like. "We often think of an older gay white man," Santos says, "but Kia, a young women of color, has also been living with HIV for over 25 years, and has only known living with HIV, which again is not a story often told."


For more on Truvada, check out our latest VICE Report:


Our understanding of long-term survivors is, in a very real way, our understanding of the crisis itself. Who we picture today as having survived AIDS is who we picture as having had AIDS. The over-representation of gay white men in histories of the crisis strengthens the belief that they were the only community affected. This enables a dual erasure: Not only are women and people of color disappeared from AIDS history, but that disappearance is itself made invisible when we believe they were never there in the first place.

Today, women of color, and black women in particular, are often invoked in the aggregate in discussions about AIDS, as some of the "fastest growing" or "most at risk" populations. But their individualized selves, and their thoughts about the crisis, are often absent from those selfsame discussions. LaBeija's photos flip the script, offering up her experiences for our consumption on her specific terms, and requiring us to look her in the eyes while we do so. LaBeija is still young. Some of the influences in her work—David LaChapelle, Cindy Sherman—lay a little close to the surface. But through her subject matter, she makes these techniques her own. The images in "24" chronicle difficult experiences—her mother's death, the nausea brought on by her meds in middle school—yet even while lying prone on the bathroom floor, LaBeija's poise conveys strength, dignity, and power.

LaBeija characterizes her aesthetic as "beautiful and shiny," but it's gloss with a purpose. Glamor, after all, once meant magic, and LaBeija's portraits cast a spell over their subjects, through gorgeousness-giving power. Santos, from Visual AIDS, says she is "a name to look out for in the contemporary art world," and sets her in a lineage with Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, and Luna Luis Ortiz (another respected photographer to emerge from the ballroom scene).

For LaBeija, it's about taking "moments that could be considered sad or disabling," and bringing "them into a positive light." That's exactly the kind of transformation she's made her whole life, in figuring out how to live with a virus that's been called everything from a "curse" to a "death sentence." It's the kind of transformation she had to make to become who she is: a daughter of the house of LaBeija, one of the legendary children, and an icon in the making.

Follow Hugh Ryan on Twitter.

We Can End the HIV Epidemic, If We Want To

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[body_image width='1024' height='681' path='images/content-images/2015/06/05/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/05/' filename='has-porn-become-the-better-advocate-for-safer-sex-293-body-image-1433542301.jpg' id='63634']

Photo via Flickr user Felix Castor

This article is part of a series of stories inspired by our latest documentary, Stopping HIV? The Truvada Revolution.

Last June, the New York Times published two op-eds on the same day: one by the founder of a porn company, and the other by the founder of an AIDS foundation.

The first, written by Peter Acworth, the chief executive of Kink.com, argued that, "We owe it to performers and other sex workers to move beyond old models of prevention and educate them about all the safeguards at their disposal—including PrEP... Morality and politics shouldn't cloud prevention, on-set or off." (Full disclosure: I work at Kink.com as the Director of Sexual Health and Advocacy.)

The second op-ed took the opposite position. Michael Weinstein, the controversial founder of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, wrote that "PrEP has failed to protect the majority of men in every clinical trial (study). Relying on negative men to take this medication every day just doesn't happen most of the time. If you have multiple partners over a long period of time and you are not using condoms, there is a very high likelihood that you will turn HIV positive."

The question isn't whether or not we want to keep the public safe from HIV—both men clearly do. Instead, it's about determining a realistic and effective approach to protecting at-risk individuals from one of the most nefarious infections in recent history. Ignoring the science, Weinstein calls PrEP a "party drug," while Acworth, a porn exec, is both better informed and more aligned with national health standards.

If we ask the general public to imagine the owner of porn production company, many are likely to think of shady men with greasy hair, dripping in gold chains. They are unlikely to imagine individuals doggedly committed to sexual health initiatives and promoting safe sex for their performers.

But in reality, the adult film industry is a front-runner when it comes to sexual health. For ten years, the industry has operated self-regulated testing protocols that have prevented HIV infections on set. It is not a surprise that developments like PrEP are closely watched and quickly added to existing education materials.

In a recent public hearing of the California Standards Board for Occupational Safety and Health concerning proposed regulations for the adult film industry, scientists and public health experts came together to oppose the condom-only prevention focus promoted by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.


Watch part 1 of VICE's new documentary, "Stopping HIV?":


One of those experts was Dr. Robert Grant, a senior investigator at the Gladstones Institute for Virology and Immunology, professor of medicine at UCSF, and chief medical officer for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Grant testified, that " pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) is proven to be safe and effective and was approved by the FDA in 2012. The protective benefit is estimated to be 99 percent among men and transgender women who have sex with men when PrEP is taken daily... Limiting prevention options to only one and removing personal control and confidentiality is antithetical to good medical practice and the public's health."

Bottom line: PrEP is an invaluable tool in working to end the HIV epidemic.

Since 1991, new HIV infections in men who have sex with men have been rising while all other analyzed populations at risk have seen a decline in new infections. Data presented by Dawn Smith of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) showed that the HIV incidence among men who said they used condoms all the time were 70 percent lower than men who did not use them at all.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/zMLHm47xedzM99PUYG4Pc7ePq8tzZcDc5n6umZ0Fw_lP9WfbNvofPIXpxOlTIC-BxZJyLXAH8BYFkE_JTSh8DrAuAAfhqW8xU56kGjVW9bu4TCWsYABEgTzcaPNquKDdOi-3Tjs

Graph via CDC

While 70 percent may sound great, it isn't 99 percent. It isn't 100 percent. This is why we need more options to better suit the needs of people to actively engage them in prevention.

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) prevents HIV infections in HIV negative people through a continuous daily regimen of Truvada. Truvada is an antiretroviral medication that consists of two active agents which block enzymes that HIV needs to replicate and in essence "infect" a person.

It's true that HIV is the only infection that PrEP prevents. Often people say, "Well, what about Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, and Hepatitis C?!" To which I'd reply, "Do you always use condoms during oral sex?"

When discussing other STIs, we need to understand how they are transmitted, how they can be prevented, and how severe an infection actually is. Regular testing is the mainstay of prevention when it comes to many STIs. In the adult film industry, performers get tested within 14 days of a possible shoot to rule out acute or untreated infections and therefore significantly reduce the risk of transmission. PrEP users are required to get tested every three months for all STIs.


Why do some people opt out of Truvada? VICE investigates in part 2 of our documentary, "Stopping HIV?":


Herpes, HPV, and oftentimes syphilis can be easily transmitted by skin-to-skin contact. A condom can have some preventative effect but won't guarantee a significant risk reduction. While herpes and HPV are incurable infections, a vaccine exists that protects against four strains of HPV that could cause cancer, and herpes is an infection that many of us have been living with for decades. Syphilis, in turn, is curable.

Gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis are curable and easily transmitted during oral sex. (Again, very few people use condoms during oral sex.) We have vaccines for Hepatitis A and B, and C is now curable as well.

But HIV is not curable. If undiscovered or left untreated, HIV will lead to AIDS. An infection with HIV means that a lifelong regimen of numerous anti-retroviral medications is required to render the virus undetectable (TasP), and best protect the health of a person living with it.

We can end this epidemic if we really want to. We have all the tools we need.

When we consider side effects as the primary concern for people nervous about taking PrEP, let's compare taking one pill once a day to prevent a lifelong infection with taking up to five or six medications everyday to treat an infection. HIV negative people adhering to the daily PrEP regimen as prescribed have shown little to no side effects. The two side effects that could be concerning are potential impacts on kidneys and bone density. Both of these effects are closely monitored by the patient's doctor and won't leave irreversible damage if PrEP is discontinued.

The last common argument of anti-PrEP advocates is the problem of adherence. As Dr. Bernard Branson, a former associate director in the CDC's division of HIV/AIDS prevention, testified, "All [prevention methods] require consistent adherence. No prevention method is completely foolproof." While PrEP and condoms both require adherence to work, PrEP is far more forgiving. Parts of the medication has a half-life of up to 167 hours. Condoms have a half-life of zero.

What we are left with is the question of whether we are willing to let adults be in charge of their own health. Women now have the choice of which contraception to use. It's time to encourage at-risk individuals to make the same kind of serious decisions about their own bodies.

We can end this epidemic if we really want to. We have all the tools we need.

Follow Eric on Twitter.

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