E-mail a friendDr. Gail Wyatt
airdate March 31, 2005
Dr. Gail Wyatt is a psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences professor and Associate Director of the UCLA AIDS Institute. The first African American woman licensed as a psychologist in California, she's also a sex therapist in private practice and has developed curricula for school age children on human sexuality. She's the author of numerous publications and books, including No More Clueless Sex, co-authored with her husband. Wyatt's work has been profiled in many magazines, including Essence and Good Housekeeping.
Dr. Gail Wyatt
Tavis: We continue our "Road to Health" series tonight on the subject of African American women and AIDS. Dr. Gail Wyatt is the Associate Director of the UCLA AIDS Institute here in Los Angeles. She is the first African American woman to be licensed as a psychologist in the state of California and also conducted the first-ever study on African American female sexuality. The crisis of AIDS in black women is certainly no surprise to Dr. Wyatt, but it was to the vice president during last year's debate.
Gwen Ifill: In particular, I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts.
Dick Cheney: I had not heard those numbers with respect to African American women. I was not aware that it was that severe an epidemic there because we have made progress in terms of the overall rate of AIDS infection.
Tavis: Gwen Ifill, of course, of PBS, talking to Vice President Dick Cheney in one of the vice president's debates last year, Dr. Wyatt. I should say I remember seeing that debate.
Dr. Gail Wyatt: Yes, I do, too.
Tavis: You remember that?
Wyatt: Yes.
Tavis: In fairness to the vice president, he was clueless, but John Edwards, respectfully, was kind of stuck on stupid, too. Neither one of them really had a clue about HIV/AIDS and black women. What did you make of it when you watched that debate with 2 guys who would be a heartbeat away from the presidency who knew nothing about this crisis that's devastating black women?
Wyatt: It wasn't really surprising, Tavis. I think what it suggested to me was that it is a disappointment that in the 21st century, African American women are still so invisible when it comes to health and happiness and our well-being and that we, as people, are only assumed to be highly sexualized, but we really aren't understood in terms of the whole woman.
Tavis: Does that myth still exist? I mean, I've had these conversations a thousand times over the years on radio and television and have talked to you in the past in other settings.
Wyatt: Right.
Tavis: Is that myth still out there, that black women are that highly sexual--sexualized? That's old stuff. That's an old story, isn't it?
Wyatt: No, it's just as vibrant today as it was 200, 500 years ago. And these myths are over 500 years old, literally. They started in the 16th century, and their vibrancy and their potency has not changed. In fact, we have so many young hip-hop artists and movie stars that emulate that very same image of the she-devil, the woman who's not sexually responsible, who'd bear her clothes in some other format, but certainly not on her body, and that her self-worth is defined by how much of her body she can show. And this has a lot to do with why people don't take seriously when we become infected with HIV and AIDS or sexually transmitted infections or if our unintended pregnancy birthrates are high. They just assume we've just done something wrong.
Tavis: OK, let me ask that, then. I ask this question to get an answer, not because this is Tavis' point of view. And be very clear for all my black female friends watching, I'm just asking a question here, y'all. But I do want to get an answer to this. If then black women are not sexually promiscuous, why then are they at the top of this list for contracting HIV/AIDS?
Wyatt: Because we've never had health care amongst African-descended people, men or women, because we don't go to the doctor on a basis that would prevent the kinds of problems that lead to HIV and AIDS. You have to know about your body to know how to protect it. You have to know how to talk about sex in order to negotiate, and then you have to take action and actually do the kinds of things that protect a woman's body, even if she's in a relationship with someone that she loves, that have to do with yourself. Giving yourself to someone, trusting that person to make those decisions for you, is now killing women.
Tavis: Ah, but now we're into the psychology.
Wyatt: Yes.
Tavis: Which is really your expertise. I assume then that you will not shy away from telling me that there is a certain psychology that African American women process or a certain psychology that they engage that will allow them or convince them, for whatever reasons--you tell me--to put themselves in harm's way, although unintentionally.
Wyatt: We've always been in harm's way in relationships. You know, we weren't allowed to be in relationships unless someone gave us permission to be so. So for a black woman to say it's risky to be with someone, that's not new. What's new is the whole idea that "maybe I can't be with anyone because it's not good for my health." And so in order to get this message across to black women, we have to be able to reach them where they are. Black women want to be in relationships. We want family. Those are cultural values that haven't gone anywhere no matter what the circumstances are, no matter if your partner's not working, no matter if your partner's using drugs or having sex outside of the relationship. If that person is with you, the mentality still is today, that person's yours, even for a moment, and that's a killer.
Tavis: Let me take you back to that clip we ran a moment ago of Dick Cheney, and again, I want to reiterate, we did not run a clip of John Edwards not because we're trying to, you know, cast dispersion on the vice president, but Edwards really had nothing to say about it, so there wasn't no clip to run, which is maybe just as tragic. I don't know, but let me set that aside for the moment. I want to go back to those two white men, Edwards and Cheney. I'm trying to understand why it is that they should, in fact, care about this disease ravaging black women and their babies in the black community. Why should they care about this in the first place? It's not their problem.
Wyatt: They should care--it's not their problem, but it is their problem. It may not be because they're with black women, but black women are a part and linked to them by the fact that we're part of the human race, and there is no race, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to health. We're all in one, and we're in this boat together. If one group of people is more infected than another, that means that that disease is going to spread everywhere. Somehow, people have this mythical thinking that if your people are doing something, they're not doing it in my group. And that's just not happening. We don't know the kind of sexual politics that go on. People are being very naive if they think that they can cloister AIDS or sexually transmitted infections or unintended birth rates and simply blame the victim. Black women are not voluntarily getting infected by AIDS. They simply don't know what to do in order to make their relationships work.
Tavis: You said something that just got my attention I want to pick up on right quick when you used the phrase--I'm not sure I've ever heard those two words strung together, but you do that to me often, say things that make me think--"sexual politics."
Wyatt: Yeah.
Tavis: I've heard "race politics." I've heard "gender politics." We certainly see, with this Terri Schiavo case, the politics around life and death. Are--is there something called sexual politics?
Wyatt: Absolutely. The last election had everything to do with sexual politics, and people don't talk about it, so sometimes we're not aware that sex is used sometimes to frighten people. It's certainly used to titillate. Even when you buy tires, you've got a half-naked woman standing up there, you know, selling you a tire. So, yes, it's very critical that we understand when our--when our chains are being pulled and for what reason, be it race, be it sex, be it gender--because it sometimes is--be it life or death.
Tavis: I was at a meeting the other day with some people around the issue of HIV/AIDS where there were no TV cameras present, and the issue was raised--and I've heard this raised a number times. I'm just curious to your point of view on this. The issue was raised that when this disease, AIDS, was primarily known as a gay white male disease, everybody wanted to throw money into finding a cure.
Wyatt: Right.
Tavis: I mean, into awareness, rather. When it first became public, the money was being spent on awareness. "Make everybody aware. If you make them aware, they can protect themselves." But all the money went to awareness. Now that years have gone by, and we're getting closer to finding a cure, one can reasonably understand that people now in the HIV/AIDS community want the money spent to find a cure. One can understand that. But the complaint raised at this meeting is now that everybody wants to find a cure, and we're getting closer to finding a cure, as it hits communities of color, we're not spending the kind of money, the kind of energy, making the kind of effort necessary to make this community as aware as we made the gay white male community aware.
Wyatt: Exactly.
Tavis: Does that make sense?
Wyatt: Absolutely.
Tavis: Is there any truth to that?
Wyatt: Absolutely, and there were black people infected with HIV when gay white men were infected. This issue had to do with politics, sexual politics again.
Tavis: Ah!
Wyatt: Who was at the front line? Who was the front of the line? Let's say it like that. And we weren't there. Our representatives were not there to advocate for our community. We have a very heavily religious community, and the religious community has a very different stance on sexual politics. "We shouldn't have any politics when it comes to sex."
Tavis: "We should have no sex."
Wyatt: "We should have no sex." That's naive. Because this has been going on far too long for us to bury our heads in the sand, Tavis. But what we have to do is to realize that regardless of who was at the front of the line, the line should still form and should include us. And black women still need advocates. We need people to speak out for them, and that's why I wrote 'Stolen Women.' People need to understand our history. They don't understand the stereotypes that you see and the people who win Academy Awards. They're the same old stereotypes that we had so long ago.
Tavis: Aside from reading your book 'Stolen Women,' tell me in 30 seconds or less what you say to black women, period.
Wyatt: I say to black women that the situation has changed, that family is extremely important, but if they don't survive, they're not going to be able to form one, and the first person that they have to take care of is themselves. That may mean that in that process they may not find someone who's as motivated to have a family and the kind of life and trust needed to survive the 21st century. So they may find themselves alone. There's nothing wrong with that. They have family. They have friends. There are other ways to satisfy needs.
Tavis: She's out of UCLA. She's Dr. Gail Wyatt. The book is 'Stolen Women.' Dr. Wyatt, nice to have you on.
Wyatt: Such a pleasure.
Tavis: Pleasure's all mine. Up next, Oscar-nominated actor Michael Clarke Duncan. Stay with us.
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