From The Advocate magazine in partnership with Glad, this is LGBTQ and A.

I'm Jeffrey Masters, and last week we heard from the author Sarah Schulman talking about

Act Up and the history of HIV-AIDS activism in the U.S.

And this week, I wanted to expand that conversation and shifted Act Up and the history of HIV AIDS activism in the U.S.

And this week I wanted to expand that conversation and shift it south, where as we've talked

about, the South makes up the bulk of new HIV infections in the U.S.

To talk about it all, Gina Brown is here.

Gina has been working in the field of HIV for almost 20 years

and now works at the Southern AIDS Coalition,

doing community organizing and engagement.

When it comes to HIV, women, women of color,

women living with HIV are so often left out of the conversation,

and so I'm really excited for Gina to be joining us today.

Let's hear it.

I want to jump right in.

So you found out that you were living with HIV about 27 years ago.

And at that time, how much did you know about or how familiar were you with HIV?

My knowledge of HIV was gay white guys. I remember watching the evening news and I'm talking about it,

even before they had a name for it. And they were calling it grid and gay plague and but it only impacted gay people,

right? So if you weren't gay, you were okay, I'm good. Or even if you were a lesbian, they

weren't talking about HIV and lesbians. They were talking about HIV and gay men. So you still

felt like you were good. No one was talking about it with women.

...