Joyce Turner Keller
September 2011
It is with great honor we announce Joyce Turner Keller as our Dab the AIDS Bear's Angel for September 2011.
Joyce Turner Keller is the founder and CEO of Aspirations, a non-profit organization in Louisiana. A minister for 40 years, she founded Aspirations after learning of her HIV infection. After so many decades of helping to empower others, she was able to disclose her infection to her family within hours of learning of it. She advocates for the elimination of stigma for all people living with HIV and for awareness of the risk of infection. She is on the board of the National Minority AIDS Council, based in Washington, D.C.
Joyce contracted the disease through rape. She is the mother of three and the grandmother of many.
Joyce works with people from all walks of life. She does not judge people based on race, religion, creed, color, or any gender preferences. She thought it was necessary that people know you do not have to be gay or white, you do not have to be using drugs, you do not have to be a commercial sex worker to be infected with HIV.
The other thing she wanted to bring to the public is that it does not matter how you become infected. When Joyce says, “I’m a woman living with AIDS,” the eyebrows go up, because they can not look at her and tell. There are times when she gets sympathy or empathy or people tend to change their tone once they find out how she became infected. People seem to be more accepting then and that sometimes infuriates her, because she does not think there is anybody in this world who says, “You know, I think I will get infected with HIV today.”
Whether it was consensual, whether it was assault—whatever, the same side effects, the same discrimination, the same ills, the same woes, the same concerns are there for her just as they are for the woman who may have gotten high, the young man who may have had sex with another man, or the wife who did no know her husband was on the down-low, or the man who did not know his wife was on the down-low. It is no different, and she thought it was necessary that she come out and talk about it so that we can erase some of the stigma, dispel some of the misconceptions of how this disease is transmitted.
For these and many more reasons, we are honored to announce Joyce Turner Keller as our Dab the AIDS Bear's Angel for September 2011.
Joyce Turner Keller is the founder and CEO of Aspirations, a non-profit organization in Louisiana. A minister for 40 years, she founded Aspirations after learning of her HIV infection. After so many decades of helping to empower others, she was able to disclose her infection to her family within hours of learning of it. She advocates for the elimination of stigma for all people living with HIV and for awareness of the risk of infection. She is on the board of the National Minority AIDS Council, based in Washington, D.C.
Joyce contracted the disease through rape. She is the mother of three and the grandmother of many.
Joyce works with people from all walks of life. She does not judge people based on race, religion, creed, color, or any gender preferences. She thought it was necessary that people know you do not have to be gay or white, you do not have to be using drugs, you do not have to be a commercial sex worker to be infected with HIV.
The other thing she wanted to bring to the public is that it does not matter how you become infected. When Joyce says, “I’m a woman living with AIDS,” the eyebrows go up, because they can not look at her and tell. There are times when she gets sympathy or empathy or people tend to change their tone once they find out how she became infected. People seem to be more accepting then and that sometimes infuriates her, because she does not think there is anybody in this world who says, “You know, I think I will get infected with HIV today.”
Whether it was consensual, whether it was assault—whatever, the same side effects, the same discrimination, the same ills, the same woes, the same concerns are there for her just as they are for the woman who may have gotten high, the young man who may have had sex with another man, or the wife who did no know her husband was on the down-low, or the man who did not know his wife was on the down-low. It is no different, and she thought it was necessary that she come out and talk about it so that we can erase some of the stigma, dispel some of the misconceptions of how this disease is transmitted.
For these and many more reasons, we are honored to announce Joyce Turner Keller as our Dab the AIDS Bear's Angel for September 2011.
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