I refer to Joshua Sim's forum letter "Posters exploit stereotypes" (Campus Observer, Oct 29, 2006).

Thank you for expressing your opinions on our posters. We sincerely value your feedback. Please allow me to explain the rationale for our posters.

Firstly, this print campaign was initiated by my team cre-AIDS-ive in support of the StompAIDS Challenge 2006, which is organised by the Health Promotion Board. The aim of the competition is to promote awareness of the AIDS topic among tertiary students and the increased risk of HIV infection with high-risk sexual behaviour.

We do understand that there are also other ways of contracting HIV such as through the sharing of needles or inheriting the HIV virus during childbirth. However, the main scope of the StompAIDS Challenge is about the prevention of AIDS, high risk behaviours that increases one's risk of infection and protection against infection if one participates in high-risk sexual behaviour.

In with the rules of the competition we have conveyed 3 key messages to the school population, and they are namely:

1. High-risk sexual behaviour (e.g. casual sex, sex with multiple sex partners, sex with sex workers) may lead to AIDS and other sexually-transmitted infections (STIs)
2. The only way to prevent contraction of AIDS/STIs is to abstain from high-risk sexual behaviour.
3. If you are already engaged in high-risk sexual behaviour, use a condom to protect yourself.

My team has come up with a series of 3 posters to depict the various high-risk sexual behaviours that youths may engage in these days. In all our posters, there are Kaposi's Sarcoma blemishes and sores on the models to bring across a more obvious message that high-risk sexual behavior may lead to AIDS. (Kaposi's Sarcoma is one of the illness that AIDS patients may suffer from, just like lung cancer may be one of the illnesses that smokers may suffer from.)

Each poster also shows our tagline “Condoms cut chances, Abstinence adds assurance.” This tagline means that using condoms can reduce a person's chance of contracting AIDS during high-risk sexual behaviour, and abstinence assures oneself that there will be no chance of contracting AIDS from high-risk sexual behaviour.

Through our tagline, we are advocating the use of protection during high-risk sexual behaviour to reduce one's risk of exposure to AIDS. Also, we are not promoting complete abstinence from sex itself, but rather abstinence from high-risk sexual behaviour. Lastly, there is further explanation of what the sores on the bodies of the models are, and a short message that further elaborates what the models in the posters are depicting.

In our first poster, we depicted unprotected casual sex by featuring a half-naked couple making love on a bed. The accompanying message is "Unprotected casual sex may lead to AIDS. Can you afford to risk it?"

In our second poster, we depicted a prostitute giving fellatio to a young man. The accompanying message is “Sex with sex workers may lead to AIDS. Can you afford to risk it?” In our last poster, we depicted the message that having multiple sex partners may lead to AIDS, through a picture of a group of homosexual young men embracing one another in a disco. The accompanying message is “Sex with multiple sex partners may lead to AIDS. Can you afford to risk it?”

For the last poster, my team aimed to acknowledge the fact that high-risk sexual behaviour such as sex with multiple partners can increase the risk of anybody whether heterosexuals or homosexuals, in getting AIDS.

It was not our intention to bring across the message that being homosexual equates to having AIDS. Furthermore, we are also not pinpointing that homosexuals regularly engage in sex with multiple sex partners. We are instead also targeting the entire spectrum of high-risk sexual behaviour that youths (straight or gay) may engage in, from unprotected casual sex to sex with sex workers to sex with multiple partners.

Hence we would like to state that it was never our intention to discriminate against homosexuals, or to stigmatise AIDS patients in any way. Any further feedback or comments can be directed to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it