PWA

abbreviation (Health and Fitness) (People and Society) Short for person with Aids, an official designation in the US which is also the preferred term for themselves (rather than Aids patient, Aids sufferer, or--most disliked of all--Aids victim) among those who have Aids. Etymology: The initial letters of Person With Aids. History and Usage: The term PWA arose as a direct result of the coming together of people with first-hand experience of Aids at the second Aids forum in the US, held in Denver, Colorado, in December 1983. At this forum a group of people who had Aids or ARC (see Aids) formed themselves into the Advisory Committee of People with Aids and issued a statement objecting to some of the other terms which had been applied to them in the past: We condemn attempts to label us as 'victims', which implies defeat, and we are only occasionally 'patients', which implies passivity, helplessness, and dependence upon the care of others. A variation on PWA is PLWA or PLA, both denoting person living with Aids. This arose, again among the people most intimately concerned, in the second half of the eighties and was designed to counteract the negative responses of the general public by emphasizing the fact of living with--rather than dying from--Aids. Among journalists and others who influence popular usage, however, PWA is the only one of these designations which has gained any currency; in the US in particular, it had become a well-known and widely used abbreviation by the early nineties, although the terms to which PWAs most object also remained frequent in the popular press. Sometimes the apparent sensitivity of the writer to the feelings of PWAs is cancelled out by an insensitive reversion to Aids victim within a few words. He found a place to live thanks to the Shanti Project, a charity subsidised by the municipality to help PWAs. It makes houses available to AIDS victims. Guardian Weekly 26 Jan. 1986, p. 12 He explains that the race and class of most straight PWA's are proof that the 'heterosexual epidemic continued to fail to show up'. Village Voice (New York) 30 Jan. 1990, p. 61