One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

In the States, the HIV transmission from mother to child is almost completely preventable - the only mothers who really do transmit it are the ones who don't come in for care. If a mother in the United States or in Europe or in the UK comes to care and gets her medicines, she will have an HIV negative baby. Most people don't know that.

Pop stars are so busy having a career that they don't really have a lot of time for activism.

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.

I don't have clear-cut positions. I get baffled by things. I have viewpoints. Sometimes they change.

There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

Women's issues have always been a part of my life. My goal is to bring the word 'feminism' back into the zeitgeist and reframe it.