When reports in the media come out about a person with HIV knowingly infecting others, what thoughts pass through your mind? What is an appropriate response?
A question that is sometimes asked of me is: ‘How did you get HIV?’ To which I have often said, ‘through making love and having intimacy with another man’. I say it in this way to contextualise the experience. As a 21 year old I met a gorgeous man on a beach. We went back to his place and had a beautiful experience. I was so blissful that not even death could rob me now of my young life’s best experience ever.
There came a time when I was ready to confront this beautiful man from the beach whom I thought had knowingly passed on HIV to me and ask him why? When I met up with him, HIV had compromised his immune system and he had significantly wasted away. He also had Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions over his body. I looked at him in his human vulnerability and, in doing so, recognised my own. For me there was no longer any room for blame. Only compassion for him and acceptance that a virus had positioned itself in blood and semen (among other body fluids), which made sexuality not only a mode for experiencing lust, love and intimacy but also a mode for HIV transmission with fatal consequences.
I have bared witness to human vulnerabilities and heard the stories of many people living with HIV. This gives me an understanding that hyped up media stories designed to sensationalise, sell controversy and stereotype people with HIV as the ongoing malicious vectors of a fatal disease is simply false and misrepresents the truth for the vast majority of people with HIV. Spiteful transmission is rare when compared to the unknown person with HIV who passes the virus on to his partner or when shared vulnerabilities between people occur, like substance use and other mental health issues.
Do malicious people exist? Yes, of course they do. And yes, some of them have HIV. However they represent a very small minority of people. By using condoms I, and many other people with HIV, have prevented more infections than the newly diagnosed statistics reveal. It is with individual responsibility and community support that we do our upmost to maintain each others safer sex practice both negative and positive.
Perhaps the finest response to media reports of people knowingly placing others at risk is to keep it in perspective and keep it real. For the most part we walk amongst a caring community some of whom are our friends, lovers and private heroes.
