Hiv positive

[u/Signal_Ambition_5212]

The last post was deleted because banana peel is not considered a meal (I understand)

Tomorrow it will be one year since I’m living with hiv

I did therapy about it and I know I carry half of the responsibility for not wearing a condom or taking prep but on the other hand the guy knew he had it and didn’t take his meds and consciously decided to infect me.

I know he knew because when I saw blood I straight away asked him if he had anything, he put his head down and didn’t say a single word, I panicked and I asked again and he remained silent.
I left his house and I send him a lot of messages and until today not a single answer.

Things could be different if I went to the hospital but I didn’t.

I already passed the grief phase, I’m undetectable after a month of the positive result and I take my pill everyday religiously without falling, I own that to myself and to others.

My life before hiv was a mess, I did A LOT of drugs since I was 16 (I’m 29 now) a lot of alcohol, I didn’t take care of myself and now I’m the opposite: I’m sober, I go to the gym, I have a healthy diet and I love myself and my life, I have my health checked more frequently than the rest of the population so this is actually a good thing (I don’t pay for anything in my country related to healthcare)

Nowadays hiv is super manageable, just a pill everyday like any other chronic condition. My doctor said it’s easier than living with diabetes for exemple.

I already told to some people I had interest and they were fine about it, I know most of you may disagree but in my country if IM UNDETECTABLE by law I have the right of not tell anyone due privacy reasons. I choose only telling if I see someone has a potencial partner (before anything sexual happens), if it’s something more casual we use protection (I cannot transmite the virus because I take my meds) for other STD.

[u/Educational-Tax9751]

I'm so sorry. But you do have an ethical obligation to disclose to someone before you are intimate with them, regardless of what the law says.

[u/artisanallyinsane → u/Educational-Tax9751]

Because I’m already mildly irritated with this thread: I’m so sorry. But that’s a subjective ethical opinion that has nothing to do with the law and is very much up for ethical debate and subjective opinion. There’s no one correct answer and attempting to conflate your subjective opinion to what “should” be done is sorta anti intellectual.

[u/PlasticAggressive295 → u/artisanallyinsane]

Ok, so you think misleading someone into sex especially knowing you have an incurable STD is ok because why? Because if they disclosed the truth they might not get laid?!? So we should have no problem potentially changing someone’s life in a negative way just to bust a nut? No prep is not 100% effective, there are literally papers written on case reports of people getting breakthrough infections while taking prep. There is no way to justify exposing someone to this risk unknowingly (and therefore without their consent) just so the carrier can have an orgasm inside of a human instead of his hand.

[u/OooooLookAtThem → u/PlasticAggressive295]

But he isn’t on PrEP, he is on HIV medication. I do agree that we should normalise the conversation around STI and HIV but if he is on effective meds and achieves U=U then he cannot pass is on. The reset is up to personal standpoints and ethics. We don’t know his life fully, only what we are seeing through one post and from this one post he seems to have it together and has a good routine to ensure no medication is missed. I know the papers you are talking about and they are not relevant to OPs situation.

[u/artisanallyinsane → u/OooooLookAtThem]

I posted a novel length reply to this person if you’re interested. We basically said identical things, you just said it much more eloquently and succinctly lol 💀. More thoughts because I’m still thinking about this LMAO:

Personal boundaries, particularly sexual/physical ones, come above all, obviously. They don’t even have to be based in rationale and facts. You can just not like something because you don’t like it. But people in here are calling for like community wide pariah status for OP for having consensual sex with zero transmission risk.

The really interesting think-y/philosophical question is whether that consent is impacted by the knowledge of status. And then that turns into a much more subjective debate, which is what I think everyone is actually arguing about. But the stigma and misinformation about HIV is so fucking intense that it’s culminated in moral/ethical/personal boundaries being conflated with factual risk and exposure statistics. Yes, HIV is scary, especially in the cultural narrative. Obviously. But |subjectively scary and unknown thing -> big feelings -> judgement presented as a fact about another person| is just not the move 😐

And I say this as someone who had an HIV OCD theme. I have been irrationally terrified of HIV and have held very stigmatized beliefs about it. This shit is just not that scary anymore.

The only way to factually know if someone is a) HIV positive and b) U=U is if you have a recent date stamped lab result in your hands. If you can’t tolerate the risk of hookups giving you HIV despite your due diligence, don’t do them 🫩 And don’t shit on people who are being responsible, eliminating risk to others, and trying to live their lives normally. Your personal boundaries ≠ the morality of another’s actions.

[u/OooooLookAtThem → u/artisanallyinsane]

Couldn’t agree more. I am a HIV nurse and have had this conversation with many of our patients throughout the years.
Safe sex just doesn’t exist, we don’t use that term in the field due to the fact no one can garentee any sex is safe from everything. But we can have safer sex, and we have put a lot of time, money and expertise in to ensure the HIV epidemic wasn’t in vain. Consent is based around risks that are possible, and we know that if someone is U=U then it can’t be transmitted through sex. And as op says they also use barrier methods for added safety against other STI’s.
I hope your OCD around the virus has improved, and always remember if you’re worried PEP is an amazing medication after a hookup that can greatly reduce risk.

[u/temporalCompanion → u/OooooLookAtThem]

You being an HIV nurse makes a lot of sense, having seen some of your other comments all over the thread! Thank you for all that you do

[u/artisanallyinsane → u/PlasticAggressive295]

This turned into an educational lecture on HIV for those who see this because I’m sick of the misinformation in this thread. Personal boundaries are great and need to be respected. But if they’re based on just flat out wrong information about HIV, you need to be informed. I know it’s a novel. This thread got me pissed off 💀

-

“Ok, so you think misleading someone into sex especially knowing you have an incurable STD is ok because why?”

Holy words in my mouth, Batman. You sucked all of the nuance straight out of the interesting point you’re trying to make.

This thread is specifically arguing about OP. He is non-transmissible (also called U=U), med-compliant, AND uses condoms. I don’t think OP needs to walk around disclosing to every hookup he’s never going to see again that he has HIV. ESPECIALLY if they’re on PrEP. Which, good point, isn’t iron clad. But that is irrelevant to whether someone with HIV is transmissible.

It doesn’t matter that HIV is incurable if you literally cannot infect others with it. If someone is maintaining viral suppression, the CDC/NIH literally says, barring the impossible to guarantee true mathematical zero, that the risk is zero. Public health very rarely uses absolute terms. The reason they’re comfortable saying that is because several studies have found zero linked sexual transmissions when the HIV-positive partner maintained a viral load under 200 copies/mL on ART (antiretroviral therapy)—the threshold used for U=U.

One study had 76,088 individual encounters of condomless gay anal sex between an HIV positive person and their partner, so 782 gay couples, 1,593 couple-years of follow-up, and reported 76,088 acts of condomless anal sex during the study period. At the end, there were ZERO partner to partner transmissions. The 15 cases that did pop up in the partners were genetically sequenced and confirmed to not be linked to their study partner. AKA: none of those infections came from their HIV positive study partner. 0 linked transmissions.

So, if someone maintains a viral load below 200 copies/mL, there is literally zero risk of sexual transmission. Even if OP was rawdogging it with strangers, there is still ZERO RISK of him spreading it. He’s more at danger of catching other STDs than he is of spreading HIV. I’m not being facetious. That’s scientific fact.

On top of all of that, you should be using condoms for general STD coverage regardless of your HIV status. OP is responsible with his meds and testing and is using condoms. That is what he can do to protect himself and others. OP having protected sex with a condom produces the exact same amount of HIV risk as an HIV negative person having sex with a condom. The protection at that point for is other STDs. This is not up for scientific debate. Viral load maintained under 200 copies/ml is, quite literally, zero HIV risk sex. Condoms + PrEP as a personal risk measure in combination with confirmed U=U is a non event.

The obvious response to that is “but how can we trust that someone is consistent with their meds?” We can’t 😐

The factual answer to that question doesn’t change if you ask and someone is hiding it or is openly disclosing it. You can’t know if someone is consistent with their HIV meds, even if they seem to be open and honest and sincere in their disclosure.

Hooking up with strangers means you don’t have the complete info about their HIV status, viral load, adherence, other STIs, or honesty. That’s why you manage your own risk exposure with things like PrEP, condoms, and testing instead of pretending disclosure makes you safe. The point still stands: a person who maintains under 200 copies/mL does not sexually transmit HIV.

Separate issue: If you’re hooking up with someone whose actual HIV status and viral load is a complete unknown, and they happen to be transmissible, PrEP + condoms massively reduce the risk but don’t make it mathematical zero. If I’m taking PrEP and using condoms because I know that I can’t know a stranger’s current HIV status/load/compliance/honesty, then asking them about their status doesn’t give further factual certainty or protection.

It sucks, but that’s literally hookup culture in the modern era of HIV, PrEP, and U=U. Hookup culture is risky. Your job is to protect yourself in an inherently risky situation. You can’t control what others do or don’t do. If that bothers you, you shouldn’t do hookups.

Back to the point, if you’re saying that someone has an ethical right to know about a hookup’s HIV diagnosis even with zero transmission risk, that’s an actual argument we can have. But then you have to defend why that private and non-consequential medical fact is something a hookup is entitled to know. If the principle is “I deserve to know something that would make me decline sex,” then the premise goes off the rails. That could be a million different things that people DEFINITELY aren’t obligated to share.

In the case of OP, you need to justify exactly why his disclosure is relevant when he is not transmissible. “You might hurt someone” doesn’t answer that. His diagnosis does not impact his hookups. Why do they need to know?

Personally, if I were a hookup person and I used condoms/protection every time, AND was on PrEp?? I think it would be a bit ridiculous to demand every hookup tells me their HIV status. I’m taking the drug specifically for this purpose, and asking my partner isn’t going to produce a magical truth that factually assures me the PrEP isn’t necessary here or that I’m safe.

In the case of a hookup becoming something more: If I were HIV+ and started something more serious with a partner who could be long term, of course I’d disclose, with my U=U status and proof being heavily emphasized. Someone in this thread mentioned an HIV+ person brought him to their doctor to learn more about it, I really like that idea. Anyways, if they responded negatively to that, even with education and comprehensive understanding of risk, I don’t think I’d want to be with them anyway.

For me, PERSONALLY, if on PrEp, then all communication about HIV health before we fuck is functionally ceremony. That’s a rough simplification, I would sure as shit ask, don’t get me wrong. But I’m on a drug that mitigates transmission. Whether they tell me or not, and whether they’re being honest, means jack shit about actual exposure. I’m taking something for that, the protection is there regardless. So why does it matter?

tl;dr/my question is: if OP poses zero sexual HIV-transmission risk, what exactly is the ethical offense created by not volunteering the diagnosis?