If you think you can tell someone’s HIV status by the way that they look, or behave, you’re setting yourself up for a major upset.

Can you tell if a man looks HIV positive
Stock photo by cottonbro studio (pexels.com)

I met up with a friend of mine who’s HIV positive the other day. His most recent date hadn’t gone well. He’d cruised a guy in a supermarket, got talking and arranged to have dinner – all very civilised. Some time after the main course had been served my friend revealed that he is HIV positive. His date didn’t stay for dessert. In fact, he barely finished his mouthful before he made his excuses and left the table.

This guy had clearly assumed, prior to my friend’s disclosure, that my friend was HIV negative. Is that surprising? My friend’s a handsome chap who works out at the gym. He’s been diagnosed positive for just over a decade, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. His date hadn’t raised the issue of HIV and yet he walked out when he found out my friend was positive.

The reaction my friend received reflects the fear that many have about HIV. There’s no cure for HIV so, if you’re infected, you will always be infected; you will have the potential to infect your sexual partners and in time you will have to start taking drugs every day to prevent serious illness and death. The outlook has improved considerably since we’ve had effective treatments but HIV infection is still, to use a cliché, no picnic.

It’s a frequent theme from worried gay men. ‘He looked healthy’ they say, or even, ‘he looked clean’ – as if HIV infection was a result of poor personal hygiene. The truth is, if you think you’re always going to be able to tell someone’s HIV status from the way that they look, or the way that they behave, you’re setting yourself up for a major upset.

Back in the bad old days, before effective treatment, you would often see men with visible symptoms of HIV infection. I remember the awkward clouds of silence that seemed to surround those men who were brave enough to walk into a gay bar with KS lesions on their faces.

Nowadays it is relatively rare to see someone who is obviously infected with HIV. The majority of gay men with HIV have no visible symptoms. And HIV isn’t just stereotyped by the way that someone looks. Men will often assume that someone is HIV positive because they go to a certain bar, or they enjoy a particular kind of sex.

Although the number of gay men living with HIV in the UK increases every year, the number of gay men who believe that they do not know any HIV positive men is also increasing. HIV is, in a very real sense, becoming invisible.

With current HIV prevalence rates in London, it’s a good bet that there will be some HIV positive men in any busy bar, anywhere. And it’s not just men who have lots of partners, or who are into hard sex who become infected with HIV. Research suggests that a third of men are infected as a result of sex within the context of a long-term relationship.

If you think you’re always going to be able to tell someone’s HIV status from the way that they look, you’re setting yourself up for a major upset.

The truth is that you may guess someone’s status, based on how they look, where they hang out or the kind of sex that they have, but it is only that – a guess. If you then take sexual risks based on this false assumption, you’re essentially gambling with your health and the health of your partners. If men stop kidding themselves that the sex they have is safe, because the person they are having sex with looks healthy, then the motivation to use protection is stronger.

Believing false stereotypes about HIV, and what HIV positive men look like, leads to new HIV infections in our community. Avoid making assumptions about the HIV status of others. If we all do this, and therefore avoided risks as a result of stereotypes, we can make a big difference.

Stereotyping positive men as having a particular look or lifestyle, or pretending that positive men are not a part of our community, does nothing to support HIV positive men, and it does nothing to help HIV negative men stay that way.

Find a condom that fits.

 

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