2017 Is the Year That HIV Stigma Is Finally Loosening

published on October 5, 2017 by Mike Miksche, in VICE

Studies have proven that having an undetectable viral load means you can't transmit HIV—and people are finally waking up.

This May, Hans Berlin, an HIV-positive gay porn star, gave an acceptance speech at the Grabbys, an annual awards show for the gay-porn industry. Hans was accepting an award for best threeway for a scene from Skins 1 (link NSFW), a bareback flick. This marked the first year (also NSFW) that bareback studios were nominated in the award show's history.

"We've come a long way, if you think about it. Thanks to PrEP and treatment as prevention, it is safe to show condomless scenes," Berlin told the audience, referring to methods for preventing transmission among those who are HIV-negative and HIV-positive, respectively. "For HIV positive performers like myself, there's still a lot of studios that I cannot work for because our studios are testing for the virus and not for viral load… We have to get the message out. 'U equals U': Undetectable equals untransmittable. The science is clear about that."

Despite how clear the science is, the message is still in the process of catching on—and for everything modern medicine has done to make HIV serodiscordant sex safe, stigma against HIV-positive people remains high.

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BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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2017 Is the Year That HIV Stigma Is Finally Loosening

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