HIV Stigma

Cass Mann is one of the world's longest-term HIV-positive diagnosed gay men, now in his third decade of living with HIV, and the founder of UK’s only gay men’s HIV/AIDS charity Positively Healthy, which provides HIV services including education, support, and peer counselling. He feels that ironically, it is often other gay men who most stigmatize gay men. He experiences the deepest discrimination from people in the gay community who want nothing to do with an HIV positive person. Many HIV positive gay men don't want to go to clubs because visible side effects of antiretroviral drugs like lipodystrophy (muscle wasting), lipoatrophy (facial wasting) and the "buffalo hump" (irregular fat deposits in the body) cause them to be singled out and ridiculed. As a result, HIV positive gay men often don't go to lit venues; they go to dark rooms, back rooms, or parks instead. For more information about HIV/AIDS, visit http://www.posh-uk.org.uk/ and http://www.AIDSvideos.org/.