Fact: Tremendous stigma still surrounds HIV. Just ask any gay man living with HIV.
Tom is an HIV-positive man and activist living in the U.K. He runs the Twitter account @PositiveLad which he uses to raise awareness to issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and sexual health.
Over the weekend, Tom shared some of the truly vile messages he’s received from other guys on Grindr.
They include everything from curt rejections:
To slut shaming insults:
From mocking:
To scolding:
To calls for his public execution:
In a thread of Twitter posts, Tom writes:
One thing I hear again and again when talking to the media, or the negative general population, is that “HIV is sorted now isn’t it?”. Medically? Treatments are simple, effective and stop onwards transmission. Socially? HAH. NO. NOPE.
A 2014 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law found that 1 in 4 people living with HIV reported experiencing discrimination because of their positive status.
Tom continues:
The LGBT community for example has borne the brunt of the HIV epidemic–so you’d think there would be compassion and understanding out there from our negative peers.
Sadly HIV stigma seems at its worst within these most affected communities.
Chrisk
Makes you almost wish you go back to the 80s. The world At large hated us but at least we were a real community of people that actually cared for one another.
Raymundo
That is something I miss.
Kangol
I hear you on the solidarity, but I lost many friends at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, before the advent of the effect AIDS drug combo (was it 1994 or 1995?), and I think about the devastation of the gay and bi male populations during that period and have to say, despite the many wonderful aspects of that period, I wouldn’t ever want to go through that level of mass death of people I know again if I can help it. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible.
DHT
you cannot be serious…back then everyone was accusing everyone else of having AIDS in an effort to deflect from the probability they had it themselves. In my early 20’s while in college I worked at a bar back in Boston. I was continually slut shamed and accused of having AIDS regularly by my older co-workers. I didn’t even know what a tea room was and had no idea about cruising the Fens at night. Turns out most of them did and they are now dead from AIDS.
Roy Moss
The world at large still hate us, they just pretend they don’t.
DHT
the idea that so many gays think rape is sex makes me hate us a little too.
QueerTruth
Romanticizing the 80’s gay culture is understandable but I was there. It was brutal, painful, hidden, and a human rights tragedy. Not to even mention HIV/AIDS. I’m one of two people from a circle of friends who is still alive. Most are long dead. Few would have ever guessed how far society has come.
No offense, but today is much better. You confuse the ridiculous social media/dating app trolls with our actual lifestyle. There is no comparison. We are far from perfect but we are in a much better place.
am_psi
I’m calling BS on that last “you should be executed” section. The font is different, the background is different, the balloons aren’t formatted the same and there’s no time stamp.
1898
it looks different because it’s from a newer version of the app. they changed the visual appearance of the app. the previous screenshots were from an older version of the app
Umoja
That still doesn’t explain why the text bubbles are so truncated. Why was there such a lag in taking the screenshots from what seems to be a contiguous conversation?
1898
@Umoja each screen shot is from a different person / different conversation. they’re not all the same person / same conversation
drmiller
am_psi the first images are from the older version of Grindr. The execution screenshot is from the newer version 🙂
Zambos271
The internet has given people the comfortability to be meaner than ever and to say things that they wouldn’t say in person.
Chrisk
It’s been a known thing for decades. Same with people becoming assholes in cars.
Bob LaBlah
Its sad that many in our community never stop to think for a minute that back in the late 1980-2000 era a lot of children were born with HIV to mothers that were infected with the virus. Many of them are now grown and are gay and out of the closet. The ignorance surrounding HIV in our own community is appalling but I personally am not shocked by it.
Raymundo
That’s what I’m here thinking. As far as anyone knows he was born with H.I.V.
1898
willing to bet that most of these jerks are “discreet” and/or “str8” and only have a headless torso for their profile pic
1898
one of my former boyfriends became poz after being drugged and gang raped by a trio of men he met at a gay club in NYC
NEVER make assumptions about how someone was infected
DHT
I have no doubt that there are a lot of guys got it that way and there more drug predators than ever in the bars now from what I can see. Drugs are absolutely endemic in the bars now, even more so than a decade ago, I stay away from them as much as possible.
DHT
However horrible this guy is, and he is truly reprehensible for shaming this guy about his HIV on Grindr, he is right that drugs are destroying a lot of young gay men. Because of the number of predators I believe that the bars are culpable. Everyone working in the gay bars knows who the drug dealers are and they make a choice to allow them in. Honestly, the last time I was at a bar here in DC I asked the door man if they knew who the dealers were and if they let them in. He told me that yes they know them and they do let them in. Gay bars are disgusting.
Heywood Jablowme
“Bare backing and chem sex seem to becoming [sic] ingrained into our self destructive disrespectful lifestyle…”
Amazing that this guy sees nothing disrespectful about his OWN unsolicited comment!
(Note: I’m now completely mystified about how the new comment policy is being applied, or what could possibly have been the objection to my last post. At this point I’m just taking a wild guess as to what minor peccadillo it MIGHT have been. But I see arguably offensive posts all the time! – usually if not always by the right-wingers.)
CastleSF
What this guy sent may not be the most endearing text one would expect to receive on that platform but it is absolutely true that a lot of gays are addicted to drug fueled sex that is unsafe and disease spreading. Many of them remain stubbornly unrepentant and hell bent on ruining their own lives and those of others just to satisfy their sordid lust. Sometimes people say not-so-nice things on the hookup apps and if you don’t like it, delete the comments and move on.
Heywood Jablowme
@Castle: That’s just it, he is ASSUMING the poz guy got infected by drug-fueled barebacking, but as other comments point out, no one can really assume such a thing.
“Many of them remain stubbornly unrepentant and hell bent on ruining their own lives and those of others just to satisfy their sordid lust.”
Perhaps, but guys like you describe DON’T admit to being poz on a hookup app!
1898
@CastleSF telling someone they should be “publicly executed” is not even on the same planet as “not the most endearing text” or “not-so-nice things”
WindsorOntario
This is why we have the opiate addiction in the gay community. We hate each other more than the non-gay world does. And these apps are partly responsible for why so many of our gathering spaces like bars and coffee shops are gone. They aren’t coming back. In a lot of places now Grindr is the only game in town. It’s either go on Grindr or you’re not going to meet anyone. And the things people say to each other only makes a person want to use the pills or other drugs even more. It reminds you that you will never find anyone to enjoy your life with. It reminds you that all these other gay men have ridiculous expectations and requirements just to meet them; and you’ll never be good enough/rich enough/successful enough/young enough for the majority of these guys.
It makes you feel like you came out for nothing. Look at what we get to choose from! Some community!
Heywood Jablowme
@Wndsor: Please take a look at Meetup.com. (They don’t allow sex stuff, it’s all activity groups of various kinds.)
There are maybe some gay-oriented activity groups in your area. And if there aren’t, look at the bigger cities to see what kind of things they do. It’s easy to START a Meetup group and see who shows up. Not all of them work out, but you can take a look at different ways to go about it.
Also (I’m just guessing your age — pushing 40?), Grindr is too young for you anyway. Scruff has an older demographic and would be less oppressive for you, at least.
“It reminds you that all these other gay men have ridiculous expectations and requirements just to meet them….” Well, it’s never quite clear what expectations YOU have?
AndThenTheresMax
What Windsor Ontario said!
Chrisk
@Heywood Jablowme. I totally agree with that. You can eliminate allot of the problems by staying away from a certain demographic. We all know what age group this is coming from. Gay men go through a catty phase and most come out of it by say 35.
AndThenTheresMax
I’mma gonna say this. I was part of Act Up! Fight Back! in the late 80s and 90s in Toronto and NYC. What neg. gay men are saying to poz gay men is 100 times worse than what we got from straight people during our “die in” demonstrations to highlight AIDS activism. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would hear what is contained in this article from the fingers of gay men. It’s disgusting. One of my close friends became HIV+ from receiving a tainted blood transfusion (remember those days). How is that his fault? Yet he’s called every name in the book because guys thing he was promiscuous which is totally not true. Until you know the full story, you have no right to judge.
DHT
Obviously the stigma concerning HIV hasn’t gone away yet. Insecure gay men will always use whatever they can find to try to make you think that they superior when in fact they are insignificant.