Why are Primark promoting "Found Family"

[WandaWomblesaurus]

www.primark.com/en-us/a/inspiration/special-occasions/celebrating-found-families

"A Found Family Is About Finally Feeling Whole, Something That Might Be Absent In Your Biological Family, Like A Full Set Of Acrylic Nails Or A Good Pair Of Fake Lashes. It’s A Community You Choose, Whose Values And Honesty Speak To Your Own."
- Jude & Michael, Germany

What???

Sex is the one time when things are never your choice alone. It's yours and that of your potential partner. You shouldn't choose for them.

It's patronising? Ok... I'll find some different way of saying the same thing.

That poster has already demonstrated that most people living with HIV+ know, categorically, that they cannot transmit HIV.

When there is no risk to a sexual partner then they have no more right to know HIV status than mental health status.

It’s like some of you folk are determined not to learn the lessons of the past 20 years in tackling HIV transmission in this country. Spoiler alert - needlessly increasing stigma wasn’t part of the success!

That decision can still not be one sided. It doesn't matter how you twist it, legalise it, apply logic to it, contort it. Sex involves more than one person in the most intimate act.

This behaviour is not / should not be only for hiv.

I'm unsure why you compare hiv to mental health. It's an std. It's about sex... hence the involvement of a partner or partners...

Because someone with an undetectable viral load has the same chances as passing on their HIV to a sexual partner as someone with bipolar disorder has of passing that on to a sexual partner (I.e.zero).

The law should not demand that people disclose
personal health issues which pose no risk to sexual partners.

It’s not just invasive and illogical. It’s also really stupid in terms of tackling the spread of HIV.

It's not about the law. It's about your personal ethics. It's wrong to withhold that from a sex partner who you think might otherwise refuse consent.

It's a sexually transmitted disease.

This entire discussion is about laws criminalising non-disclosure of HIV status.

Of course it’s about the law.

Which is only transmissable by 11% of people who are HIV+. The other 89% know with certainty that they cannot transmit HIV.

For that 89%, a law that makes them a criminal for not disclosing a health condition that has no impact or risk for a sexual partner is wrong and counterproductive.

And as I have said, it's not a case of "zero risk" because it depends on remaining below a threshold of viral load. Very little in life is zero risk. Even if it's a billion to one chance that's still a risk, albeit minuscule. You don't have the moral right to decide for someone, like you wouldn't have the moral right to give them a vaccine without telling them, even though you think it's ok and the risk may be tiny.

Does your moral code only cover things that are prosecutable by law?

I think maybe that's why you're so ok with males barging their way into female spaces where they aren't wanted by most women. It's not against the law. Well no, but it's morally wrong for them to violate women's boundaries in that way.

It's morally wrong for men to compete unfairly against women at sports in the sex class for women. It's not against the law though, so that's ok.

This has been explained to you a number of times.

People who are HIV+ know whether or not their viral load is undetectable.

If they know it is undetectable they also know there is zero chance of transmission.

Undetectable viral loads don’t shoot up overnight because someone takes some St John’s Wort. If viral loads increase they increase slowly. And the threshold for undetectable (20) and zero risk (200) is a big one which means any indications that someone might in the future become transmissable are spotted early and addressed.

So yes, someone with HIV who is undetectable knows with certainty that they remain undetectable for as long as they continue their regular check ups.

This entire discussion is about what the law should criminalise, arising from the Feminist Declaration.

I’ve said nothing about what the ethical obligations of disclosure might be. I’m discussing the issue of what the law should say because that is what we were discussing.

If you’re now shifting to say the law should not criminalise non-disclosure but that non-disclosure is nonetheless ethically wrong, then that is progress.

A found family. Like your fellow child labourers

Huh?

If you’re now shifting to say the law should not criminalise non-disclosure but that non-disclosure is nonetheless ethically wrong, then that is progress.

I haven't "shifted" at all because I haven't discussed the law question on this other than to post clarification of what the current legal position is.

People who are HIV+ know whether or not their viral load is undetectable.

No they cannot know this absolutely because your body processes and how it reacts to medication and other substances are not always within your control. As discussed. It's not possible with any medicine to entirely rule out every possible kind of interaction. For eg obscure Ayurvedic herbs when you've decided to do a "detox"?

Even most of the online sources say things like "effectively zero" and "very low to non existent" risk. It's based as far as I can see on a couple of cohort studies. It's political, rightly or wrongly. But it's not your decision to make for someone else, morally. And even if they are wrong, they still should have the right to know whether they are sleeping with someone with an STI that the person knows about.

In all this discussion about HIV, what had struck me is that it a significant sexually transmitted disease and that this affects people of any sexual orientation. The treatment of HIV is life changing in that it means a person is medicalised for life.

However there is also this abiding narrative that all people with HIV are honest and reliable and that a prospective sex partner must be ignorant or offensive to doubt that honesty and integrity. Maybe it is my upbringing in discovering many people around me are not honest and reliable that I don’t have this trust level that others seem to either have for others or expect from others.

There isn't much trust in a relationship where one partner is not being told something they should have knowledge of because the other partner thinks they will not then consent if they find out.

I agree. Also that someone made the decision for me. And felt they could make that judgement call.

Every third film and TV show out of Hollywood over the last decade seems to have had a strong message about "Found Family". Especially anything of the comic book / superhero / fantasy genres. Like someone above said, by itself it's not a bad message though it's weird we no longer just call that friends, but messaged like crazy and in the context of trying to replace your actual family for the sake of political marketing, it's unsettling.

Like it or not but family is one of the foundational units of society and it has long been targeted overtly or otherwise by authoritarians. I find stores actively pushing stuff like this very creepy and suspicious. The messaging is very clearly "your family don't accept you. Find a new one. Our one." Isolating people from their family and surrounding them with a new set of people with the values you want is cult behaviour.

And I haven't been commenting on the rest of the thread, so just wanted to agree with this post way upthread from OldGardinia.

Sorry but your knowledge of how viral loads work is the problem here.

Someones viral load doesn’t just shoot up overnight. If it rises it rises slowly and any rise would be picked up by regular check ups well before it became a risk.

There is a difference between intentional transmission, and non-disclosure.

If someone is intentionally dishonest and misleading about their HIV status and there is transmission as a result, that is one thing.

I’m talking about someone who knows their risk of transmission is zero, or someone who is only engaging in safe sex. Criminalising that person for non-disclosure would be abhorrent and would set back the significant public health progress that has been made over the last two decades.