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???

So you just think a man who doesn't disclose his HIV status should be prosecuted for rape?

And a woman who does the same should be prosecuted for, what, sexual assault?

This is a false comparison.

What would be pretty much the same, would be someone deliberately exposing a partner, and someone believing they have managed it and pose no risk, and the partner in both cases does not become HIV+.

Also it would be the same if they deliberately exposed a partner, or believed they had it managed and pose no risk and the partner in both cases does contract HIV.

It’s not the call of the person with the virus to decide what level of risk the partner is comfortable with. They have a duty to disclose and justify why they believe there is no risk, and deal with the fact some people, even after all the facts, figures and assurances, still might not be convinced and still give them a miss. That’s how consent works.

Which then brings you back - if it's not about actual harm, and just about the idea that the sexual partner might, whether rational or not, not consent if they knew - why would that principle not apply to literally any other thing that might cause someone not to consent to sex?

I think there are many other cases where this applies, not just HIV. For example, if someone didn’t disclose they are a blood relative, or that they had put hidden cameras in their room, or they lied about who they were (for example twins swapping partners for a laugh)…

So you just think a man who doesn't disclose his HIV status should be prosecuted for rape?

And a woman who does the same should be prosecuted for, what, sexual assault?

I don't believe anyone is suggesting that women and FTM people should be able to do it with impunity and men and MTF people not.

All of those are existing crimes though.

What about other things that are not crimes in themselves, but which might make someone withhold consent for sex.

Hellofabore already gave us examples of reasons she might refuse sex - such as knowing that someone had a heart condition. Should non-disclosure of a heart condition also be a criminal offence?

I'm trying to understand what specific crime Hellofabore is saying they should be charged with.

She thinks it amounts to sex without consent, so logically, for men, that should be a charge of rape. But she claims that is too emotive and manipulative. So I'm wondering if she can explain what specific offence she thinks it should be, and how that squared with her view that it is sex without consent.

I think non-disclosure of having a sexually transmitted, potentially lethal, virus with a sexual partner should be a crime.

I chose comparators which, after the event, would make you feel very different about the sex you had - make you feel violated, deceived, so that when you looked back you may feel angry, powerless, sullied - traumatised - any enjoyment you had at the time would be rubbed out and replaced by burning regret, outrage and a feeling like you want to scrub yourself with bleach inside and out. The fact that some people might not be bothered by the blood relative, the cameras or the other twin, is as irrelevant when it comes to consent as those who wouldn’t be bothered by non-disclosed, managed HIV - the people who do mind must be given the opportunity to withdraw consent.

Most people wouldn’t feel that way about a heart condition. If I was dating with a view to settling down, I would want to know about the heart condition, but a shag or a fling, it wouldn’t be necessary since you can’t catch it and it would only affect me in the long term if I settled down.

But you're just applying your standard and saying because a heart condition wouldn't vitiate your consent, it shouldn't vitiate anyone else's.

HIV is sexually transmitted. Heart conditions aren’t.

@Helleofabore would you feel violated if you had sex with someone and they disclosed afterward that they had a heart condition?

Whilst I get what you mean about it not being the same thing, technically its not, whilst you can have HIV and never have it progress to AIDS, You can only have AIDS if you've had HIV. so in the minds of most people it is the same thing just different stages of it.

God I don't think I've had to write those abbreviations for over 20 years.

I'm of an age where I remember the whole world finding out about AIDS and HIV and the leaflet being sent to every house.

The stigma from that time has never fully gone away, which is a shame because the treatments for the illness have more or less obliterated the chance of people passing it on. (And yet we still have people catching it on a regular basis, because someone decided for them that they didn't need to know that piece of information)

I appreciate we are now at a point when treated effectively you may as well not even have the illness. BUT that is only because you are on medication. In just the same way someone's mental health may only be stable because they control it with medication, or a heart condition only being stopped from heart failure by daily medication.

But as with anything that is a long term health issue requiring lifelong medication I do think it incumbent on the person with the whatever it is, STD, heart condition, mental health issues, to be honest with someone they plan to have a relationship with.

This may mean you disclose things earlier than you would have liked. The solution to that is to wait, not have a sexual relationship straight away. Once you reach a point where you think the person you are with could potentially be a long term partner then that is the time for both sides to put their cards on the table and discuss the things that you know the other person may not be happy with whether that be a health condition, a mountain of debt or an ex wife and three kids.

I'm honestly not sure where i sit with the law on disclosure having read the posts above. Where do you draw the line? That's the problem.

Everyone is entitled to privacy, but if your right to privacy could cause someone else harm? urghhhh in some respects it feels like once you start down a path of making disclosure a legal requirement then before you know everything is up for grabs with regards well anything.

I'm sitting on the fence on this one, I don't know enough about the ins and outs of it.

Good post beetle and I agree with the majority of what you say. In the area I volunteer we often have discussions around sharing our status - if, when, how, other health conditions shared by partners etc.

For relevance it can be stigmatising to refer to someone as having AIDS or using that word to describe someone with HIV if not correct (National AIDS Trust have a section on this to inform the media). Nowadays in the U.K. AIDS is not really used as much as this infers a death sentence - hangover from the past as mentioned. People can now come back from a really low CD4 (measure of the immune system) and are regarded as eg late diagnosed or late stage.

New diagnoses happen, for the majority, due to someone with HIV not knowing they have the virus and passing it on, with too many still being late diagnosed. The fear of stigma can often prevent people from getting tested and stigma generally is probably the biggest barrier to stopping the epidemic (including reading that people would want to scrub themselves inside and out with bleach after something that was no risk to them).

There is currently a combined initiative from the government and many charities to get to zero new HIV cases by 2030. Tough to do with the lack of knowledge and stigma that still prevails in the general population, hard to forget the past and a lot more work to do on this. https://fasttrackcities.london/

Not for 90% of people who are HIV+ it’s not.

I'm of an age where I remember the whole world finding out about AIDS and HIV and the leaflet being sent to every house.

Me too, the terrifying adverts with the graves, I was a child. It was unequivocally a death sentence then and a lot of people probably aren't aware of improvements in treatment.

It’s been illuminative reading a post that started on on Primark and transformed into a biomedical and legal debate on disclosing HIV+ status to a potential sexual partner.

Ethically and logically how can consent be informed if your partner does not disclose a STI beforehand? That’s the same whether it’s HSV or HIV and whether there’s an active or inactive breakout infection for the latter.

Whilst unethical, It appears, according to hivpos and teaklaxon that legally someone HIV+ does not have to disclose their status if VL is undetectable ie <200 because this is considered untransmissable.

Teaklaxon asked for evidence of transmission at undetectable viral loads.

The following study was on transmission via breastfeeding where there were two cases of transmission despite maternal undetectable VLs.

To anticipate some caveats, yes this is breastfeeding and not one single sexual exchange so more opportunities for transmission as per discussion in the paper. Also, in one case, even though VL was undetectable at the time of the virus detected in the infant, the mother’s VL had been higher in the weeks before transmission being detected in the infants (although still low).

However, there was a case of transmission at 36 weeks PP where one mother having an undetectable VL at weeks 14, 26 and at each of the visits at which the infant tested positive for HIV DNA. Even the authors had to conclude that: Taken together, these cases of transmission suggest that undetectable does not mean untransmittable in the case of breastfeeding.

Now, given the agreed caveats, it may not be outside the realm of possibility that undetectable VL in the blood may not 100% in every circumstance guarantee non transmission of the VL in semen for example.

Im so grateful for ARTs for HIV+ people and grieve for a dear friend who just missed out the new treatment regimes in the 1990’s, but consent needs to be informed.

https://www.aidsmap.com/news/nov-2018/two-cases-hiv-transmission-through-breastfeeding-mothers-undetectable-viral-load

@HIVpos I do think the massive media blitz it got right back in the beginning did major ongoing harm.

I still remember my first hearing about it, it was 1985? when Rock Hudson died and then it seemed to snowball and it wasn't until end of the 90s? when a decent antiretroviral was created so you had ten years of a fairly relentless anti information campaign that managed to cover more than one generation. But here we are nearly 30 years on from that first antiretroviral and the virus is hopefully on the point of being wiped out within the next few years.

Personally I think the only time I've referred to someone having AIDS is when they actually have reached the stage where it's AIDS. If i'm honest, I'm surprised people still mix up the two today. I did think we had got past that point. I think a lot of people will maybe not realise the knowledge and medication for the virus has improved so much over the last 20 years, as once there was something that could treat the virus I certainly heard less and less about.

I'm sorry to hear that the reason the virus is still catching new people is mainly because of the stigma around it. It really shouldn't be the case anymore. I think the 2030 target is doable but it would mean a massive campaign, just like the one back in the 80s to bring to peoples attention where the medical world is currently at with the virus and treatment for it.

Of course one of the other ways to keep new cases to a minimum is to not have unprotected sex with anyone, unless you know them well enough and have been for a sexual health screening before you commence with the fun bit!

God now I sound like my mother!

It’s pretty well known that U=U only applies in respect of sexual activity. For breastfeeding transmission is about 1%, and for shared needles it is unknown. But for sexual activity it is 0.

It’s pretty well known that U=U only applies in respect of sexual activity. For breastfeeding transmission is about 1%, and for shared needles it is unknown. But for sexual activity it is 0

Yes, it’s true that several large studies found no cases of transmission. These studies ran from one to five years. The authors of the studies state that if a person with HIV is on ART with a completely suppressed HIV viral load, the risk of infecting an HIV-negative sex partner is exceedingly low.

It is national governments that then interpret these findings to advise there is no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.

It is impossible, however, to state with absolute certainty that it could never happen. No researcher would make this claim. Impossible to defend or refute.

This isn’t true. The most seminal and conclusive study - the PARTNER study in 2019 did explicitly say that prospect is zero. Not just low. Not just exceedingly low.

Other non-governmental health institutes have said the same like the WHO.

It is impossible, however, to state with absolute certainty that it could never happen.

I agree.

We can't say with certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow.

Oh jeez this is a tough one. Who should we trust? Scientific consensus or some random two word post on the internet?

That’s a tough one.

Oh, is that like the "scientific consensus" that men can be women, and it's ok to give children powerful drugs to arrest their puberty, with little evidence of long term outcomes?

You’re really just a crank aren’t you.

Maybe the scientists are out to get you.