This

So it's National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. I have a lot feelings about this, because, i feel like it's fucked up and necessary and fucked up that it's necessary. Here's the tea: This shit is plaguing our community and has been for ages. Most of that is about historic and current systemic and structural violence aka inaccess to resources/knowledge/power necessary for healthy living/survivial/thriving. Another part of that is our proximity to in/externalized white supremacy, heterosexism, heteropatriarchy, femmephobia and the like. Here's the other thing, HIV meds can cut transmission by 96%, add that to a condom (if used properly) and that's cut by another 76-98%. No one can get meds without being tested, but in many states being tested for HIV and being found positive, is grounds for losing your right to have consensual sex. In most states, if you're HIV+ and have consensual sex, despite disclosing your status, you can be criminalized as an attempted murderer, bioterrorist, sex offender or biological weapon among other things for simply having sex---without transmission of HIV. So if you're a young, sexually active person of color, getting tested becomes scary as shit. You got your physical life on one hand and the threat of further criminalization and your sexual-social life on the other. The struggle is real. So before we start hollering about disclosure, remember that sometimes, disclosure means death...Jim Crow Prison style.