Claudine Housen, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
Janice*, 43, has been HIV positive for twelve years. She contracted the virus through
having unprotected sex with a former lover. Contracting HIV has changed Janice's
life in many ways but it has not affected her sex life.
"Being HIV positive for me is just an illness," she said. "I think sex is part of the recreation that human beings have a right to share. For me it is therapeutic and it de-stresses me."
Noting the obvious risks involved when a person living with HIV chooses to have sexual intercourse, Janice said that the key to the relationship is making sure that person is aware.
"What I think should happen is that each person should be informed enough to know how to protect themselves and how to protect their partner," she said, adding that she is involved in a relationship with an HIV negative partner.
Somebody
special
"I am really sharing my life with somebody special who supports and understands me," she said. "He understands my illness and how it can be contracted. He is very educated about it and I think we are having a meaningful relationship."
Like Janice, 32-year-old Althea* agrees that persons living with HIV have the right to have consensual sex. However, she says she would never enter into a relationship with someone who does not share the same status as herself.
"I would never talk to someone that is not positive because yes you are going to use a condom and they say a condom is only 99% chance; I don't want to take that one per cent chance," said Althea, who was a part of a PANOS Caribbean HIV/AIDS workshop recently.
Noting that both herself and her partner were HIV positive, Althea said she still continues to use a condom during sexual intercourse in order to prevent reinfection between herself and her partner.
HIV/AIDS consultant Ian McKnight however notes, while a number of persons living with HIV are able to enjoy an active sex life there are still those that experience challenges.
"There are lots of hang ups because even though most people know that if a condom is properly used they cannot get the virus that way, there still is a deep-rooted psychological fear that says I perhaps don't know everything about this virus and so again it is the fear of being infected by this person, or of infecting someone that is one of the greatest stigma attached," Mr. McKnight explained.
"Men have been known for instance to lose their erection because their minds are on the threat of infecting somebody or being infected, and in some instances people just cannot go ahead with it," he said.
*names
changed
