@A myHIVteam Member for me not get in a "social media" argument with anyone, I'm going to give my "black educated straight HIV positive woman's" point of view based on what I've experienced. You did originally want to know how we straight ppl deal with the stigma right? I can't answer for a gay person because I'm not gay. Everyone should know that HIV/AIDS does NOT discriminate. It sees no age, color, gender, wealth nor sexual status. people on the outside looking in always have the same mind-set.If you are positive straight and a woman, you contracted the disease because you were once smoked crack and was giving a turn with anyone who wanted. And you probably have a thousand kids that you left addicted and positive in a trash bag. Someone telling you that is hard and hurtful to deal with but I deal with it. I'm none of those things. My uncle who died from AIDS in 2006, brutally raped me from the age of 9 til I turned 17. The boyfriend I dated in high school and college was sleeping with me and other men. I dated to other guys in college, one in which is my husband My strain came from my uncle.Ive never been out there sleeping with other ppl spreading the disease. I've only had sex with my husband .I had my daughter 2 yrs before I was diagnosed. She is 24 now and disease free. So you see I'm none of the those things that ignorant ppl think that am but they still have the same notion about me. I've havent been thru what a gay person has and vice versa. The person who angrily answered should realize that we don't share the same circumstances but we do share the same disease.

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A myHIVte...

I'm a heterosexual married male in a profesional occupation who was diagnosed hiv positive in 2015. The best we can tell is that I was infected from one of the nine surgeries that I had. I don't tell anyone that I am hiv positive and cringe when I hear people make remarks about hiv and aids and say nothing. Where I live there is no support for hiv positive people and if it weren't for my daughter in-law at the time who works in the medical field, who talked to me at the urging of my wife, I wouldn't be here right now. I can't tell you how many times after I first found out I was positive that I sat on the back porch by myself with a loaded gun in my hands, with tears running down my face, contemplating pulling the trigger. I still get down sometimes due to carrying the burden of being HIV positive and having no one to talk too. I still have times that I wish I had just died back in 2015 when I was diagnosed. I try to stay focused on the positives in my life, and expressing my feelings and reading what others have posted on this site does help, but the burden of having this disease and the stigma surrounding it does wear you down. I truly believe that having a support group for heterosexual hiv positive people would help us, but I also now that it will never happen due to the shame of having the disease and being afraid to tell anyone you have it.

You know, I felt like I deserved it because I use meth (smoked it) but a special lady who got it from being raped set me straight. She said NO ONE DESERVES IT. And that it's tired tho behaviors that are perfectly natural too like sex. This was after I said she didn't deserve it because she was raped. I don't feel that way now. Funny thing is I didn't feel my gay friends deserved it.

Well in all honesty I have found no problem what so ever conversing with any one once we get past the " Oh I'm so sorry " stage.
Now after I came out at my previous employer I for some reason became the " go to guy " when some one had found out that one of their family members had been diagnosed with hiv/aids so what else was I to do but help with any intel I had gathered on my own or thru the various magazines available and believe U me with 16 of us working the floor plus the back of the house staff and all 5 managers my days were usually filled with trying to answer questions about meds, side effects and any thing else hiv/aids related and in fact the few customers that I made privy to my health " condition " were overly eager to help in any way they could from nothing more than moral support ( a hug ) to advice on finding some sort of financial fix which made me one truly happy camper to know that my having decided to be open had caused so many to become self aware that people with hiv/aids are just like every one else in all walks of life :) .

For all of us their are phases we go through before we accept and have hope.

For me, I am bisexual, I was married. I had relationships with boys and girls in Middle school and high school. From 19 to 28 I had so much sex and many threesomes.

Being bisexual not only brings discomfort from straight, but LGBTQ also.

I have always lived my life openly, and raised in a small town. My peers accepted me in the sixth grade, because we were young and didn't know what we were doing, myself and the others didn't realise we were having sex until 8th grade biology and of course at that time same sex was not mentioned at all. For most of us, we know what gay was until college.

I went on after graduation discovering AIDS & HIV in the news, Ryan Whites life, Rolling Stone magazine which for years had an article on the disease every month, and that opened my eyes to Africa where babies born with HIV with being thrown in ditches to die and in adults the disease was mostly transferred through heterosexual sex.

I started volunteering and working with hiv patients through non- profits and sending aid to organisations that specifically helped the children in Africa, at one time raising $65,000.00 with a fundraiser I organised.

When I became HIV positive, it was almost a non-event. I had full support from my friends and my family. I continued reach and encourage college students to get tested. I would be speaker in one of their biology classes and no question was inappropriate, all questions were answered openly.

Now to your question. Anyone with HIV has no obligation to defend themselves when attacked with derogatory and bullying speech. Just walk away if someone you don't know or care about.

If it's friends or family, ask them if "we can take the conversation down a bit and discuss what HIV is, statistics if you know them, and why they are angry or fearful.

There is absolute power in knowledge, openness and strength in your truth.

Don't fear the conversation, be courageous and do it in charity for the others.