A video recently crossed my timeline featuring a man who claims that he has known he was HIV-positive since June 7, 2023. According to him, he does not take medication and has knowingly exposed more than 200 men and women to the virus. He admitted that he sometimes lies when people ask about his status. Other times, he says nothing because the conversation never comes up.
I cannot confirm his diagnosis, whether he has actually infected anyone, or whether every detail of his story is even true. His statements could be truthful, exaggerated, or manufactured for attention because apparently everyone is a clout-chasing hoe these days. What I can discuss is the mentality he openly presented. According to him, someone infected him without giving him a choice, so now he does the same to other people because nobody showed him pity. Instead of becoming an advocate doing meaningful work, buddy chose to present himself as a villain doing terrifying work. That is a hell of a choice.
If his story is true, what happened to him was a violation. Despite the harm he now claims to inflict on others, he is still a victim of what was allegedly done to him. Someone allegedly withheld information that could have affected whether he consented to sex under those circumstances. Instead of addressing the person responsible or dealing with his own physical and emotional health, he claims to have recreated that violation with strangers who had nothing to do with what happened to him. There is something deeply disturbing about believing that inflicting your wound on someone else will somehow make you less wounded.
For me, this is not an abstract conversation. Last year, while I was pregnant with my son, a woman contacted me about a man I was no longer dealing with. She claimed that she was HIV-positive, alleged that he had given it to her, and told me to get tested. I was tested repeatedly over several months, and my results remained negative. Medically, I know my status. Mentally, that experience still did something to me because it turned me off from physical intimacy completely.
It made intimacy feel dangerous in a way I had never experienced before. It made trusting someone sexually feel frightening because a condom cannot reveal what another person knows, what they may be hiding, or whether they are taking their health seriously. I know who I could imagine spending my life with, but sexual vulnerability frightens me differently now. One reckless or dishonest person can force another human being into months of testing, fear, and waiting without ever carrying the psychological damage they leave behind.
Living in metro Atlanta adds another layer to that fear. According to the Georgia Department of Public Health’s 2024 surveillance report, 2,485 people were newly diagnosed with HIV in Georgia during 2024. The Atlanta metropolitan area accounted for 1,632 of those diagnoses, roughly two-thirds of the state total, and Black people represented approximately 65 percent of new diagnoses in the metro area. Nationally, the CDC reported 38,793 HIV diagnoses in 2024, with Black Americans accounting for 39 percent and residents of the South accounting for 51 percent.
None of this means people living with HIV should be feared, treated as dirty, or automatically viewed as dangerous. Modern treatment allows people with HIV to live long lives, and a person who takes treatment and maintains an undetectable viral load does not sexually transmit HIV. That principle is known as Undetectable Equals Untransmittable, or U=U. That is exactly why the behavior described in this video bothers me so much. He specifically claims that he refuses medication while knowingly exposing other people, which is entirely different from someone responsibly managing HIV and living their damn life..
Protection still matters. Condoms substantially reduce HIV risk. PrEP provides another layer of protection for HIV-negative people and, when taken as prescribed, reduces the risk of acquiring HIV through sex by approximately 99 percent. PEP may prevent infection after a possible exposure, but it must be started within 72 hours. Testing matters, conversations matter, and knowing your own status matters, but none of those things allow you to see inside another person’s conscience.
Someone can look healthy and have HIV. Someone can be married and acquire an STI from a spouse. Someone can be educated, successful, attractive, religious, or health-conscious and still make reckless decisions. HIV does not have a particular face, and neither does dishonesty. At the same time, fear cannot become stigma. The danger is not people living with HIV. The danger is untreated transmissible infection combined with deception, lack of testing, reckless exposure, and people who decide another person’s body is acceptable collateral damage in their private war.
Ethically, I believe consent requires more than agreeing to sex in the abstract. People deserve information that could reasonably affect whether they choose to participate. Laws involving HIV disclosure and criminal liability vary by jurisdiction, so I am not making a universal legal claim. I am talking about informed sexual consent and the basic principle that another person’s body should not become a testing ground for whatever you refuse to confront within yourself.
If somebody broke a piece of your spirit by denying you a choice, doing the same thing to innocent people will not put that piece back or make what happened to you fair. It will only create more frightened people, more damaged trust, and potentially more infections. Passing your trauma forward does not make the original harm fair. It makes you responsible for a new one.