Most Humans With HIV Are Straight
Why are the US and Europe different? Can we end HIV?
Did I surprise you with my headline?
Most well informed, open-minded people understand that HIV and AIDS don’t exclusively impact gay male communities, but they know that gay men and transgender women are especially at risk for sexual transmission of the virus.
Right? Well, yes, but that’s not the whole story. What if I told you that almost everyone in the world with HIV contracted the virus through plain vanilla, penis/vagina sex?
That’s true, and I’ll show you data in a minute, but let me back up first.
In the United States and Europe, HIV decimated gay male communities in the 1980s and 90s. I’ve written a lot about what I call the Plague Years, when the Sword of Damocles dangled over gay men’s heads.
Getting Tested When AIDS Was a Death Sentence
How it FELT to know, why it’s different today
medium.com
That’s the narrative that most North Americans and Europeans are familiar with. Worldwide, however, HIV is primarily transmitted by vaginal sex. A very large majority of people in the…
