Breaking the silence for the invisible ones: heterosexual men living with HIV.
By Bob Bowers | aka One Tough Pirate
I’m a heterosexual living with HIV.
Not braggin’, just sayin’.
Forty-two-plus years into this journey, and I’m still running into the same tired assumption—that HIV is a “gay disease.” Still watching guys like me get looked at sideways, dismissed, or left out of the conversation altogether.
Let me be clear: I’m not here to compete with anyone’s struggle. But I am here to speak truth. Because when you’re a straight man living with HIV, you experience a specific kind of stigma that’s real, harmful, and almost always unspoken.
We’re made to feel invisible.
Outside the HIV/AIDS community, we’re hit with ignorant questions like, “How’d you get it?”
Inside the HIV/AIDS community, we’re often overlooked in campaigns, support groups, funding priorities, and outreach.
Too straight for the HIV world.
Too HIV-positive for the straight world.
Just stuck in-between, trying to survive.
It’s not who you are—it’s what you do that puts you at risk for HIV. That’s the truth I’ve been shouting for decades, and yet people still look confused when a heterosexual man stands up and says, “I’m positive too.”
This silence is deadly. Literally.
There are straight men out there—newly diagnosed, scared, ashamed—who don’t know where to go. They don’t see themselves in the messaging. They don’t feel welcome in the spaces built for support. And because of that, some of them never get the care they need.
That’s not just stigma—that’s systemic failure.
And I’m calling it out.
Read full piece at: https://onetoughpirate.substack.com/p/not-braggin-just-sayin-a-straight
