Safe Poz Love: Count HIV+ Women in on Valentine’s Day!

An expression of love for women living with HIV is supporting our rights to our sexuality. Count HIV+ women in on Valentine’s Day!
#safepozlove #pwnusa

Count HIV+ women in on Valentine’s Day! HIV+ women have a right to healthy sex lives, women‐centered methods to prevent transmission and healthy relationships free from violence. An expression of love for women living with HIV is supporting our rights to our sexuality. U.S. Positive Women’s Network commemorates Valentine’s Day as a day to uphold the rights of HIV+ women to have safe and satisfying sexual lives!

Talking points:

• All HIV+ women have the right to pleasurable and safe sex without fear of judgment
• HIV+ women have a right to safe sex, which includes comprehensive women‐centered health care, prevention options that women can control, and freedom from intimate partner violence.
• HIV+ women have a right to pleasurable sex. An HIV diagnosis does not equate to the end of a woman’s sexual life and satisfaction.
• HIV+ women have a right to safe sex. Employment discrimination based on HIV status and the inability to work and make a living wage can cause women to engage in sex for money, housing and food. This puts women at more risk for violence and the inability to negotiate safe sex.
• HIV+ women have a right to choose when and how they disclose their HIV status to their partners.
• Count HIV+ women in prevention! Telling women to abstain or asking women to tell their partners to wear a condom is not enough to protect women. Women will be safe when the overall quality of our lives and the lives of our loved ones are uplifted and when we have a variety of ways to protect ourselves, including methods that don’t require our partner’s knowledge or consent.
• The United Nations addresses putting an end to Violence Against Women as a critical to curbing HIV transmission. Cut violence against women as a cause and causality of HIV infection.
• 1 in 4 women have been a victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in her lifetime, according to the CDC’s report that came out in Dec. 2011.
• Almost 70% of female victims experienced some form of intimate partner violence for the first time before the age of 25, according to the CDC’s report that came out in Dec. 2011.
• Nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped at some time in her life, 80% of which experienced rape before the age of 25 according to the CDC’s report that came out in Dec. 2011.
• Transgender and queer‐identified women experience increased cases of violence.
• Count HIV+ women in the services! HIV+ women are at higher risk of gynecological complications, yet HIV providers rarely discuss and provide sexual health care.
• Women behind bars experience little to no sexual healthcare and counseling.
• HIV+ women in the U.S. receive little or substandard sexual healthcare and information on how to protect themselves and their partners.
• Abstinence‐only education violates the rights of all women to life saving information.