One of us recently had the uncomfortable experience of sitting in a cinema when one of the pilot adverts for the National Aids Trust’s Are You HIV Prejudiced? campaign was screened (see here). The screen goes totally black and a women’s voice explains that, much as she wants to let you see her, she can’t, because you might be HIV prejudiced. She points out she might be sitting next to you.
We think the NAT campaign is a good thing. Its challenging question will be on billboards all over Britain from the end of January, and also in papers like the News of the World where people with HIV only usually feature as health-scare stories. It may get people thinking about HIV who’ve never thought about it since the doomy ‘tombstone’ ads of the late 80s.
But for the HIV positive film-goer seeing that particular ad - who may indeed be sitting next to a stranger, and who may well think at that point ‘What would s/he do if I told them I had HIV?’ - it may inadvertently give the message that since HIV Prejudice is so awful, you shouldn’t even think about coming out as positive.
We talked to numerous people with HIV in the UK and all over the world about stigma for this month’s issue. There was one thing everyone agreed on: yes, there is a lot of HIV bigotry in the world outside, but the worst stigma is in your mind. Stigma is shame. It’s Bad Stuff you believe about yourself as a person with HIV. Silence = death, sure, but it’s your own silence that’s the real killer.
That means the only real answer to stigma is to Come Out. To get through the anxiety and shame of diagnosis and to value yourself enough to defy others’ prejudice. To get to the point where, Hey, if they reject you and your HIV, all it means is they don’t make the grade as friends.
Maybe there needs to be a second HIV Prejudice campaign running in parallel with the first, directed at HIV positive people. It would have one simple slogan: “We’re Here; We’re Pos; Get Over It!”