Life and Love with HIV is a space for women, partners, and couples living with HIV everywhere to share their experiences of love, romance, and sexuality. In creating our own stories, in our own voices, our goal is to reclaim our sexual rights around the world.
Feminist principles we live by in our work include:
Pleasure: When it comes to sex and HIV, research and support tends to focus on risk. We aim to counterbalance this narrative in our work by talking about and studying the positive aspects of sexuality and relationships.
Anti-Oppressiveness: Focusing on the positives doesn’t mean ignoring injustices. In discovering and illuminating pleasure, we also remain attentive to and highly critical of the social and political forces that constrain its expression.
Diversity: People—and their bodies, sexualities, desires, relationships, perspectives, and choices—are profoundly diverse. We believe in honouring and sharing people’s experiences in their real-life fullness.
Intersectionality: True diversity is intersectional. Our work acknowledges people's multiple, overlapping identities that create richness in experience, as well as various forms of oppression, stigma, and violence that work together to influence lives.
Social change: This project was born out of one simple desire—to make a difference in the quality of our lives. Through it, we aim to amplify community efforts to de-stigmatize HIV, de-criminalize non-disclosure, and de-pathologize and de-marginalize sexuality and relationships.
GIPA/MIPA: We value the greater and meaningful involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA/MIPA) as we are the experts of our own lives. As such, we are leaders and partners in all stages of this work, along with our key allies.
