One letter, two responses

[conuly]

Q. My son is dating an HIV-positive man: When my son came out a few years ago, I struggled at first but have since come to a better understanding of what this means for him and his happiness. All I want is for him to be in a stable, secure, fulfilling relationship—with someone of whatever gender he would be happiest with. However, he recently Zoom-introduced us to his new boyfriend, “Alec.” Alec is HIV-positive. My son announced this on the Zoom call (I didn’t have time to process it) and then became irate with me when I asked some questions to better understand what that means.

Prudie, I remember the ’80s and actually had a close friend die from AIDS. My son claims I’m being ignorant, but I was alive during this time—he wasn’t! I’m scared of what will happen if they stay together and have children. Will they have to live the rest of their lives in fear that Alec will accidentally infect the children via a small cut? It seems like the relationship is quite serious, and I’m trying to read up on ways to be supportive.

My son is now threatening to cut off contact for a few months if I can’t immediately get on board with this new development. I love my son and Alec seems lovely too—but I can’t help feeling anxious about the risk of transmission. I’m not homophobic. I just need some processing time without the threat of “I’m going to cut you off if you can’t understand that love is love” constantly hanging over my head. Am I being unreasonable? How can I handle this?

A: Yes, you’re being extremely unreasonable, not to mention invasive, intrusive, rude, homophobic, and cruel. If you don’t knock it off immediately, your son is absolutely going to stop talking to you and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. Your son is still qualified to make his own romantic decisions despite not having been alive in the ‘80s. Simply because you knew someone living with HIV more than 30 years ago does not make you an expert on medical best practices now, and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to demand private, sensitive medical information from your son’s boyfriend the moment you meet him. Your attempt to disguise your cruelty as “concern” is absolutely reprehensible, as is your attempt to treat Alec like a ticking time bomb whose mere presence around children—children you have no idea whether your son and Alec are even interested in having!—is a possible death sentence.

If you have general medical questions about transmission and treatment, consult a doctor or the CDC, which has published a number of pamphlets on the subject and addressed many common myths. You don’t need to “read up on ways to be supportive”—you know exactly what you need to do to be supportive. Apologize for your conduct, treat your son and his boyfriend like adults who are capable of making their own decisions and safeguarding their own health, and don’t ask rude personal questions under the guise of “anxiety.”

https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/04/dear-prudence-hiv-dating-risks-safety-parenting-advice.html

(there are some comments from readers if you scroll down)

****

Dear Mom: You and your son seem to be playing a game of sorts. He tells you that he is gay, and your eventual reaction is that you only want him to be happy with a partner of "whatever gender."

Mom - I have news for you: he has chosen his gender, and it's not "whatever."

He then introduces you to lovely "Adam" via Zoom and immediately broadsides you with perplexing health news.

You quickly leap to the remote improbability that these two will have children and that Adam will infect their children. Whoa!

I've got a pro-tip that will make your life much easier. If you don't know what to say or how to react to any given situation - respond only in generalities: "Oh, I see." "Wow - that caught me off-guard. I don't really know what to say."

Give yourself time to process things, even if you feel pushed to react.

This is NOT the 1980s. You can read more about HIV, treatments and risks on the CDC website: CDC.gov/hiv/basics.

With antiretroviral therapy, people with HIV can reduce the viral load enough that it is considered to be undetectable. That is a life-saving medical advance.

You should ask your son (as carefully as possible) about his own health -- this might be his way of trying to tell you that he also has HIV.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2361507?fs

Comments

[conuly]

LW may remember the 1980s, but clearly she slept through the last three decades. I can understand not knowing that somebody with undetectable levels of HIV can't transmit it, but how can anybody in this day and age still be pulling out that canard of "what if they spread it through a small cut?"

[minoanmiss]

The last thing I would tell this LW is to even suggest the possibility that her son is HIV+, with her attitudes in this state. Oh dear. Good luck, son.

[cereta]

...UGH.

[ioplokon]

Generally good advice, though I wish they were clearer about spelling out that undetectable = untransmittable vs just linking to the CDC (sure, responsible people will click thru but... it doesn't hurt to be plain about the current advances in treating + living with HIV)

I also think the mom has kind of ruined any chance of being able to inquire about her son's serostatus in a neutral or careful way, for the time being. She's clearly lost a lot of his trust & should work on that rather than put him on the spot about HIV.

[redbird]

If her son came out "a few years ago" and she "struggled at first," that means that she reacted badly to her son's sexual orientation in the 2010s.

I don't buy her claim of not being homophobic, and I doubt her son does either. (Frankly, I'm not convinced about that claim of having lost a friend to AIDS, either, but that doesn't much matter for answering the question.)

[fred_mouse]

I'm willing to believe the lost a friend, but I'm willing to bet that that friend was either not a gay man, or wasn't out to her early on.

[shirou]

Wow, Danny's response was aggressive and... mean? I get the impulse to tell off "mom" for being invasive and homophobic. However, I think it's a step too far to say she's merely disguising cruelty as concern. It is possible to do something cruel out of genuine concern, and although horribly misguided, I think that could be the case here. I like the second response, with some basic medical information included (minus the left-field suggestion that the son might have HIV).

[rosefox]

Yeah, agreed.

[ayebydan]

I got this vibe too. I know sites like agony aunt sites and even reaction places like this don't want to be all 'real world' but...this is kind of reality. LW is...wrong but I don't think she is trying to be horrendous. 'Will they have to' Rather than 'They will have to' in regards to the possible children's father. I also noted she didn't shut down the idea of them having kids.

Idk she strikes me as a very confused trying parent who has screwed up a lot and I think that is more realistic of parents who are not on the internet than those who are.

[laurajv]

On the one hand, yes, Danny went off.

On the other hand, anyone who wrote to a queer person expecting a polite response to their homophobia kind of...came to the absolutely wrong address.

[lilysea]

Also from that Dear Prudie post:

Q. Re: My son is dating an HIV-positive man: The key to the letter is in the first sentence: “When my son first came out a few years ago, I struggled at first.” I have a hunch that this is why the son reacted the way he did. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for those of us who lived through the horrors of the AIDS crisis in the ‘80s and ‘90s to have that knee-jerk reaction, although I would hope that I could bite my tongue and do some reading about how HIV is now essentially a manageable chronic condition like asthma or diabetes. (Even some cancers are manageable chronic conditions.) It is almost curable now, given how effective some of the treatments are. The world has changed a lot since we were your son’s age. You do owe him a big apology and need to try to see the world through something other than the lens we grew up with. This is not the last time he will present you with a different way of living or being that is threatening to you.

A: I agree that the letter writer’s own admission of past homophobia is the key to their current expression of homophobia. One of the primary purposes of politeness, of etiquette, of social niceties is creating a buffer between one’s initial “knee-jerk” reaction to something and one’s public acts of speech and behavior. (Nor are “knee-jerk” reactions necessarily the most “natural” or “unguarded” ones—often they are the result of learned prejudice. Conflating an instantaneous response with a “natural” or “obvious” one goes a long way toward justifying things like racism and homophobia.) Yes, it’s true that treatment protocols have advanced significantly in the past 30 years. But even if HIV were not “manageable,” it would still be rude, cruel, and dehumanizing to say, upon first meeting someone living with HIV, “Oh my God, I’m so upset about this—if you have children with my son, won’t you live in fear that you’ll infect them and they’ll end up like you?”

Q. Re: My son is dating an HIV-positive man: I can’t help but wonder whether the mother has been living under a rock or something. Has she not heard of PrEP? Or of how someone can have HIV and be undetected? I am fully on board with your response, but maybe these pointers could help the mother get started on how the landscape has changed since the ‘80s?

A: That struck me too. I didn’t want to get too lost in the weeds of how far behind she seems to be on general HIV-related news because her behavior is objectionable on other grounds than simply “Oh, don’t worry, this is safer than you realize.” But it is also true that there’s a great deal of information about HIV treatment and management that may set some of her fears to rest.

Q. Re: My son is dating an HIV-positive man: “If you don’t knock it off immediately, your son is absolutely going to stop talking to you and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself” is not a helpful thing to say at this time.

Everyone is afraid that they or someone they love is going to die from an invisible virus that has stopped the world. Now add in a known risk (and, yes, it’s a risk, just like diabetes or a heart condition) coupled with the mother living through the experience of losing a friend from this illness. She is flashing back to her experience. Good lord, I am having PTSD from being trapped in your country during 9/11. Instead of being helpful and supportive to a woman who has distanced from her family member, learning news over Zoom, living in a frightened time, you chastise her and call her cruel. You are the cruel person to throw such words out at his time.

A: I think it’s helpful to acknowledge reality, and I disagree strongly that all fear ought to be treated as reasonable justification for all types of behavior. It is true that her son is prepared to cut her off if she continues to insist that her fear of seropositive people justifies rude and intrusive questioning. The very problem in this woman’s life is her belief that, if she’s afraid of something, she’s allowed to treat other people as obstructions, as potential contaminants, as people whose very existence threatens her safety. Coddling that fear would be the worst thing I could do for her.

[cimorene]

it would still be rude, cruel, and dehumanizing to say, upon first meeting someone living with HIV, “Oh my God, I’m so upset about this—if you have children with my son, won’t you live in fear that you’ll infect them and they’ll end up like you?” sums it up neatly and that's why I'm with Danny on this. The last A there also explains quite well why the response is as baldly stated as it is: it's not 'mean' to tell someone they're being cruel just because they arguably are motivated by concern if the context is that they asked why their son is mad and their son is definitely hurt because they were cruel to him; it's explanatory, and what she needed was a wakeup call.

An adult should be capable of having adult conversations without thoughtlessly saying cruel things. No matter how scared or concerned she is, it's still 100% her responsibility to treat her son and any partner he introduces to her with civility and there's still no scenario where THAT was an acceptable response. On the contrary, she had a responsibility to not be cruel and no right to ask the intrusive questions and her motivation has no bearing on that.

[starfleetbrat]

"without the threat of “I’m going to cut you off if you can’t understand that love is love” constantly hanging over my head."

That's an argument about his sexuality, not about his partner having HIV, so I think there is definitely some ongoing issues with LW accepting his sexuality. Sounds like maybe the LW is latching onto the HIV as the argument for why her son shouldn't be with someone of his own gender. News flash for the LW. Anyone can be HIV positive. Not just gay men. Straight women can be too.