HIV Prevention and Ending Stigma

Adam's Nest is sex positive! Know your status. Get tested. Change stigma. 

Prior to becoming Adam's Nest there was a small business started called "offontheweb".  It began as a tumblr page described as a place: "for the love and lust of men... A place for prurient imagery, utterances, language, what-not, musings, and all else that strikes one's fancy to reside."  The idea was to be a sex-positive place to help spread the word about PrEP; otherwise known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, a daily pill approved by the FDA to prevent HIV infection and AIDS.

A friendship with Damon L Jacobs, founder of a group on facebook called  "PrEP Facts: Rethinking HIV Prevention and Sex" led to the creation of a number of "PrEP" t-shirts and cemented the importance of having a sex-positive vibe at Adam's Nest.

Damon wears many of our products when traveling around the county talking about PrEP.  One of the richest experiences in the Provincetown shop is explaining to people unaware about the existence of PrEP.  The other thing that happens are discussions with customers of a certain age how PrEP has really impacted them and their sexual activities.  For many sex has been an activity fraught with fear, and they are now experiencing a completely different relationship with sex.  The fear cloud is slowly lifting and many are experiencing in middle age, for the first time, sex without fear. 

Adam's Nest is sex positive! Know your status. Get tested. Change stigma.  Proactive, responsible, empowered, pleasure, PrEP.  Arm yourself against HIV, how you do so is a personal choice and there is no shame and nothing wrong with your decision, regardless of what it is. We loved the Truvada whore shirt that was popping up a few years back, but as Damon mentioned whores get paid, so we felt the acronym he coined:  S.L.U.T. - sexually liberated using Truvada was a more apt moniker for those on the daily pill regimen.

Above our friend Alex Guerra of Hôtel Gaythering; a queer, sex positive hotel on Miami's South Beach featuring a sauna and a neighborhood bar; Friday nights is "bears & hares".  Be sure to check them out if on South Beach; and if you're in town for Art Basel; be sure to visit their concurrent queer art fair "Art Gaysel" featuring queer artists from around the globe.

Another group educating the community is the Prevention Access Campaign.  Their mission is providing equal access to the HIV Prevention Revolution and bases its communication on science not stigma.  All people living with HIV have a right to accurate and meaningful information about their social, sexual, and reproductive health.  

"In 2016, the Prevention Access Campaign, a health equity initiative with the goal of ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic as well as HIV-related stigma, launched the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U = U) initiative.  U = U signifies that individuals with HIV who receive antiretroviral therapy (ART) and have achieved and maintained an undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit the virus to others. This concept, based on strong scientific evidence, has broad implications for treatment of HIV infection from a scientific and public health standpoint, for the self-esteem of individuals by reducing the stigma associated with HIV, and for certain legal aspects of HIV criminalization."

We created our "U = U" t-shirt to help stop stigma and get the message out about this important finding.  Data over dogma; facts not fear; science not stigma; and evidence over emotions.  A huge shout out to Bruce Richman in making it his mission to get the message out.  Our community is filled with people fighting for change and we are proud to have been a part in a small way of helping Karl Schmid share the message as well.

#endAIDS #PrEPWarrior #UequalsU #HIVequal #BeTheGeneration #TruvadaWhore #greaterthanAIDS #PrEP #ScienceNotStigma #FactsNotFear #queersexed #fstigma