Sexual Anxiety Among Women Living with HIV in the Era of Antiretroviral Treatment Suppressing HIV Transmission

Radical Pleasure: Feminist Digital Storytelling by, with, and for Women Living with HIV

“…Emerging empirical evidence suggests the #UequalsU campaign has made it possible for some people living with HIV to reimagine stigmatized identities and sexualities (Tan, Lim, & Chan, 2020), even before this breakthrough finding became a hashtag (Persson, 2016). However, as we have previously argued (Carter et al, 2020;Roche, 2018b), advances in biomedicine do not serve women in the same way they do men, as their situations are often more vulnerable due to the disproportionate impact of socioeconomic inequities on women's sexualities (Carter et al, 2017). Moreover, women's voices are frequently muted, sidelined, and ignored in HIV-related public policy and discourse, unless under the label of "women's interests," particularly in countries in the Global North where women constitute a minority of those affected by HIV.…”

“…Over the past 5 years, we published a number of research papers concerning the sexual rights of women living with HIV in Canada (Carter et al, 2017(Carter et al, , 2018a(Carter et al, , 2018b(Carter et al, , 2019(Carter et al, , 2020Kaida et al, 2015;Patterson et al, 2017Patterson et al, , 2019Salters et al, 2017). Given the lack of sex-positive resources for this community, we created Life and Love with HIV to disrupt narratives of danger and disease, and to ensure women's stories of love, romance, and sexuality-which have deep historic, economic, and political roots-were heard.…”

“…The Canadian HIV Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study (CHIWOS) is one of the largest community-based cohorts of women living with HIV in the world, with more than 1400 participants contributing three time-points of data about their experiences (Loutfy et al, 2016(Loutfy et al, , 2017. Grounded in a critical feminist theoretical framework that acknowledges women's multiple, overlapping identities within a context of connected systems of power (Crenshaw, 1989;Hooks, 1984), we have conducted research on women's sexual activity and satisfaction (Kaida et al, 2015), sexual pleasure (Carter et al, 2018a), sexual importance (Carter et al, 2018b), (lack of) sexual anxiety (Carter et al, 2020), new agentic forms of safer sex (Patterson et al, 2017), the multidimensional nature of love and relationships (Carter et al, 2019), and acts of resilience and resistance to the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure (Kaida et al, 2019b).…”