FRANÇAIS TABLE OF CONTENTS PRINT-READY PDF PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE RELATED LINKS SUBSCRIBE
The Positive Side Spring 2003
Volume 6, Issue2
Women's Words: Janet Conners
Janet Conners, 47
Hatchet Lake, Nova Scotia
Diagnosed with HIV: 1989
CD4 count: over 600
Viral load: undetectable
Wannabe retired AIDS activist.
From the moment we’re diagnosed, we begin a struggle to remain a whole woman. First and foremost, we tend to become a walking, talking virus. You become defined by your virus: You’re an HIV+ woman. You’re not young, old, a mother, a woman of colour, a schoolteacher…. I don’t think that happens with men.
Still to a large degree, there’s a pretty dehumanizing element within the medical community. In some of my earlier experiences, somehow there was the assumption that I have the virus and therefore I’m not sexual anymore, I don’t really have the right to be sexual anymore. And, if I’m going to be, the onus for prevention of pregnancy and infection falls on me.
I can’t tell you how many times people (both within and outside of the AIDS community) said to me after my husband died: “Surely you can find a nice, straight HIV+ guy out there.” As if the only person I could ever date again has to be HIV+. To me, that puts us into some kind of second-class place. So, it’s not bad enough how dirty or infected you feel once you’re diagnosed, but now you’re second class and you can only date an HIV+ man. I think it also speaks volumes about the perception of HIV+ men.
My husband, Randy, has been dead for nine years and I’ve been with my partner for three years. For six years I didn’t date. I completely withdrew. I was in mourning for Randy, and because his experience showed me what I could expect, I was also mourning the loss of my own future. I threw myself into work. And I surrounded myself within the gay community. It was kind of like being at a smorgasbord with your mouth wired shut, surrounded by beautiful, intelligent, attractive, interesting men that I could never have.
My partner Terry and I met at a single’s dance for “older” people. It had nothing to do with HIV. My best friend convinced me to go to these dances. It was my first big leap back into the straight social world. I met him at the third dance I went to. His response when we talked about my HIV status was: “Well, quite frankly, I probably feel safer with you than I would with any other woman. Firstly, you know you have HIV, and secondly, you probably know more about HIV prevention than any other woman in this province.”
This past December 22nd, Terry gathered our combined family and literally got down on bent knee and proposed to me.
There are so many people working against us continuing to be a complete or total woman, and it’s a battle, but we can do it.
| 
