Untransmittable scepticism and stigma: understanding gay and bisexual men’s perspectives towards sexual partners living with HIV
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: ‘Untransmittable scepticism’ is defined as hesitancy to fully embrace that an undetectable viral load (UVL) is zero risk. Recent research has identified wide variation but slightly increased willingness (due to UVL and PrEP) amongst gay and bisexual men (GBM) to have a sexual partner living with HIV, including when the partner has an UVL. The aim of this qualitative study was to better understand HIV stigma amongst GBM and those living outside of inner-Sydney, who may be less familiar with people living with HIV (PLHIV). Methods: In 2023, 32 GBM participated in semi-structured interviews. GBM were cisgender men, mostly gay (n=25), with 14 young (18-25 years), 16 living in regional NSW, and 11 in Greater Western Sydney. 27 were HIV-negative (7 currently using PrEP) and 5 were living with HIV. Data were analysed thematically. Results: Amongst HIV-negative GBM, three themes were developed: Open (n=9) comprised participants willing to have casual sex with PLHIV, based on comfort with UVL or their own PrEP or condom use. Engagement with health promotion (including ACON workshops) and contact with PLHIV was associated with openness. Caution (n=9) included hypothetical willingness but with reservations, including about trust in the partners’ antiretroviral adherence, or needing more confidence and education. Rejective (n=6) comprised those who stated active avoidance of PLHIV, and they indicated heightened fears of acquiring HIV, mistrust of UVL, stigmatising attitudes towards PLHIV, or lack of knowledge about UVL. Conclusion: Untransmittable scepticism in this study included suspicion of partners’ antiretroviral adherence, low knowledge of HIV transmission risk, fears of acquiring HIV, lack of familiarity with PLHIV, and stigmatising views of PLHIV. Many in this sample lived in Greater Western Sydney and regional parts of NSW, indicating a need to address stigma and mistrust through targeted education and visibility of PLHIV to reduce untransmittable scepticism.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".