Breaking Binaries? Biomedicine and Serostatus Borderlands among Couples with Mixed HIV Status

ABSTRACT

With recent breakthroughs in HIV treatment and prevention, the meanings of HIV-positivity and HIV-negativity are changing at biomedical and community levels. We explore how binary constructions of HIV serostatus identities are giving way to something more complex that brings both welcome possibilities and potential concerns. We draw on research with couples with mixed HIV status to argue that, in the context of lived experiences, serostatus identities have always been more ambiguous than allowed for in HIV discourse. However, their supposed dichotomous quality seems even more dubious now in view of contemporary biomedical technologies. Invoking the anthropological concept of “borderlands,” we consider how biomedicine is generating more diverse serostatus identities, widening the options for how to live with HIV, and eroding the stigmatizing serostatus binary that has haunted the epidemic. But we also ask whether this emerging borderland, and its “normalizing” tendencies, is concomitantly giving rise to new and troubling binaries.

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KEYWORDS:

• Binaries
• borderlands
• couples
• HIV serostatus
• serodiscordance

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their sincere thanks to all those who participated in the YouMe&HIV study and who gave so generously of their time and stories. We also thank the members of the study advisory committee and the collaborating community organizations. The study was approved by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Committee (approval reference HC12627).

Funding

The YouMe&HIV study was funded by the New South Wales Department of Health and the Australian Government Department of Health.

Additional information

Funding

The YouMe&HIV study was funded by the New South Wales Department of Health and the Australian Government Department of Health.

Notes on contributors

Asha Persson

Asha Persson is a Senior Research Fellow at UNSW Australia Centre for Social Research in Health where she does qualitative research on various cultural and lived aspects of HIV, with particular focus on previously hidden or under-researched populations within the Australian epidemic, including heterosexuals, children growing up with HIV, straight-identified men who have sex with men, and couples with mixed HIV status.

Christy E. Newman

Christy E. Newman is an Associate Professor at the UNSW Australia Centre for Social Research. She is a social researcher of health and relationships and is devoted to understanding our diverse experiences of and responses to sexual health, infectious disease, and chronic illness.

Jeanne Ellard

Jeanne Ellard is a Research Fellow in the National Viral Hepatitis Program at the Australian Centre for Sex, Health & Society at La Trobe University. She has a disciplinary background in Anthropology and research expertise in the areas of HIV, sexuality, sexual health and viral hepatitis.