From the perspective of the husband, the woman taking prep implies she is cheating. He either doesn't get tested or doesn't care, it's more important that she not do the thing that implies she could be cheating than that she not get HIV, and that she be sexually available to him.
You're digging for a logical explanation for a fundamentally illogical cultural problem and you aren't going to get it.
No, that doesn’t make sense. And writing it off as an illogical cultural problem is just lazy. I’ll believe these guys are assholes. I don’t believe they’re just consistently idiots. If the men refused to acknowledge that they had HIV and refused to allow their wives to get prep, then the logical consequence is that the wife gets HIV and the men are forced to confront the fact that either the husbands themselves have HIV or the wife is cheating and got it from someone else.
It seems much more likely that the husbands refuse to allow their wives to get prep out of spite. The implication of infidelity angle does not feel plausible.
Otherwise the men are setting themselves up for a lose:lose scenario regardless of what the wife does.
"the men are forced to confront the fact..." No they aren't, they simply never confront it. People go to their graves denying that they have HIV, denying that they ever tested positive, denying that a positive HIV test has anything to do with illness.
"Otherwise the men are setting themselves up for a lose:lose scenario regardless of what the wife does." - Of course.
I mean, the most rational win:win thing to do is to get an HIV test and get treated if positive. They then both don't get sick and die and can't pass along HIV. Many people don't do that either. What's the mindset that explains this behavior? You can't work backwards from the most rational thing to do to what people actually do.
You are the one injecting this narrative about women cheating though. It seems to me you’re just making this up. It doesn’t make sense.
Establishing the narrative that if my wife gets HIV that she must be cheating on me is a losing proposition for the man that only increases the probability that his wife will appear to be cheating. There is no motivation for it.
Simply being a dick and saying women can’t use prep because I don’t want them to is a much simpler narrative.
Your reasoning here is similar to arguing they’re a stupid people ergo they don’t use prep because of aliens. It’s not compelling even if you’re willing to believe they may engage in irrational behavior.
You asked "why would someone hide prep", you got one example. It is by no means an exhaustive list. For example, a big fear is being perceived as having HIV (since prep drugs are also part of HIV treatment).
If you do actually have interest in this topic you could read about it:
"Men were able to initiate PrEP without discussing it with their partners, whereas some women said they needed to get permission. Discussions around starting PrEP could raise questions about trust and infidelity and act as a barrier to PrEP use."
Well, you have an anecdote from someone claiming to be from SA saying that’s culturally the perception. Here’s a summary of research [1] on the topic concluding similar reasons (among others):
> Several participants felt that they could stop taking PrEP when the need, as they saw it, had passed. Often this was to do with the nature of their current relationship, for example with a person regarded as unfaithful: “If I find someone that I will be in a relationship with and if he is not faithful, or I have started being unfaithful, then I will come back and get them.”
And
> On the basis of these findings, the authors suggest that take-up and continued use of PrEP is likely to remain subject to established social norms. These norms often relate to gender and they determine, for example, who decides what HIV prevention methods to use, and the extent to which a woman in a relationship might – or might not – be able to make and implement such choices.
Just because something seems logical to you, doesn’t mean that social norms and pressures don’t superseded it. In fact, we even see it in our own cultural with people believing vaccines cause autism, the whole belief that ivermectin cures COVID-19, or flat earthers. What’s really impressive though is you having such a problem with this idea despite overwhelming objective evidence to the contrary being available online and people telling you their lived experience on this very website and you significantly discount the very real possibility that people can be illogical in their strongly held beliefs even if it seems nonsensical to you. If you know nothing about a subject, you’re likely to believe what all your peers tell you which is how misinformation gets a foothold. This misinformation can even come from nowhere. The point is that if enough people believe it, they can get others to believe it to. That’s literally how human belief systems work where beliefs spring out of nothing.
Your first quote is saying the opposite of what you are trying to defend. It’s about women taking prep because they believe their husbands are cheating, which makes total sense.
Not HIV husbands forbidding their wives from taking prep because it would enable the wives to cheat or imply that they are cheating
The point is that in the scenario being described, where the woman feels she needs "permission", the man's perspective is... if you were taking this, what does that say about ME? What does that say about what you think about ME? The decision would be about him, not her. How could it be about her? Wait, if it's not about ME, who else do you need this for? MY wife would never need such a thing.
It is easy to avoid stigma and shame through denial. The woman would be well aware that he would not approve such a thing and would take it in secret.
I mean you literally have women saying they take it if they are cheating.
> Some of the women were prevented by their male partner from taking or continuing PrEP: “I showed him the pill. He immediately stopped me from saying more before mentioning he had heard about PrEP and that he was strongly against the pill... He ordered me to throw them away or else pack my bags and leave. And that was why I stopped taking them.”
Here’s some more explicit quotes [1]:
> Another concern was that partners would interpret PrEP use as evidence of sexual activity outside the relationship.
> “I didn’t tell him about the pills. I was hesitant because he will say, ‘Why are you preventing HIV? Are you cheating now because we don’t have HIV so why are you taking pills?’ So, I decided to keep quiet. I am going to tell him. But for now, I haven’t told him about it.” PrEP User, Lower adherer, Age 21
It even makes sense that your partner taking PrEP would be seen as evidence of having an affair if you are convinced that neither of you had HIV prior. So not only do you continue on doubling down on a losing position, it’s not even an illogical line of reasoning to have.
I’d say the burden of proof is on you at this point that such an interpretation isn’t a social norm or that it’s even an illogical position to have.
