Are sugar-daddies to blame for HIV transmission?
The title of this article in the renowned Scientific American magazine caught my eye the other day.
I have written in the past about the research conducted in South Africa that found that sugar-daddies are not to blame. Or should I say not to take full blame for the epidemic?
The image is easy to conjure: The older man, let us give him a Toyota Prado, a bank manager job, a fat stomach and an ill-fitting suit frequenting the girls’ dormitories of the Malawi Polytechnic.
Intergenerational sex—sex between people of vastly different ages—is associated with lower condom use, the illogical thought that unprotected sex will somehow yield to more financial gain and a higher social status.
The Scientific American article describes the South Africa study that found that intergenerational sex did not have an impact on the likelihood of contracting HIV.
Don’t get this wrong; this needs to be stressed quite carefully that women in intergenerational relationships were equally likely (not more likely) as women in other types of relationships to become infected with HIV.
The authors of the study suggest one reason is that older men are more likely to be HIV infected than younger men, but the difference lies in that older men are more likely to be on ARVs and not have transmissible HIV.
Furthermore, for women with partners closer to their age, it is more likely that these “younger” partners have several casual relationships and, therefore, are more likely to have infectious i.e. transmissible HIV.
Sugar daddy relationships often are weirdly monogamous or at least in the sense, it is between the husband, wife and the side chick.
It is difficult to determine what the drivers for the HIV epidemic are, but it is likely to a multitude of factors that affect some not others—concurrent relationships, intergenerational sex, commercial sex workers, polygamy…the list goes on.
Regardless of what the drivers might be, one thing is for sure: preserve your integrity and if that is hard, practice safer sex.
