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Comment by jncfhnb | Hacker News Reader

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.

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"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:

https://www.aidsmap.com/news/feb-2020/your-partner-not-angel...

"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."

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