The Rock Hudson Era

Actor and director Eduardo Casanova has announced on Instagram that he is HIV-positive. "Today I break this unpleasant and painful silence after so many years. A silence that so many people with HIV keep and suffer. I'm doing it for myself, but I hope this can help more people," he wrote. That a public figure makes a decision like this is still news. Of course, we can all continue with our lives and the world won't stop, as a legion of trolls has been quick to proclaim. The comment sections of websites and social media have been filled with expressions of support, but also with arguments, questions, reproaches, and, ultimately, judgments that no one needed. Casanova least of all. As happens when someone freely shares their sexual orientation, those who haven't understood anything question that "that's their business," that there's no need to broadcast it. That it's none of their business.

Privacy is a right, not an obligation. When someone decides to speak out, they are not betraying their privacy: they are using it politically. HIV-positive status is not neutral information, but rather information laden with stigma. Censoring its sharing is to demand that the stigma continue to render it invisible. What is private is not HIV itself, but the prejudice that many prefer not to examine. Therefore, exposing oneself in this way is not exhibitionism, but social responsibility stemming from vulnerability, not from moral superiority. And yes, perhaps all these obsessive questions about "who cares" haven't considered that it matters to those who have HIV and haven't been able to share it with anyone, to those who are afraid to get tested, or to those who believe that this "doesn't happen anymore" because they don't see it in their environment. And if it's no longer a problem, why does it bother them?

As long as verbs like "confess" are used, as if being HIV-positive were a crime, we will have to talk about the issue; one that, until not so many years ago, was a taboo, a disgrace, and a shame that devastated the lives of millions of people. Today it has become a chronic illness that still requires education and explanation that a person with an undetectable HIV virus does not transmit the virus, and that it is not exclusive to homosexuals and drug addicts. It may seem obvious, because we are not in 1985, but some people still seem to live in the time of Rock Hudson. Silence does not protect: information does. It's not bothersome that Eduardo Casanova has HIV. What is bothersome is that he says so without apologizing.