That night, I searched the internet for information about HIV for the first time. The woman on the other end of the line seemed disorganized and squeaked out, 'We need you to come in.' I was a senior in college and was walking to my car after a morning yoga session when I got a call from the student clinic. I discovered the symbol on a damp, balmy day in Savannah, Georgia, when I tested positive at 21 years old. For queer men, the idea had some practicality: Such tattoos would wordlessly communicate HIV-positive status to others and make the business of disclosure easier.Īmong the many HIV-related tattoos, one has become widely recognizable: the international biohazard symbol, which appears on medical packaging for hazardous materials like viral samples and used hypodermic needles. In 2011, London South Bank University professor Richard Sawdon Smith told CNN that many people living with HIV may have gotten HIV tattoos as an act of defiance to Buckley's proposal. They 'should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals,' Buckley wrote.īuckley's proposal, among the earliest known mentions of a codified HIV tattoo, spurred several backlash letters, with immediate comparison made to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.
