Poz

Poz is casual, community-owned slang for being HIV-positive. Many people prefer it to clinical language in everyday conversation because it feels plain, familiar, and self-defined rather than medicalized. The term became especially visible with POZ, an award-winning magazine founded in 1994 by activist Sean Strub, which has chronicled the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS ever since. Poz identity ties into a long tradition of advocacy, mutual aid, and activism that grew out of the AIDS crisis. With modern antiretroviral treatment, a person living with HIV can expect a near-normal life span, and someone with an undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV sexually, a fact summed up by the phrase Undetectable equals Untransmittable.