Questions Of, For & About Consent

  • What Would an HIV Doula Do?

What Would an HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD) is a collective who conceptualize ways of better supporting people with HIV while also intervening in the lack of present-day AIDS-related discourse. Considering how there are doulas specializing in birth, abortion aftercare, end-of-life, and gender transition, they ask: how might we imagine a doula for a culture living with HIV? The collective, which has members across the US and in Canada, is named as a question, which is a fundamental feature of their methodology: the questions they ask challenge HIV narratives from personal and political perspectives. This can be guiding, unsettling, confrontational, and liberating. Some questions are rhetorical, others are more pointed, while others operate like statements.  

WWHIVDD uses printed matter, PDFs, pamphlets, and zines to share their work, which is all free to download online, and with many of their materials shared in English and Spanish. WWHIVDD actively engages broad local communities, enabling more people to access these resources and contribute to the conversation.  

Questions Of, For & About Consent was created initially for a 2016 screening of the short documentary, CONSENT: HIV Non-Disclosure and Sexual Assault Law produced by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Goldelox Productions. The titular questions were used to spur on post-screening conversation, and extend it beyond that one-time event, guiding self-reflection on how we learn about consent, HIV, stigma, and the ways testing positive intersects with overlapping oppressions like racism, criminalization, and sexual violence. By asking questions as a processing tool—instead of providing answers—WWHIVDD frames an open-ended dialogue that folds in various levels of knowledge and life experiences. Readers are inclined to fill in gaps of understanding by using the questions to guide further research. 

A chart made of black text and horizontal lines printed on a white background. The chart title in large print at the top reads “Questions of, for, and about consent” and various questions appear below.



The What Would an HIV Doula Do? collective comprises artists, activists, academics, chaplains, doulas, health care practitioners, nurses, filmmakers, AIDS service organization employees, dancers, community educators, and others from across the HIV spectrum joined in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis. We understand a doula as someone in community who holds space for others during a time of transition. For us, HIV is a series of moments in someone’s life that does not start with diagnosis nor end with treatment or death.

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