WATCH: DatingPositives' Moving Tribute To The AIDS Epidemic

From the first chat that Josh Robbins had with DatingPositives, he found their commitment to the community was deep and authentic. This was one of his paramount concerns when weighing the decision to partner with them.

“From the webseries,Life with Josh, to their blog, WAXoh!, the team clearly wants to educate about STIs, reduce stigma, and believes everyone deserves love (or a date or a hookup). And I agree, completely! Their sensitivity to the issues around entering this niche dating space is important — they believe people should have a choice and venue to date without fear of being stigmatized.”

Photo above: Josh Robbins

Although Robbins is adept and comfortable disclosing his status — there still remains a lot of anxiety around having to disclose because of stigma. “I still understand the fear of rejection that many of us feel when having that awkward conversation about living with an STI to a potential partner.”

DatingPositives is one platform that alleviates most of that stress. That in turn takes  huge pressure off of the already emotionally fraught experience of dating — which subsequently leads to the kind of foundation that’s crucial to a successful relationship, as well as living successfully with an STI.

“My aim with this partnership is to continue to provide meaningful, digestible content that resonates with a cool, niche audience — the same audience that I spend so much time advocating for.”  

In his role as spokesperson, he has incredible latitude to craft a meaningful tribute video in honor of World AIDS Day; to spend time remembering and reflecting on the over 35 million lives lost in the AIDS epidemic.

Robbins says, “It’s really cool that DatingPositives produced this World AIDS Day video highlighting two stories of people that passed away from HIV during the epidemic and were one of the first lives enshrined in The AIDS Memorial Quilt. One of whom covered the disease for The Advocate during the plague years.”

“World AIDS Day is a day to not only remember those we lost—but celebrate them—I think this video did just that,” Robbins concludes. 

Check out DatingPositives and watch the video below.