Social media star Gena Tew surprised her fans with a revelation about sex and her "biggest pet peeve."
Tew, 27, revealed in March 2022 that she had been diagnosed with AIDS and since then has been asked the same question by fans.
"Even though you are sick do you still crave sex?" one fan asked in the comment section of one of her TikToks.
"Hey, hey! Weird question, but I get it, I get it," Tew began before explaining she broke up with her boyfriend because she wasn't "sexually motivated."
"Everyone sees me and thinks, 'oh she's a freak,' honestly no, I hate being touched it's one of my biggest, biggest pet peeves.
"Most of the time I faked it, I'm not going to lie."
She also revealed she used to need alcohol to have sex but because she had been sober for two years was not very interested in sex.
Tew has been documenting her health journey on TikTok and in November shared some exciting news.
She told her more than 840,000 followers that the count of CD4 cells—a white blood cell that helps fight infection—in her blood had been boosted. Untreated HIV can cause the number of CD4 cells to die and affect a patient's immune response.
In a video clip, she said: "I just had my recent bloodwork done, and as you know… my CD4 count was 112. So now it is 159. So I think in the next three-and-a-half to four months, I'll be over 200. I'm excited."
Once she reaches a threshold of above 200, Tew will officially be classified as living with HIV rather than AIDS, as per the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The influencer also revealed in September her viral load was undetectable meaning she cannot transmit HIV to another person through sex, needle sharing or to a fetus should she become pregnant. It would also greatly reduce her risk of transmitting HIV to her baby if she breastfed.
"I am undetectable, you guys. That means untransmittable," she said on TikTok. "With that being said, people are asking me, 'Are you going to marry or have a baby with someone with AIDS?' I don't need to marry somebody with AIDS. They don't have to have AIDS. That means I cannot transmit it to the other person."
Having an undetectable viral load for people living with HIV is the CDC's aim in its mission of "treatment as prevention," to reduce transmission of the virus.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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