February 3, 2021 | Porn Stars

John Thomas explains work as HIV+ porn star

John Thomas, winner of Best Newcomer at the 2019 Prowler European Porn Awards, is proving you can have a thriving career in porn while living with HIV. In fact, when not shooting porn, he works as an educator, and hopes to dispel many of the lingering misconceptions people still have about the disease.

He most recently teamed up with the UK-based Terrence Higgins Trust  for its "Give HIV the Finger".

“I was quite young when I found out I was HIV-positive," John told Attitude Magazine. “I was probably the kind of person who would have been on PrEP had PrEP been on offer when I was younger.

“It’s really important for me to try to spread an awareness message to other gay men and particularly young gay men to help them take control of their sexual health, and to enjoy themselves while minimising the risks of contracting HIV.”

Son of a priest and sent to religious schools as a kid, John fled to London at an early age to more freely explore his sexuality. In 2010, at the age of 22, he was diagnosed with HIV.

He explained: “I’d had a negative test in December and a positive test in March, so it really narrowed the window that I knew I’d probably contracted it, and that I’d potentially put other people at risk."

“If I’d not had a test for a long time, in terms of my personal health it might have been OK, but I may have really struggled with feelings of guilt of possibly unknowingly passing it on to other people over a much longer period of time.”

At 30, Thomas decided to pursue a career in porn, something he had thought about for several years..

“When I applied to Tim Tales, which is the company I started working with, I disclosed my status as part of the application and it wasn’t a barrier to working with them at all,” John revealed. “In my experience, people who are in porn are either positive and on medication, or they’re on PrEP, so the risk of HIV transmission in the gay porn industry is minimised.

“There are still models who don’t want to work with HIV-positive performers. I’m aware of one performer who I would have wanted to work with, but they wouldn’t have wanted to work with me because of my status. I tend to think of it more as their loss. I’m not going to carry the burden of somebody else’s ignorance or prejudice."

His biggest hope, now, is to convince others to get tested and be aware of their status.

You can find out more about Thomas and his journey here! And you can check out his galleries here!