readwithpride.com When we think of MM romance books, our minds often drift to the rain-slicked streets of London, the neon lights of New York, or maybe a cozy small town in Vermont. But there’s a whole world of passion, longing, and identity waiting to be explored in the heart of the Middle East and among …

Desert Hearts: Arab Protagonists in MM RomanceRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about queer history, we often look to the “usual suspects”: San Francisco in the 70s, London in the 90s, or Berlin in the 20s. But if we pull back the curtain on the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire, we find a rich, steamy, and deeply communal history of male intimacy …

The Hammam: A History of Male IntimacyRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about being gay in the Middle East, the conversation usually goes one of two ways: it’s either a story of extreme hardship and underground living, or it’s a flashy highlight reel of a Tel Aviv beach party. But for those living at the intersection of faith, heritage, and sexuality, the reality …

Faith and Pride: Being Gay and Jewish in the Middle EastRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about queer life in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the conversation usually goes one of two ways. It’s either a heartbreaking tragedy of oppression or a sanitized “pinkwashing” narrative. But here in 2026, the real story is happening in the messy, brave, and incredibly vibrant middle ground. There’s a …

The New Guard: The Future of Queer Rights in the Arab WorldRead More

readwithpride.com To understand where we are today, browsing for the latest MM romance books or downloading LGBTQ+ eBooks on a Sunday afternoon, we have to look back at a time when our community wasn’t just fighting for the right to love, but literally fighting for the right to breathe. If you’ve ever picked up a …

The Front Lines: San Francisco’s Early Fight Against AIDSRead More

readwithpride.com If you’ve ever walked through a Pride parade or scrolled through the history sections of Read with Pride, you’ve seen it. Six simple words in stark, white Futura font, sitting under a neon pink triangle on a black background: SILENCE = DEATH. It’s arguably the most iconic piece of political art in history, but …

Silence = Death: The Legacy of ACT UPRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, we often talk about riots, parades, and legal battles. But some of the most powerful moments in our shared journey didn’t happen in a courtroom or behind a barricade: they happened over a sewing machine. In the mid-1980s, the world was a terrifying place …

Stitched with Love: The AIDS Memorial QuiltRead More

readwithpride.com If you’ve spent any time browsing the shelves of gay historical romance or watching queer cinema, you know that the 1980s and 1990s carry a specific kind of weight. It’s a period of our history defined by immense loss, but also by a level of grit and resilience that honestly makes us look like …

The Turning Point: HIV in the 1990sRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s be real for a second: the way we talk about sex, intimacy, and health in the LGBTQ+ community has shifted massively over the last few decades. If you’ve been keeping up with our latest gay novels or diving into MM romance books set in the modern day, you’ve probably noticed characters mentioning “the …

PrEP and PEP: The Modern Toolkit for Sexual HealthRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s be real for a second: the dating world is a minefield. Between ghosting, breadcrumbing, and trying to figure out if that guy in the gym is actually looking at you or just the squat rack, there is a lot to navigate. But for many in our community, there’s an extra layer of anxiety …

Undetectable = Untransmittable: Ending the StigmaRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, we often speak in terms of “before” and “after.” There’s the era before Stonewall and the era after. But for a massive portion of our community, the most defining timeline is 1996. That was the year the “cocktail”: highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART): changed …

Long-Term Survivors: The Generation That Made It ThroughRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s get real for a second. When we talk about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, we can’t skip the chapters that hurt. At Read with Pride, we’re all about the swoony MM romance books and the “happily ever afters” that make our hearts skip a beat, but we also know that real life …

HIV in Africa: Resilience in the Face of AdversityRead More

readwithpride.com While many of us in the West are celebrating the massive strides made in HIV prevention: thanks to PrEP, U=U (Undetectable = Untransmittable), and better healthcare access: there is a corner of the world where the clock isn’t just stopping; it’s ticking backward. We’re talking about Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA). At Read …

The Hidden Crisis: HIV in Eastern Europe’s Queer CommunityRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about the history of the LGBTQ+ community, we often focus on the big, sweeping victories: the marches, the legislative wins, and the beautiful explosion of queer fiction and MM romance books that line our shelves today. But at Read with Pride, we believe in telling the whole story, even the parts …

HIV and the Trans Community: An Intersectional StruggleRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s be real: as a community, we’ve been through the wringer when it comes to public health. We’ve fought for visibility, for research, and for the simple right to stay alive. So, when news started breaking in 2022 about a “new” virus circulating primarily among gay and bisexual men, the collective groan could be …

Beyond HIV: The Impact of Mpox on the LGBTQ+ CommunityRead More

readwithpride.com When we talk about the 1980s in our community, the conversation usually shifts pretty quickly to the neon lights, the synth-pop, and: inevitably: the dark shadow of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It was a time of immense fear, but if you look closer at the history, it was also a time of radical, defiant love. …

A History of Care: The “Buddy” Systems of the 80sRead More

readwithpride.com If you grew up as a queer kid in the 90s, your first introduction to the HIV/AIDS crisis likely came through a flickering TV screen or a heavy-duty cinema seat. For a long time, the narrative was pretty much a one-way street: tragedy, hospital gowns, and a lot of sobbing in courtrooms. Fast forward …

From Philadelphia to It’s a Sin: HIV in Cinema and TVRead More

readwithpride.com For a long time, if you picked up a piece of queer fiction featuring a character with HIV, you knew exactly how it was going to end. You’d need a literal pallet of tissues, a dark room to sob in, and a therapist on speed dial. It was the era of the “sad gay …

HIV in MM Romance: Writing Stories of Hope and HealthRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s be real for a second: life isn’t always like the “happily ever after” we find in our favorite MM romance books. While we all love a good slow-burn or an enemies-to-lovers arc, real life often throws us plot twists that are a lot harder to navigate than a fictional misunderstanding. One of the …

Mental Health and HIV: Navigating Life with the VirusRead More

readwithpride.com Let’s be real for a second: when we talk about the “Roaring Twenties,” we usually think of fringe dresses, jazz, and maybe a little bit of underground rebellion. We didn’t exactly expect the 2020s to bring back a vintage infection like syphilis with such a vengeance. But here we are in March 2026, and …

The Syphilis Surge: Why Sexual Health Awareness Still MattersRead More