3.3 Anthropological Issues 45
3.3.6 Gender and Vulnerability 59
This issue of violence against women is a violation of human rights, and a major contributory factor to women’s vulnerability to HIV infection. The importance of gender equality must be upheld, especially in the light of the Millennium Development Goals to turn the tide of HIV by 2015. Morrell (2009) argues that gender equality is a global goal enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals, he further stated that the importance of gender equality would raise the living standards of vulnerable groups, contribute to development, better relations and a healthy planet.
Whilst the debate around the relationship between gender and vulnerability is ongoing, Campbell (2003: 1) argues that the gender and vulnerability analysis does not take us very far in explaining why “people knowingly engage in sexual behaviour that could lead to a slow and painful premature death”. Women’s bodies, say Holland et al (1994), are the basis of their material existence - their few pleasures and many pains and if women are to confront the global HIV epidemic with effective strategies for safer sex, then they need to understand, recognise, control and take care of their bodies. They further add that sex as a social activity means negotiating sexual practices with partners. They argue that if heterosexual women are able to control their bodies, they must come to terms with the ways in which the social construction of masculinity and femininity estranges women from their bodies. Holland et al (1994) stress that safer sex is possible when women are able to assert and express their desires, and are able to understand and respond to the risks that women run in heterosexual encounters. Safer sex requires that women embody their own desires that they are informed about their bodies and the risks they can run into.
They believe this embodiment provides a social space within which women and men can negotiate sexual encounters so as to ensure that sexual safety is a shared concern.
Holland et al (1994)17
17 See Holland et al (1994) Desire, Risk and Control: The Body as a Site of Contestation (as cited in Doyal et al.
emphasised that sexual safety cannot, however, develop in isolation in the privacy of sexual encounters, since these encounters are constrained by gendered power relations. Gatens (1988) points out that feminists have made women’s bodies a focal point around which struggles for autonomy have been fought. She contends that conflict around women’s rights to contraception, abortion, control of childbirth and pleasure have clearly been central to feminism. She argues that men have been seen as having power over women in battles for control of the body, and that this view of gendered power, which is so central to feminism, is disputed by Foucault and his poststructuralist followers. Gatens (1988) is of the opinion that feminist theory has developed with little reference to his theory of the body, sexuality and the nature of power, while Foucault has largely ignored feminism. She contends that an analysis of the
Chapter Three Indrashnee Devi Appalsamy Literature Review: Scanning the HIV and AIDS Scenario
D.Ed Thesis: An insight into the experiences of educators living with HIV and AIDS in the context of schooling
and beyond 59
tensions between Foucault and feminism can be a productive way of understanding the disembodiment of femininity, and therefore the problems of achieving safer sex.
Holland et al (1994) have reported that, according to radical feminists, the most important factor of women’s oppression is located in men’s control of women’s bodies, with male power exercised through men’s control over female sexuality and reproductive capacity.
They further argue that at an abstract level, the concept of patriarchy has helped to understand the nature of male-power. Feminist studies have explained the exercise and threat of male violence as entwined with sexuality.
Holland et al (1994) argue that Foucault’s work raises problems for feminist conceptions of patriarchy and women’s liberation, arguing that in his view, women cannot understand power as a possession which can be held by a group or groups in society. As there is no such possession, there cannot be patriarchal power held by men and opposed by women.
According to Foucault (1988), power is diffuse rather than located in some central group, institution or source. He therefore believes gender then cannot be a source of power, but this does not mean that power is shared. He further adds that some categories of people will be subjected to power exercised by others and that their bodies will be disciplined and controlled. The body for Foucault is changeable, since it is a social site in which ideas and discourses about sexuality are played out. Sawicki (1991) asserts that the body is both material and, at the same time, a social space where the larger-scale organisation of power is connected to minute and local practices.
Foucault (1988) emphasises that the body is both a target of power, since it is constituted by discourses, as well as a site of resistance. The meaning of resistance is one point where feminist politics diverge from Foucault’s relativism and pluralism (Hekman, 1990).
Braidotti (1991: 18) summarises the problems of Foucault’s position by arguing that he is trapped in a gender- blind theoretical discourse, which is not just politically unacceptable but, in leaving women out, is inaccurate as a theory: “the notion of power which Foucault
develops rests on a masculine view of the body.” Although he identifies the body as a site of power, he rejects the idea of women confronting a patriarchal system. Issues of sexual identity, the body, its desires and acts are foregrounded by HIV and AIDS, and must be confronted within discourses of health promotion and social policy as never before (Frutchey, 1990; Patton, 1990b; Watney, 1990a).
Jefferys (1990) believes that while sexual identity is used as a “hook” to grab people’s attention, the social ascription of masculinity demands that biological males achieve masculinity through a variety of actions, central to which is penetrating women sexually.
Wilton (1994) in her paper18
18 See Wilton (1994) Feminism and the Erotics of Health Promotion (cited in Doyal, AIDS: Setting a feminist agenda).
argues that a Feminist/Foucauldian analysis of femininity suggests ways in which dominant discourses of femininity construct the female body as a paradigmatic site for establishing and perpetuating gendered relations of power. All these discourses show that the female body is a “hot-bed” for “power-contestation”. In addition, Bartky (1988: 89) argues that woman is a “self-policing” subject, a self committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy and it is also a reflection in the woman’s consciousness that “she” is under surveillance in a way that “he” is not, and no matter what her status is, she is importantly a body designed to please or “excite”. Or as Berger (1972: 89) says, “women are there to feed an appetite, and not to have any of their own”. This positioning of women as the object of desire, “innocent” of sexual agency, has far-reaching implications for the sexuality of both men and women. Stimpson (1988: 89-90) points out that this image of women as “innocent”, makes logically necessary the image of women as “victims”. If desire is unavailable to women, then sex can only be something done by men to women.
If mutual sexual pleasure is not available to women, then sexual practices which foreground male pleasure are inevitable. This vicious cycle of the discursive structuration of femininity has profound implications for how views about women are related to HIV and AIDS issues.
Chapter Three Indrashnee Devi Appalsamy Literature Review: Scanning the HIV and AIDS Scenario
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and beyond 61
Kitzinger (1994) says that HIV and AIDS is carelessly referred to as a women’s issue, and the claim that women spread the disease, leads communities to ask not only how HIV affects women specifically, but also how women’s subordination influences their risk status and experience of HIV and AIDS. Hence, Kitzinger (1994) unpacks the term
“women” as untainted by any prefix, representing the“ordinary person”, a symbol for
“the family”, the “general population” and all the “innocent victims” of AIDS. Generally the mention of HIV is followed by stigma and discrimination, hence the fear and silence around HIV disclosure. In the next sub-section a discussion on HIV-related stigma will be provided.