peripheries

HIV prevention: Time to ditch cultural sentimentality?

Reporting on the role of circumcision in the “combination prevention” discussed during the 2008 AIDS conference, Roger Peabody from Aidmaps noted that “In response to several criticisms of the recommended roll-out of circumcision, Catherine Hankins from UNAIDS insisted that circumcision had to be seen as part of combination prevention” – in other words, it is one extra choice, rather than the replacement for another intervention.”

But in the same session, Mogomotsi Supreme Mafalapitsa noted that circumcision is often imbued with religious and cultural meanings, and very often forms part of ceremonies that mark a transition from boyhood to manhood” and “warned that attempts to change practices around circumcision are fraught with difficulties. Health officials may prefer circumcision to take place at a different age, or under medical supervision in a sterile environment, but Mafalapitsa said that “cultures who are already circumcising adolescent males do not take kindly to the possibility of alteration of their culture by medical circumcision and neonatal circumcision.”

When faced with a exceptional epidemic, isn’t it time to take exceptional measures and in this case to ditch cultural sensitivity, or rather cultural sentimentality?

Interestingly, “drawing on his experience in South Africa, [Mogomotsi] said that these traditional circumcision rituals often emphasise specific ideas of masculinity which can be harmful to women.”

More than 25 years into an exceptional epidemic, isn’t it time to recognize the role of cultural sensibility in fuelling the HIV epidemic? Isn’t it cultural sensibility that cast out those most at risk, such as sex workers, drug users and denies them treatment? Isn’t it cultural sensibility that put women’s sexuality under the control of men? Isn’t it cultural sensibility that put entire nations in a state of denial about the danger and extent of a generalised HIV epidemic?

Despite acknowledging the potential nefarious effect of culture on women, isn’t it blind cultural sensibility that informs the discourse of Mogomotsi? To the point that we are now afflicted with the new buzzword of “gender transformative programmes” rather than gender equality or gender mainstreaming.

Exceptional times require exceptional measures and the time has come to get ride of the cultural blinds that have hindered the response to the HIV epidemic during the last 25 years. Loosing life or loosing face, how long are we going to waffle?

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Discrimination in the toilets?

Hong Nam Katoye (Toilets for Katoye

Matt, Bangkok Lost Boy and fellow blogger, posted on the recently introduced toilets for Katoye in Thailand. I specifically use the Thai word as there is no satisfactory translation in English or other western languages. Transvestite, transsexual, third sex can never encompass the real nature and complexity of the Thai Katoye, especially for outsiders as Matt’s writes:

“It’s difficult for an outsider to really comprehend because there is some conflict between whether ladyboys should be viewed as women or a third sex.”

Matt’s post is interesting because on the one hand it shakes up our certainty and reveals our unsettling fear when faced with difference, but also our near-atavistic acceptance of sexual difference, so much that we don’t notice or question first the existence of toilets for men and toilets for women!

After all, though differentiated toilets may reflect a material adaptation corollary of physiological differences, aren’t they more the reflection of an institutionalised gender-based discrimination? I have been to The Fabric too (the London club mentioned by one of Matt’s reader) and have seen and used the communal toilets without a problem.

But there is something more unsettling in Matt’s post when he writes:

“A cross-dresser is not necessarily someone who wants to switch sexes. In such cases, you could argue that there should be a separate toilet for all lifestyle choices.”

This is reminiscent of the right-wing/fundamentalist Christian argument that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and therefore does not deserve particular respect. I am sure that it is not in Matt’s intention to show disrespect to Katoye (or to think that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice) but that he describes Katoye as “men with gender issues” speaks volume of our inability to accept differences and beyond that to understand and comprehend what is “not us”.

Follow the link to Part Two.

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Gentlemen on the left, Gay on the right. No Ladies?	Interestingly the Thai writer translated Katoye as “gay” which confirm that, when borrowed, western words lose their meaning and with that all the symbolic we attach to them
Picture Credit: Roger TATOUD – These photos were taken a year ago !

Tags: Culture, Gay, Thailand