Reconsidering gendered sexualities in a generalized AIDS epidemic

Abstract

Using the threat of a severe AIDS epidemic in a collection of rural villages in South Africa, we illustrate how men and women reconsider gendered sexualities through conversations and interactions in everyday life. We draw from data collected by local ethnographers and focus on the processes through which men and women collectively respond to the threat posed by AIDS to relationships, families, and communities. Whereas previous research has shown that individuals often reaffirm hegemonic norms about gender and sexuality in response to disruptions to heteronormative gender relations, we find that the threat of AIDS provokes reconsideration of gendered sexualities at the community level. That is, our data demonstrate how men and women—through the interactions and exchanges that make up their daily lives—debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in a context where the threat of a fatal disease transmitted through sex looms large. We argue that ethnographic data are particularly useful for capturing communal responses to events that threaten heteronormative gender relations and reflect on how our findings inform theories of gender relations and processes.

In this paper we provide an account of how men and women in rural South Africa reconsider gendered sexualities through their everyday conversations about AIDS. We build on McGuffey’s concept of “gender reaffirmation,” which he argued is “the way social actors recuperate after a situation has been interpreted as detrimental, challenging, or stressful to heteronormative gender relations” (2005, 622; 2008). The threat imperiling heteronormative gender relations we study is a severe AIDS epidemic in a collection of rural South African villages, where HIV is estimated to infect one in five people (Gómez-Olivé et al. 2013). Our evidence suggests that rather than responding to threats with wholesale reaffirmations of hegemonic gender norms (also see Ridgeway 2011), men and women reconsider “gendered sexualities” (Gagné and Tewksbury 2005) within a “cloud of commentary” (Hammel 1990, 467), in which they debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in response to a fatal virus transmitted by sex¹. Rather than focus solely on the results of the gender recovery work emerging in response to this threat, we aim to show, “the multiple and on-going discourses through which meaning is made in situ” (Watkins and Swidler 2009, 163). In other words, our interest is in highlighting the processes of reconsidering gendered sexualities as it occurs through social commentary and everyday interactions among men and women living in a context of AIDS.²

We arrive at this theoretical adaptation of McGuffey’s work through analyses of ethnographic data capturing conversations taking place in everyday life. This form of “insider ethnography” (Angotti and Sennott 2015) produces data ideal for examining, at the community level, how ideas about gendered sexualities are constructed, reinforced, and debated through interactions and exchange. Our data highlight the plethora of viewpoints surfacing in any given conversation and also, in the aggregate, provide access to a multitude of conversations across social groups and settings in the community. They thus yield a rare perspective on the emotional, intellectual, and social responses to the threat of AIDS (see Watkins and Swidler 2009).

GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND DISRUPTION

Scholars of gender and sexuality generally agree that such fundamental and seemingly personal aspects of our lives and identities as our sex, gender, and sexuality, should also be understood as social phenomena. This stems from the social constructionist perspective, which challenged conventional understandings of gender and sexuality in seminal works by Gagnon and Simon (1973), Ridgeway (1991), and Lorber (1994), and has been widely adopted by others, including scholars emphasizing performativity in the everyday “achievement” of gender (Butler 1999; West and Zimmerman 1987) and those critically examining the social construction of heterosexuality itself (Gagné and Tewksbury 2005; Wilkinson and Kitzinger 1994).

Accordingly, the construct of “gendered sexualities”—defined as how “individual and societal constructions of gender overlap and intermingle with sexual behaviors, ideations, attitudes, and experiences” (Gagné and Tewksbury 2005, 4)—signals an ongoing effort to reframe gender and sexuality as intertwined. That is, gender and sexuality are not distinct aspects of identity and experience, but rather, are mutually constitutive, fluid, and contextually-dependent. We utilize the construct of gendered sexualities here because people’s everyday responses to AIDS in rural South Africa implicate both gender and sexuality: Gender norms inform expectations about sexuality—what is appropriate and what is not, and for whom particular behaviors are and are not tolerated—and it is what people do sexually that fuels HIV transmission. By sexuality, we refer to the embodied practices that relate to sexual attraction, desire, and to behaviors that are coded as sexual.³ These aspects of gendered sexualities are salient in our data, as they are of foremost concern to those navigating their lives and relationships within a severe AIDS epidemic.

Scholars have also argued that resistance to the hegemonic gender order challenges entrenched power arrangements and may even disrupt them (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Gagné and Tewksbury 2005). But what is meant by disrupted? Previous research on gendered sexualities has considered particular types of disruptions—such as what happens when trans-identified people complicate the heteronormative linkages among sex, gender, and sexuality (e.g., Dozier 2005; Vidal-Ortiz 2005). In a similar vein, McGuffey (2005; 2008) examined parental responses to the gender disruption caused by extra-familial childhood sexual abuse and found that mothers who experienced “mother-blaming” for the abuse scaled back on professional work to be more present at home. Fathers, however, maintained robust work schedules, while reinforcing a masculine heterosexual identity for their abused sons for fear that they would “turn gay.” McGuffey called these responses “gender reaffirmation” which, he argued, is invoked by social actors when heteronormative gender relations are threatened.

Building on this work, we also aim to illustrate what happens when heteronormative gender relations are disrupted, though we expand our view beyond the individual by examining a threat generalized to the community. We consider responses to the threat of a potentially fatal virus (HIV) transmitted by sex, imperiling individual lives, relationships, and communities. We find that rather than only reaffirming hegemonic constructions of gender, men and women in rural South Africa respond to the threat of AIDS by reconsidering not only gender, but the complex interplay of gender and sexuality. We define reconsideration as the processes through which social actors debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with social norms circumscribing gendered sexual practices in the context of a threat to heteronormative gender relations. To be clear, reconsideration does not preclude reaffirmation of hegemonic norms about gender and sexuality. Rather, it suggests that at the community level, in everyday interactions and exchanges, men and women respond to a threat to heteronormative gender relations in myriad ways—some reaffirm longstanding norms about gendered sexualities while others challenge those norms, leading to frequent discussion and debate in which people attempt to make sense of the present-day reality of AIDS or come to terms with its implications for their lives and the lives of others. Thus unlike previous work that has focused primarily on individual responses to the disruption caused by particular threats, we analyze social commentary within communities to understand how gendered sexualities are collectively reconsidered.

RURAL SOUTH AFRICA AND THE THREAT OF AIDS

South Africans today live amidst one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics. In our study site in the rural, northeast region of the country, HIV prevalence peaks during the prime of life: one in five adults and twice as many women than men are HIV positive (Gómez-Olivé et al. 2013). AIDS is the leading cause of adult mortality (Zwang et al. 2007) and a significant cause of child mortality (Sartorius et al. 2011). Antiretroviral treatment, which was being expanded to all public health facilities at the time of our study, has contributed to declines in AIDS-related mortality in the area. Nonetheless, many still view the disease as invariably fatal. A common refrain among many in the community is that they attend more funerals than weddings (Sennott 2013).

The threat of AIDS has disrupted relationships of all kinds. Men and women face the uncertainty that their lives have been, or may be, imperiled by an infection from their partner (Beck 2004; Bunnell et al. 2005). There are gender imbalances in rural areas due to longstanding patterns of men’s labor migration to urban areas (Collinson, Tollman, and Kahn 2007), which may motivate behavior putting women at risk for HIV, such as tolerating rather than challenging a partner’s violence or leaving him altogether (see Jewkes and Morrell 2010). AIDS deaths of prime-age adults are difficult for spouses left behind, who may be uncertain about their own HIV status. Additionally, when both parents are ill or have died, older women (grandmothers) often assume caretaking responsibilities and struggle to support their now extended households (Schatz 2007). AIDS has also generated dissension within communities by breeding accusations of blame for the spread of the disease (see Niehaus and Jonsson 2005).

Importantly, the advent of the AIDS epidemic coincided with the end of apartheid in 1994, which ushered in a host of political, economic, and legal changes instituting racial and gender equality. Gender relations in South Africa have a long history of instability, triggered by events like labor migration (Smit 2001), political upheavals (Marks 2002), and economic shifts (Dworkin et al. 2012). Additionally, scholars have shown that post-apartheid legislation supporting gender equality in employment and wages, legal protections against domestic violence and rape, and commitments to the advancement of women have strained relations even further (Morrell 2002; Walker 2005). We recognize that the AIDS epidemic does not operate independently of these social factors, which have also influenced gendered sexualities in South Africa. Nonetheless, we argue AIDS is a unique threat because HIV is transmitted through sex and is potentially fatal, complicating life and relationships in distinctive ways. Given that societal changes and the AIDS epidemic have occurred in tandem, it is not possible—nor is it our aim—to isolate the factors responsible for how norms about gendered sexualities may be evolving (though, where possible, we consider the influence of other social factors in our interpretations of the data). Our focus, instead, is on understanding how the threat of AIDS informs everyday discourses about gendered sexualities.

SETTING AND METHODS

Our study takes place in nearly half of the 26 contiguous villages in the Agincourt Health and socio-Demographic Surveillance System (AHDSS) in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Around 110,000 people live in the area, which covers 420 square kilometers (162 miles) and is governed by both traditional and elected leadership. The primary ethnic group is amaShangaan who speak XiTsonga/Shangaan. The area is characterized by frequent migration (Collinson, Tollman, and Kahn 2007), high unemployment (Blalock 2014), and limited development (Kahn et al. 2012).

We analyze everyday conversations and interactions occurring among groups of men and women and captured in field notes written by seven “insider ethnographers,”⁴ men and women in their early twenties to late forties. The ethnographers were local community members who were employed with the AHDSS and thus trained in research ethics. We provided additional training in ethnographic methods specific to the study. The ethnographers worked on a part-time basis for approximately seven months in 2012, during which time they kept field notes of everyday conversations about AIDS they encountered in public spaces, such as clinics, taverns, and bus stops, or community events, like village meetings and church services. Although conversations occurred in Shangaan, ethnographers wrote field notes in English, except for words or phrases that were difficult to translate, metaphorically revealing, or provided local flavor, which they then retained in Shangaan and described in English.

Because they were locals, the ethnographers were cognizant of the myriad ways AIDS is invoked in everyday life, such as through referencing the “disease of nowadays,” by holding three fingers above one’s head, or through metaphors that something is invisible and frightening, like the bogey man. Any conversation including a direct or indirect reference to HIV or AIDS was included in field notes. We found different patterns in the data for how AIDS was invoked. Sometimes AIDS was the conversational trigger, such as people commenting on a community member’s death to the disease; other times it arose in evaluating one’s sexual behavior, such as when discussing someone rumored to be sleeping around and thus inviting (or spreading) HIV, or whether and with whom it is appropriate to use condoms.

We transcribed the handwritten field notes into Microsoft Word files and coded them using Excel. We coded deductively using a semi-structured scheme following prominent themes in the literature on AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and then inductively, focusing specifically on themes arising from conversations relevant to gendered sexualities. The overarching pattern in the data was that of reconsideration of hegemonic norms about gendered sexualities. We coded a conversation as reconsideration (“yes”) if speaker(s) questioned or challenged these norms, debated them with others, or discussed and even evaluated their benefits and drawbacks; and not as reconsideration (“no”) if speaker(s) only reaffirmed hegemonic norms governing gendered sexualities or if there was no deliberation about these issues. For example, a conversation among women at a church meeting where everyone blames the spread of HIV on the behavior of undisciplined young women would be coded “no” for reconsideration because it reflects only reaffirmation of hegemonic norms. A similar conversation condemning young women’s sexual practices for the spread of HIV, but where at least one group member disagrees or offers alternative ideas about gendered sexual practices, would be coded as “yes” for reconsideration, as it shows people debating, making sense of, or challenging prevailing norms.⁵

The study received ethical approval from university-based Institutional Review Boards in the United States and South Africa; local approval from the Mpumalanga Province Department of Health; and community consent from village-based leadership, per the requirements of the research site. We took steps to protect confidentiality and obscure links between the ethnographers and those captured in their texts: the ethnographers anonymized field notes by using pseudonyms or descriptors (e.g., “Brother K”⁶, “woman in the red dress”), and we added a second layer of anonymization by changing pseudonyms as well as non-essential details. To aid in the readability of data excerpts, we inserted clarifying words in brackets, made minor edits to grammar, and, in some places, added quotation marks around speakers’ statements or questions, although they may not be direct quotes. We used parentheses to indicate the ethnographers’ own explanations, including translations of local expressions.

RECONSIDERING GENDERED SEXUALITIES

The data include close to 200 conversations featuring discussions about HIV/AIDS, around half of which implicate gender and sexuality, with the overwhelming majority of those conversations demonstrating some form of reconsideration of gendered sexualities. We selected the excerpts below, which present conversations occurring among varying sized groups and combinations of friends, family members, and fellow community members, because they represent common trends in the data by both illustrating the processes of reconsideration and highlighting the unique ways in which norms about gendered sexualities for men and women are being collectively discussed, debated, and, at times, refashioned. We begin with an example from a village meeting, which portrays the types of conversations and social commentaries captured in field notes, and introduces common analytic themes found throughout the data. We then discuss the (differential) ways women’s and men’s gendered sexualities are being reconsidered amid the threat of AIDS.

The first example, captured by ethnographer Audrey, comes from a civic structure meeting⁷ where a married couple went before the community to resolve a domestic dispute. The chairperson asked the husband to give his testimony and appealed to the public to share their views. The husband explained how a few years prior he heard rumors his wife was cheating, saw her with another man at her place of work⁸, and then found a message on her phone referencing a sexual tryst. The wife denied it but subsequently the husband, who claimed he was faithful, became infected with a sexually transmitted infection. After several confrontations and arguments, including the wife’s claim that her husband was not satisfying her sexually, she left him to stay elsewhere. The husband had sought counsel from family and neighbors and was now turning to the community for guidance.

After the husband’s testimony several attendees interrupted the proceedings by shouting disparaging comments about the wife, including that she was a “prostitute” and “dog”. A male representative from the wife’s family then stood up to speak, while the wife, declining to do so herself, remained reticent before the crowd:

It’s a shame to stand before you with my sister’s matters…Sivara [brother-in-law] I’m feeling sorry for you…[beating his brother-in-law’s back] You are a man. You are a real man. If it was me I would not admit this.

The wife’s family then pleaded with the husband for a chance at reconciliation. The husband was amenable, but reminded them of the severity of the matter: that his wife had imperiled him given the prevalence of AIDS:

I love my wife very much. But I hate her behavior. I’m faithful to her and I thought she is faithful to me too. Nowadays people are dying of HIV/AIDS. I’m always telling my children that outside there is HIV. It also kills. They have to take care of themselves, but I failed to take [care of] myself as I trusted my wife. I’m really worried. Now I need to go to the clinic for blood tests and after that I have to see which way do I take.

After the meeting adjourned, attendees making their way home discussed the day’s deliberations. One group of women expressed shock at the husband’s willingness to forgive his wife and searched for explanations for her wayward behavior:

On the way home people were shouting, “Ha…that man [husband] is stupid. If it was me, I would divorce her there.” One woman who is at her thirties said, “…I thought maybe he will say, ‘This is the end.’ But he said, ‘I love my wife’. Is that a wife?”… Another woman who is in her forties said, “He said she sleeps outside their home. A woman, sleeping outside home! A married woman? What is that?”… The two women passing us said, “Ha, this is nonsense…This woman [wife] claims she is a Christian, meanwhile she is not….She is playing with marriage. Or maybe because she is educated, we don’t know.” …Another one said, “Education! What is education? The meaning of education is that you know how to respect other people and their needs… We do all worry for her husband. He is a good guy.” … [Another woman said]: “…A man to be infected [with HIV] by a woman! …All we know is that a woman is infected by a man. Even the Bible said, ‘During the ending of time, seven women will want to be married by one man, not seven men to one woman.’ This [cheating on one’s husband] is a taboo.”

The conversational exchanges surrounding this event exemplify what we mean by reconsideration. In response to the wife’s alleged sexual affair, which defies normative expectations of a faithful, dutiful, monogamous wife, the husband positions himself publicly as vulnerable by asking for support in disciplining his wife, reconciling their relationship, and protecting his health and household from HIV. His plea to the community can thus be interpreted as at odds with hegemonic gender norms for men (Wyrod 2011), consistent with the brother-in-law’s pronouncement (in which he ostensibly tries to salvage the husband’s compromised masculinity) that he himself would not be as forthcoming and forgiving. These claims also underscore the existence of multiple masculinities in rural South Africa, which we discuss in further detail below.

At the same time, community members reaffirm gender norms through their denigrating remarks about the wife, and their incredulity about the husband’s desire to stay with her after she defied him and exposed him to the risk of HIV. However, we also see a group of women attempting to make sense of the wife’s behavior in light of cultural frames including religious doctrine, educational ideals, and the social expectations of marriage. Drawing on Biblical scripture, they question the wife’s status as a Christian because of the discord between religious beliefs about the sanctity of marriage and the wife’s alleged infidelity, which also raises questions for them as to how a woman could infect a man with HIV. They also ponder whether the wife’s education—which sets her apart from many in the community—is a contributing factor (see Madhavan, Harrison, and Sennott 2013).

Building on these themes, we turn next to women’s gendered sexualities—followed by men’s—with particular attention to how gendered sexual practices in rural South Africa are read and analyzed through the lens of AIDS.

Reconsidering Women’s Gendered Sexualities

In South Africa, women’s sexual practices are often measured against hegemonic gender norms of “emphasized” or “acquiescent” femininity that encourage deference, modesty, and self-restraint (Connell 1987; Jewkes and Morrell 2012; Schippers 2007). Women who engage in “pariah” (Schippers 2007) or “modern” (Jewkes and Morrell 2012) femininities by exhibiting sexual agency and challenging male power are often condemned in public discourse, particularly when their actions are perceived as pathological, deviant, or even dangerous, as in the case above.⁹ Nonetheless, as we show below, these norms are also subject to debate, especially when viewed as outdated, undermining women’s pleasure and protection in sexual relationships, and/or unfairly linked to AIDS.

In the conversation below, ethnographer Zanele was hanging out with friends selling snacks at a soccer match one afternoon. She happened upon an exchange between two groups of women—one younger and one older—triggered by the mini-skirts the younger women were wearing. Their ensuing conversation hinged on the presumed links among mini-skirts, promiscuity, and HIV infection (Vincent 2008). Zanele noted:

The first older woman said, “Children of today, they wear [clothes] like the world is full of women only, look what they are wearing.” She showed this by moving her head to the direction where the three girls were. The second woman said, “That is what they want, to attract men’s eyes, and when they get raped, we blame the men for not controlling their feelings [sexual desire] instead of blaming both of them.”

Upon overhearing the older women’s disparaging remarks, the younger women responded with aplomb:

The first girl said, “I can wear whatever I want to; it is a free country.” She was saying it with a bold voice, beating her thigh and also making some moves with her body and her eyes. The two [older] women left without saying anything after hearing what the first girl said. The second girl said, “Old people think that when you get raped it is because you wear mini-skirts. They are like those who think when you are HIV positive it is because you are a whore or you were a whore back then…Sometimes whores can’t get HIV and girls with long skirts also get raped.”… The girls laughed.

Here we see younger women reconsidering norms regulating gendered sexual practices. The younger women verbally contest the older women’s characterization of their behavior (wearing mini-skirts) as intentionally inviting sexual attention—and even violence—from men. They thus outright reject the older women’s assertions and attempt to expose the contradictions of their claims. For the older women, however, the younger women’s practices are coded as sexual and perceived as inviting unnecessary attention from men, sentiments that reaffirm hegemonic norms regulating women’s public behavior and attire (Hassim 2009).

This exchange also highlights generational rifts that have developed over the last two decades alongside the increasing neo-liberalization of the South African economy (Carmody 2002), which has reshaped desires and consumption practices of young women striving to “purchase modernity” through newly-available goods (Hunter 2010; Mojola 2014, 45). This is troubling to elders because young women, lacking employment themselves, often gain access to these goods through “transactional” relationships with older men, which are linked to high rates of HIV among young women (Luke 2003; Mojola 2014). In response to the elders’ opprobrium, young people have appropriated the language of “rights” to bolster their claims to individualism and freedom, thus exacerbating generational divides (Sennott 2013), as shown above.

Returning to Zanele’s field note, after the two groups of women walked away, Zanele and her friends reflected on the confrontation, debating the best moral and practical recourse for avoiding HIV:

One of my friends said, “But sometimes in life we have to listen to our elders. When they say ‘Don’t go there, there’s fire,’ don’t prove it by feeling the heat, you will get burned…It is like when they say to us we must not have multiple partners at the same time, our risk of getting HIV and sexual transmitted infection is higher and we don’t listen; when we get sick we need our elders’ support.” My other friend said, “You are telling the truth. We youth of today, we don’t listen to our elders because we want to enjoy life to the fullest, not knowing that we are putting ourselves in danger because we think we are the cleverest ones, but when it comes to the HIV virus if you don’t use protection you are not wise, and you will find yourself in danger.” I said, “Don’t forget, that we have to look at both sides. For example, I can be in danger or can be HIV positive, meanwhile I do respect and listen to my elders, but I understand you when you say we have to respect and listen to our elders.” My friend said, “I am not saying when you listen to your elders you will never be infected with the HIV virus. What I am saying is that your risk of getting HIV is low if you behave in a way that our elders want you to, like having one sexual partner…”

Zanele and her friends’ acknowledge the elders’ wisdom about the virtues of strict fidelity, but also grant that such advice is not wholly protective. Nonetheless, they reason that young people’s disregard of elders’ advice becomes consequential when elders are sought to provide care and support in times of illness (see Schatz 2007). These women, then, are striving to make sense of and bring meaning to this inter-generational confrontation in light of how competing ideas about gendered sexualities are related to the risk of HIV and its consequences.

In other examples from our data, women share ideas about how they can protect themselves from HIV given normative expectations about men’s sexual and health practices. Below, ethnographer Lucky happened upon a conversation among a group of women in their twenties and thirties sitting outside a church. He observed one woman advising the others to be perspicacious, as men are rarely forthcoming when they are sick and hide illnesses like “Helen Ivy Vilakazi,” (“HIV”) (Beck 2004; Wyrod 2013). The women then discuss how—and to what avail—speaking openly with their partners might serve them:

“If some of us are still shy with our own men, both our lives are at risk”…Another woman said, “We should as well consider the issue of one husband one wife, though men are said to be tinhwembe loko ti kula ta nava (meaning men are like pumpkin vines and have to spread their seeds). So we as women should humble ourselves all the time before our men so that we can be able to discuss sensitive issues that can put our lives at risk.” The other women sitting at the back wearing tight jeans said, “Men cannot be satisfied no matter how we could submit ourselves before them. They still go out and cheat on us.” A woman at the age of 25 years said, “Men have a tendency that they cannot relish by fish [only eat fish] every day.” All laughed. The women in tight jeans continued, “Some men have small penises that can never reach our satisfaction, so do you think that we should also accept such challenges?”

Here we witness processes of reconsideration as women make sense of the best possible recourse for men’s infidelity in light of concerns about HIV (also see Schatz 2005). In a similar example from our data, ethnographer Entle encountered a conversation among a group of women on a mini-bus, prompted by a woman returning from the hospital where her nephew had just died of AIDS. The woman explained that her late nephew, who was married, also had several girlfriends—one provided money, one bought him clothes, another he took on trips because of her beauty. She observed the women discussing the predicament of the late-nephew’s wife and married women more generally:

“Ladies are in trouble…This is time to tell them [husbands] if you quickly see that he is out for girlfriends, don’t allow him to let you go to bed with him….Women are lucky enough they can live for a long time without sexual interest….” There was a lady who was listening. She said, “You said you will be with him [a husband] in bed and in good situations, so you have to face anything; you are not allowed to rule his family… You have to respect him in all aspects, whether he is doing good or bad.”

The question for women in these two observations—at the church and on the bus—is how to reconcile concerns about men’s infidelity while protecting oneself from HIV. These conversations thus show women both coming to terms with the perceived inevitability of men’s cheating, while also deliberating ways to overcome this risk. Given that dominant discourses of heterosexuality often disempower women (Reddy and Dunne 2007), we see some women simply resign and reaffirm hegemonic gender norms by proclaiming that women have few options but to acquiesce to men, especially within marriage. Others argue for creatively adapting strategies such as confronting their partners through conversation, while still remaining humble in order to respect gendered boundaries (also see Wyrod 2013). Others, however, out-right reject these expectations by refusing sex or privileging their own sexual desires, thereby challenging the gender hierarchy altogether (Reddy and Dunne 2007). In this context, the latter recourse is more likely if women are unmarried or have cultural capital like education (Jewkes and Morrell 2010), as shown in the opening case.

Reconsidering Men’s Gendered Sexualities

Our data indicate that norms governing men’s sexual practices are also being reconsidered in everyday life, particularly when they are seen as putting men as well as their partners and families at risk for HIV (Beck 2004; Walker 2005). Whereas hegemonic constructions of masculinity in this context emphasize sexual dominance, prowess, and relationship concurrency (Hunter 2005; Jewkes and Morrell 2012; Wyrod 2011), our data also show men challenging these constructions in the shadow of AIDS. That is, although many men reaffirm hegemonic norms, an alternative construction of masculinity acknowledges the value of prioritizing responsibility to oneself and others over the pursuit of pleasure, even in the face of ridicule and resistance.

In the field note below, ethnographer Entle observed several men doing construction work near her home, chatting about the best way to spend their paychecks. Their remarks hinged on the risk of acquiring HIV from relationships in which economic provision serves as a precursor for sex. The conversation was triggered by Mister N’s comments:

You see, when I get my salary at month’s end, the money that I receive is not going to my family alone. There are other women outside one must think about. If you are a man, you must not eat chicken only every day; you have to balance your diet.

The notion that a man must not eat chicken (or fish) every day is a commonly invoked analogy describing the variety in sexual partners men believe they need to remain satisfied sexually. This trope, however, is embraced neither universally nor uncritically, particularly when having multiple sexual partners is viewed in the collective imagination as inevitably inviting HIV (Colvin, Robins, and Leavens 2010). As Mister V warned:

After you are drunk, my man, it is then that you will be sleeping around and every woman is yours. …All the diseases are yours, especially HIV and AIDS…. Myself, I drink at home, watching TV with my wife. After that I go and sleep. I don’t want to die early. There is nobody who will protect your life except yourself…it [HIV] will affect your wife and then the kids will be left alone.

Another man reasoned that since death is unavoidable, you should enjoy life:

“Hey!! You don’t know life [referring to Mister V]. You live once and you die once. Also I don’t mind about disease. I also spend my money the way I like…Sometimes I protect myself with condoms when I didn’t forget to [bring them]. I also don’t want to eat from one plate. I have my different kinds of girls….I even don’t know where [from which girl] I am going to get this disease of HIV people are talking about.” …. [Mister N] responded, “It doesn’t matter. We are all going to die… We cannot run away from it [death] by not having girlfriends. Also our wives should know this, that she is not alone [there are other women].”

Here we see men debating what it means to be a man in a time of AIDS. Their exchange about how to spend their money—solely on their wives or also on extramarital girlfriends—illustrates men coming to terms with hegemonic masculinity, given that money and masculinity are intertwined and associated with the spread of HIV (see Dworkin et al. 2012). Those bragging about their sexual conquests (Kaler 2003) reason that men naturally need sexual variety, and money is a means to achieve it. Others, however, contest these sexual practices, arguing they will lead to an untimely death to AIDS, ultimately threatening one’s wife and children (Hunter 2005; Lynch, Brouard, and Visser 2010). Thus, while for some men sexual variety trumps self-protection and a sense of responsibility, for others, the gendered cultural and moral obligations to one’s family are paramount, thus reinforcing an alternative masculinity (Beck 2004; Bunnell et al. 2005; Colvin, Robins, and Leavens 2010).

These hegemonic masculine displays may also reflect the structural reality that long-term economic stability remains elusive for many men because of changes in the post-apartheid South African political economy (Morrell 2002). Multiple partnerships thus evolved as an alternative route to manhood for those unable to exploit historical pathways tied to money, namely paying bridewealth or purchasing land (Hunter 2005). Although these types of informal relationships are advantageous insofar as there are fewer expectations for financial provision, they are associated with riskier sexual practices and thus HIV (Mathur et al. 2016).

Several examples from our data show young men challenging hegemonic norms encouraging multiple partners and instead embodying a “transformed masculinity” in which they position themselves as more sexually responsible (Lynch, Brouard, and Visser 2010; Mfecane 2007). This often arises in conversations in which men advise one another about protecting themselves from women who are rumored to be promiscuous and could put them at risk. In one example, ethnographer Entle was traveling to visit a relative when two young men took a seat behind her on the bus. One of them [Brother L] lit a cigarette, sparking a conversation about his dating woes:

Brother L said, “You don’t know how last night was bad for me…. I wish there was somebody to come in but I was alone through the night with sadness and boredom.” Brother A replied, “These days when you find yourself alone [it] is a good thing. Maybe your girlfriend is falling under those who [are] not honest for you alone and she likes to sleep around. “Mfowethu [my brother], you will die being young; maghama mathathu [“three words”, meaning HIV] is no longer in Gauteng [the city] only, it is here. You must always have your makepisi [condoms].”

In this example one young man consoles another, as they come to terms with the fact that the old association of AIDS with the city no longer holds: avoiding HIV is not guaranteed by living a slower-paced, rural life. They thus acknowledge that loneliness may be the best protection from HIV, particularly if one’s girlfriend has eyes for others. Ethnographer Idah described a similarly-themed conversation, in which a young group of friends at a musical festival were teasing one of the men about being seen leaving a bar with a woman rumored to sleep around. The young man vehemently denied the accusations and grew irritated by their insinuations that he lacked judgment, asking the group, “What do you take me for?” One of the friends warned him that he could deny all he wanted, “…We [will] see you in two weeks to come, you will start coughing and that will be the beginning of AIDS.” In the conversations from the bus and music festival, masculinity is being refashioned by the threat of AIDS, such that some men believe that being shrewd, responsible, and self-preserving is more prudent than pursuing sex, thus reflecting how young men are grappling with the impact of AIDS on their sexual lives.

CONCLUSION

Building upon and integrating two theoretical constructs—“gendered sexualities” (Gagné and Tewksbury 2005) and “gender reaffirmation” (McGuffey 2005; 2008)—we argue that gendered sexualities are being reconsidered in rural South Africa where AIDS is a significant threat. Because AIDS is an epidemic, and thus affects not just individuals but communities, we focus our analysis at the community level. Our findings suggest that reaffirmation and reconsideration are not mutually exclusive responses to threats to heteronormative gender relations. As we have shown, reaffirmation is indeed part of community discussions of these issues, but it alone does not capture the range of discussion, debate, and reflection featured in everyday interactions and exchanges as gendered sexualities are refashioned in this context.

Our ethnographic data show the breadth, depth, and variety of contributions that men and women bring to the social commentary on AIDS (Kaler, Watkins, and Angotti 2015). Indeed, being forced to reckon with the threat of a potentially deadly disease can trigger nostalgia for the past, concerns about an uncertain future, and strategies for coping with its consequences. With respect to gendered sexualities, AIDS stimulates questions about the type of gendered person women and men want to be or expect that others should be: the agentic woman who prioritizes sexual pleasure, or one who abides by hegemonic gender norms encouraging humility because deviating from these standards is associated with sexual deviance, risk, and danger; the man who has sex indiscriminately, or one who prioritizes his future or the welfare of his family and thus exhibits a transformed masculinity. While these questions are faced by individuals, they are also discussed collectively within communities, as our data show. Our method thus captures “ideas, concepts, and beliefs in the very process of circulation” (Kaler 2003, 353), thereby inviting new possibilities for understanding social phenomena.

How does our study contribute to extant knowledge? To begin, our findings echo past research evincing the negotiation of multiple masculinities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and femininities (Schippers 2007) in African settings where AIDS is endemic. For example, in urban South Africa, HIV positive men “pushed the boundaries of culturally dominant conceptions of masculinity” while also reaffirming hegemonic norms to avoid appearing vulnerable to their illness (Colvin, Robins, and Leavens 2010, 1187). In Uganda, an HIV diagnosis worked to “destabilize gender norms and power dynamics” within sero-discordant couples (Bunnell et al. 2005; Wyrod 2013, 13). And, in rural South Africa, young women enacted multiple constructions of femininity within sexual relationships: an agentic formulation emphasizing personal freedom; another surrendering to men’s power; and a third accommodating men but also seeking greater respect (Jewkes and Morrell 2012).

Our findings also contribute to theories of gender relations and processes more generally by providing an alternative view to seminal arguments that gender relations are primarily reinscribed in response to threats to the heteronormative gender order (McGuffey 2005; 2008) and social change (Ridgeway 2011). Ridgeway (2011) argues that individuals bring trailing historical gender norms into new circumstances, which reinforces the gender hierarchy and ultimately maintains inequality. Although across our data, we see men and women drawing on (and at times, reaffirming) historically hegemonic norms governing gender and sexuality, we also commonly see people advocating for new configurations and contesting the status quo. The deliberation and debate of competing gender frameworks in light of a communal threat may provide a pathway for social change through the diffusion of new ideas (Bongaarts and Watkins 1996). Indeed, as Weber reminds us, “the world images that have been created by ideas have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed” (1946, 280). Our findings suggest that new ideas may gain traction in communities as men and women debate, challenge, make sense of, and attempt to come to terms with the best way to live in the face of a threat like AIDS. Thus, we argue that the construct of reconsideration best captures the myriad social commentaries in circulation, and exemplifies how some men and women are working to refashion gendered sexualities in the wake of a communal threat.