Jerker Edström Research Fellow: HIV and Development Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

1. Stereotypes of men and boys in Gender and HIV work: Challenges, tensions and possible directions Jerker Edström Research Fellow: HIV and Development Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

2. Quick overview • Trajectories of framing gendered subjects in HIV • Combining gender with ‘vulnerability’ and ‘risk’ • Diversity and change in masculinities as feasible • Challenges in work on gender norms, ‘missing HIV’ • Challenges and possibilities for the way forward

3. Trajectories of framing gendered subjects, incl. ‘men’, in HIV & AIDS • Story from “GRID” and “4Hs”; to “MSM”, “CSW” and “IDU” etc. - a gradual shift to ‘behaviour’ • Shifting to ‘norms’ as driving behaviour • ABC “demand reduction” (say “no”, “later” or “if..”) • Making better ‘Women’ and ‘Men’? • Conflations with generalised vulnerability of ‘the masses’ (ignoring key groups at the heart of HIV)

4. The problem of vulnerability and the unspoken ‘threat’ • Risk(of transmission) = Vulnerability(to HIV) + Threat (infective source) • The ‘HIV problem = vulnerability’; ‘Gender = women’ • The focus on women’s vulnerability easily result in three sets of binary ‘encoded’ stereotypes: men’s promiscuity women’s faithfulness men’s violence women’s victim-hood men’s (ir)responsibility  women’s rights

5. Challenges of a binary “di-vision” of gender, or – rather – sex…

6. So, what are the implications? • Reinforces essentialist binary gender constructs, shoring up male stereotypes and excluding minorities • Ignoring male victims of rape, criminalising/pathologising sex worker’s clients, stigmatising homosexuality • Undermines men’s motivation to engage • Men framed mainly as ‘the source of problem’ • Counterproductive for women’s empowerment • Framed as faithful, vulnerable victims with little agency

7. A decade(+) of male engagement showing some signs of progress • Research and activism from the 80s and 90s has challenged essentialist binary notions of masculinity, showing; • plurality, hierarchical relations and contested change as key. • Practice has shown a diversity of ‘alternative’ and more ‘positive’ masculinities feasible, locally (more later) • However, a fundamentally binary and heteronormative framework (often alluding to male/female complemetarities) prevails and shapes policy and responses. • Focusing merely on ‘better men’ as juxtaposed to vulnerable women (& girls) can reinforce these binary stereotypes

8. The key challenge: Abstract binary ‘genders’ miss the virus • Violence as interpersonal vs. structural • Promiscuity as essentially male - an old gender and HIV myth • Sexual behaviour as essential ‘natural’ behaviour with sex-specific hydraulics • If unprotected anal sex is a key issue, why only “MSM” and not all the women and other men who have anal sex? Are they fewer? (Hardly!) • Which men matter most, in what respects and settings? • Even as general norms and behaviours of the majority of men (and women) matter too, has changing them at scale ever succeeded ? • Which drivers – of vulnerability or risk? • These don’t just shape individuals, but the relations and dynamics between people, as well as the obstacles and constraints to access • HIV is a disease of inequality (not poverty) • And the virus thrives in the margins of intersecting inequalities

9. How to move beyond these abstract binary individuals? • Move beyond methodological individualism (& RCTs!) • it not only over-generalises, but also tends to de-contextualise and depoliticise the issues • Focus more on the ‘men in power’ and institutions • Policy ‘down-streams’ problematic masculinity as an issue of the poor, the Southern or the criminalised underclass • Focus on realities of marginal and non-conforming men, who get left out (some of them matter most) • Sexual minorities, cultural dissidents, the incarcerated • Don’t g gloss over changes needed at multiple levels • Not just drivers of general norms, but obstacles to access

10. Broadening the focus on people within context Governmental (legal, regulatory) Institutional (services, workplaces etc.) Communal (networks) Personal/interpersonal Individual/s

11. Challenges for the way forward • Constantly challenge the binary stereoptypes • Strike a balance in problematising cultures and behaviour with specific drivers of risk • Within a contextual analysis of power relations and • Without loosing sight of intersecting structural inequities • Focus better on the men matter most for HIV? • With treatment as key to prevention, how well do we reach the most relevant HIV+ men? • In broader gender justice work with men, forge better alliances with key groups • Sexual rights and sex workers rights movements etc.

12. Thank You et Merci! De Nada, amigo

13. www.ids.ac.uk

14. Sources • Edström, J. (2011), Masculinity and HIV: Di-visions of Bodies, Sex and Structural Context, Ch 6 in Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities, Ch 6 in A. Cornwall, J. Edström and A. Greig (Eds.), Zed Books: London • Edström, J. (2010), Time to call the bluff: (de)-constructing ‘women’s vulnerability’ in HIV and sexual health, Development 53: 2, Society for International Development