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1 w A Puzzling Blindspot, a Troubling Silence, a Strange Consensus Reflections on the Heterosexual Norm in “African AIDS” the research question HIV/AIDS was identified in Africa south of the Sahara in the mid1980s .1 At that time its rapid, atypical progress in populations focused considerable attention on so-called African sexuality. Scientists, theologians, pundits, gender activists, and other researchers were all struggling to explain both the unprecedented rates of HIV infection and the fact that men and women appeared to be equally affected. This suggested a different epidemiology than in the West, where HIV infections occurred mostly in gay and bisexual men. Efforts to solve the mystery were complicated by the relative paucity of African epidemiologists and other researchers in the search for answers . Indeed, the vast majority of those who published their findings in the early years of the epidemic were European or North American. Only about one in twelve of the participants in the very first AIDS in Africa conference in 1985 actually came from Africa (Putzel 2004, 21), while the most widely cited publication to synthesize their findings with the ethnographic record was authored by three Australian demographers (Caldwell, Caldwell, and Quiggin 1989). Not knowing Africa or African languages all that well, and under intense pressure of time and the looming health calamity, foreign researchers relied heavily on received wisdom and rational logic to fill in the many critical gaps in knowledge about the disease in its African manifestation. Their work in turn contributed to a new problem that in many ways continues to frustrate research, prevention, and education initiatives. The problem resides in the 1 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. notion that a singular African sexuality exists and that it exacerbates the risks of HIV transmission particularly for women. This hypothetical singular African sexuality includes, above all, the supposed nonexistence of homosexuality or bisexuality, along with Africans’ purported tendencies toward heterosexual promiscuity, gender violence, and lack of the kind of internalized moral restraints that supposedly inhibit the spread of HIV in other cultures . Another common thread is a tendency toward age discrepancy in sexual relationships (mostly older men with young women, girls, or even female infants), and, compared to the West, a relative absence of romantic affection and a predominance of transactional relationships (sex in exchange for money or gifts). Further examples of such “otherizing” or pathologizing of African sexuality in the popular media are legion, and many will be discussed in the chapters to follow. But a sobering example in the peer-reviewed academic press is worth pointing out here. Rushton (1997, esp. 178–83) claims a relationship between Africans’ penis size and sexual behavior that can account for the high rates of HIV/AIDS among women in Africa and in the African diaspora. African opinion makers often responded defensively to Western claims about an African sexuality. Yet ironically, they often at the same time buttressed one key aspect of it. Hence, on the one hand, African critics pointed to the colonialist (or even older) provenance of received wisdom about African sexuality. They have suggested that the long shelf life of negative stereotypes in contemporary discourses was evidence of whites’ pervasive unthinking racism against Africans. As late as 2004, for example, South African president Thabo Mbeki angrily rejected questions about the high rates of rape and HIV infection in that country by accusing whites of clinging to apartheid-era demonizations of black men.2 Yet on the other hand, many African leaders accepted or even amplified the accompanying stereotype that homosexuality was exotic in Africa. In some cases they baldly asserted that male-male sexual transmission was so rare that it should and would not be discussed , even as a theoretical possibility. Both African and foreign scholars proved surprisingly receptive to this unscientific assertion. Important scholarly texts aimed at health care professionals sometimes went so far as to say that there are only three modes of HIV transmission in Africa (that is, heterosexual intercourse, intravenous injection, and mother-to-child transmission ; hence, there is no transmission through homosexual intercourse and it is therefore not worth mentioning on the precautionary principle, let alone as a substantive issue).3 This understanding of African sexuality is now typically so much taken for granted that it does not even warrant a footnote to...

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