HIV depriving: Women of sexual power

Some women subjected to higher levels of violence after testing positive

RONAK GHORBANI, RYERSON FREE PRESS (RYERSON UNIVERSITY)

TORONTO — (CUP) Maria Gurevich sat in a hotel room in Vancouver, putting the finishing touches on a paper she would present later that day. Gurevich had become frustrated with the lack of women’s voices in HIV literature and had recently completed a study examining the impact of the illness on women’s lives.

She was then asked by the woman cleaning her room what she was doing. When Gurevich responded, the woman asked if most of the women she was studying were prostitutes.

“Clearly I said no, but that is still the mythology, and the reality is that it is completely the opposite,” Gurevich said. “The myth of the sexually promiscuous woman who’s going around spreading it to all the men is not true at all.”

Gurevich is an associate professor of psychology at Ryerson University. In her recently published study “Disciplining Bodies, Desires and Subjectivities: Sexuality and HIV-Positive Women” in the journal Feminism and Psychology, she examined the lives of 20 HIV-positive women from Toronto to Halifax.

Gurevich found that sexuality was one of the most difficult parts of all of the women’s lives. The women felt that they had lost sexual power and spontaneity, and, in some cases, found that their HIV-positive status even incited violence.

According to Gurevich, past research has focused on risk prevention methods, often neglecting the mental and sexual aspects of being HIV-positive.

One reason for this, she said, is that society differentiates women’s sexuality from men’s. While men are seen as sexual beings, women are expected to be more reserved. Within the heterosexual community, HIV/AIDS has been treated as a taboo subject.

“As I was reading HIV literature, I was noticing an absence of women’s voices,” Gurevich said. “It was mostly focusing on men, and homosexual relationships.”

“For HIV-positive men within the gay community, there has been a lot of activism and research for men by men; but for women, it’s taken a very long time.”

“One of the complaints women have is that they feel like they’re minorities within the HIV community.”

“Biologically, women are much less likely to transmit HIV to men than the other way around. Women are much more vulnerable to it; even in the sex trade work context, it’s actually the men that are doing the transmission for the most part,” Gurevich said.

The way society approaches HIV/AIDS needs to evolve as the disease affects more people.

“The presumption is when you have a chronic illness, your focus should be on surviving, on treatment, not on sexuality — when in reality, we’re all sexual beings from the day we’re born to the day we die.”

The women in the study said they felt that having to plan out and discuss the precautions to be taken before having intercourse took away their spontaneity and sexual power. In one particular case, a woman refrained from having any intercourse in fear of infecting her partner.

Condoms also serve as a constant reminder of their status, taking away sexual intimacy.

“In the heterosexual community, we associate condoms with promiscuity and absence of condoms means trust — the monogamous mythology,” Gurevich explained. “A lot of people use condoms initially, and once the relationship goes from casual to permanent the condom fades.”

Most of the participants were already in committed relationships when they discovered their status and bringing back the condoms was hard for many of the women.

Some HIV-positive women even found that they became more vulnerable to violence from their partners once their status was revealed.

“It raises the question of how much rage there is in men. Her HIV status makes her more of a target. In terms of putting up with the abuse, they kind of feel like, ‘Who’s going to want me?’” Gurevich explained.

Gurevich found that within the heterosexual community, HIV is still a stigmatized illness. For many of the participants, disclosing their status was another form of losing power within the relationship, as it becomes the partner’s choice, in most cases, whether or not to engage in sexual activities. The women also begin to compromise their sexual needs in order to ensure full protection for their partner.

Studies have shown HIV-positive women do continue to have relationships, but, as Gurevich puts it, “frequency is different from satisfaction.” She said she is hoping her study will launch larger studies that will give HIV-positive women a voice.