Research Articles (Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender (CSA&G))

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/2263/51810

Browse

Now showing 1 - 16 of 16

A refusal to abandon HIV science
(Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2025-05) Hatcher, Abigail M.; Metheny, Nicholas; Dunkle, K.L.; Fielding-Miller, Rebecca
No abstract available.
The intertwining of antisemitism and racism in modern South Africa, c. 1880-1939
(UCL Press, 2024) Hodes, Rebecca; Reznek, Rodney H.
This article traces how historical constructions of Jews – informed by protean notions of social, cultural, and physical difference in Europe – were transplanted into the colonial imagination, infusing the writings of scientists, state officials, and the popular press at the Cape colony from the late nineteenth century onwards. It focuses in particular on how eugenic ideas were expressed in the scientific literature, adding momentum to calls for the segregation and sterilization of social “undesirables”, and for greater regulation and control by the nascent South African state.
Response to Shirli Gilbert
(UCL Press, 2024-01-12) Hodes, Rebecca
In her article “Scholarship on South African Jews: state of the field”, Shirli Gilbert offers a sweeping yet meticulous account of scholarship on South African Jews beginning on 9 July 1905 when Dr. Joseph Herman Hertz, the Rabbi of the Witwatersrand Old Hebrew Synagogue, gave a keynote address to the first Zionist Conference held in Johannesburg urging Jews to write their own history. Much of Jewish history in South Africa is bound up in histories of Zionist sympathy and support. In the late nineteenth century, the age of the new imperialism during which European global empires were at their zenith, Hertz encouraged Jews to consider their roles as “discoverer and pioneer” in the South African colonies. In current scholarship, with its focus on decolonization and subalterity, an exploration of these roles would be likely to attract censure rather than celebration. Indeed, Jewish historiography from the early twentieth century to the present echoes the contours of the discipline of history more broadly, with so-called empirical accounts told in the tone of “his master’s voice” gradually replaced by a move towards history from below, that is, eschewing Whiggish versions of history as the product and representation of great men and grand events.
In pursuit of a theory of individual and social accountability : a critical engagement with responses to perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence in higher education
(Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Education, 2024-10-02) Frizelle, Kerry; Brouard, Pierre; pierre.brouard@up.ac.za
South African universities are in the midst of rising sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). In the face of a lack of wider institutional commitment to effectively tackle the issue, we have seen an increase in calls to find, name, punish, shame, and expel perpetrators, that is, offending men. While appropriate at times, we propose that this current response to SGBV in tertiary education runs the risk of unintentionally essentialising problematic constructs of masculinity and, due to changing demographics of universities in South Africa, reproducing problematic colonial ideas of Black African cisgender male sexuality. As queer people, we are deeply aware of the machinery of othering, and that individual and systemic dynamics operate in interdependent ways to structure our personal and social relations. Using reflexive action research and autoethnographic memory work, we locate our own experiences of shame and being shamed, calling for dialogue to move beyond simplistic and individualistic solutions towards a theory of individual and social accountability. We invite SGBV practitioners to come together to think more systemically about the social construction of gender and race, the role of institutional systems and cultures, and pedagogical strategies that could bring male perpetrators into a relationship of engagement towards rehabilitation, change, and growth.
Traditional and biomedical health practices of adolescent boys and young men living with perinatally-acquired HIV in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa
(Routledge, 2023-01) Gittings, Lesley; Colvin, Christopher; Hodes, Rebecca
Men are less vulnerable to HIV acquisition than women, but have poorer HIV-related health outcomes. They access HIV services less, and are more likely to die on antiretroviral therapy. The adolescent epidemic presents further challenges, and AIDS-related illness is the leading cause of death among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa. We explored the health practices of adolescent boys and young men (aged 13–22) living with perinatally-acquired HIV and the processes through which these practices are formed and sustained. We engaged health-focused life history narratives (n=35), semi-structured interviews (n=32) and analysis of health facility files (n=41), alongside semi-structured interviews with traditional and biomedical health practitioners (n=14) in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Participants did not access traditional products and services for HIV, a finding that deviates from much of the literature. Findings suggest that health practices are mediated not only by gender and culture, but also childhood experiences of growing up deeply embedded in the biomedical health system.
Blood and blood : anti-retroviral therapy, masculinity, and redemption among adolescent boys in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa
(Wiley, 2022-09) Gittings, Lesley; Colvin, Christopher J.; Hodes, Rebecca
Adolescents living with perinatally acquired HIV are among the first generation in South Africa to grow up with anti-retroviral therapy and democratic freedoms. In this article, we explore the biosocial lives of adolescent boys and young men living with HIV in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. We conducted qualitative research with 36 adolescent boys and young men in 2016‒2018, including life history narratives, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of health facility files.
Rereading the Zimbabwean “land question” : gender and the symbolic meanings of “land”
(Unisa Press, 2022) Mawere, Tinashe
As the source of all food production, land in southern Africa has been highly contested. Using a variety of texts that express themes relating to land, I show that in Zimbabwe, in the face of massive political competition, land became the foundation for reform and national sovereignty in dominant nationalist, patriarchal and gendered discourses. I demonstrate that cultural texts centred on land have been embodied and generated in familial troupes, revealing dominant gendered and sexualised overtones that naturalise land ownership and particular land uses. At the same time, these texts reveal symbolic violence meted out on particular bodies. This discursive analysis of texts examines the gendered and sexualised discourses associated with Zimbabwe’s national reforms and security, where the imagining of the security, protection and sanctity of land has been driven by nationalist ideas about its centrality in the healthy (re)production of obedient social and national subjects.
'Foreign body' : a social history of Implanon in South Africa's Eastern Cape
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-08) Hodes, Rebecca; rebecca.hodes@up.ac.za
This article explores the reception of the contraceptive implant, Implanon, by healthcare workers and patients in family planning units in South Africa’s public health sector. Based on observations conducted at public health facilities in the Eastern Cape Province, and on interviews with nurses and patients in the same province, the study explored real-world experiences of the implant. This article examines the strategies used by nurses to promote use of the device, and explores how patients themselves responded to a widescale, national rollout of the implant within government family planning services. The study examines the reception of Implanon in the context of the post-Apartheid era in South Africa, in which the vestiges of Apartheid-era healthcare provision, and lack thereof, continue to animate personal experiences of contraception.
“Even God gave up on them” : a deconstruction of homosexuality discourses in Zimbabwe’s online locales
(Routledge, 2021) Evans, Henri-Count; Mawere, Tinashe
Gay or queer relationships in Zimbabwe remain a site of discursive contestation. The rise in human rights advocacy has re/located the subject within the human rights premise, shifting the discussions away but not disconnected from the religious, political and cultural representations. This paper examined the societal constructions and attitudes toward homosexuality by analyzing Twitter exchanges that followed the disclosure on the 21st of September 2018, by a teacher (Neal Hovelmeier) of St John’s College in Zimbabwe, that he was gay. The disclosure prompted substantial online and offline debates on gay and queer relationships (what is popularly known as homosexuality in Zimbabwe) and produced two discursive divisions. The first division was against homosexuality and galvanized support across cultural, political, traditional, religious and social constructions. Though less popular, the other division found support from within the gay or queer community itself, the global North diplomatic missions resident in Zimbabwe, liberal left-leaning and some civil society organizations. The former’s key feature is societal resistance to homosexuality which is constructed by way of inferences to Christianity and traditional belief systems about binary gender and sex categories and sexual relations. The latter has constructed homosexuality from the premise of human rights, acceptance and tolerance.
Thoughts from the epi(Centre) : interview with Mary Crewe
(Routledge, 2020) Reddy, Vasu; Crewe, Mary; vasu.reddy@up.ac.za
This interview engages Mary Crewe, founding Director of the Centre for the Study of AIDS, now known as the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender, at the University of Pretoria, by tapping into her archive, representing a series of active commitments in community and university sites that address a life’s work that is still under construction. Vasu Reddy engages Crewe on her shaping experiences with regard to family, gender arrangements, AIDS, and gender inequalities.
The #feesmustfall protest : when the camp(u)s becomes the matrix of a state of emergency
(University of the Free State, 2019) Kamga, Gerard Emmanuel Kamdem
The paper examines the state’s response to students’ claim for free education that has rocked South African tertiary institutions since 2015. These responses have been characterised by the enforcement of a de facto state of emergency materialised by an extreme securitisation/militarisation of campuses and other public spaces, resulting in human/student rights and the rule of law being brought to a standstill. The paper further discusses the background to the #FeesMustFall protest and attempts to understand why the crisis was addressed only more than two years after it erupted. The article proceeds by looking into the aftermath of the fees must fall campaign characterised by an escalation of security mechanisms which succeeded in turning the campuses into camps where fact and law are merged into one another and where a state of emergency has lost its exceptional character and became the new normal.
Sex, sexuality and education in South Africa : editorial introduction
(Routledge, 2019) Bhana, Deevia; Crewe, Mary; Aggleton, Peter
No abstract available.
Ethical challenges for piloting sexual health programs for youth in Hammanskraal, South Africa : bridging the gap between rights and services
(Routledge, 2015-03) Thokoane, Charmaine; charmaine.thokoane@up.ac.za
This article describes challenges of conducting an HIV prevention program involving 40 male and female participants ages 12–18 in Hammanskraal, South Africa, aimed at increasing awareness and knowledge of laws protecting children’s sexual health rights and access to services through a culturally based “study circle” format. Challenges highlighted by the project included Institutional Review Board approval of youth consent procedures, cooperation and coordination with local policymakers, the need to modify presentation materials to youths’ comprehension levels, availability of youth-based sexual health service providers, and cultural ambiguity over parental involvement in youth health care decisions and laws pertaining to sexual relationships among minors.
Correlates of HIV testing among abused women in South Africa
(SAGE, 2011-08) Adams, Julie L.; Hansen, Nathan B.; Fox, Ashley M.; Taylor, Baishakhi B.; Van Rensburg, Madri J.; Mohlahlane, Rakgadi; Sikkema, Kathleen J.; rakgadi.mohlahlane@up.ac.za
Gender-based violence increases a woman’s risk for HIV but little is known about her decision to get tested. We interviewed 97 women seeking abuse-related services from a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Forty-six women (47%) had been tested for HIV. Caring for children (odds ratio [OR] = 0.27, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.07, 1.00]) and conversing with partner about HIV (OR = 0.13, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.85]) decreased odds of testing. Stronger risk-reduction intentions (OR = 1.27, 95% CI = [1.01, 1.60]) and seeking help from police (OR = 5.51, 95% CI = [1.18, 25.76]) increased odds of testing. Providing safe access to integrated services and testing may increase testing in this population. Infection with HIV is highly prevalent in South Africa where an estimated 16.2% of adults between the ages of 15 and 49 have the virus. The necessary first step to stemming the spread of HIV and receiving life-saving treatment is learning one’s HIV serostatus through testing. Many factors may contribute to someone’s risk of HIV infection and many barriers may prevent testing. One factor that does both is gender-based violence.
Integrating HIV prevention into services for abused women in South Africa
(Springer, 2009-10) Sikkema, Kathleen J.; Neufeld, Sharon A.; Hansen, Nathan B.; Mohlahlane, Rakgadi; Jansen Van Rensburg, Madri; Watt, Melissa H.; Fox, Ashley M.; Crewe, Mary
The relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV risk is well documented, but few interventions jointly address these problems. We developed and examined the feasibility of an intervention to reduce HIV risk behaviors among 97 women seeking services for IPV from a community-based NGO in Johannesburg, South Africa. Two versions of the intervention (a 6-session group and a 1-day workshop) were implemented, both focusing on HIV prevention strategies integrated with issues of gender and power imbalance. Attendance was excellent in both intervention groups. Assessments were conducted at baseline, post-intervention and two-month follow-up to demonstrate the feasibility of an intervention trial. Women in both groups reported reductions in HIV misperceptions and trauma symptoms, and increases in HIV knowledge, risk reduction intentions, and condom use self-efficacy. The 6-session group showed greater improvements in HIV knowledge and decreases in HIV misperceptions in comparison to the 1-day workshop. The study demonstrated the feasibility and potential benefit of providing HIV prevention intervention to women seeking assistance for IPV.
In their own voices : a qualitative study of women's risk for intimate partner violence and HIV in South Africa
(2007-06) Fox, Ashley M.; Jackson, S.S.; Hansen, Nathan B.; Gasa, N.; Crewe, Mary; Sikkema, Kathleen J.
This study qualitatively examines the intersections of risk for intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV infection in South Africa. Eighteen women seeking services for relationship violence were asked semistructured questions regarding their abusive experiences and HIV risk. Participants had experienced myriad forms of abuse, which reinforced each other to create a climate that sustained abuse and multiplied HIV risk. Male partners having multiple concurrent sexual relationships, and poor relationship communication compounded female vulnerability to HIV and abuse. A social environment of silence, male power, and economic constraints enabled abuse to continue. "Breaking the silence" and women's empowerment were suggested solutions.

Browse

Recent Submissions