AIDSImpact.com:: - Santa Fe, USA 2011

Abstract #210 - What made an HIV free man to marry a positive woman? Islam, HIV/AIDS response and new emerging masculinities in Bangladesh
Authors: Presenting Author: Mr Sayed Md Saikh Imtiaz - University of Dhaka
Additional Authors:
Aim: This paper, using life histories of two young heterosexual HIV negative men, tries to explore how a different version of masculinity has allowed the young men to go beyond the prescription of the hegemonic masculinity and marry HIV positive women.
Method / Issue: The paper is based on an ethnographic research done among the young heterosexual men in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Discourse analysis, life histories along with FGD and participant observation were used as methodological tools.
Results / Comments: While presenting life histories of two heterosexual HIV negative young men who married HIV positive women, the paper unfolds a new emerging construction of masculinity that has successfully challenged the prescription of hegemonic masculinity in regard to HIV/AIDS i.e. not to accept HIV/AIDS patients, and suggests incorporation of this 'marginal forms of masculinity' as a 'successful model of masculinity' in programatic response through risk group approach would help to reduce stigma on HIV/AIDS in so called 'general community'.
Discussion: Although 'risk group' approach has huge limitations in addressing HIV/AIDS issue in a low prevalent predominantly muslim country like Bangladesh, unfortunately there is no better option than this till now considering cultural stigma and lack of resources. In Bangladesh the discursive construction of AIDS (as part of responses based on risk group approach) as a disease conforms to the dominant heterosexual masculine ideology. So it is no exception that most young heterosexual men embodies such prescription and identify HIV patients as 'deviant'. However, though very rare there are cases in which 'positive examples of manhood' intertwined with Islamic discourses of 'care', 'love', 'affection' and 'responsibility' and construct certain masculine ideologies that allow young men to go beyond the hegemonic masculine prescriptions. Unfolding of two extreme cases of enactment of such masculinities suggest there are alternative ways to address 'man as gatekeepers of sex' in so called 'general population' that would help to reduce stigma through discursive construction of HIV/AIDS in programatic responses.
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