Sponsored Sexuality, Aids and Tough Choices
ABC (Abstinence, Faithfulness and (perhaps) Condom) is the brand paradigm and practice on HIV risk avoidance being macro-managed by foreign funding agencies. The solution to the African AIDS epidemic is the ‘fidelity fix’ imperatives promoting pre-marriage sexual abstinence and marital monogamy. The anti-sex-condom crusade ignores gender inequality, poverty and power – the structural drives of the epidemic – and discusses abstinence, fidelity and sexual networks without historical and cultural context. Condom marginalisation downplays the public health responsibility of protecting self and others from infection. The social, political and economic hardships exacerbated by the intractable problems of ignorance, poverty and disease make people vulnerable to the dictates of the rescuers promoting solutions. Negotiating ways around foreign-imposed sexual virtue has happened since colonial contact. Ugandans demanding the reinstating of pre-2003 safer sex education and the condom option are silenced, while the support of local Christian fundamentalist advocates is buttressed with economic incentives.