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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Sexual behaviour
Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America brings
together a broad community of scholars to explore the history of
illicit and alternative sexualities in Latin America's colonial and
early national periods. Together the essays examine how "the
unnatural" came to inscribe certain sexual acts and desires as
criminal and sinful, including acts officially deemed to be
"against nature" - sodomy, bestiality, and masturbation - along
with others that approximated the unnatural - hermaphroditism,
incest, sex with the devil, solicitation in the confessional,
erotic religious visions, and the desecration of holy images. In
doing so, this anthology makes important and necessary
contributions to the historiography of gender and sexuality. Amid
the growing politicized interest in broader LGBTQ movements in
Latin America, the essays also show how these legal codes endured
to make their way into post - independence Latin America.
Modernizing Sexuality illustrates how Western idealizations of
normative sexuality and the power of modernity come together in
U.S. HIV prevention policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results are
calls for women's "right to say no " to sex and the promotion of
"love matches " as the remedy to the "traditional cultural
practices " said to put people at risk for HIV. Using the country
of Malawi as a case study, Anne W. Esacove draws on narrative
theory and a rich set of interview, archival, and ethnographic data
to expose the unacknowledged - yet widespread and well-funded -
moderniziation project at the heart of U.S. policy, and to argue
that these efforts not only fail to translate into actionable steps
for preventing HIV in the widespread, generalized epidemics in
Sub-Saharan Africa, but actually exacerbate HIV risk, particularly
for women. Moving beyond U.S. policy, Modernizing Sexuality also
examines how people targeted by prevention efforts create everyday
understandings of HIV risk and prevention. Deploying gossip,
information gleaned, and strategically adapted from prevention
efforts, and the assumption that sex is essential to life,
Malawians tend to sort potential sexual partners into "tiers of
desirability, " each with a corresponding HIV-prevention strategy.
By illuminating the collective solutions and multiple paths of
prevention used by Malawians, the analysis exposes fundamental
flaws of U.S. HIV prevention policy and provides direction for
potentially more effective strategies. Stepping outside of the
normal theoretical and methodological boundaries of HIV
scholarship, Esacove raises important questions about lure of the
story told through prevention policy, the risks of medicalizing
social justice advocacy, and the limits of feminist and sexuality
theories for directing prevention efforts, particularly cases when
they mirror U.S. policy by erasing corporeal bodies and actual sex
acts. Modernizing Sexuality closes with a fascinating alternative
narrative to guide HIV prevention that reimagines risk and provides
one alternative path for organizing policy efforts.
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