Article insight (including female perspective)!

The problems resulting from HIV and AIDS feed the need for introspection. While silence surrounds sexuality issues in Moshi district, my study tried to explore male and female relationships to understand sexual (risk) behavior.

The most striking finding is the emphasis placed in educational messages of parents, schools, churches and media campaigns on avoiding sex before marriage, which is in conflict with the reality of many sexually active young boys and girls.

Behavior of boys and girls is socially evaluated according to ideas about proper behavior and good and bad character of youth.
Gender characteristics differentiate men to have a natural desire for sex while women show good character by being non-sexual unless married. Girls are not supposed to talk or be active in issues of sex. For girls to be knowledgeable on HIV/AIDS and prevention methods will increase fear for her to be seen sexual while at the same time she does not feel in control to direct sexual behavior within relationships with men. Men are seen to be decision makers in issues of sex as well as providers in relations. This results in a transactional nature of relationships whereby boys provide girls with money and gifts and girls give them sex for love in return.

Educational messages try to protect girls from HIV/AIDS and pregnancy by warnings that they should not be close to boys. The separation of boys and girls in order to avoid sex however, makes the construction of their relations only a sexual one. Thereby love and sex have become very much interrelated. Friendship between boys and girls are soon to become love relations, which include sex. The silence surrounding sex and sexual relationships are meant to avoid a desire for sex to develop. Thereby sex is put in a negative light, which increases anxiety and distrust between men and women and it feeds the need for more silence.

Socio-economic changes and the HIV/AIDS epidemic feed the need to redefine gender roles. Poverty will make women more vulnerable to exchange sex for money but also it will be more difficult for boys to provide in a girls needs. Furthermore modern times make girls’ needs more expensive. At the same time increasing access to movies and information through internet will heighten a desire to explore issues of sex.

The aim of education should therefore be to help boys and girls to form healthy relationships. When not responding to the emotional and psychological aspect of sexual desires (including its positive aspects of pleasure), but instead represent them in a negative light, contributes to fears and distrust. This leads to a situation where boys and girls construct a trust in romantic love instead of actively involve oneself in defining healthy future for themselves and their partner. Silence and respectability make girls more vulnerable through the fear of being labelled a prostitute. Separation of boys and girls, making their relations only sexual could be replaced by more responsiveness to genuine experiences of young people and possibilities to develop non-sexual relations. Critical thinking about inconsistencies or ambiguities within male-female relations could lead to openness and communication between men and women to make healthy choices in (sexual) lives.

Since behavior is very much socially evaluated, other people within the environments of young people should also be involved. These include schools, parents as well as churches. Thereby the caring and protective effect of breaking the silence and improvement of communication should be made explicit as well as the clear need of young boys and girls to be able to talk about their experiences with different people.

Celine van de Coterlet has arrived to join the quantitative research part of this project (5 months) to fulfill her internship for the University of Maastricht!