Exploring masculinities in the context of ARV use: a study of men living with HIV in a South African village
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: \nThe dominant social constructions concerning what it means to be a man have been studied in \nrelation to various HIV risks that they may pose for men and women. It has been shown that men \nworldwide tend to embrace notions of manhood that encourage them to have multiple partners \nand not pay attention to their health needs. This study focuses on men who have taken an HIV \ntest, disclosed their HIV results and are using antiretroviral medicines provided in a public health \nfacility in South Africa. It investigates their experiences of living with HIV in relation to how \nthey constructed and experienced their masculinity. This focus is unusual in South Africa. Most \nresearch focuses on men who are resisting health services and who have not taken an HIV test. \nBased on a fourteen-month ethnographic fieldwork in a South African village, findings show that \nliving with HIV poses unique challenges for a man. From the onset of a disease men are faced \nwith difficult decisions to make, such as whether or not to seek help, where and with whom. \nThese decisions, I argue, are not made in a vacuum, but are highly mediated by pre-existing \nviews about manhood, culture, HIV stigma, perceptions of treatments, and other belief systems. \nThus when someone becomes ill he draws from the various meanings offered by these discourses \nto decide on how to respond to a physical discomfort. Most men in this study embraced the \ndominant social definitions of what it means to be a 'real' man before they became ill. These \ndefinitions discouraged men from using public health facilities; they encouraged men to have \nmultiple partners as a way of proving manhood and gaining social respect, and they constructed \nmanhood as a powerful, controlling and an independent gender. This thesis engages with men \nliving with HIV to find out how they dealt with these expectations when they became ill and \nneeded to receive help. Most importantly it investigates how these definitions and experiences of \nmasculinity have been challenged and then transformed by the experience of being ill and what \n'alternative' definitions of manhood have been forged out of experiences of being sick and using \nlifelong medications.
Author: Sakhumzi Mfecane
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Universiteit van Amsterdam
OpenAlex ID: W2234940356