Presentation Abstracts
Hidden From View: "Where's My Body in This?"
Youth, Sexuality and AIDS Prevention
By Claudia Mitchell. IASSCS International Conference: Sex & Secrecy, WISER, University of the Witswatersrand, South Africa, June 22-25, 2003.
This paper focuses on how images within public safer-sex campaigns in South Africa have often failed to change intimate behaviour patterns particularly amongst young people. Framed within discourses of communication and cultural studies (see for example the work of Cindy Patten, Simon Watney), the paper examines the contradictory spaces that exist between images of sexuality in popular culture (From Diesel ads to Seventeen magazine) and those in public campaigns sponsored by Soul City, love life, along with more conventional life-skills campaigns. While there has been extensive research, particularly within the literature on popular culture in North America and the UK on pleasure and desire within ‘compulsory’ (hetero) sexuality (e.g. Fiehy), there has been, to date, little said within this discourse about what it mean to begin sexual experimentation at a time when the dangers and responsibilities of sex are central to public messages and campaigns. How do various groups of young people in South Africa negotiate these tensions between pleasure and death, and where their bodies, collectively, at least are in "full view?"
The paper draws on qualitative data from 25 adolescents who themselves have been involved in in-depth ‘image making’ projects on AIDS prevention in township schools in the Western Cape and in one more privileged school in Johannesburg. The project, funded by the Canadian Society for International Health and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, involved participants who ranged in age from 15 to 18. In the first part of the project participants were asked to consider what AIDS prevention messages they thought people their age would respond to. In particular they were asked to try to locate themselves in these messages. They were also, however in the second part of the project engaged in action-oriented arts-based projects where they had opportunities to explore ways of addressing the gendered face of AIDS through graffiti, hip-hop, dub poetry and so on. How might the "hidden from view" themes that emerged (i.e. "this is not about me", "where is my body?") in part one inform thinking about the need for more localized approaches to AIDS prevention, challenging some of the ‘one size fits all’ global strategies. The findings that will be presented (and which will incorporate video footage) will pertain both to arts-based methodologies for working with young people, as well as implications for those working in the area of communication and health promotion.
Gendering HIV/AIDS in a Globalized World: Implications for Prevention Programs for Youth
HIV/AIDS is now recognized as a global crisis, with young women emerging as one of the most vulnerable groups. Given the uneven effects of globalizing forces, the limitations of a "one size fits all" approach to youth HIV/AIDS prevention programs are now being recognized. A serious limitation of most programs is the homogenized notion of masculine and feminine behaviour across youth in different localities. Our research with diverse Canadian and South African youth points to the need for a more complex view of the ways unequal gender relations are increasing HIV risk for youth. In this paper, we draw from the transnational literature to propose an approach to the study of gender, youth and HIV that considers the ways local and global forces are reinforcing and/or reshaping gendered relations in youth sexual practices. Our goal is to consider the increasing vulnerability of girls in the context of a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between gender, youth and HIV infection rates. We argue that the avoidance of universalizing notions of risk will lead to the development of HIV prevention programs tailored for youth in specific locales.
Creative Transmission: Arts-informed Approaches to Working with Girls on HIV Prevention
A paper presentation by Claudia Mitchell and Shannon Walsh. Advances in Qualitative Methods, Banff, Alberta, May 2-4, 2003.
Young women are one of the most vulnerable populations worldwide to HIV infection. Female biological and epidemiological vulnerability to infection, combined with gender imbalances, and other factors add to HIV rates in women continually climbing. The inclusion of girls within the process of developing prevention strategies and ideologies is imperative if successful initiatives are to be discovered. In this paper, I will explore integrating arts, creative vision and expression into HIV prevention strategies with young women through a discussion of arts-informed projects we are involved in South Africa and Canada. I will address how being ‘provoked by art’ is contributing to the empowerment of a group of young women to take action in relation to their own bodies, sexuality and HIV prevention. This paper asks; how does engagement in arts-informed action research effect personal behaviour change in young women?
Masculinit(ies): An Important Construct in the Study of Youth, Gender and Sexual Health Risk
By Amy Andrews & June Larkin
Ontario HIV Treatment Network 5th Annual Research Day
November 28-29, 2002
Objective:
To date, most studies of the interactions between youth, gender and sexuality/sexual expression have focused on heterosexual women. There has been little attention paid to the ways in which traditional and alternative concepts masculinity impact the perceived sexual norms and expected behavior decisions of young people locally or globally. In this pilot study, we examined the ways in which traditional and alternative notions of masculinity are reflected in young men’s stories and comments regarding notions of sexual activity, power and risk as discussed within mixed-sex groups in three urban Toronto-area high schools.
Methods:
For this pilot study, three urban, Toronto-area high schools were contacted by youth facilitators and all students aged 16-years and older within the school were invited to participate in three, one-hour group discussion sessions. The three pilot discussion groups each consisted of 10 – 13 students from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds (N=42: Women=28, Men=14). Discussion topics included: issues of normative sexual activity, power and notions of sexual ‘risk’. Student feedback was audio recorded with consent, coded and categorized by themes using the constant comparative method. Ethical review and clearance for this study was provided by the HIV/AIDS Review Committee at the University of Toronto.
Results:
Three themes were identified in the student group data that corresponded to common themes in the existing literature on masculinities, sexuality and health behavior. These themes were: 1) normative conceptions of men’s sexuality; 2) sex act hierarchies and relations of power; 3) concepts of ‘risk’.
Conclusions:
Support for dominant notions of masculine sexuality is prevalent in the comments of many of the Toronto youth included in this pilot study. However, in spite of apparent support for hegemonic masculine notions, there is also support for alternative expressions of masculinity.
Implications for Policy:
A deeper investigation of alternative manifestations of masculinity will assist us in developing more complex understandings of sexuality, sexual meaning and the practice of social/sexual relationships. Such understandings are essential for the development of meaningful and critical sexual health education programs for
Youth Culture and Youth Participation in HIV Prevention
By Claudia Mitchell, Shannon Walsh & Ann Smith
Ontario HIV Treatment Network 5th Annual Research Day
November 28-29, 2002
In this in-depth project (funded by the CSIH) involving 20 young people (males and females) from several township schools in the Cape Town region, the focus was on youth and youth culture. What messages do they think people their age need to see? What media are most effective? How might they themselves participate in creating those messages? How does gender play into youth culture? These young people encountered hip-hop artists, graffiti artists, a television producer, young adult writers, filmmakers and photographers in a series of workshops over a period of several months. At the same time as they were meeting up with these artists they were also producing their own creative projects (graphic novels, photographs, rap poetry, fiction and so on). At the end of the project, young people evaluated their own ‘new knowledge’ and potential for behaviour for change.
We feel that the creative process cannot be ignored in developing prevention programs. Youth culture artists (hip hop, graffiti and so on) have a powerful role to play in AIDS prevention. Constructions of masculinity and femininity can be addressed through youth culture.
Youth, Gender and HIV Prevention: A Case for Transnational Approaches to Risk
By June Larkin, Claudia Mitchell, Amy Andrews (hyperlinked)
9th Canadian Conference on International Health, Ottawa, Ontario
October 27-29 2002
Young women's disproportionate vulnerability to HIV infection has been attributed to conventional constructions of aggressive masculinity and passive femininity adopted by youth. A serious limitation of this analysis is the homogenized understanding of masculine and feminine behaviour across youth in different localities. While unequal social relations have much to do with the ways society produces and enforces gendered subjectivities, our research with diverse Canadian and South African youth points to the need for a more complex view of the ways unequal gender relations are increasing HIV risk. In this paper we discuss the benefits of taking a transnational approach to the study of gender and HIV risk with particular reference to our work with Canadian and South African youth. More specifically, we propose an approach that considers the local specificities of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the context of the global forces that impact on gender relations
Risky Spaces: Negotiating the Meanings of Risk to Adolescents in HIV Prevention
By Claudia Mitchell
9th Canadian Conference on International Health
Ottawa, Ontario
October 27-29 2002
In our work within GAAP – Gendering Adolescence and AIDS prevention Project-- our interest is in ‘mapping out’ the territory, of how young people talk about sexuality, and of what they understand of such terms of ‘risk’ negotiation ‘safe sex’, prevention messages and so on. We are particularly interested in seeing how we might work the space between the local, national and global in term of gender and HIV prevention amongst youth. Drawing from the work of De Oliveira (1999) and others, we are particularly interested in developing a gender analysis on risk and risk-taking. As we have noted elsewhere (Kumar, Larkin and Mitchell, 2001; Mitchell and Smith, 2001), young women are particularly vulnerable in terms of HIV infection. While there are both biological and social reasons for their vulnerability, our own ‘take’ is that to date there is still a great deal of ‘gendering’ to be factored into HIV programs. One size does not fit all and notions, for example, of ‘risk’ ‘negotiation’ ‘safe sex’ are areas that have been cultural and gender differences, and that need to take account of issues of transactional sex, the high incidence of gender based violence, sex with a virgins, gang rapes and so on, and if we take this into the realm of issues of poverty and equity, we see the necessity of such more complex framework (Larkin, 2000; CIDA, 1999).
Narratives of Change/Narratives of Hope: Visualizing HIV and AIDS
By Shannon Walsh
9th Canadian Conference on International Health
Ottawa, Ontario
October 27-29 2002
A series of films will be presented around HIV and AIDS issues from a variety of perspectives and formats. Films to be screened include a number of works from the Canadian independent filmmakers, the National Film Board and the South African Steps for the Future project, an organization who produce a "challenging, provocative, and unconventional collection of films about life in Southern Africa in the presence of HIV/AIDS". Some of the selections will be: from Eddie Edward’s "Gotta Give" – a dynamic up-beat short film using the music video form to promote the empowerment of female identity and sexual negotiation; Orlando Mesquita "Eclipse" a dreamlike documentary depicting the total blackout of four girls’ lives, eclipsed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Mozambique; and, Siyabonga Makhatini’s "The Moment", a funny and honest film, in which people from different backgrounds share their most personal thoughts about courtship and sexual behaviour. We will also show a number of films from Canada, such as "Panic Bodies", from independent filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, who uses an experimental format to discuss of his own HIV positive status. A number of documentary films from the National Film Board, such as "Doctors with Heart", and "At Risk", will contribute to a broad and diverse understanding of our visual and social reaction to the pandemic.
Artfully Engaged
By Shannon Walsh
9th Canadian Conference on International Health, Ottawa, Ontario
October 27-29 2002
How does engaging, acting, and producing impact our personal political and social responses? Is the very gesture of being engaged in ?doing? in and of itself significant to shaping an individual and her/his world view? These questions are central to our investigation into how art and activism can be integrated into a more comprehensive strategy for HIV prevention work and AIDS activism. While inequalities of gender, race and class are all critical to how the virus has flourished, it is apparent that the individual is not the only site to navigate in creating an effective prevention strategy, it is central in the empowerment of each individual, as well as the broader social structures, to encourage safer sexual practices. From some of our previous work in the area of youth HIV prevention, it has become apparent that youth have been ?provoked? to question themselves, to discuss among their peers and to feel personally implicated by AIDS issues through arts. This coupled with the positioning of youth as active agents in producing messages and assuming a voice in the discussion around HIV/AIDS strategies can potentially charge current strategies. The "personal is political" is turned on its head to read- "personal engagement creates political action".
Creative Transmission: Girls, Message Making and HIV
By Shannon Walsh
AWID Conference, Guadalajara, Mexico
October 3-6 2002
Female biological and epidemiological vulnerability to infection, combined with gender imbalances, economic dependence, ideas of femininity, structural violence, rape and other factors all add to HIV rates in women continually climbing. Worldwide the AIDS pandemic can be understood not only in terms of health and science, but also as rooted in our cultural, social and personal realities. The structures of globalization that increase the divisions between those who have and those who have not, clearly exaberate an already critical situation. I am interested here in:
• Working with girls to think "out of the box" in terms of safe, fun sexuality.
• Creating a safe and positive space for young women to discuss and interact with issues of desire, their bodies, and their ideas about sexuality and abstinence, while promoting self-esteem is a key factor to encouraging young women to practice - and maintain - safe sexual practices.
• Encouraging girls to be producers, not only consumers of message making that includes notions of healthy sexuality and self-esteem.
In this session I will explore some approaches that integrate arts, creative vision and expression into HIV prevention meaning making. Some of the questions that inform our process will be; How can women working collaboratively and inclusively, begin to create messages of healthy female sexuality, desire and agency as well as providing a space for boys and men to see female sexuality as just as important as their own. And, how can HIV prevention messages be affected, and how can adolescent girls gain a sense of personal power and agency, by involving girls in the process of creation? Using participatory processes and collaborative, feminist methodologies we may begin to change the picture.
South African Youth Culture and Youth Participation in HIV Prevention
Claudia Mitchell, McGill University
Shannon Walsh, McGill University
Ann Smith. University of the Witwatersrand
14th World AIDS Conference, Barcelona Spain
July 8-13, 2002.
Issues: Youth worldwide are one of the most vulnerable populations for risk of infection of HIV. Young women are particularly at risk. Too often, however, prevention programs tend to be ‘about’ young people or are ‘for’ young people but are not developed with young people themselves. Moreover, such programs often ignore the significance of youth culture.
Description: In this in-depth project (funded by the Canadian Society for International Health) involving 20 young people (males and females) from several township schools in the Cape Town region, the focus was on youth and youth culture. What messages do they think people their age need to see? What media are most effective? How might they themselves participate in creating those messages? How does gender play into youth culture? These young people encountered hip-hop artists, graffiti artists, a television producer, young adult writers, filmmakers and photographers through participating a series of workshops over a period of several months. At the same time as they were meeting up with these artists they were also producing their own creative projects (graphic novels, photographs, rap poetry, fiction and so on). At the end of the project, young people evaluated their own ‘new knowledge’ and potential for behaviour for change.
Lessons learned: The creative process cannot be ignored in developing prevention programs. Youth culture artists (hip hop, graffiti and so on) have a powerful role to play in AIDS prevention. Constructions of masculinity and femininity can be addressed through youth culture.
Recommendations: There is a need for more youth-focused programs. Health care workers and educators need to look beyond conventional forms of message transmission. As much as possible the media forms needs to be authentic.
Opening Up Critical Spaces for Gendering Youth and AIDS: Visual Narratives of South African Girlhood in the Age of Aids
Claudia Mitchell & Ann Smith
The VIII International Interdisciplinary Congress on
Women: Gendered Worlds: Gains and Challenges
Women’s Worlds 2002 Conference
Kampala, Uganda, July 23-26, 2002
This paper draws on our recent work on HIV/AIDS. Youth and gender-based violence, particularly in the context of South Africa. In the paper we draw on visual narratives as ?entry points? into developing youth-focused initiatives which place gender on the agenda. These visual narratives include excerpts from documentary video, mainstream advertising, and youth-targeted AIDS prevention campaigns. Arguing that the popular media is a key feature of HIV/AIDS prevention programs, particularly within urban areas of South Africa, we raise a number of key questions: To what extent is gender a feature of AIDS prevention programming generally? Can popular media become a player in gendering AIDS prevention? How might young women, themselves, become engaged in gendering their own narratives? The combination of a rise in the HIV incidence rate of both women and youth suggests that young females are particularly vulnerable. In our recent work on gender violence with South African teachers and learners, we were confronted with the force of the AIDS epidemic and the gendered impact of the disease: the HIV incidence rate among South African girls is three-four times higher than boys (Brown, 2000) and, worldwide, four-fifths of all infected women are African (UNAIDS, 1999). Our paper draws on the recent work which has identified particular vulnerabilities of young women to HIV infection. The risk of HIV infection during unprotected vaginal intercourse is as much as 2-4 times higher for women than men (UNAIDS, 1999). Young women’s biological vulnerability to HIV infection is increased when their sexual autonomy is compromised. Gendered power relations operate to shape and constrain heterosexual practices in ways that increase young women's risk to HIV infection. Although adolescent heterosexual relationships take place within the private sphere, they are located within complicated social networks of peers where information is exchanged and sexual reputations are constructed (Holland et. al. 1999; Holland and Thomson 1998; Moore, Rosenthal, & Mitchell, 1996). According to the dominant femininity script, young women are not supposed to desire sex or be sexually assertive, and are further expected to resist young men’s sexual advances (Gomez, 1998). In the context of the factors noted above, our overarching concern in this paper is to explore the critical space of HIV/AIDS as an action-drama in which young people in South Africa – young women in particular -- could become dynamic and powerful actors and protagonists in relation to their own sexualities.
Risky Images: Youth, AIDS and Gender in South Africa
By Claudia Mitchell, Ann Smith & Sandra Weber
Visualizing Community, State and Nation: Images of Power & Social Bond
IVSA 2002 Conference
Santorini Island, Greece, July 13-18, 2002
This paper focuses on the visual messages available to young people in AIDS prevention campaigns in South Africa. In our recent work on gender violence with South African teachers and learners, we were confronted with the force of the AIDS epidemic and the gendered impact of the disease: the HIV incidence rate among South African girls is three-four times higher than boys (Brown, 2000) and, worldwide, four-fifths of all infected women are African (UNAIDS, 1999). As we have argued elsewhere (Mitchell, Smith and Larkin, 2001; Mitchell and Smith, 2001), to date, there has been relatively little attention paid in AIDS prevention campaigns to what might be described as the ?gendering of AIDS" and the fact that the combination of a rise in the HIV incidence rate of both women and youth suggests that young females are particularly vulnerable. While the subject of gender and sexual stereotyping has of course been the subject of extensive analysis when it comes to commercial advertising, our particular concern is on providing a gender analysis of messages that, in fact, may put young women even more at risk in the context of gender-based violence and AIDS. Drawing on visual images from several large organizations such as UNAIDS, we offer in the paper a consideration of some key features of a gender analysis and are particularly interested in how 'risk' itself is gendered.
Guys Talk!
By Amy Andrews
14th World AIDS Conference, Barcelona Spain
July 8-13 2002.
Background: Rates of STD and HIV infection are increasing among heterosexual youth in Canada (Patrick et al, 2001). Although several studies involving young men have investigated prevalent types of sexual behaviours, few have examined the ways in which young men experience and respond to social expectations that accompany dominant perceptions of masculinity. Methods: A series of four semi-structured focus groups were held with 15 high-school aged young men in Toronto, Canada. The group sessions were designed to initiate and guide discussion around the influence of gender expectations on young men’s sexual risk taking behaviour. Focus groups themes included participants' understanding of HIV/AIDS, sources of HIV/AIDS information, pressures experienced by society, health and ?manhood?, the influence of sex education programs, perceptions of HIV/AIDS risk, strategies for managing risk, definitions of sexual activity, the effects of peer pressure and concerns about sexual reputation. Focus group feedback was transcribed, coded and categorized by themes using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Results: Project results indicate that young men feel a great deal of pressure to appear unconcerned about their health and to exhibit an active sex life. These and other factors often combine to inhibit young men’s health seeking behaviour and they encourage young men to seek situations of sexual risk. Conclusions: Young men are rarely given the opportunity to talk about how social pressures affect their decision-making. More work needs to be done in this area.
Participatory Approaches to the Study of Gender, Youth and HIV/AIDS
By June Larkin, Claudia Mitchell and Ann Smith
Canadian Psychological Association 2002 Conference
Vancouver, British Columbia, May 30-June 1, 2002
HIV/AIDS is fast becoming a global crisis and young people, worldwide, are one of the most vulnerable groups. Within the youth population, there is strong evidence that girls are particularly at risk (UNAIDS, 1999). In both Canada (Health Canada, 2000) and South Africa (Tallis, 1998), the HIV incidence rate is increasing more rapidly in females than in males. Although female vulnerability to HIV infection is now acknowledged (UNAIDS, 2000; Health Canada, 2000; UNAIDS, 1999; Tallis, 1998), there are few studies that deal specifically with issues related to gender, HIV and youth. This study is designed to address this gap. Specifically, we are working with young people in Canada and South Africa to examine the ways gender acts as a conduit for HIV transmission. This research is a joint project with the Women and Gender Studies Institute, Toronto, McGill University, Montreal, and the University of the Witswatersrand, South Africa. In this paper we discuss the participatory methodologies we intend to use in the project with a particular focus on phase one of the three-year study. Drawing on feminist approaches to participatory research we present the protocol and preliminary findings of our work with youth research groups from Canadian and South African schools. Our overall goal is to work with young people in both countries to develop a gender-based analysis of HIV/AIDS that can be used in prevention programs with youth.
Bored to Death and Sick of AIDS: Narrative in HIV/AIDS Prevention with South African Youth
By Claudia Mitchell
Association of Bibliotherapy and Applied Literature Annual Conference
Toronto, Ontario, May 25-26, 2002
Drawing from the work of Simon Watney and others who elsewhere have written about the significance of narrative and knowing in relation to sexuality and HIV/AIDS, I explore a number of recent South African young adult novels which deal with HIV/AIDS-related issues: AIDS orphans, sexual violence (Van Dijk’s Stronger than the Storm), AIDS testing (Malan’s The Sounds of New Wings, Hofmeyr’s Blue Train to the Moon) and so on. These narrative texts provide an ‘entry point’ for addressing the reality that everyone in South Africa (including healing practitioners as well as those with whom they work) is either affected or infected. The analysis of these works comes a 3-year SSHRCC-funded study of the uses of literature in social change amongst South African youth.
Particpatory Process and Creative Vision in AIDS Prevention: Exploring the Gendered Discourses of AIDS Amongst South Africa Youth
Claudia Mitchell, Shannon Walsh & Ann Smith
Instituting Gender Equality in Schools: Working in an HIV/AIDS Environment
A Colloquium at the University of Natal
Durban, South Africa, April 8-10, 2002
Young people in South Africa are one of the most vulnerable populations in terms of HIV/AIDS infection rates. In particular, there is a need to highlight the gendering of AIDS in relation to the high infection rates amongst young women. However, while youth is a group that is in great need of information and knowledge, the kind of information and knowledge that would be most effective, and the ways of constructing and disseminating it, are areas that are of key concern t health workers, educators, families, communities, and of course to young people themselves. In this paper, we explore youth-based participation in understanding AIDS prevention, focusing in particular on ‘arts based’ approaches (photography, creative writing) that we are using as part of the Soft Cover project. Soft Cover is a project involving students in a secondary school on the Cape Flats, the Centre for the Book and McGill University which addresses in a concrete way (through the arts, hip-hop, computer-based technology and literature) approaches to addressing HIV/AIDS prevention that take account of youth culture and its significance to AIDS prevention, the voices of youth, and the need to place on the agenda the links between gender, sexuality and power and prevention. The research for the paper is supported by two sources: ?Gendering HIV/AIDS in South African and Canadian youth? (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), and ?Soft Cover: Youth, creative vision and AIDS? (HIV/AIDS Small Grants Fund Phase 11: 2001-2003, Canadian International Health Society).
Visualizing the Politics of Innocence in the Age of AIDS
By Claudia Mitchell and Shannon Walsh
American Educational Research Association Annual Conference
New Orleans, April 1-5, 2002
‘Another kind of threat, however, comes from within, in the inexorable onset of growth that will transform all the smooth, unmarked purity of youth into lumpy, hairy adulthood. In an age marked by the emergence of AIDS and hence by a new consciousness of the body and sexuality, this transition to maturity was bound to receive a different focus.’ (Open Ends: Innocence and Experience, exhibition brochure. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000)
The focus of this paper is on gender, youth and HIV prevention/AIDS awareness in the context of South Africa and draws together two areas of investigation, the uses (and abuses) of images of ?childhood?, ?youth? and ?adolescence? in the age of AIDS, and the uses (and abuses) of visual data in the social sciences in this work. We are concerned with the ways in which social constructions of age can contribute to reducing or exacerbating the vulnerability of young people, and for this reason we refer to the issue as one of ‘the politics of innocence’. For whose benefit are certain visual images of young people used? Notwithstanding the particular case of South Africa right now where the incidence of new cases of HIV infection amongst young people is at crisis proportions, the impetus for our work on the visual representations of youth, gender and AIDS comes out of a recognition of the increasing risk of youth to sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, and within that the particular vulnerability, worldwide, of young women. Our particular interest is in the ways in which young people who are at the age of experimenting with sex and who are most in need of information about sexuality and HIV and AIDS are often publicly referred to and represented as children in need of protection, rather than, as Mark Heywood points out in relation to the Access to Information Clause of the South African Constitution, as young people who have the right to protecting themselves by having access appropriate information about their own sexuality (Heywood, 2001).
The background to this paper comes out of our experiences with two interrelated youth-based projects in South Africa with which we are currently involved, both donor-funded (an issue in and of itself), on developing school-based and youth-focused materials that address gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS in South African schools. In both, ‘awareness’ itself is considered to be a first step in addressing the issues, with visual data occupying a central role in creating awareness - in the form of media campaigns, billboards, brochures and pamphlets, and through youth culture more generally (from t-shirts to cd packaging). As Anne Higonnet points out in Picturing Innocence, there is a longstanding tradition of visual images contributing to constructing notions of childhood – from the paintings of childhood explored by Philip Aries, through to the controversial photographs of Lewis Carroll and Sally Mann to the uses of images of childhood in Bennetton and Calvin Klein ads. In the case of South Africa, the visual in relation to AIDS ‘awareness’ occupies a particularly significant and, as we argue here, often paradoxical position when it comes to ‘creating awareness’ within HIV prevention campaigns. At the heart of this issue is the dichotomy between the way the community often wishes to see young people – innocent as in non-sexual and in need of protection (from sex itself), as opposed to the way young people actually are --sexually active either consensually or as victims of non consensual sex, and hence in need of protection in terms of information about safe sex.
In the paper we look at a number of visual images related to youth, gender and HIV/AIDS including from Lovelife and Unwanted Images, a video documentary which addresses gender based violence in South Africa.
What's Morality Got to do With it Anyway?
By Ann Smith
Getting the Word Out: Spreading the message of HIV prevention to youth on their terms
The Centre for the Book
Cape Town, South Africa, March 22-23, 2002
The linking of notions such as "romance" and "fidelity" to sexual activity, apart from being impertinent and inappropriate, is, historically speaking, a relatively recent practice, and one which has entrenched the view that the behaviour of its women is an index of the morality of a society. The A and the B of the ABC prevention programme encourage this sort of thinking: women and girls who do abstain are "better" than those who do not, and those who are faithful are similarly "more moral" than those who are unfaithful. The C of the program - the last resort for those who can neither abstain nor be faithful - is also linked to female morality: girls who know about, and insist upon, condom use must be sexually experienced. As long as morality continues to be attached to whether or not girls and women are sexually active, HIV and AIDS prevention campaigns such as the ABC program cannot work.
"A Teen's Guide to STDs and HIV/AIDS": Contesting Mainstream Images of STDs and AIDS in Teen Magazines
Jacqui Reid Walsh, Claudia Mitchell & Nikki Kumar
The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association Conference.
Toronto, Ontario, March 13-16, 2002.
"Just when we thought today's teenagers were a whole new breed of sexually savvy sophisticates, reality intrudes in the form of a new study on sexually transmitted diseases. .. Teenagers (in Canada) from 15 to 19 have the highest infection rates, demonstrating that they are either ignorant of or blasé about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphyllis, herpes and human papilloma virus. "This latest study of sexually transmitted diseases has other implications. If teenagers are not using condoms, there is a growing risk that AIDS will spread to this age group" (Toronto Globe and Mail, Monday, August 20, 2001)
We are interested in exploring the ways in which mainstream youth culture attends to adolescent sexuality, its risks and its problematics in relation to STDs and HIV/AIDS. Our work in this area draws on a 3 year study (in progress) of the health knowledge and behaviours of eleventh grade students in Canada and South Africa. In this study we are particularly interested in image-based participatory approaches to working with youth, approaches which include working with images within media and popular culture. In this paper we focus primarily on images in North American popular culture. How do popular texts such as Seventeen magazine address these issues? How might we use some of these images as 'conduits' with young people in exploring prevention programs? One student for example reports that "Seventeen is all sweet and good in its reporting of STDs. The issues are camouflaged between ads for make-up and fashion. Nothing alarming. We don't want to upset the readers or the sponsors!" We do not take the position in this paper that it is the role of popular culture to be didactic (although we are, of course, interested in the Seventeen's "Guide to Bedrooms" and "Guide to Proms"!) What we are interested in, however, are the issues as noted in recent studies such as the one published in the Canadian Journal of Sexuality (reported on in the Globe and Mail) and elsewhere that point to the ways that the current generation of young people may not have encountered the range of safe-sex and other health-related media campaigns that were in evidence even a decade ago. It is important, of course, to not 'gloss over' the obvious populations of young people who are regarded as being at high risk for STDs and HIV --street youth, aboriginal youth gay youth, injection drug users. As Simon Watney and others point out about AIDS, for example, in the North American context, at least, it is not an 'equal opportunities' issue. At the same time, however, we are interested in the changing profile of STDs and AIDS world-wide, and the ways that sexual health is not just about "someone else".
Contemporary youth culture itself, we argue in this paper, can be regarded as an important window on adolescent health issues, offering the possibility for a cultural studies analysis, something that we are beginning to see in studies of girls and menstruation, girls (Frith, 1995), feminine hygiene products (Merskin, 1999) and so on.
Interestingly, while the area of HIV/AIDS within the gay community has had a rich cultural studies analysis attached to it, as we see in the work of Paula Treichler, Simon Watney, Cindy Patton and others, there remains a need for this kind of work in relation to mainstream youth culture.
In the paper we look at a framework for exploring images of sexuality and health within youth culture, using Fiske's work on levels of textuality (the primary texts, the reader/user texts, and the production texts). While we have used Fiske's framework to explore girlhood within popular culture focusing, for example on such texts as Barbie (Mitchell and Reid-Walsh, 1995); and on teachers' identity (Weber and Mitchell, 1995), this application of Fiske's work to popular culture texts within the discourse of health and culture contributes to alternative readings on popular culture.
Reconceptualizing "the Gay Disease": Issues too Important to Miss in Literature for Young Adults
By Claudia Mitchell
National Council of Teachers of English
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 16-19, 2000
In this panel on "Books too good to miss" within Gay and Lesbian Studies, I am interested in the issues, debates and tensions - commissions and omissions - that I think are too important to miss in the year 2000 and beyond - in relation to HIV/AIDS and young people. My particular focus is on contemporary narratives of AIDS found in literature for young adults, and the possibilities and limitations of such literature for explaining/informing/sensitizing/politicizing young people to the spread of HIV/AIDS within ordinary heterosexual activity. My ?entry point? is not unrelated to the most typical answer to a question ?do you have any books for young people on HIV/AIDS?? ?Yes we have several gay and lesbian titles that deal with the issue?, and the fact as Holland, Ramazanoglu, Sharpe & Thompson (1999) point out that on a global scale, at least, heterosexual intercourse is ?the? means through which HIV is now transmitted.
Of particular relevance to this panel on books for young people, I am interested in how HIV/AIDS needs to be read in the context of young people’s lives. As a recent Health Canada report notes:
Youth ages 10 to 24 years are of particular importance with respect to HIV/AIDS. Not only since they are at risk for infection, but also it is during this period of life when many behavior patterns are established that will affect their risk of HIV infection throughout their adult years. (Health Canada, 1999, p. 1)
These statistics provide evidence that the teen years are a period of high HIV risk. Both issues - HIV/AIDS and youth, and HIV/AIDS and heterosexual practice - were addressed poignantly in an article by Arthur Meyer’s article in VOYA - Voice of Youth Advocates ?Are you afraid to die? 7th graders confront AIDS?:
<Curt> lists the facts: 8000 new cases in Indiana, 80% of whom are 13-19 years old ...Young women are the highest source of new transmissions: ?Young ladies,? he pleads ?I’m not saying its fair but you have to protect yourself. HIV takes a piece of you at a time, it robs you, you lose everything that’s important to you.? (1997, 313)
This appeal to youth in HIV/AIDS prevention -- and the discourse surrounding a youth focus or a youth friendly perspective is not just something that is informed by the fact that we all work in education and with young people in school and library settings. It also comes out of such interventions as The First World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth held in Lisbon, in 1998 or the Third World Youth Forum of the United Nations System held in Braqa. Indeed, the Braqa Declaration officially recognized the significance of youth, not just as ‘future leaders’ but as protagonists - actors - now - in their own lives and the societies within which they live and it is in that context that I read literally and figuratively literature for young people in which themes of HIV/AIDS are included.
In my ongoing study of literature for social change - and particularly gay and lesbian themes in young adult literature, I have been interested both in the treatment of HIV/AIDS in these texts, but also the treatment of the issues found in these novels in some prominent journals on literature for children and young adults: VOYA, Children’s Literature in Education, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, School Library Journal. In fact, another title of this presentation might have been ‘articles on aids narratives that are too important to miss’, and I would argue that some of the most interesting work that is being done to expand the complexity of issues related to understanding HIV/AIDS prevention is found in this work. Here for example I am thinking of Elizabeth Ford’s review article in CLAQ on Leslea Newman’s award-winning children’s book Too far away to touch, dealing with HIV/AIDS in comparison with her more controversial book Heather has two mommies in which Newman address lesbian love. As ford points out lesbian love is a less acceptable topic than death and dying (albeit from AIDS):
Paradoxical though it may seem, disease and death -- even death caused by AIDS -- are safer territory for authors and children’s fiction than the theme of lesbian love and commitment that Newman explores in Heather. Here Newman does not enter new territory. Children’s books that examine death or separation are an accepted genre, so Too Far Away to Touch has a standard generic context. (130).
In the paper I provide a close reading of one recent Canadian young adult novel Glen Huser’s Touch the Clown published by in 1999.
I conclude the paper with a call for reconceptualizing ‘the gay disease’ in literature. In reviewing some of the recent articles where novels for young people are discussed, and in looking at recent publications for young people, I see that there are more questions than answers. And while some of the answers may exist in the form of new genres that we need to be looking at, the role of the Internet, the role of popular culture and other forms of media, the one area that I do not question is the potential of narrative for understanding. Writing of narrative and sexuality my colleague Ron Morris writes ?Narrative and storytelling place meaning, understanding, and the moral imagination at the centre of the educational process? (Morris, 77). As can be seen in the discourse on AIDS, various Quilt-memorial projects, the work on AIDS art, literature and AIDS, and the body of literature for children and young adults — and in particular the commentary and critique of this work - all are part of this narrative and the educational process.