Talking about women and AIDS: Normative discourses on sexuality

Abstract

A close reading of popular discourses on women and the AIDS epidemic reveals patterns that could be described as attempts to produce and reiterate notions of normative and deviant sexuality. Prostitutes, one frequently depicted "kind" of woman, are presented as indiscriminate, polluting to men, and categorically different from "normal" women. Other women depicted in AIDS discourses are almost always HIV-positive mothers or pregnant women; these women are usually only of concern insofar as they may infect their babies. The themes of self-control, self-discipline, and personal responsibility may also be used to stigmatize women. Such discourses suggest that those who have AIDS are responsible for their own illness. They also deflect attention away from the socioeconomic contexts which may make it more difficult for some to avoid infection, away from the connections between poverty, illness, and disempowerment, and away from the systematic inequalities that characterize U.S. society.