India – Gender, Sexuality & HIV/AIDS – Politics of Women’s Health in India
Author: WUNRN
Date: January 18, 2016
Women’s Feature Service – https://www.wfsnews.org/
India – Gender, Sexuality & HIV/AIDS – Politics of Women’s Health in India
Kolkata (Women’s Feature Service) – In this excerpt from ‘Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: Exploring Politics of Women’s Health in India’, published by Sage, Skylab Sahu, author, teacher and independent researcher, reveals how women, trapped by patriarchal norms, are rendered powerless and pushed into a life of disease and death.
In Indian society, women’s sexuality is legitimized only under a marital relationship. Her purity is secured by getting married to a man who in turn becomes the sole master of her body and protects her chastity (Ramasubban 1998). In such a situation, a woman’s sexuality is determined by her husband’s desire and by reproduction. Within the so-called legitimate relationship, when the man’s behaviour becomes repressive and violent, he is hardly answerable to anyone in the society. In such cases, the repressive man’s sexuality gets legitimized by the indifferent societal attitude to his behaviour. Strong social norms do not allow women to look beyond her marital relationship. At the same time, the same culture shows leniency to men who are engaged in extra- or pre-marital relationship. Even when some men maintain extramarital relationship, it is the lack of sexuality of their wives that is often blamed for not having the requisite charm to keep the relationship united. In such cases, women hardly have any rights and are treated as mere sex objects.
Even within a legitimate marital relationship very often women face oppression and violent sex from their partners. When there is an oppressive relationship, women get less chances in decision making regarding household affairs, reproductive rights, condom use and so on. When a woman gets married at a young age and is exposed to sexual life, she faces a violent relationship that makes her more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS 2000). Within a marital relationship, there is a high chance that women face powerlessness which in turn affects other aspects of their life and makes them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. …
Taslima Banu, a Muslim woman, was a 26-year-old widow whose husband died in 2006 due to AIDS. She has been staying in Kolkata, with her daughter, brother and sister-in-law. She stays in one room given by her in-laws. After her husband’s death she started ‘zari’ work and was earning Rs 600 per month. According to her Rs 600 per month was insufficient to meet the basic needs and to maintain her health and her HIV-negative daughter (seven-year-old). She has no proper livelihood and above all she was being discriminated by her sister-in-law, who even did not touch her and her daughter. For all her drudgery, she blamed her husband and cursed him after his death. She said that her husband infected her consciously and forcibly. Her husband was a migrant labourer and used to do jewellery work in Mumbai for some years. During that period, she was staying with her husband (she thinks that her husband was having extramarital affairs when they were in Mumbai). However, after staying for a few years, both of them returned to Kolkata and settled down in their native place. After returning from Mumbai, her husband underwent some medical check-ups, but he did not disclose the results (diseases) of the medical tests.
At that time, Taslima subsequently got infected with STD and started having other problems. She requested her husband to use condoms, but her husband did not bother about it. Rather, he used to beat her and engage in forceful and violent sex while saying, ‘main to mar jaunga tu jeeke kya karegi’ (I will die and then there is no point for you to live). She said it was very difficult for her to bear the torture, but she did not know what to do. She thought that it was shameful to share these details with any of her close relatives, including her sister-in-law. For many months she could not reveal20 her problem to anybody. But her husband’s health deteriorated and the doctor revealed that he had HIV and instructed them to use condoms. However, despite doctor’s instructions and her unwillingness for unsafe sex, her husband raped her several times. The culture of silence associated with sexuality in Indian society often legitimizes marital rape. Taslima Banu’s case exemplifies how a powerless woman, trapped by patriarchal norms, can be infected by her own husband through intentional and forcible sexual intercourses. She could not protect herself from infection, as initially she could not understand how to react against forcible and violent sexual behaviour of her husband. She thought it was shameful to disclose such a private affair. She could not disclose this also because she was apprehensive of getting the blame of being a bad wife. Moreover, she did not know that she had the rights to protect herself from forceful sexual intercourse. In Indian households, silence is maintained over issues relating to sexuality, and especially over problems like sexually transmitted infections suffered by women. This prevents them from seeking information about STDs like gonorrhoea, HIV infection and so on that indeed limits their access to treatment for these diseases. …
… the socio-economic positioning of Taslima and others like her increases their helplessness and prevents them from understanding and informing others about the oppressive marital relationship that they face. Such conditions increase women’s vulnerability in disclosing any problems relating to diseases or infections such as STDs and HIV/AIDS.
(Excerpts from ‘Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: Exploring Politics of Women’s Health in India’, by Skylab Sahu; Published by Sage; Pp 240)
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