Learning Sex and Gender in Zambia: Masculinities and HIV/AIDS Risk

Abstract

For men in Southern Africa to play an effective role in efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, more needs to be learnt about their perceptions of themselves as engendered sexual beings. The author describes how a group of Zambian men learnt sex and gender and highlights the importance of the peer group in constructions of masculinity. He reveals the anxieties these men experienced in their early sexual experience and the significance of this experience in adult life. He argues that many expressions of masculinity are best understood as fragile entities and that this fragility, inculcated in childhood and adolescence, explains, in part, the risks men may take in their sexual conduct in spite of the threat of HIV/AIDS.