“I don’t blame that guy that gave it to me”: Contested discourses of victimisation and culpability in the narratives of heterosexual women infected with HIV
Considers how heterosexual women living with HIV make sense of their HIV acquisition, challenging the victim–culprit binary. None of the women interviewed presented themselves as ‘victims’ in any straightforward sense or placed the blame squarely on the men who likely infected them, including men who had not disclosed. Instead, the women’s narratives revealed themes of “mutual vulnerability” and far more ambivalent allocations of responsibility. The tendency to position women who become infected with HIV as ‘victims’ obscures the complex realities of gender and sexual practice.
10 Reasons Why Criminalisation of HIV Exposure or Transmission Harms Women
Argues that applying criminal law to HIV exposure or transmission does nothing to address the epidemic of gender-based violence or the deep economic, social, and political inequalities that are at the root of women’s and girls’ disproportionate vulnerability to HIV.
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