Free The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg Page B

down in December 2004,” Epstein wrote. “Radio ads with such slogans as ‘LifeGuard condoms! Ribbed for extra pleasure!’ were to be replaced with messages from the cardinal of Uganda and the Anglican archbishop about the importance of abstinence and faithfulness within marriage.” 7
    “The policy is making people fearful to talk comprehensively about HIV, because they think if they do, they will miss funding,” Canon Gideon, an HIV-positive Anglican minister from Uganda who has been a leader in the clerical response to the pandemic, told me. “Although they know the right things to say, they don’t say them, because they fear that if you talk about condoms and other safe practices, you might not get access to this money.”
    On July 5, 2007, Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda’s National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS, stood before hundreds of other HIV-positive women in the vaulted city hall in Nairobi, Kenya, and denounced the Bush administration’s AIDS policies. “We are now seeing a shift in recent years to abstinence-only,” she said. “We are expected to abstain when we are young girls and to be faithful when we are married to men who rape us, who are not necessarily faithful to us, who batter us.” The women in the audience, several waiting to share their own stories of marital rape, applauded.
    Were exhorted her audience to “denounce programs that are not evidence-based, that view AIDS as a moral issue, that undermine the issues that affect us, women’s rights. I want to be very clear—the abstinence-only business, women must say no!” Again, there were hollers and applause.
     
     
    O f course, not all women reject the abstinence-only business—far from it. In Africa as well as in America there are always women among the staunchest social conservatives. The owner of the virgins-only factories in South Africa is a woman, and there are many women just as eager to police the behavior of their gender. Feminists worldwide are working to reform not just laws but deeply ingrained traditions and religious strictures as well, institutions in which many women and men find the only security and meaning that they know. Sexual hierarchies are literally essential to how most cultures reproduce themselves. Traditional gender roles are being challenged at a time when so much of life is in flux and so many verities are slipping away. No one knows what a world of gender equality would really look like, and so with each step toward it, people move from comforting certainty toward the unknown. To some it no doubt feels like being pushed toward an abyss.
    Yet as long as women don’t have control of their own sexual and reproductive lives, we’re all heading toward possible disaster. HIV/AIDS has added to the Everest of evidence showing how deadly sexism can be. It is not the role of outsiders, either Western governments or foundations, to dictate new sexual norms to others. It should be their role, however, to bolster those trying to make positive, responsible change from within. In almost every society on earth there are women doing heroic work to remake their cultures. They are every bit as authentic as the self-appointed guardians of tradition, and we all have an interest in their success.
    “Right now, women are coming to realize that they’ve been vulnerable for some time, and they are trying to fight to get out of that vulnerability,” said Esther Kalule, a Ugandan midwife-turned-district councilor in heavily rural Nakasongala province. “Some women’s organizations have come up, to advocate for their rights. Women are trying to participate in politics like I did, to ensure that we fight for our own rights. Very many activities are going on.”
    I first met Kalule at a conference about women and HIV held in Nairobi during the summer of 2007, and I later visited her in her village. She was forty-nine, a broad-shouldered woman with close-cropped hair and a radiant smile. The men in her