Men are from Mars... and Women are from Venus, or was that the other way around?

Men are from Mars... and Women are from Venus, or was that the other way around?

...I never could get that straight, who was from where. The take-home message though seems to be that as human and as one and unified as we can be as a species, men and women still drastically differ. Gender and cultural issues have always fascinate me because so much of our behaviors, and how we make decisions. This concept naturally seeped over to my fascinations with HIV and this class. How do cultural norms and gender roles affect people perceptions of HIV?

There's this great site called "The Body: the complete HIV/AIDS Resource" that I'm sure many of our fellow students have come across, as it's a top hit on google, that offered a whole section of Men, Culture and HIV/AIDS. I've used it in the past as a resource for projects relating to the physiological impacts of HIV, but never realized the wealth of information it possessed for the other impacts. I personally have always thought that gender roles would have affected this topic, but I don't think I ever sat down to consider the specifics, I just knew that they must have since so many HIV statistics are broken down by gender and race. This week I want to look at the psychological issue of the social norms of considered masculinity.

Some people, and I may be guilty of this too at times consider some double standards and dominance of males in many societies as men having it easier. I am finding more and more that this class is causing and requiring me to think outside of the box, and outside of what I'm often naturally inclined to consider without further dissection. When it comes to sexual expectations, I know the most often heard stereotype at least that I've heard is that, if a man is to be sexual active with many partners, he is considered to be a "real man", and if a woman were to do the same, she'd be considered promiscuous. I think to a certain extent, that idea is starting to level out between genders, but on that note, I've always considered that it was many an "advantage" that guys have. They could do what they want, and there would be no stigma towards them. But wait... I've never taken the time to consider that in a way, it is a disadvantage. It is very much a social PRESSURE. I don't know what it's like to be a guy growing up around other guys who all presumably talk about sex and getting girls, and numbers and figures of partners, but I would imagine like anything else that happens while you're growing up...people, particularly young people, just want to belong. We want to be accepted...liked... and fit in. Point blank, I think to some degree, that desire is always there.

So does the pressure of being engaging in dangerous behaviors more concentrated on males? How does this have an affect on the number of men vs. women who are living with HIV or AIDS? Hmmm.....

According to this article, these dangerous behaviors that put men more at risk for becoming infected with HIV are more than just sexual behaviors but also "high-risk behavior such as violence, sexual risk-taking, excessive drinking or drug use." These the website defines as "macho" behavior. An interesting point too was that because of this so-called, "macho" behavior "many women cannot negotiate condom use and are often forced to have unwanted sexual relations". So both sexes face challenges in this way, men are pressured to having multiple partners putting them at greater risk, and women are often pressure to be less dominant/more submissive and have unprotected sex.

The website is: http://www.thebody.com/content/art715.html

Really especially cool, at the end of the article, it has a section called "Ideas for Action" with questions for self questioning and reflection... the first step to change.

I plan on dissecting each of those questions further and looking into more resources in the coming days...