Sexual pleasure as a human right: Harmful or helpful to women in the context of HIV/AIDS?
Introduction
Within the growing international discourse of sexual rights, it is increasingly recommended that sexual pleasure should be recognised as a human right. Since 1983, sexologists have worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) to define sexuality and sexual health (PAHO & WHO, 2000, WHO, 1987). Their work culminated at a meeting with the WHO and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) in 2000, during which the WHO agreed to endorse the World Association for Sexology's “Declaration of Sexual Rights” (PAHO and WHO, 2000, pp. 2, 37–38). Within this Declaration, it is recommended that sexual rights are fundamental to human rights. The right to sexual pleasure is listed as one of eleven core principles. There are five major sexual rights declarations or bills in global circulation and four of them propose that sexual pleasure should be recognised as a right. The authors of these declarations use gender-neutral language in principles and definitions of terms. Thus, they do not explain how the right to sexual pleasure, or any sexual right, may affect women and men differently. The omission of a feminist analysis of gender from sexual rights principles means that they are difficult to apply to political reality. However, the fact that one set of these principles has now been endorsed by the WHO demands that feminists test the application of each principle to women's lives in a variety of economic, cultural, and sexual contexts. I am interested in exploring whether a right to sexual pleasure will enhance progress towards sexual equality and whether it will help efforts to prevent HIV transmission from men to women. Sexual equality has been included as a theoretical goal because it is essential to the meaningful expression of human rights. I have selected HIV as a political context because each day, 8800 women are newly infected with HIV (UNIFEM, 2000, p. 11). Women account for 55% of new infections and 70% of all new infections are spread by sexual intercourse (Sandrasagra, 2001, UNIFEM, 2000). In this sense, the spread of HIV from men to women directly involves the pursuit of sexual pleasure and therefore, the proposed transformation of sexual pleasure into a human right.
Feminists and sexologists have attempted to define the concept of sexual rights during the past decade. According to political scientist, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky (2000), sexual rights became a part of international discourse in the platform for women's reproductive rights during the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (FWCW). She explains that the term “sexual rights” appeared in the draft Platform for Action arising from the Beijing conference, but was deleted from the final version. Petchesky believes that the phrase was deleted because “underneath the aversion to sexual rights lurk taboos against homosexuality, bisexuality, and alternative family forms” (Petchesky, 2000, p. 86). She reveals that the sexual rights discourse at Cairo and Beijing was suppressed by Vatican-led fundamentalists who began a media campaign against reproductive and sexual rights on the basis that they were associated with “individualism”, “Western feminism” and “lesbianism” (Petchesky, 2000, pp. 86–87). Petchesky is concerned that the human rights discourses of feminists focus solely on sexual violence against women rather than asserting women's right to sexual pleasure. She believes that this is a “victim-izing tendency” and that feminist human rights campaigns “capitalize on the image of women as victims” (Petchesky, 2000, p. 90). Her aim is to create sexual rights in which there is a positive acceptance for relationships and family forms beyond heterosexuality in a new paradigm that she labels sexual diversity and “multisexualism” (Petchesky, 2000, p. 91).
Petchesky's emphasis on “multisexualism” intersects with Barbara Klugman's criticism of the European interpretation of sexual rights. According to Klugman, director of the Women's Health Project at the University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg, the phrase is interpreted differently by South Africans than Europeans. She contends that in South Africa, sexual rights are understood as “the right of women to control their sexuality” (Klugman, 2000, p. 1). She criticises the European delegates' interpretation of sexual rights at the 1995 Beijing conference because, as she claims, they were “unable to conceptualize sexual rights beyond the limited aspect of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation” (Klugman, 2000, p. 6). Thus, there are strong differences underlying the interpretation of sexual rights, even among feminist advocates. While Petchesky concentrates on how the suppression of sexual minority politics impedes the possibility of sexual rights for lesbians and homosexual men, Klugman focuses on how male dominance obstructs all women's sexual rights.
Section snippets
Feminist sexual rights
There are two sexual rights documents that have been drafted by feminist activists. The first is found in the “Action Sheets” of the North American based organisation Health, Empowerment, Rights and Accountability (HERA). The second is “South Africa's Sexual Rights Charter”, drafted by the Women's Health Project (WHP), of which Barbara Klugman is a member. The Charter is a part of “The Sexual Rights Campaign” in South Africa, which includes seven major non-governmental organisations and
The ideological origin of sexual rights
I suggest that one reason why sexual rights discourse may not begin with an analysis of male sexual dominance or the goal of sexual equality is that the very concept of sex as a right is derived from sexology rather than feminism. As discussed, the “Declaration of Sexual Rights” endorsed by the World Health Organization was created by members of the World Association for Sexology in 1999 (PAHO and WHO, 2000, pp. 37–38). The very first “Bill of Sexual Rights” was drafted in 1976 by Lester
The problem with consensual sexual violence
Sexologists' support for harm with consent poses significant problems for people who work against sexual violence on the basis that no harm committed against women is justifiable. Authors and signatories to the 2004 “Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities” recommend sexual harm with consent as a part of sexual rights. However, in the feminist context, the idea of consent becomes far more than the sexual libertarian measure of morality employed by Bullough and criticised by Hamilton. Rather,
Constructing sexual rights as women's rights
If sexual rights are to encompass women's rights, it is important to consider whether there is a relationship between gender, power and sexuality. Without such consideration, sexual rights advocates risk being unable to respond to the differences between women and men's experiences of sexuality and thus unable to recommend rights that are equally liberating to both sexes. As discussed, this problem is already apparent in the 2004 Bill and the use of consent as a barometer of sexual freedom.
The role of male sexual pleasure in reinforcing masculinity
Some pro-feminist men are addressing how the pursuit and exercise of male sexual pleasure are related to gender and sexuality. According to academic Robert Jensen, men are taught that their sexual pleasure depends upon acquiring people to use as objects. He writes:
Perhaps the most important rule of patriarchy is: you gotta get it. You have to fuck something at some point in your life. If you don't get it, there's something wrong with you. You aren't normal. You aren't really alive. You
Men's pursuit of sexual pleasure: does it subordinate women's sexual autonomy?
Susan Maushart, a journalist with the Weekend Australian Magazine, writes about how the appearance and behaviour of difference generated by gender has become the fundamental stimulus of sexual pleasure. In her book Wifework, she explains that
… it's the differences between lovers that kindle their appetites … But it's not just difference that matters. If it were, we would be reading trashy novels about tall, greying female CEOs who spot a ‘certain something’ about their under-educated but plucky
HIV and men's right to sexual pleasure: a lethal combination
There is mounting evidence that men's demand for sexual pleasure is problematic politically and in terms of health, especially in the context of HIV/AIDS. The 2003 WHO report “Integrating Gender Into HIV/AIDS Programmes” states that there is “an unequal balance of power in sexual relations in which the satisfaction of male pleasure is more likely to supersede that of female pleasure, and where men have greater control over their sexuality” (WHO, 2003, p. 10). In the 2003 report “Working with
Male dominance, prostitution and HIV transmission: men's sexual rights in action?
Carole Pateman labels men's entitlement to use women as bodies the “male sex-right”. She contends that
[T]he general display of women's bodies and sexual parts, either in representation or as live bodies, is central to the sex industry and continually reminds men–and women–that men exercise the law of the male sex-right, that they have patriarchal right of access to women's bodies … Whether or not a man is able and willing to find release in other ways, he can exhibit his masculinity by
Conclusion
The idea of sexual rights originated in sexology. It is therefore unsurprising to find that in much of the contemporary sexual rights literature the relationship between male sexual pleasure, sexual intercourse, male dominance and HIV transmission is minimised or ignored. While sexual pleasure is presented as a gender-neutral right in sexual rights literature, the application of feminist research and theory to it reveals it as a deeply political right that opposes a range of women's human
Uncited references
Bailey, 2002
Sullivan et al., 2001
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Sheila Jeffreys and Renate Klein for their editing assistance.
Jennifer Oriel is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has been researching the sexual politics of HIV prevention for 4 years and has been active in campaigning to end violence against women for a decade.
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Jennifer Oriel is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has been researching the sexual politics of HIV prevention for 4 years and has been active in campaigning to end violence against women for a decade.