by KARIN DEAR

IT USED TO BE the demure and chaste girl who got the guy, but now it seems the bad and adventuresome girl is capturing the man.

Trust an enlightened woman, however, to lay the squirming issue of sexuality in the Caribbean squarely on the line for more than one 100 church ministers wrestling with their male-dominated faith-based role.

Especially when that woman is Roberta Clarke, programme manager for UNIFEM who, in a no-holds-barred address that related gender issues to the burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region, saw several delegates shifting uncomfortably in their seats last week.

"For women, sexual availability is a key message, one which is being nuanced by the bad girl image. In the olden days, the demure and chaste girl got the guy and now the bad and adventuresome girl also gets the guy," she told an audience attending a two-day faith-based forum on Inclusion And Human Sexuality In The Context Of HIV/AIDS.

"And this getting of the man in the Caribbean is also complicated and perhaps necessitated by economic dependency and unless we address and redress unequal and stereotypical gender relations and sexuality, the Caribbean will continue to experience the creeping rise in HIV cases.

Male behaviour

"In relation to masculinity," Clarke pointed out, "there is a growing body of work which places male sexual behaviour and the norms around male sexuality at the epicentre of the HIV epidemic."

Furthermore, she argued, such work highlights the "centrality" of male gender roles for HIV control.

Referring to a paper presented by David Plummer and Joel Simpson on HIV And Caribbean Masculinities, Clarke emphasised that men were subject to comprehensive social pressures to conform to roles which in essence are dramatically at odds with the behaviours necessary to control the spread of HIV.

"They highlight sexual risk-taking; the quality of men's relationships; and the use of male economic power," she stressed.

"By the age of ten, boys begin to realise that toughness, physicality, (strength) and sexual dominance are features of traditional masculinity and are expected of them," she told delegates gathered at Casa Grande Hotel in St Philip.

She cited "fear, for example, of the stigma of homosexuality" as a powerful source that forces boys into early sexual initiation.

"It is a male life which takes us along the road of disrespect for women collectively (who must be duped necessarily)," she insisted.

Moreover, there is a sense of entitlement of maximum sexual pleasure which is also implicated in the spread of HIV.

This sense of entitlement, she maintained, finds expression in sexual exploitation and even violence.

But faith-based institutions have a "privileged entry point" into the lives of communities, she suggested, through which they are in a unique position to alter the course of the epidemic because of their ability to "shape social values".