Short description:

In a stimulating analysis of gender and AIDS, Wilton assesses safer sex health promotion and health education discourse, and considers their consequences for the construction of gender and sexuality. She links issues of power, gender, sexuality and nationalism to offer a theoretical foundation for an effective HIV/AIDS health promotion strategy.

Long description:

In an original and stimulating analysis of gender and AIDS, Tamsin Wilton assesses safer sex health promotion and health education discourse, and considers their unintended consequences for the cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Taking a queer/feminist constructionist position, she links issues of power, gender, sexuality and nationalism to offer a sound theoretical foundation for an effective and radical HIV/AIDS health promotion strategy.

EnGendering AIDS draws on safer sex materials from the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Scandinavia, and sets current practice against the historical context of VD/STD education, dissecting the role played by STDs in the cultural construction of gender. Wilton debates the meanings that erotic minorities read into bodies and desires, and how these have been transformed by AIDS, and suggests a new model of pornography that disengages the sexually explicit and/or erotically arousing from gendered power relations.

`This is a book which will be of use to all people engaged in AIDS work, at whatever level. Health promotion in the context of safer sex is a monumental task. Gender is one of the most significant factors contributing to continued epidemic growth. To make the healthier choice the easier choice demands no less than the eradication of the institution of male supremacy. Wilton's book goes a long way in ullustrating how and why this is simply an imperative' - Psychology in Society