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[ IASSCS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: SEX & SECRECY ]

CONFERENCE DATES: 22 - 25 JUNE 2003

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Papers / Abstracts - Special Session: Women's Same-Sex Practices
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Author/Presenter (Surname, First name)	Abstract	Country
	African Women’s Life History Project: Exploring Women’s Same-Sex Practices
Agustin, Laura Maria	Poor Little Whore: Keeping secrets from researchers	Spain
Amowitz, Lynn	Prevalence of war-related sexual violence and other human rights abuses among internally displaced persons in Sierra Leone	USA
Anh, Hoang Tu	Power for sexuality negotiation: implication for HIV/AIDS prevention	Vietnam
Arndt, Marlene & Hewat, Helena	The experiences of stress & trauma: Black lesbians in South Africa	South Africa
Arnfred, Signe	Contested constructions of female sexualities: Meanings and interpretations of initiation rituals	Sweden
Arnott, Jayne	Postcards from the underground: Adult sex work and HIV prevention after S v Jordan	South Africa
Bagnol, Brigitte	Healers' identities in southern Mozambique and female ritual in northern Mozambique: two spheres of secrecy where same-sex sexuality is practised	Mozambique & South Africa
Balachandran, Chandra	LGBT Journeys (I): Telling the stories of LGBT people in Bangalore	India
Barigye, Henry	The dilemma of disclosure: Experience at The Mildmay Centre and a case report	Uganda
Becker, Heike	Imagining tradition & modernity. Sexuality & gender in southern African academic and popular discourse	South Africa
Bennett, Linda Rae	Between agency & coercion: The polemics of sexual secrecy for single Indonesian women	Australia
Berman, Laurence	The furtive word [The rhetoric of hate speech in the Bible]	South Africa
Berold, Ralph	Personal is political: Struggles with the meaning of HIV and AIDS	South Africa
Besnier, Niko	The silenced discourse of attachment among transgender Tongans	USA
Betteridge, Dawn	Sexual orientation and law reform: Where are the transexuals?	South Africa
Bhaiya, Abha	Female friendships	India
Bhana, Deevia	Presuming innocence in the age of AIDS	South Africa
Blackwood, Evelyn	Lesbian, transgendered and queer subjects: Notes on difference	USA
Browde, Selma & Mazibuko, Sibongile	Strategies to overcome silence, secrecy and denial in dealing with HIV/AIDS	South Africa
Bullington, Susan	The Devil Dean of Cape Town: Race, sexuality, and the limits of the nation in contemporary South Africa	USA
Buntman, Fran	Sex, Secrecy, and Robben Island	USA
Burns, Catherine	Secrets, silences and sex: A history of contraceptive use in Johannesburg 1900 to 1960	South Africa
Cage, Ken	From Moffietaal to Gayle – the evolution of a South African gay argot	New Zealand
Chabedi, Marks	"'AIDS has its people and I am not one of them': Sex, Secrecy, Status and the Power of Forgetting in Post-Apartheid Soweto"
Chacha, Babere	Does a woman who marries a woman become a man? Real desires in woman to woman marriages in Africa	Kenya
Chandran, Vinay	The veil behind the face: rituals, language, and sexuality among Hijras in India	India
Chipkin, Ivor	Chapter proposal for Wiser book on HIV/AIDS	South Africa
Chirkut, Sheila	Western education and the cultural identity of professional Hindu women	South Africa
Churchill, David	Challenging Cold War Secrecy, Paul Goodman's Five Years	Canada
Cindoglu, Dilek	Sex and secrecy: Different forms of coersion and control over sexual bodies in the Middle East	Turkey
Conway, Daniel	Masculinities, citizenship and political objection to compulsory Military Service in the SADF 1978-1990: The role of homosexuality	South Africa
Darak, Shrinivas	Males but not men	India
de Vos, Pierre	Sexing the family: Sexual orientation and the reconstruction of the South African family	South Africa
Deo, Shalini Singh	The power of shame	India
Dirsuweit, Teresa	Mortification, fear and desire	South Africa
Dolan, Chris	Staying in or coming out? Dilemmas of seeking asylum in the UK for lesbian and gay Ugandans	UK
Dowsett, Gary	Good gay men don’t get messy: sex, drugs and secrets	USA
du Plessis, Irma	Body of the 'nation': The project of Afrikaner nationalism and schoolboy and schoolgirl bodies in popular fiction for children in Afrikaans in the 1940's	South Africa
du Preez, Amanda	Technology and transsexuality: secret alliances	South Africa
du Venage, Jeremy	Interpreting the contradictions between discursive representations of and the materiality of, “sexuality” in some “coloured” communities in Johannesburg during the 1980’s and 1990’s	South Africa
Edwards, Jane	Same-sex attracted women in rural Australia: community narratives, invisibility and secrecy	Australia
Epprecht, Marc	Fear and loathing of homosexuality in Zimbabwe: settler origins and African transitions, 1890-present	Canada
Epstein, Debbie	Masculinities, sexualities and HIV/AIDS in schools in KwaZulu-Natal	UK
Epstein, Helen	What people say about HIV in Kagera Region, Tanzania	USA
Erlank, Natasha	“The problem of SEX”: Christian grapplings with sex education for Africans in South Africa, 1910-1950	South Africa
Farahani, Fataneg	Veiled references: Narrative constructions of 'Exotic' female desire	Sweden
Ford, Claudia	Infant rape and the deconstruction of predatory and impulsive masculinity	South Africa
Forssell, Stephen	Secrecy vs. open communication in gay male couples: Implications for HIV risk in sexually open and closed relationships	USA
Foulis, Carol-Ann	“I have an evil child at my house”: stigma, denial and the struggle against youth HIV/AIDS in Ekuthuleni
Fritz, Nicole	Crossing Jordan: Constructing a liberated female sexuality within South Africa’s constitutional framework	USA
Gaissad, Laurent	Sex without consequences ? Secrecy and mobility in (southern France) urban public spaces where men meet	France
Gear, Sasha	An exploration of sex, violence and gender in South African men's prisons	South Africa
Glaser, Clive	The myth of polygamy: A history of extra-marital and multi-partnership sex in South Africa	South Africa
Graham, Sharyn	Giving love and affection: female-female relationships in South Sulawesi, Indonesia	Australia
Graham-Smith, Greg	”[H]alf in love with easeful Death”: The sex/death dialectic and the eroticization of the AIDS virus’	South Africa
Ha, Vu Song	The harmony of family and the silence of women: Sexual behaviour among married women in two northern rural areas in Vietnam	Vietnam
Hailonga, Panduleni	Silences, frankness and its impact on adolescent sexuality and reproductive behaviour	Netherlands
Haque, A. S. M. Rowshanul	Women in urban slum areas are at special risk to HIV infection: Reveals from studying husbands; sexual behaviour	Bangladesh
Haram, Liv	‘Eyes have no curtains’: The moral economy of secrecy in managing love-affairs among adolescents in northern Tanzania	Sweden
Harris, Karen	Private and confidential: The Chinese mine labourers and unnatural crime	South Africa
Haslam, Emily & Lind, Craig	Stories of sexuality in constitutional reform in South Africa: Translating individual experiences into law	UK
Hoad, Neville	Race, desire and voyeurism: Thabo Mbeki and Mark Behr on the libidinal economy of the South African nation, old and new	USA
Hunter, Mark	Masculinities and multiple-partners in KZN: The making and unmaking of Isoka	USA/SA
Ige, Busayo	Being a Zulu male or female on campus	South Africa
Irving, Toni	Going Public: Citizenship & Black Female Sexuality in 19th Century America	USA
Isaack, Wendy & Gunkel, Henriette	Troubling gender: Homosexuality in an African society	South Africa & Germany
Isiramen, Celestina	HIV/AIDS, culture and women in Nigeria	Nigeria
Jolly, Rosemary	The secret of our failure: sexual violence against children in South Afican discursive practices	Canada
Jungar, Katarina & Oinas, Elina	Tragic masculinities, brave girls, and prevention strategies: what about treatment? - a discourse analysis on recent gender-sensitve HIV research	Finland/SA
Karlyn, Andrew	Intimacy revealed: The language and context of adolescent sexual experimentation in Maputo, Mozambique	South Africa
Khunou, Grace	Constraints in practicing sexual rights and accessing the law	South Africa
Klaaren, Jonathan	Sex and citizenship in southern Africa	South Africa
Klausen, Susanne	Medicalized contraception & sexual tension: The Race Welfare Society and poor women's resistance to eugenic birth control in Johannesburg 1932-1939	Canada
Kothari, Jayna	Silence and secrecy: The legal discourses of domestic violence	India
Kung'u, Dorcas	Sexuality & condom use among young people in Western Kenya	Kenya
Lambert, Helen	Dirty bodies, clean talk? Sexuality, health and communication in India and Africa	UK
Lock Swarr, Amanda	"I just wonder what they are doing in the bed": Secrecy, sexuality, and stabane in Soweto	USA
Long, Scott	Is the private secret? Is the secret sacred?	USA
Lorway, Robert	Constructing Namibian queer selfhood in the era of HIV/AIDS	Namibia
Lwanda, John	The [in] visibility of HIV/AIDS in the public sphere	UK
MacPhail, Catherine	Challenging dominant norms of masculinity for HIV prevention	South Africa
Mahoney, Michael & Parle, Julie	An ambiguous sexual revolution? Sexual change and intra-generational conflict in colonial Natal	South Africa
Maingard, Jacqueline	Bokkie/moffies: cinematic images of black sexual identity in Zonk! (1950)	UK
Manderson, Lenore	Against the flow: The contradictions of sexual and excretory bodies for incontinent adults
Malaquais, Dominique	Sexing Africa, again: Pop as politics (Watch it tonight on HBO)	USA
Miner, Susan	The intersectionality of silences: The use of violent and other controlling behaviours in the context of intra-lesbian partnerships	Ireland
Mitchell, Claudia	Hidden from view: “Where’s my body in this?” Youth, sexuality and AIDS prevention	USA
Morgan, Jonathan	Mind, body, memory maps	South Africa
Moyer, Eileen	Secret pleasures: Imagining sexuality on the Swahili Coast	Netherlands & Tanzania
Murungi, Kagendo	Positive sexualities: Gender-based violence & human rights	South Africa
Muthien, Bernedette	Strategic intersections: Gender-based violence & HIV/AIDS	South Africa
Narrain, Arvind	Alternative lawyering for queer rights: Issues and dilemmas in the Indian context	India
Nel, Dawie	Schooling femininites and masculinites in the face of the homosexual other; experiences of gay and lesbian learners in selected schools in Gauteng, South Africa	South Africa
Nel, Juan & Joubert, Kevin	Lifting the veil: Experiences of gay men in a therapy group	South Africa
Nguyen, Vinh-Kim	Uses and pleasures: Sexual modernity, HIV/AIDS and confessional technologies in a West African metropolis	Canada
Niehaus, Isak	“Now everyone is doing it”:Towards a social history of rape in the South African Lowveld	South Africa
Nordien, Razia	Muslim women’s experiences of domestic violence in the Nelson Mandela Metropole	South Africa
Nuttall, Sarah	Girl Bodies
Olivier, Gerrit	The unspeakable fictional scandals of Koos Prinsloo	South Africa
Omarjee, Nadira	An analysis of a newspaper report on the brutal rape and murder of Alexus Arendse - Cape Argus - Late Final, 1 July 1998	Netherlands
Osha, Sanya	Figures of the African female: Texts, gender, bodies, sex	Nigeria
O'Sullivan, Lucia	Saying what I cannot say: Secret sexual lives of youth in rural South Africa	USA
Oswin, Natalie	Value-added queer: ‘Proudly South African’ in ‘Gay Cape Town’	Singapore
Pant, Puspa Raj	Sexual violence and gender in Nepal	Nepal
Pantazis, Angelo	Outing in South African law	South Africa
Parikh, Shanti	Private Acts, Public Shame: Reading Youth Love Letters as National Romance in Uganda	USA
Pattman, Rob	‘Dear diary you won't believe what I saw …I saw an angel she looked like heaven on earth’ : encouraging boys and girls to articulate their heterosexual desires and anxieties	UK
Peters, Chris	You’ll die and leave the polonies in the fridge – Transforming intimate sexual behaviour in rural women in Limpopo Province, SA	South Africa
Phillips, Oliver	Secrecy and the embodiment of vulnerability in Zimbabwe"	UK
Phillips, Richard	Locating sexual silences (in the British Empire): historical geographies of sexuality politics	UK
Philpott, Anne	The vagina; introducing the female condom to tackle the last secret in HIV prevention	Thailand
Pierce, Steven	Identity, performance, and secrecy: Gendered life and the modern in northern Nigeria	USA
Pittman, LaShawnDa	Sex and Secrecy throughout the African diaspora: Child prostitution in urban America	USA
Rabenoro, Mireille	Understanding openness and secrecy in Malagasy youth’s relations – the challenge of promoting safe sex	Madagascar
Ramakrishna, Jayashree	The less said the better: Societal attitudes and young people's sexuality	India
Ratele, Kopano	Constructions of masculinity and sexual risk-taking among young males: a qualitative intervention study	South Africa
Reece, Michael	Cruising for sex on an American college campus: Communication, etiquette and characteristics of space in the 21st century tearoom	USA
Riba, Phineas	Let me be what I am: An ethnographic case study of a male sangoma involved in same sex relationships	South Africa
Richardson, Eric	“It’s okay to be gay – just don’t tell the children”: Should teachers come out the closet?	South Africa
Romberg, Christine	Sacredness and secrecy: Discourse and the experience of sexuality among adolescents in Rukungiri District, Southwest Uganda	Germany
Roy, Kinsuk	Desire on the street: Same sex behaviour and perception of sexuality among street youths of Calcutta	UK
Saavedra, Martin	Queer Pampas, the battle for silence	Argentina
Schuhmann, Antje	Zero tolerance goes public; Traps and chances of mainstreaming feminist discourses on gendered violence	Germany
Sember, Robert	In the shadow of the object: Public sex and the politics of mourning	USA
Sharma, Maya	Documenting lesbian lives of working class women	India
Shyam, Anita	Pattern of substance use and dependence in Hirjras	India
Smith, Charlene	The virgin rape myth - a media creation or a clash between myth and a lack of HIV treatment?	South Africa
Southey, Nicholas	Of wholesome Christian behaviour: The Anglican Church and homosexuality in South Africa	South Africa
Spronk, Rachel	Ambiguous pleasure. Sexual relations of young professional women in Nairobi, Kenya	Netherlands
Stadler, Jonathan	Can one study AIDS: reflections on fieldwork in the South African lowveld	South Africa
Stein, Jo	AIDS Stigma: the latest dirty secret	South Africa
Stobie, Cheryl	“Biopia” in biography: the representation of bisexuality in selected South African lives	South Africa
Tadele, Getnet	Surviving on the streets: Sexuality and HIV/AIDS among male street youth in Dessie, Ethiopia
Teunis, Niels	Racism in the San Francisco Gay Community: An experimental ethnography to create new visibility to an old problem	USA
Thornton, Robert	You can't fuck with words, or, Why we can't talk about sex	South Africa
van den Berg, Mes	Sexuality, intentionality and the ambiguity of the body	South Africa
van der Poll, Letetia	"Formulating an appropriate legal response to dry sex and virginity testing within the discourse on sexuality and human rights in Africa"	South Africa
van Wijk, Joan	Sharks: the male equivalent of the female sex worker?	Netherlands
van Zyl, Susan	Evolutionary origins/psychoanalytic consequences	South Africa
Visagie, Andries	Secrecy, drugs and necrophilia: Taboos in contemporary Afrikaans gay literature	South Africa
Walker, Liz	Men behaving differently: South African men since 1994	South Africa
Webster, Naomi	They want you to keep it a secret so that they don’t get involved	South Africa
Weinberg, Grazia Sumeli	Father-Daughter relation: Violence, silence and seduction in the practice of incest	South Africa
Wieringa, Saskia	Femme desire and butch defiance in Jakarta	Netherlands
Willis, Jon	Between a rock and a hard place: exploring racism and homophobia in the lives of gay-identified Aboriginal men in Melbourne Australia	Australia
Willocks, Clare	Exploring women’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in relation to HIV/AIDS	South Africa
Wood, Kate	Coded talk, scripted omissions: the politics of knowing and talking about AIDS in a South African township	UK

The theme of the conference - 'Sex and Secrecy' - seeks to engage with pressing concerns emanating from the South African situation, while simultaneously resonating with and encouraging international scholarship in the field of sexuality. The conference aims to provide a forum for new ethnographic work and theoretical insights from a range of disciplines, and emerging from diverse social contexts.

Some of South Africa's most urgent social concerns relate to sexuality and secrecy. The rapid spread of HIV/AIDS and the scale of gender-based violence, are two obvious examples. To what extent is the nature and scale of domestic violence hidden from public view? What distinctions between public and private realms are drawn by survivors, perpetuators and law enforcement agencies in responding to gender-based violence? What political interests are protected by the veils of secrecy around illness and death? To what extent are cultural norms violated when lifting the veil of secrecy? 'Secrecy' provides a new perspective from which to explore these and other issues.

There is a limited amount of work done in the field of sexuality research in an African context. The conference aims to give new impetus to this avenue of enquiry. Attitudes to homosexuality, silence surrounding domestic violence and the whisperings and coded references that accompany HIV/AIDS related deaths are suggestive of broader cultural norms that could be usefully understood in relation to 'secrecy'. How do male and female initiation rituals use secrecy to maintain cultural authority and power? To what extent can the recent re-emergence of 'invented traditions' in South Africa, such as public 'virginity testing' of young girls by older women be understood as an attempt to use traditional cultural practices to respond to contemporary crises. What is the role of confession and taboo in formal religious institutions and in the secular domain? What are the hidden codes, local rules and euphemisms used in negotiating sexual transactions?

Same-sex activity in many parts of Africa is almost invariably associated with tacit social acceptance (or imbued with ritual power) provided that codes of secrecy and discretion are respected. In what circumstances is same-sex sexuality accepted and at what point does it become transgressive? What accounts for this? How does discretion and silence compare with the imperative towards self-disclosure - 'coming out' - that characterizes contemporary gay and lesbian liberation movements? How is ritual power used to create and protect spaces of same-sex intimacy and desire?

An innovative way of thinking about sex in relation to the public/private sphere is through the lens of secrecy. Media attention given to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, public visibility of gay and lesbian cultures in the wake of legal equality and the increasing prominence of women in public life has meant that issues of gender and sexuality are at the forefront of public debates. Yet how does public discourse influence the private realm? Why have public safer-sex campaigns failed to change intimate behaviour patterns. How is HIV/AIDS presented in national public debate, in the media and public life? How do stigma and shame bolster denial and silence in the face of illness? What are the carnal and erotic politics of sexual fantasy, particularly in an African context?

Ultimately 'secrecy' speaks to a wide range of spheres: desire and death, risk and pleasure, the public and the private. These themes allow for a particular African imprint, while engaging with global concerns.

Conference sub-themes include:

· Hidden cultures of same-sex desires.
· Sexuality and language - euphemism, and coded-discourse.
· Sexual transgressions.
· Domestic violence.
· Strategies of silence, secrecy and denial in dealing with HIV/AIDS.
· The invisibility of HIV/AIDS in the public sphere.
· Gender-based violence.
· Sexual violence against children and the elderly.
· Risk, HIV/AIDS and masculinity.
· Health, ethics and disclosure.
· Sex and death.
· Masculinity and health.
· Sexuality and religion.
· Sexual transactions.
· Legal and public discourses of sex.

The issues outlined here have specific resonance in South Africa and Africa. We hope to use the conference to expand links and examine differences and similarities with other parts of the world. Contributions are invited on these themes globally.

Deadline for Submission of Full Conference Papers
If your abstract is accepted for the conference you will be required to submit your full paper to the conference office by Thursday 1st May 2003. Papers can be submitted by e-mail or post on disc.

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