AIDS at 25

Via Feministing, the leader of South Africa's Inkatha Freedom Party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, is claiming women have a duty to carry out "virginity testing" to fight the AIDS pandemic.

"I want to see women taking the lead to educate and empower other women to control their sexual relationships. In African society it was always women who safeguarded the chastity of virgins before marriage. It is older women who carry out virginity tests on younger women. It was not done on an order from any man."

It was still women's duty, as before, to do the testing.

"It was women's duty then and it is women's duty [today] especially now that we are being overwhelmed by the pandemic of HIV/Aids."

Now being a virgin might be expected to help protect a woman from exposure to HIV. The only problem is, there seem to be a lot of folks in South Africa who believe that a man can be cured of HIV/AIDS by having sex with a virgin. Given this belief, it seems like being identified as an "official" virgin in a country where perhaps 20% of the population is infected with HIV might be a really bad idea.

And why, given that women are at higher risk than men of contracting HIV from sexual intercourse, is the burden of controlling the spread of the virus being placed (at least by Buthelezi) on the women?

Don't get me wrong -- I agree that men shouldn't be the ones who control women's sexuality. But meaningful control here includes the recognition that women should be able to opt out of any sexual contact they choose to opt out of. It certainly means women should be able to opt out of being used, at great risk to their own health as quack cures for HIV infection.

I suppose there's a way to make the woman-run virgin testing work in women's favor here: certify them all "not virgins" and hope that serves as protection from the magical thinking of HIV-infected men.