Caroline Ramazanoglu

Risk, Power and the Possibility of Pleasure: Young Women and Safer Sex

This paper draws on the work of the Women Risk and AIDS Project (WRAP) which was undertaken by the authors working collectively. It reports on data from a sociological study of the sexual beliefs and practices of two samples each of 75 young women between 16 and 21 in the cities of London and Manchester in the UK. The period of data collection was 1988-1990. The paper sets out the methods used by the WRAP team and locates this research process within wider debates about feminist theory and methodology. There then follows a discussion of the main research findings--relating to the respondents sexual practice--which are then illustrated in some detail in relation to the themes of risk and trust and power and empowerment. Based on these findings conclusions are drawn about the need for a gendered dimension in the development of policy and practice for HIV and AIDS prevention.

Deconstructing virginity - young people's accounts of first sex

In their first (hetero)sexual experience, young people are enticed into the gendered practices, meanings and power relations of heterosexuality. This paper draws on findings from two primarily qualitative studies of young peoples sexual practices and understandings: the Women, Risk and AIDS Project and the Men, Risk and AIDS Project. The paper suggest that for young men, first (hetero)sex is an empowering moment through which agency and identity are confirmed. For young women the moment of first (hetero)sex is more complicated, and their ambivalent responses to it are primarily concerned with managing loss. By exploring and contrasting young peoples accounts of their first sexual experiences and the meanings that virginity hold for them, the paper reveals the asymmetry of desire, agency and control within (hetero)sex. The paper concludes by considering the implication of these findings for practice.

What can you do with a man?: Feminism and the critical appraisal of masculinity

Abstract The impact of feminism has led to the critical appraisal of masculinity by men, and feminists can both welcome this development and also treat it with caution. The claims that masculinity and male sexuality are socially constructed rather than biologically given are similar to feminist theories of social construction, but examination of the differences between men and the social divisions which enable men to exercise power over each other raise very difficult questions about how we understand power and how gendered power is connected to other sources of power. This makes mens claims that patriarchal masculinity oppresses men problematic. Where studies of men and masculinity most need to be developed (both empirically and theoretically) is in identifying and explaining mens exercise of power and in understanding the political, as well as the personal, implications of transforming power relations.

Managing Risk and Experiencing Danger: Tensions between Government AIDS Education Policy and Young Women's Sexuality.

ABSTRACT Much of the early panic relating to AIDS has focused on non‐heterosexual sexualities and the identification of high risk groups. It can be argued that fear of the spread of HIV and AIDS into the heterosexual population was the spur for the development of government policy in this area. The protection of the population in general depends on changes in high risk sexual practices, and the part played in these changes by young women has been given scant attention. We argue here that the sexual knowledge and practice of young women are crucial factors in the spread of HIV and AIDS, and that information on these factors is limited and interpreted within a framework of patriarchal ideology which obscures the power relations embedded in sexual relations. These issues are discussed using data from an investigation of young womens sexual beliefs and behaviour (the Women Risk and AIDS Project — WRAP) in relation to government AIDS education campaigns. [1]An earlier version of this paper was delivered at th...

Tripping over Experience: some problems in feminist epistemology

1This is a shortened and revised version of a paper presented to the conference on Transformations: thinking through feminism Institute of Womens Studies, University of Lancaster, July 1997.

Gender and Islam ‐ the Politics of Muslim Feminism

Freda Hussain (ed.) MUSLIM WOMEN, London, Croom Helm, 1984, 232pp., £15.95 (h.b.) Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (ed.) WOMEN AND THE FAMILY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: NEW VOICES OF CHANGE, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1985, xii + 356 pp., n.p. Unesco, SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND WOMEN IN THE ARAB WORLD, Paris, Unesco, London, Frances Pinter, 1984, x + 175 pp., n.p. Abdelwahab Boudhiba (trans. Alan Sheridan) SEXUALITY IN ISLAM, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, viii + 288 pp., £25.00 (h.b.)

Unravelling postmodern paralysis: a response to Joan Hoff

Abstract Joan Hoff, in her article ‘Gender as a postmodern category of paralysis, womens History Review, 3, pp. 149-168, usefully shows that questions of how we know gender are displacing questions about what needs to be known about womens lives, and why relations between women and men are as they are. It is argued that if the material realities of womens lives become deconstructed into readings of texts, womens complex and contradictory experiences can be reduced to debates about the limits and possibilities of knowing. Gender relations may be discursively constituted, but this does not mean that they do not really exist. The key problem is that some theories are better at grasping gendered power than others. The disintegration of history into a multiplicity of voices does not make all narratives equal