“I don't blame that guy that gave it to me”: Contested discourses of victimisation and culpability in the narratives of heterosexual women infected with HIV

Abstract

In Australia, most women with HIV were infected through heterosexual sex, echoing global patterns. In media coverage, these women are typically portrayed as having been deceived by men they trusted, or as victims in criminal cases against HIV-positive men from high-prevalence countries. Heterosexuals are clearly overrepresented in such cases, a pattern consistent across high-income countries. It has been suggested that the victim/perpetrator distinction that defines criminal cases and media stories has some resonance among heterosexuals because of gender power dynamics. But less attention has been paid to the ways women themselves make sense of heterosexual transmission of HIV. Drawing on qualitative interviews from two larger studies, this article shows how the victim–culprit binary is challenged by women's own accounts of acquiring HIV. None presented themselves as “victims” in any straightforward sense, or placed the blame squarely on the men, including men who had not disclosed HIV. Instead, their narratives revealed themes of “mutual vulnerability” and far more ambivalent allocations of responsibility. I conclude that the tendency to position women who become infected with HIV in a victim discourse obscures the complex realities of sexual practice and gender that play a part in the epidemic in any cultural context and that have implications for HIV prevention.