Although years before my gender reassignment surgery, I [...]]]> I had just landed my first holiday job at the end of my first year at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. I was also about to land what I thought was my first love relationship. He was perfect. Well, so I thought.  

Although years before my gender reassignment surgery, I presented myself as the female that I was. I found it thrilling that the caramel-skin, Don Juan-looking guy from the neighbourhood was interested in intimacy, while fully aware of what would be displayed by the time he would strip off my negligé.

Our first sexual encounter was planned according to the clichéd foam-bath-with-candles-and-rose-petals recipe.  A Sunday morning would be best, I proposed. We would be alone for four hours while my mother, with whom I lived in Cape Town, would be tending to her regular ritual of church and visitations.

The romance of round one did not disappoint.  Round two and three were more carnal.  HIV was then a distant disease relegated to the white, promiscuous, homosexual male population of the United States. In South Africa, one could indulge with “gay abandon”, even bareback – or so we thought.

Transactional sex drives HIV infection among young women, study says. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

Soon it would be time for him to leave.  And then he stunned me with a demand that nearly made me regurgitate the champers and chocolates I had been fed at bath time.

He wanted payment for “services rendered” – in cash or in-kind! I could hardly stutter nor splutter a response, except to insist that sex is an exchange of mutual pleasure, not goods or cash.

Despite his veiled intimidations, I did not pay. I had yet to receive my first job pay cheque, was my defence.  Eventually he left, but not before he raided my cupboard for some choice items.  I’d just become an unknowing victim of a form of transactional sex.

A risky exchange

Since time immemorial, transactional sex has flourished in many forms.  In South Africa (as I’m sure in many parts of the world), one such form widely practiced is that of teenage girls and young women trading their bodies for luxury goods.  However, they commonly disassociate their actions from prostitution.

In early April, transactional sex in South Africa was in the news. Alarmingly, we learned of a spike in HIV infections among young women, mostly due to engaging in transactional sex, in the latest report of the Human Science Research Council.

I was shocked to read that young women aged 15-24 have the highest incidence of HIV. In 2012, they accounted for a quarter – 113,000– of all new infections.

While the girls’ expectations are of expensive jeans, trendy takkies (shoes), a new cell phone or gold earrings, they are actually paid with HIV, the virus that has infected 6.4 million South Africans.

When I recall my first (and last) encounter with transactional sex, I still feel that bitter sense of powerlessness.

However, as the episode subsided and I received my first wages ever, I felt a sweet sense of empowerment. I could replace the goods taken.

Years later, I’ve earned many salaries and I’ve been in several relationships, both short and long term. Of course, I’ve received a gift here and a necklace there from a guy or two. But I know that it was given out of love, respect or like.

Those are the modes I advocate that we, as women, young or old, receive the things we like – not trading our bodies for it, and certainly not for HIV!

Simone Heradien is an artist, activist, journalist, maximalist (likes things big), always on the ball. But come sunset, to unwind, you’ll find me dancing on a bar counter in some or other music hall.

I was in a four-year monogamous relationship, six years after happily undergoing gender reassignment, and felt fairly smug that [...]]]> The year was 2001. South Africa was in the midst of HIV/AIDS denialism. Safer sex was the buzzword. Casual sex was discouraged, abstinence encouraged and monogamy applauded.  Many were terrified of catching the disease.

Still from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierre le Fou. Credit: Public domain

I was in a four-year monogamous relationship, six years after happily undergoing gender reassignment, and felt fairly smug that I was immune to HIV infection.

But, as the anti-establishment cliché goes, “rules are made to be broken”. I embarked on my first voyage abroad, a six-week business mixed with pleasure trip to France. Armed with French fluency, I swore it would be a trip of no pleasure denied, except for one.

I had vowed to myself and my fiancé, Mike, that I would not yield to the legendary, intimate delights Frenchmen had on offer.

Little did I know that there were men of other origins to indulge my penchant for those from North Africa. From Paris to Limoges to Lille, they were everywhere.

In the small town of Ambleteuse, alongside La Manche, or the English Channel, as the Brits call it, I met Mehdi. The olive-skinned, curly haired, perfect toy-boy looking, French-Algerian made all the right moves.

I succumbed. We did not have safe sex. Neither of us had condoms handy. I grappled with going “all the way”. The fear of HIV infection gripped me for months afterwards. It was still very much a possible death sentence.

A smart femme fatale

A few years later, in 2004, I went on a working trip to France, extended by a two-week vacation in Paris.

South Africa was now on the brink of its imprudent beetroot-and-garlic so called HIV “cure”. I was by then single.

This time it was no holds barred. I had gone prepared as La Femme Fatale. France, and in particular secularist Paris, taught me the freedom of casual sex. But this time I came prepared – with condoms. The option of reciprocal oral sex was another alternative to minimise the risk of infection.

Yes, I indulged in various pleasures, but when in the City of Love, who doesn’t? And of course I was less afraid of contracting HIV than I was in 2001. Antiretrovirals (ARV) now keep HIV-positive people healthy for years.

Glamourised by the media as another manageable chronic condition, HIV is not portrayed as a death sentence anymore – provided, of course, one is diagnosed early, has the ARVs needed and takes them, has good nutrition and good medical care and maintains a healthy lifestyle. Not all people living with HIV in Africa enjoy these.

The blessed cumulative efficacy of ARVs has resulted in the progressive depreciation of the fear of HIV infection among youth. I am certainly eons less fearful than I was in 2001.

However, whether sexually desirous or hedging one’s bets, one cannot adopt a laissez-faire attitude. HIV can still kill. It still does. And resistance to ARVS is a real, life-threatening possibility.

Thus, until the golden dream of a vaccine becomes reality, the rules of HIV prevention remain. Let us not play Russian roulette. Not even in Moscow with a handsome stranger and a shot or two of vodka. So pack your condoms!

Simone Heradien is an artist, activist, journalist, maximalist (likes things big), always on the ball. But come sunset, to unwind, you’ll find me dancing on a bar counter in some or other music hall.

A buzz word so apt, as I, too, was going through reconstruction and development. After years of waiting, I had started the process of undergoing gender reassignment [...]]]>

“Be assertive and insist on that piece of latex.” Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS

It was 1994. South Africa was in the hype of its first democratic election. Reconstruction and development was the buzz word emanating from the newly elected government’s rhetoric.

A buzz word so apt, as I, too, was going through reconstruction and development. After years of waiting, I had started the process of undergoing gender reassignment surgery – becoming the complete woman I was born to be. By November, I had the first-stage operation. I was on top of the world.

It was about to come crashing down. One of my aunts called to say my sister had just been hospitalised for an “unknown” condition.

Sister Tammy was known as the prodigal daughter. Fifteen years my senior, she had been barred from home since the early 1980s, when she left for Johannesburg as a “boy” to live her life as the woman she was born to be. We saw each other occasionally, often secretly, when she visited our home city, Cape Town.

I rushed to Somerset Hospital in Cape Town, where the doctor informed me that Tammy was “dying of AIDS”.

I was floored!  For all those years, neither I nor any member of our family knew that Tammy had contracted HIV. And in those years, HIV was a sure death sentence.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered on entering her cubicle. Opportunistic infections had affected her brain. Foaming at the mouth, continuously moaning, a skeleton of her former self, she could only acknowledge my presence with a very weak hand squeeze.  Tammy died the following day.

Having witnessed her horrifying, quick death, I swore that I would never, ever contract HIV. Twenty years later, and still HIV negative, I ascribe part of my success to my emancipated, feminist and principled life.

The art of negotiation

Navigating a condom in the bedroom of a man who insists on going bareback was an easy task as a “pre-op transsexual” and is even easier as a “post-op” woman.

Insisting on alternative pleasure methods when protection is not around, employing “Victorian” above-the-belt indulgence, or plain cancellation of any sexual action has become no mean feat, including ensuring that I am in a safe space when consultation on “going all the way”, half way or no way takes place.

But many women (and “bottom” gay men) from across the social spectrum are not that empowered. Within a sexist, patriarchal world, it’s still often the man who calls the shots. The bedroom, his “palace of domination”, is where his rules prevail.

Monogamous wives, “ladies of the night”, swinging singles, experimenting teenage girls, and women in general are susceptible to HIV infection from a male partner due to his insistence on “skin against skin”. His arguments range from “I am monogamous” to he is paying for it, or “We’re just having the odd bit of fun.”

While HIV is not always a death sentence anymore with antiretroviral treatment, women still need empowerment to become assertive in navigating that male or female condom to minimise the risk of infection. Of course, this by no means absolves the man from his responsibility of navigating the condom in the first place.

Women’s emancipation in the bedroom (or the backseat of the car) is one imperative towards stemming the tide of HIV infection. Be assertive and insist on that piece of latex. A luta continua!

Simone Heradien is an artist, activist, journalist, maximalist (likes things big), always on the ball. But come sunset, to unwind, you’ll find me dancing on a bar counter in some or other music hall.