The idea is to force the country’s squabbling politicians, and most particularly the squabblers-in-chief President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, to behave more sensibly. (Lucy Kibaki hasn’t yet said whether she’ll join in.)

A whole week without sex: imagine! The idea that this would be enough to get Kenya’s politicians to give up a lifetime’s habit of self-interested tribal and party politicking says quite a bit, doesn’t it? When epidemiologists suggest that one reason HIV spreads more rapidly in East and Southern Africa than elsewhere is because the timing, frequency and volume of sexual partnerships support that spread, we’re told we’re racist (as though somehow having lots of sex is a bad thing….). Now we have the women of Kenya planning to change the world by depriving men of sex for a single week. I can’t see the prospect of that bringing many British MPs to their knees.

Actually, I don’t think for a moment that the good womenfolk of Kenya think that their men can’t make it through the week without sex. New research published today (in the wonderful, open-access Public Library of Science) that included 1,161 Kenyan couples found that they had sex four times a month on average. Giving up one of those four times hardly seems like a big sacrifice. I’m interested, though, in how they are going to pay top-up fees to all the striking sex workers — over 7,000 girls would normally be bringing in the cash each night in Nairobi’s central business district alone.

I’m also mildly amused by the “men are pigs, women are saints” ethos that underlies the sex boycott. The annoucement of the boycott itself has drawn fighting words from the leaders of some women’s organisations. In a country where one in 13 adults are infected with sexually transmitted HIV, 60% of them women, some women’s leaders still think it is wicked to talk about sex. This from The Nation:

Maendeleo ya Wanawake [Women's Development Organisation] vice-chair Rahab Muiu criticised the presence of the organisation’s chairperson at a press conference where the strike was announced. “As the largest women’s organisation in the country, we strongly believe in family values and cannot be associated with such foul utterances which can only break families,” Mrs Muiu said.
She said chairperson Rukia Subow supported the sex boycott in her personal capacity. However, Mrs Subow has come out fighting, retorting: “I set the agenda for women in this country.”
The organisation’s assistant national secretary, Mrs Elizabeth Mayieka, said women in Nyanza were beaten by their husbands over the proposed boycott. She condemned the boycott, saying it is taboo to talk about bedroom matters in public and in the presence of children.

Thanks to Lisa McCandless

According to a report in The Nation Kenya’s Ministry of Health has published a new policy on male circumcision (the policy hasn’t made it on to the MoH website yet.) The country aims to provide circumcision for any man who wants it. It’s not a radical decision in terms of public health. Although the anti-circumcision ring-masters continue to rail against the data, most public health professionals are convinced by studies suggesting that a man without a foreskin is 60% less likely to contract HIV than a man with a foreskin. Uganda and Rwanda have already decided to try and circumcise as many men as are willing. The controversy comes, rather, from people who are worried about two things: behaviour and culture.

The behavioural worry is this: if men think they can’t get infected if they are circumcised, they won’t bother with condoms. Possibly. But the reason a third of adults are infected with HIV in some parts of Kenya is that men aren’t bothering with condoms in any case. If you can reduce the likelihood that those men will contract the disease, how is that a bad thing?

The cultural worry comes from the “in some parts of Kenya” thing. HIV is much higher among some of Kenya’s tribes than among others. It is notably higher among the non-circumcising Luo, for example (22%), than among the circumcising Kikuyu (5%). Nationwide, HIV among non-circumcised men is 13%, compared with 3% among men who have had the snip. Current president Mwai Kibaki is Kikuyu. Raila Odinga, who believes he should be president following December’s disputed election, is Luo. There’s an uneasy truce between the two at the moment, but just a couple of months ago being a member of one group or the other was enough to get you burned out of your house or slaughtered. In these circumstances, markers of tribal identity such as a foreskin take on a significance that goes way beyond a concentration of HIV-susceptible cells. Circumcising everyone would remove that badge of identity. In my mind, that another reason for circumcision, not against it.

It’s easy to be facetious about this kind of thing, but it does raise an uncomfortable point. Where white men go on holiday looking for sexual adventures with women of virtually any colour, the world screams “Exploitation!”. If there is any hint the girls are under 16, even 18 in some countries, we go up a pitch. “Prosecute!”. The possibility that girls might want to make a lot of money with very little effort and get bought nice clothes and dinners on the way is somehow not considered. But are white women not exploiting golden boys in just the same way? Why does no one worry about these young men, enslaved to the demands of sagging white women?

(Image from www.beaumonde.net/weblog/archives/2006_08.shtml)