In east and southern Africa, increasing numbers of people are becoming aware of the differences in prevalence of AIDS and STDs between circumcised and uncircumcised men, and they are taking action. Male circumcision is increasingly recommended by traditional healers. Private clinics that specialize in male circumcision, many of which are run by people with minimum or no medical training, are sprouting up in Tanzania, western Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, and many advertise their services as a way to alleviate chronic STD infection and AIDS. Young men and adolescents in east and southern Africa are increasingly electing circumcision—both the medically safe procedure and more precarious non-clinical methods—in regions where traditionally they have avoided the practice (Halperin and Bailey 2000:1814).
Instead of enhancing women’s possibilities for demanding safe sex in relationships, avoiding sexualized violence and reducing the lack of control over their health risks, the male circumcision strategy seems likely to increase all these risks for women, as it completely ignores the needs of women and, in our view, recasts them as objects.
Our worry about decrease in condom use by circumcised men may be unwarranted. The idea that African men would not use condoms if they did not have to, but would rather practise promiscuous sex without any interest in the partner’s health, resonates with colonial, racist ideas of African masculinity—that will, surely, affect sexual practices (cf. Mama 1997).