We believe that the more we know about sex, the better we will be at securing healthy, pleasurable sexual relationships. We believe that good sexual lives are part of our health and should not be ignored. Sexuality very clearly links culture to health by defining gender expectations, sanctioning or stigmatizing desire, and providing or denying choices and the information necessary to making good sexual choices. We say, "Positive or Negative, Our Bodies, Our Choices".

Positive Sexuality

The Start of our Sexuality Project

TICAH has an exciting positive sexuality program which includes group therapy, the development of sexuality education materials, and activist advocacy, including theatre and other media.

This project started with a group of HIV+ women meeting together at TICAH to discuss our health, our problems, and our ideas for how to solve them. Again and again, we kept returning to our intimate lives - to the ways in which our sexual beliefs and behaviors were central not only to our health, but to so much else in our lives. We talked about the ways in which we longed for better ways to talk to our partners, for more information about our bodies, and for a stronger sense of our sexual rights as women!

We found that we enjoyed our meetings and we learned from sharing our experiences. We could see patterns and we could also find ways in which our stories differ. We began to uncover questions about our sexuality and our health and we thought that other people might also benefit from similar opportunities to talk in a safe and supportive place. We realized how rare such opportunities are, even for those of us working in the AIDS field.

Learning from Groups and Developing Materials

TICAH now hosts some fifteen diverse support groups, comprising positive women, positive men, lesbians, gay men, youth, sex workers, and affected family members. The purpose is to create safe spaces to talk about our intimate lives, to learn more about sexual health and practice, and design media designed to break the barriers which exist in Kenya for talking about our orientation, our desire, our health, our status, and our relationships. Our aims are to facilitate educational and empowering group processes and to produce a book or books from what we learn, from the questions we raise, and the answers we are able to find. We believe this book will be of interest and of benefit to all sexually-active women and men, whether they be HIV-negative or HIV-positive.

Using this process, we are designing counseling materials, educational materials, and a facilitator's guide to help others to set up sexuality support groups. In our group processes, we have talked about rights and services, and we have shared our experiences and advice around disclosure, abortion, and rape. We have shared the stories of losing our virginity, learning about sex, masturbation, what makes a good lover, good sex, bad sex, sexual violence, and circumcision. We have collected questions to doctors and experts and put together a panel to answer those questions, which we then discuss and share again.

Downloads:

Read the Exchange Magazine article on TICAH's sexuality project printed in Exchange on HIV/AIDS, Sexuality and Gender - a quarterly magazine on HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health and related issues such as gender, sexuality and rights. It is published by the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands in collaboration with SAfAIDS (Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service) in Zimbabwe.

Download

Download "Our sexuality, our stories: experiences of HIV-positive women in Kenya", published in Exchange on HIV/AIDS, sexuality and gender, No. 3
Download Sexuality poster
Download Abstinence poster