Stigma and discrimination are social responses to AIDS that can only be understood in terms of the broader relations of power and domination in society, which reflect and reproduce inequalities of class, gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality and sexual orientation. The symbolic violence which existing stigma and discrimination represent are interweaved with responses to HIV, intensified by association with notions of contagiousness and the fear of AIDS as inevitably fatal.9 The continuous association of HIV with sexual promiscuity, family disorganisation and drug use, all dimensions of life that are associated with ‘‘incurable deviancy’’, helps to explain why so many challenges remain in organising care for people living with HIV.
The literature on the Brazilian family describes the deconstruction of a single normative model (the traditional nuclear family) for procreating and raising children. Demographic studies have consistently shown that conjugal and family organisation, including the formation of the extended family, vary widely in Brazil, despite the clear hegemony of Christian beliefs among most Brazilians-and among the men living with HIV who were interviewed in this study.
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