Based on the results of an ethnographic study on daily experience with HIV in Greater Metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina, the article discusses behavioral approaches that reduce the sexuality of persons living with HIV to an issue of safety and protection. By articulating a social construction perspective and the notion of hegemony, the author proposes that sexuality can be understood as a process of individual and social construction shaped by power relations and social regulations. The analysis of the experiences of living with HIV in marginalized populations shows how chronic social inequality, violence, discrimination, and stigmatization generate particular characteristics of sexual issues. These social processes become driving forces that shape sexual experience as a field of danger, repression, and restriction rather than pleasure and exploration. Finally, daily confrontation with social metaphors places strain on gender relations, practices, and identities.
HIV; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Sexuality; Gender Identity