Amuchástegui, A. (2007) - Ethical Dilemmas For Mexican Men in Their Sexual Relationships With Women PDF

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I Had a Guilty Conscience Because I Wasn't Going to Marry Her: Ethical

Dilemmas for Mexican Men in their Sexual Relationships with Women
Ana Amuchstegui and Peter Aggleton
Sexualities 2007; 10; 61
DOI: 10.1177/1363460707072954
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2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
04 072954 Amuchastegui (to_d)
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Article
Abstract In Mexicos predominantly Catholic culture, the

enjoyment of sexual rights faces many challenges, both at the
political and the personal level. Although often connected, the
meanings of sexuality and reproduction are fundamentally
different and so, correspondingly, are possibilities for the exercise
of reproductive rights versus sexual rights. Such views are
gendered by the idea that womens desire and sexual activity
should be controlled and mens masculinity should be affirmed
through sexual performance. Drawing on in-depth research
conducted among young Mexican men in rural communities,
this article examines the ethics implicit in mens accounts when
talking about sexual desires, pleasures and practices with women.
Findings point to the need for a stronger ethics of sexual
citizenship in Mexico as part of enabling conditions for the
exercise of both mens and womens sexual rights.
Keywords ethics, gender, masculinities, Mexico, sexuality,
sexual rights
Ana Amuchstegui
Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, Mexico
Peter Aggleton
Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London
I Had a Guilty Conscience Because I

Wasnt Going to Marry Her: Ethical
Dilemmas for Mexican Men in their
Sexual Relationships with Women
Introduction
While there have been major advances in womens reproductive selfdetermination in Mexico over the last 20 years, there exists continuing
struggle concerning womens autonomy with respect to sexual desire and
pleasure. In the countrys predominantly Catholic culture, the exercise of
sexual rights1 faces difficulties at all levels from public policy to intimate
Sexualities
Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 10(1): 6181 DOI: 10.1177/1363460707072954
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Sexualities 10(1)
relations.2 In society at large, in politics and in personal relationships,

there exist fundamental differences between the meanings ascribed to
sexuality and reproduction. Dominant views are influenced by the idea
that womens desire and sexual activity should be controlled and mens
masculinity affirmed through sexual performance (Amuchstegui, 2001,
Amuchstegui and Rivas, 2004). While pleasure has been historically
shaped by discourse of the sins of the flesh (Foucault, 1988) procreation,
and particularly motherhood, has been and remains highly valued. These
differences have an effect on the ways in which Mexican women and men
feel entitled to live and to explore the use of their bodies so as to gain
sexual pleasure that is, to fully enjoy their sexual rights.
Using a broadly Foucauldian (1988, 1991) framework, this article
examines the ethics implicit in the views expressed by a group of Mexican
rural men as they talked about their sexual desires, pleasures and practices.
It focuses in particular on how and in what circumstances men construct
themselves and their female partners as subjects of desire. Such sexual
subjectivity whereby persons acknowledge the right of everyone to make
decisions for themselves about their bodies, their sexuality and reproduction, and to claim the social, economic, and institutional conditions for
the exercise of the said rights is an important precondition for an ethics
of democratic sexual relationships, and for the appropriation of sexual
rights (Amuchstegui and Rivas, 2004; Bell and Binnie, 2000; Isin and
Wood, 1999; Weeks, 1999).
While there is a growing body of literature on gender and sexuality
among Mexican men (see, for example, Gutmann, 1996; Lerner, 1998;
Szasz, 1998) and on recent transformations in gendered sexual relations
(see, for example, Rodrguez and De Keijzer, 2002; Hirsch, 2003), few
studies to date have tried to understand the ethical dimensions of mens
sexual relationships with women, nor has existing work approached these
issues with sexual rights in mind.
Similarly, while authors such as Figueroa (2001) have discussed the
ethical and political implications of the reproductive (not sexual) rights of
men, analyses of this kind have not been rooted in empirical or ethnographic work. Drawing on fieldwork in rural areas of central Mexico, this
article offers insights into mens beliefs about their sexual relationships
with women, as a possible foundation for the construction of more
democratic forms of sexual citizenship.
Mexican men and sexual citizenship

As in most countries, heterosexual3 men in Mexico have not been active
in relation to advocacy for reproductive rights and sexual rights.4 To date,
their role in gender and sexual relationships has been discussed more as a
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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience
matter of health for example in relation to contraception and STIs/HIV

than citizenship. In contrast, Mexican feminist groups have been increasingly successful in promoting debate on womens vulnerability and in
advocacy for laws to criminalize marital rape and domestic violence.
Since the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo and the Fourth World Conference on Women
(WCW) in Beijing, feminist groups and their allies have brought male
involvement in sexual and reproductive health to the public policy agenda,
discussing it within a framework for gender equality and the advancement
of womens status (Mundigo, 1995). In signing the Beijing Declaration,
the Mexican government committed itself to encouraging men to participate fully in actions toward equality (paragraph 25). The later Political
Declaration from the Beijing Conference five-year follow up, also agreed
to by the Mexican government, emphasize[d] that men must involve
themselves and take joint responsibility with women for the promotion of
gender equality (paragraph 6).5 However, recent government interpretation of these commitments has been somewhat inconsistent.
In Mexico, the neoliberal economic discourse of the current government is
matched by a profoundly conservative ideological rhetoric, thereby reducing
the political opportunities for women to forward a gender equality agenda.
(Franceschet and MacDonald, 2004: 3)
For instance, the Ministry of Healths recent Programme for Action on

Reproductive Health (Secretara de Salud, 2001) contains a section
entitled the Democratization of Sexual and Reproductive Health. In it,
citizenship, solidarity and pluralism are identified as the three guiding
principles of the Mexican health system. Promising as this sounds, this
commitment is undercut by ongoing processes of health reform which
have in fact increased inequalities in health service provision. In reality,
the demographic goals appear to be the reason for this documents
interest in Men in their Reproductive Age. It is stated for example that:
Mens participation in the family planning programme has been increasing. In
1992 there were 54 tubal ligations per one vasectomy performed by the
Ministry of Health, while in 2000, the ratio changed to 17 to 1. (Secretara de
Salud, 2001: 25)
Importantly, and throughout this same document, men are portrayed

either as obstacles to womens use of contraception or as the potential
users of contraceptive services themselves, and not as citizens who
should be aware of their rights and responsibilities regarding sexuality
and reproduction.
If anything, contemporary changes in Mexican society support the case
for an understanding of mens gender relations in terms of what has been
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Sexualities 10(1)
termed the crisis of masculinity. In Mexican cities as in most of Latin

America, social welfare reform, increasing difficulty of living on a single
income, deregulation of employment and the increase in womens paid
employment have brought about profound changes in family structures
and relationships (Olavarra, 2001). These include a questioning of male
authority and of the myth of men as providers (Escobar, 1998). In rural
areas, the reorganization of agricultural production and the decline of the
family farm have triggered the massive migration of men and increasingly
women to the cities and to the USA, also bringing about transformations
in family life and sexual relationships.
The Mexican gay movement has long argued for the need to make
homophobia the grounds for an interrogation of dominant Mexican
masculinities and the promotion of sexual rights (Letra S, 2000a; 2000b).
Such activism has had some positive results, including the recent campaign
against homophobia conducted through 19 local radio stations on behalf
of the National Commission against Discrimination. Critique has also
begun to have some impact on the few groups of heterosexual men
interested in addressing issues such as male domestic violence and
womens reproductive rights from a gender perspective.
In this context, and by the mid-1990s, there was increasing interest in
mens lives by male Mexican academics and activists, often as a result of
their experience and struggles with feminists (Cazs, 1998). To date,
however, there exists little work in Mexico on the links between masculinities and mens and womens sexual rights and reproductive rights (De
Keijzer, 1999; Figueroa, 2001), and opinions differ substantially over
whether it is possible to talk of the sexual rights and reproductive rights
of men. For some feminists, the facts of pregnancy and birth give rise to
an imbalance of vulnerability, bolstering the view that reproductive rights
apply only to women (Azeredo and Stolcke, 1991). A different position
has been espoused by those in the mens rights movement, within which
diverse positions exist, including constructions of men as victims of the
gains of feminism (Messner, 2000).6
For yet others, the argument for sexual rights as human rights
necessarily includes men, but must also take into account other social
inequalities (Crrea and Petchesky, 2001; Miller, 2000). According to this
point of view, the defence of formal rights is insufficient if it lacks
discussion concerning respect for the rights of others, the effects of
inequality on relationships between men and women, social constructions
of femininity and masculinity, and the subjectivities encouraged by them.
It is against this backcloth and as a contribution to better understanding mens subjectivities, actions, roles and responsibilities in relation
to sexual rights and reproductive rights that the present study was
carried out.
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Ethics
In his writing, Foucault draws a clear distinction between morals and
ethics. While the first of these terms refers to codes of behaviour defined
by social institutions such as the church and the law which are largely
external to individuals, ethics are the forms of moral subjectification, and
[of] the practices of self destined to ensure them (Foucault, 1988: 30).
The latter are
those techniques that allow individuals to effect a number of operations upon
their own bodies, souls, thoughts, behaviours, so as to transform themselves,
to modify themselves, in order to achieve a certain state of perfection, happiness, purity, supernatural power, etc. (Foucault cited in Morey, 1991: 35.
Authors translation from the Spanish)
This notion of ethics is relevant to the present study in that practices of

self linked to the exercise of sexual citizenship provide opportunities for
what might be described as the authorization of particular sexual desires,
practices and identities, as well as respect for those of others, in the context
of collective struggles for the enabling conditions to exercise them freely.
Solidarity, autonomy and freedom of decision making concerning ones
own body in the context of social relationships are central to an ethics for
sexual citizenship, since:
Citizenship encompasses not only rights but also the responsibilities and duties
of citizens . . . Duty and obligation bear a coercive imperative; but responsibilities . . . are broader and extend beyond duty. The later dimension includes a civic
commitment, centered on active participation in public life (the responsibilities
of citizenship) as well as symbolic and ethical aspects that confer a sense of
identity and of belonging, a sense of community. (Jelin, 1998: 106)
In the present study, the focus is on an examination of the ethical

notions implicit in the meanings that men attached to their sexual lives.
This is important, since it holds the potential to inform what sexual
rights could be for them and how such local definitions may relate to
formal expression of the said rights.7
Methods
This article draws on findings from close-focus research conducted during
19992000 among a diverse group of men of different ages in rural areas
of central Mexico. Issues explored included how men spoke of themselves
and of women as subjects of sexual desire and pleasure, and of procreation
and parenthood. The study was conducted in collaboration with the local
Equipo de Promocin de la Salud Comunitaria (EPROSCO), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) working to promote the health and
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reproductive rights of women in rural communities in the state of

Michoacn. Prior to this study, women had asked EPROSCO to work
with local men in order to advance understanding of their reproductive
rights. As a result, a series of workshops was developed on issues such as
gender equality, STI/HIV prevention, violence and sexuality, which about
15 men attended intermittently over a period of three years.8 The first
author participated in some of the workshops, taking notes and recording, and later invited the men to participate in individual conversations.
Eight men accepted (see Table 1).
In this article, the narratives of the first five participants are focused
upon because all them were of the same generation and came from the
same geographical area, enabling a comparative analysis to be carried out.
Data from a sixth respondent, Gabriel, were not included because he
Name
Age
Education
Marital st.
Children
Occupation
Ethnicity
Mario
19
Secondary
school
Single
None
Carpenter/
construction
Alberto
22
Married
1 child
Jos
23
Secondary
school
Secondary
school
Single
None
Fisherman/
construction
Carpenter/
farming
Toms
32
Secondary
school
Single
None
Arnaldo
33
College
Single
None
Gabriel
31
Elementary
school
Married/
separated
5 children
Health
promoter
Hernn
54
None
Married
11 children
Farming
Rafael
58
1st.
Elementary
Married
10 children
Farming
Mestizo1
Spanishspeaking
Purpecha2
Bilingual
Mestizo
Spanishspeaking
Mestizo
Spanishspeaking
Purpecha
Spanishspeaking
Mestizo
Spanishspeaking
Mestizo
Spanishspeaking
Mestizo
Spanishspeaking
1
2
Former
soldier/
carpenter
High school
teacher
Mestizo is a term often used to designate children of mixed Indian and Spanish descent.
The Purpecha are an ethnic group from Michoacn in central Mxico, who have been
increasingly active in the defence of their language and culture. Although Arnaldo talked
about his purpecha origins, he did not speak the language nor participate in any ethnic
activism. Alberto, in contrast, did both.
Table 1. The informants
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had only recently arrived in the area from another state and was not a
permanent resident of Michoacn.
Selecting informants in this manner had certain implications for the
interpretation of findings. It is possible, for example, that the first
authors involvement in EPROSCOs workshops may have encouraged
men to perceive her as an advocate for an ethics of egalitarian sexual
relationships. However, EPROSCOs previous involvement with the
Church and with Catholic mores also encouraged feelings of guilt among
the men with respect to the gender inequalities they were starting to
acknowledge in the workshops. Moreover because workshop leaders
encouraged men to question practices such as their use of local female
sex workers, it is possible that without our being aware of it, the norm
of conjugal monogamy may have become intertwined with the egalitarian
interests of feminist activism. These issues should be borne in mind in
the analysis that follows.
Together with the first author, local research assistants carried out a
series of audio-taped autobiographical narrative interviews (Lindn
Villoria, 1999) with each man over a series of three meetings (generating
a total of 15 texts). Participants were asked to talk as freely as possible
about different aspects of their lives their family history, their love affairs
and relationships, their sexuality, their health, their experience of their
partners pregnancies and fatherhood. All interviews were transcribed and
later checked against the audio-tape. Data were collected with informed
consent. Men were guaranteed confidentiality and anonymity, so their
names and situations that could identify them have been changed.
Sometimes men used the dialogues to reflect upon their feelings, actions
and notions about sexual relationships. This was particularly evident when
trying to understand when and why some elements of their behaviour
towards women might be thought of as violent. For instance Alberto, a
22-year-old Purpecha fisherman, was keen to show his male interviewer
how he had changed his violent behaviour and wanted to teach other men
what he had learned during the workshops.
At night I often think about what I have learned from the workshops and I have
tried to put it to practice. I also tried to bring a friend to the workshops so that
he would listen and guide his family. Like, this man I was talking to last Friday.
He told me that he hits his woman so that shell understand. And I asked him
why does he do that and he said, So that shell do as I say. And I said, Thats
not right, you should never mistreat a woman. Maybe you can scold her, but its
not right to hit a woman. But you just go home, and its all violence.
This fragment shows how Alberto had appropriated aspects of the moral
code during the workshops. However, his interpretation reduces violence
only to physical battering and although he argues against such a practice,
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he does not question the hierarchy given by marriage, in his affirmation

of the tutelage of men over women.
Many of these contradictions were not fully talked through, but were
instead hinted at when men addressed the interviewer. Some men indicated their expectation of a natural empathy with the male interviewer
with expressions like You know how it is or by using strong language
when describing their sexual encounters. In contrast, they felt compelled
to say Excuse my language to the female researcher when recalling the
same events, as if a woman were likely to be offended by such descriptions. Interviewers, on their part, often introduced elements of their own
subjectivity into the conversations, whether via the phrasing of certain
questions or by focusing on certain particular elements of narrative
content, such as gender equality or sexual freedom.
Overall, it is important to emphasize that the narratives reported here
should not be seen as data for generalization to a particular community
or culture, nor as expressions of essential identities and beliefs. Instead
they are dialogic productions generated within the context of specific
relations of activism and research (Amuchstegui, 1999) that is, as initial
ideas for the generation of further research and conceptual work on the
subjective components of sexual rights.
The narrative accounts

Although all men talked openly and with a degree of reflexivity about their
sexual relationships with women, the content of what they said varied, not
only between participants but also within each life story. This was so,
despite the fact that all of them came from the same locality, had migrated
to the city for work or education, held broadly similar jobs and did not
speak of religion as a constitutive factor in their lives.
Two dominant codes

The stories offered spoke of mens attempts to make sense of their experience in the face of a number of ethical dilemmas concerning their sexual
relationships with women.
Every moral action implies a relationship with the reality in which it happens,
and a relationship to the code it is referred to, but it also implies a certain
relationship with oneself; this is not only conscience of self but a constitution
of self as a moral subject, in which the individual circumscribes the part of
himself that constitutes the object of this moral practice, defines his position
regarding the injunction it follows, sets a certain way of being that will be the
moral fulfilment of himself, and for that he acts upon himself, he seeks to know
himself, he controls himself, proves himself, perfects himself, transforms
himself. (Foucault, 1988: 29. Authors translation from the Spanish)
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In the narratives they gave, men seemed to adhere to two different

ethical codes: the first related to Catholic notions of sex as a sin of the
flesh; the second tied more closely to gendered sexuality and its implications for mens and womens sexual experiences. Both codes interacted
within the narratives, so that often the moral evaluation of sex would
depend on whether it was a man or a woman who had sinned, and on
what female or male sexuality ought to be.
Overall, the moral status of sex was intertwined with naturalized equivalences between sex, gender and heterosexual desire. In Mexican culture,
this heterosexual matrix (see Butler, 2001) is inextricably linked to
heteronormative institutions such as marriage, romantic love and the
sexual division of labour. Morality and ethical practices of self are
connected to power through gendered sexualities, social structures and
personal experience. Under such a regime of inequality, how can men
acknowledge women as subjects of desire and pleasure in their own right?
And under what circumstances can men reflect on their selves and their
own lives in relation to such recognition?
Through adherence to the ideal types of man and woman, the infinite
diversity of sexual experiences was nullified, creating an absolute standard
against which participants evaluated themselves and their partners.
Whether respondents tried to fulfil, question or resist this moral imposition, such a standard was ever present in the stories. Both male identity
and desire for women were seen as arising in the male body, so that heterosexual genital activity was seen both as a condition of biology and a sign
of coherence for the subject of male sex/gender/desire.
Mens autonomy from gendered sexuality: male performance and

masculinity
The notions of personal autonomy that are central to sexual rights
(Petchesky, 2000; Weeks, 1995) do not speak of a self-contained individual free from subjectivity or from relationships (Sampson, 1993).
Rather, they consider subjectivity as a complex interaction of multiple
voices in particular power relationships, so that reflexivity concerning
ethical notions regarding sexual desire and pleasure always implies an
internal and external debate between such discourses. Autonomy is thus
neither a premise nor a product, but a permanent and dialogical practice.
In the case of this study, men described experiences in which they were
more or less independent from the ethical injunctions of gendered sexualities, especially those of male sexuality. Although it is popularly believed
that men are freer to express their sexuality than women, the construction
of sexual activity as an indicator of masculinity posed important dilemmas
for these men, who faced the paradox of having to desire what was
required of them to desire by virtue of their gender. In this context, the
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recognition and authorization of an individuals own desire became quite

difficult. Several of the men spoke of how a construction of masculinity,
acted out by their peers, or even by their own expectations of themselves,
had pushed them into situations that were in fact far removed from their
wishes. Toms (32, single, carpenter), for example, told a story about his
first experience of vaginal intercourse:
Toms
When I was new in the army, the men once said to me,
Some women are coming, lets give them the pyre.
Whats the pyre, I asked. Its all of us against the
woman. Oh fuck! I thought, why would I have to stick
my thing there where everybody is sticking it? I felt sick.
Then one of them stuck it in, and then another and
another. And I thought these guys are crazy or . . . should
it be this way? Later they woke me up and said, Heres a
woman for you to fuck, for you to screw. So I got up and
I started to feel like it, so I encouraged myself to do it. But
I was on top of her just playing stupid because I didnt do
anything to her. I felt sick that so many men had . . . put
their semen there in that thing.
Male interviewer
What thing?
Toms
In the girls vagina . . . and I didnt do anything. The

others couldnt tell but the girl did. So I got up, and I had
to shower, again and again. Because I couldnt stand how
disgusted I was of how many motherfuckers had done
that, and the fact that I had joined in!
In the context of the display of male sexuality as an ethical code, mens

refusal to have sex often functioned as a failure to accomplish such an aspiration. Jos (23, carpenter, single) doubted if hanging on to his virginity
was an authentic wish to wait for an ideal partner, or a failure to conform
to dominant gender expectations:
Jos
Where I worked, there were some girls, well, they are

women now actually. And one of them wanted to be with
me, but I didnt want to. I didnt like her. And the guys
there would say, Ill give you some advice: go and fuck
her. Who cares? Youll dump her anyway. But I never did,
although I told the guys I had.
Female interviewer What did you think about the men who gave you such
advice?
Jos
Well, I thought they were just normal people. What was I

to think? I thought they were tough. But maybe I had a
different lifestyle. They were very different to me, they
were very forward [aventados]. And if they saw a girl, they
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would talk to her and tell her that she was pretty, and that
they wanted her, and so on. But there I was, standing there
with my mouth wide open, like an idiot.
In this excerpt, Jos shows how older men taught him to see women as
enemies to be defeated with penetration as the weapon. But Jos refused
such a proposition either because he disagreed with it I had a different
lifestyle or because he felt that he might fail to live up to expectations.
In any case, later in the interview he revealed his commitment to what he
considered to be a higher ethical code: namely, to have sex as part of a
permanent romantic relationship with a woman.
Another aspiration linked to the display of dominant male sexuality is
that of having early and multiple female sexual partners (Szasz, 1998).
However, when Alberto (22, fisherman, married, one child) had
accomplished exactly that, he asked himself if it had been worth the
damage he had caused to other people, mainly women:
I had girlfriends. I had lots of love affairs when I was a student in Morelia. But
now I feel confused . . . I still dont understand why I behaved the way I did
with girls. For instance, I would start going out with a girl, and after a while I
started to go out with two, three or even four. Wow! I used to think, Am I so
handsome? [laughs]. Seriously, I used to ask myself why I did it. Why did I
play with other peoples feelings? But at the same time, I felt good. Because I
felt that I was unique in being able to do that.
Here, Albertos interest in multiple sexual relationships becomes the

substance for ethical work, in the sense that he considered monogamy to
be the normal practice, in line with Catholic notions of fidelity, while at
the same time he was proud of his success with different women. In the
context of romantic love as the necessary framing for womens sexuality,
the satisfying experience of power was questioned ethically by Albertos
concern for their feelings. Regardless of how moralistic such a contradiction may seem, Alberto expressed anxiety about his power to harm
women, which was itself a self-reflective process on gender inequality as
embodied in his own erotic practices.
Women as subjects of desire and pleasure: sex as harm and marriage

as reparation
In mens accounts, women were represented as desiring subjects only
before or outside of marriage and pregnancy, and then most usually in the
context of a non-regular sexual relationship. Such a perception was
evident in the way in which men talked about their relationships with
those whom they saw as sexually active women. Arnaldo (33, single, high
school teacher) actually complained about what he considered to be a
sexual role-reversal:
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When I was 18, I had an experience, the first experience . . . [it was] very
complicated. My drama teacher was older . . . she had a son my age who was
my friend. So we had a party at his place and everybody was drunk. I dont
know why the hell I approached her, but she started to touch me, we went to
the living room and she undressed me and she undressed herself, but I didnt
have an erection. And she started to touch me in front of everybody, she was
the active partner and I felt . . . I dont know, objectified, like a woman. So I
didnt like that experience at all. I didnt have an erection and she felt rejected,
so she left and nothing happened.
Here, Arnaldo felt uncomfortable with what he understands to be a

transgression of the ethical code of gendered sexuality, in the sense that
for a man to be passive in a heterosexual relationship is to assume a
feminine position.
In contrast, Mario described having had a rather different kind of
sexual experience:
Mario
When they showed us the condoms at school and some

videos, I said to a girl, Do you think they work?, and she
said to me, OK, lets try them! Just say when!, I replied.
These girls never backed out on me and I didnt either
Ok, lets go up the hill and try them out [laugh], so that
we can learn.
Male interviewer
Had the two of you had sex before?
Mario
Not me, who knows about her! Not me. And I think the
condoms did work because after that and with other girlfriends . . . none of them got pregnant.
Marios ethical stance here implies a more egalitarian view of sex, as a

game between consenting partners, regardless of their gender. Among
other social processes, modern discourses of sex, gender equality and
sexual health at school may have encouraged Mario not only to acknowledge his female friends as active sexual subjects, but also to negotiate
prevention with them.9
For the most part, images of desiring and sexually active women
disappeared once marriage and domestic work came to dominate womens
lives. Mario again provided an example of this:
I sometimes bump into Mireya. And I ask her what happened to you? And she
goes, Well, you know . . . and she looks at her child. She looks quite worn
out, she doesnt look like she used to. She used to be pretty, pretty, nice body.
Like any other girl, right? But now, shes skinny, she looks ugly, very ugly. She
has a son now.
However, initiating a sexual relationship outside marriage could be

plagued by fear, because single, eligible women were invested with the
power of rejection. Jos spoke of his difficulties in approaching girls:
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When youre drunk, you are braver. I am very shy about showing my feelings,
but when Im drunk I can say to girls whatever I want. When I am sober and
I ask somebody to be my girlfriend, it is very hard. I start to think, What will
she say, will she laugh at me? Will she want to? Im very pessimistic and I
imagine all sorts of things, Maybe she [really] wants my friend, or whatever.
So my fear grows. But when I am drunk, I can forget all that.
For Seidler (1991), the need for excitement in the chase is rooted in
mens learning to put themselves down so that only the conquest of difficult women will prove them valuable. In any case, for men in this study,
women were seen as either very powerful before marriage or completely
powerless once married. Only rarely were they the equal subjects of desire
and pleasure. Gender differences were thus premised upon inequality in
that it was the woman who had to be conquistada (conquered), rather
than understood and respected as a peer. Following such logic, for example,
Jos complained about how easy it was to get a girlfriend:
We were talking, and I held her and she didnt move away. And then we started
kissing. She asked me why we were doing that if we werent together, so I said,
If you want to, we can be together, and so we were. But I didnt like her
because it was easy for me to conquer (win) her. Things were too easy. I wanted
to have a girlfriend that I liked very much but who would have been hard to
get. A female friend once said to me, You are very shy and you dont talk to
women and you want a hard-to-get girl! Well, youre never going to make it.
And she made me think about it. Now I think back on it, those were wonderful days and that, if I had the chance again, I would enjoy them even more.
And now its over.
It was precisely when women wanted sex but refused marriage and entry
into the subsequent gender division of labour, that participants recognized more fully their sexual subjectivity and autonomy, and also desired
them most. Often in their stories men talked of romantic love, hurt and
longing in their relationships with sexually active women who were not
interested in marriage. When women expressed their sexual feelings
openly, in contexts separate from marriage and/or affection, men were
deeply puzzled. They seemed more at ease when womens desire for sex
served only as a prelude to marriage. Alberto recalled:
I had sex twice with that girl. She knew that I was married and that I had a child.
She knew everything, but I was drunk, right? And she was drunk too. And later
we talked and she said, I didnt give myself to you because we were drunk. Id
never say that you abused me sexually. I gave myself to you because I feel something for you. I liked it and Id like to do it again . . . Now I became confused
. . . why did she ask me that? She asked me (again), Would you like to do it
again with me? and I said I dont know, its the woman who decides, not me,
just like the saying goes, the man goes as far as the woman wants. And she said,
Im attracted to you and Id like to do it again with you. But I felt bad because
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I was married, and I said, I feel bad because maybe you expect me to go on
with you. And she said, I dont expect anything from you, I just want to be
with you because I like you, Im attracted to you. But you may want me to be
your husband (I said). But I dont want a husband! she replied.
This exchange shows how difficult it was for Alberto to acknowledge his
partners sexual experience and her legitimate desire for sex outside of
marriage, so much so that he felt an obligation to apologize for not
marrying her.
Often, vaginal intercourse prior to marriage was described as harmful
to a womans social reputation and to the chance of a good marriage.10
In such a context, mens ethical practices of self were often to be generous
enough not to have vaginal sex with a girl. Thus, it was marriage not
desire and pleasure and mens recognition of its inherent gender
inequality, that marked the key features of their sexual ethics. Toms, for
example, told the following story about his good behaviour towards a
young woman who had wanted to lose her virginity to him.
Toms
Back when I was in the army, a friend introduced me to a

girl and said: Look, this girl is a primeriza (beginner)
Male interviewer
What?
Toms
Thats what we used to call a virgin. Shes a virgin. Sing

a song to her and youll see . . . And I said yes, but I had
a guilty conscience so I said No to her. But the girl
started to get ideas that I was her boyfriend and that I
would marry her. And I had a guilty conscience. I was
about 16 or 17, and she was like 15. And she was excited.
Male interviewer
Why did you have a guilty conscience?
Toms
Because I wasnt . . . I wasnt going to marry her, I was

never going to marry her. And I was her boyfriend for a
while, only because she let me . . . fondle her. And I could
have had whatever I wanted with her, what we all want
to make love. Once my friends said, Come on, we will put
you in a room alone with her so that you can do it with
her. But she and I only talked, thats all. And when I said
No, she said I was scared. Later I told her friend, I dont
love her, I wont marry her. You better take her away
because if you dont, I may not be responsible for myself
later. And her friend said that I was a very good man.
For Toms, this girl desired not so much sex but subsequent marriage.
His ethical stance in the context was expressed as a dilemma: while he had
to comply with dominant notions of male sexuality as uncontrollable,
compulsory and harmful to women, he decided instead to protect his
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partner by letting her know through her friend that he would not
marry her. Such a strategy avoided calling into question his own masculinity and enabled him to enjoy a certain satisfaction, through the friends
recognition that he was a good man, precisely because he did not abuse
his privilege.
Sometimes, however, participants contradicted the importance of
womens virginity by wanting to marry non-virgin girls themselves. Toms
himself, who earlier had been so concerned about not damaging a virgins
reputation, later wanted a sexually experienced woman:
I saw her again and she said, I cant be with you. Why not?, I asked her. Im
not a virgin anymore, Im not a seorita anymore, and thats not good for you,
its not going to be OK like this. Why not?, I said. Why does it matter that
you are not a seorita? If youre worried about me, thats not a problem for
me. But youre going to be angry later, she said. I felt sorry for her. What a
mess! There are so many women and I had to choose this one! She had a
boyfriend, and Im begging! Why am I begging?
Toms ended this fragment by posing an ethical question about his sexual
self, because he found an acute contradiction between his desire for a
sexually experienced girl while the norm was the opposite. Sexual desire
can prove, as in this example, quite enigmatic for the subject himself in
that it defies both social institutions and normativity.
When women were not seen as desiring sexual subjects but as dependent on men, fear of marriage as a consequence of sex, was a powerful
reason for avoiding intercourse. Except for Alberto, marriage was seen by
other study participants as an obligation, a loss of freedom, hard work and
too much responsibility. Arnaldo complained:
Im afraid of responsibility, Im afraid of wasting my life and hers, Ive thought
about this a thousand times. Not only with her, but with all the other girls Ive
met. Ive been wanting to get married for about four years, but my fears tell
me that it is not possible to sacrifice somebody else because Im not trustworthy, I change my mind a lot. Im not capable of leading a shared life with
someone. Im scared of someone depending on me, especially if she abandons
all responsibility and thinks that I should decide everything.
In contrast, Alberto did not offer any other reason for marriage than
his need for unpaid domestic labour and his prerogative to gain this
through a wife, leaving pleasure and eroticism for his other relationships.
My mum drank a lot then, she drank a lot of alcohol, so I said to myself, In
my house there is nobody to help my dad, nobody to help my brothers and
sisters. And I started to feel bad. I thought to myself, Maybe Ill get married,
and I said it to my girlfriend: If you want to, thats fine. If you dont, thats
OK, I said. But I wanted to get married, because the truth was that I had a
problem at home [need of domestic work]. And she agreed to marry me.
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Sexualities 10(1)
Later in the same interview, Alberto asked himself why he felt guiltier
having sex with other women before he was married than afterwards, and
made this too a matter for ethical consideration:
I still dont understand why I had sex with that person. I felt guilty because I
was unfaithful to my girlfriend, but why did I do it? I felt more unfaithful then
than now that Im married, and Ive had sex with other women. I feel thats
normal, right? But Im confused. Now that Ive been unfaithful to my wife I
felt as if it were nothing. When I tied the knot I felt nothing.
Could it be that love and desire should have been involved in his
relationship with his bride before marriage? And is it then that love and
desire not marriage form the ethical substance (Foucault, 1988) that
compels Alberto to feel guilty? It is impossible to tell. But what matters
here is not that Alberto is unfaithful, but the fact that marriage and its
associated domestic work render his wife undeserving of the treatment
that she had received before that is, as a subject of desire in her
own right.
It can be seen from the foregoing examples that the possibility of men
and women recognizing each other as equals is daunted precisely by the
exigencies of gender:
The border between (gender) difference and inequality is easily crossed. Sexual
reproduction has translated into gender inequality. Complementarity and mutual
sexual dependency for procreation have been extended to other aspects of life,
producing a specialization of labour and a hierarchy of tasks that has made it
impossible for women and men to establish the fraternal bond that is inherent
to citizens. (Izquierdo, 1998: 149. Authors translation from the Spanish)
Towards an ethics of sexual citizenship

The foregoing examples reveal something of the ethics employed by
young rural Mexican men in negotiating between their sexual and reproductive subjectivities: notions that prefigure in some ways the possibilities
for more egalitarian relationships because they show the difficulties these
men encounter within the dominant gender order, both in relation to the
appropriation of their own desire and reproductive capacity, and in
acknowledging women as subjects of self-determination.
However, this relational approach to equality will never by itself be
sufficient for the fulfilment of rights. Limitations imposed by social,
cultural and political factors, and the need for the state to guarantee
enabling conditions, must be considered as well. Discussion about
such enabling conditions is a collective task that is already well under way
in some other contexts.11 However, it remains incipient in Mexico, where
the strength of heternormativity weakens opportunities for both men and
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women to develop a sense of autonomy and responsibility for securing

their mutual well-being, and that of their communities.
The stringent critique of gender institutions such as marriage, the sexual
division of labour or romantic love is a precondition for the formation of
citizens as subjects of sexual desire and pleasure, cognizant of the need for
participation in the construction of enabling conditions for all members
of society. Central to achieving such a goal are efforts to work with mens
insight into the tensions and contradictions they live with, and which they
reproduce. Be this insight fleeting and sporadic, be it in need of critical
systematization, it offers the raw material out of which to build a better
and more democratic future.
Creating the conditions for more democratic forms of sexual relations is
a difficult task, and one which must involve the participation of both men
and women. In Mexico, open discussion of gender inequality, together
with the social policies to counteract this, came about only through the
struggle of the feminist movement. More recently, some mens groups have
formed political alliances with such groups to facilitate educational
programmes such as those of EPROSCO.12 In so doing, they have demonstrated the inter-connectedness of the struggles in which women and men
collectively are engaged. As Gutmann (2003) has argued:
Notions of separate womens worlds and mens worlds, then, are emphatically
no more than idealized representations of lives as they are lived and experienced
by some and by no means all men and women. If a central aim of the study of
men-as-men in Latin America is to critique gender and sexual inequality, a focus
on men and masculinities will not make us complicit in reinforcing such archetypal polarities. (Gutmann, 2003: 19)
The challenge for the future therefore lies in providing opportunities

for insights such as those described earlier to be systematized, shared and
acted upon. Pre-requisite for success must be continued decoupling of
sexuality from reproduction, both in terms of cultural constructions of
gender and with respect to access to contraceptive information and
services; goals that feminists and their allies have struggled for, for some
decades now.
Acknowledgements
Ana Amuchstegui would like to thank Delia Villalobos and the men from the
Equipo de Promocin de la Salud Comunitaria in Michoacn, for their generosity
and insightful work. She is also grateful to Carole Vance, Ali Miller, Sea Ling
Chen and Penelope Saunders from the Rockefeller Program for the Study of
Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights at Columbia University for
stimulating discussions about sexual rights and masculinities in 2004. Peter
Aggleton would like to thank Susan Kippax and the National Centre in HIV
Social Research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia for
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Sexualities 10(1)
intellectual nourishment and support. Both authors would like to thank Gary
Dowsett for sharing his innovative thoughts on sexuality research and theory,
and Fiona Thirlwell for her help with editing. The research described here was
funded by a leadership grant to Ana Amuchstegui from the John D. and
Catherine MacArthur Foundation. We would like to thank Roberto Garda,
Yuriria Rodrguez and Elizabeth Garca for their skilful interviewing, and the
anonymous reviewers whose comments on earlier versions of this article
strengthened it considerably. The views expressed are those of the authors alone.
Notes
1. Although there is no clear-cut definition of sexual rights, the Platform for
Action from the Fourth World Womens Conference (Beijing, 1995) serves
as a starting point. Paragraph 96 states that The human rights of women
include their right to control over and decide freely and responsibly on
matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health,
free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Equal relationships between
women and men in matters of sexual relations and reproduction, including
full respect for the integrity of the person, require mutual respect, consent
and shared responsibility for sexual behaviour and its consequences
(United Nations, 1995).
2. For a discussion of such obstacles in Mexico see Ortiz Ortega (2004).
3. We place the term heterosexual in quotation marks in order to stress the
instability and situatedness of sexual identities (Weeks, 1998).
4. We use the phrase reproductive rights and sexual rights in an effort to
make a case for the separation of both sets of rights (Miller, 2000), precisely
because of the different meanings that pleasure and procreation hold in
Mexican culture.
5. These commitments were ratified by the Mexican Government at the
Economic Council for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) IX
Regional Conference on Women (Mexico City, June 2004), and in the
Final Declaration of the ECLAC Committee on Population and
Development in Puerto Rico, July 2004.
6. A similar position was recently voiced when, for the first time, a handful of
men held La Marcha Masculina in Mexico City protesting against the
Feminist Dictatorship and (promoting) the new masculine conscience,
which was not opposed to the advance of women but to the feminist
reaction against mens growth and mens rights (La Marcha Masculina,
2005). This event would have been irrelevant were it not for the wide
media coverage it received.
7. In this sense, this project builds upon previous research (Ortiz Ortega et
al., 1998) that assumed that until we know more about the local contexts
and ways of thinking in which women in their everyday lives negotiate
reproductive health and sexual matters, we cannot assume that reproductive
and sexual rights are a goal they seek and therefore one that has universal
applicability (Petchesky, 1998: 1).
8. This particular project was coordinated by Delia Villalobos and was funded
by a Leadership Grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
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9. Although non-married women were sometimes portrayed as desiring

subjects in mens narratives, reference to the ethical work of preventing
negative consequences through the use of condoms or contraception was
only to be found in Marios accounts. This does not mean of course that
other men did not fear unwanted pregnancy or STIs, but often that the
only action they would take to prevent them would be to refuse sex.
10. A similar meaning was expressed in past research, where men and women
spoke of intercourse as being evil (Amuchstegui, 2001).
11. See, for example, debates about the meanings and cases related to sexual
rights as human rights in the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission www.iglhrc.org/site/iglhrc/ (accessed 25 April 2006).
12. Colectivo de Hombres por Relaciones Igualitarias and Salud y Gnero are
among the most active mens groups in Mexico.
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Biographical Notes
Ana Amuchstegui is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Education
and Communication at the Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana Xochimilco,
Mexico City. She works on subjectivity and gender, and sexual and reproductive
rights in Mexico. Address: Department of Education and Communication,
Universidad Autnoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, Mexico DF, Mexico.
[email: amuchastegui@laneta.apc.org]
Peter Aggleton is Professor in Education and Director of the Thomas Coram
Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London. He has
worked extensively on masculinities and sexualities across a range of cultural
contexts. Address: Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education,
University of London, 2728 Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AA, UK.
[email: p.aggleton@ioe.ac.uk]
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Sexualities

I Had a Guilty Conscience Because I Wasn't Going to Marry Her: Ethical

Additional services and information for Sexualities can be found at:

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Abstract In Mexicos predominantly Catholic culture, the

I Had a Guilty Conscience Because I

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relations.2 In society at large, in politics and in personal relationships,

Mexican men and sexual citizenship

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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience

matter of health for example in relation to contraception and STIs/HIV

For instance, the Ministry of Healths recent Programme for Action on

Importantly, and throughout this same document, men are portrayed

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termed the crisis of masculinity. In Mexican cities as in most of Latin

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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience

This notion of ethics is relevant to the present study in that practices of

In the present study, the focus is on an examination of the ethical

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reproductive rights of women in rural communities in the state of

Table 1. The informants

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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience

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he does not question the hierarchy given by marriage, in his affirmation

The narrative accounts

Two dominant codes

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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience

In the narratives they gave, men seemed to adhere to two different

Mens autonomy from gendered sexuality: male performance and

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recognition and authorization of an individuals own desire became quite

In the girls vagina . . . and I didnt do anything. The

In the context of the display of male sexuality as an ethical code, mens

Where I worked, there were some girls, well, they are

Well, I thought they were just normal people. What was I

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Amuchstegui & Aggleton I Had a Guilty Conscience

Here, Albertos interest in multiple sexual relationships becomes the

Women as subjects of desire and pleasure: sex as harm and marriage

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Here, Arnaldo felt uncomfortable with what he understands to be a

When they showed us the condoms at school and some

Had the two of you had sex before?

Marios ethical stance here implies a more egalitarian view of sex, as a

However, initiating a sexual relationship outside marriage could be

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