ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how development representations of the dangers of sexuality have been combined with stereotypical representations of gender with very problematic results. It examines the realities of the imbrications of pleasure and danger in peoples' lives, looking at how gender combines with other power dynamics to play out in a variety of sexual cultures. The development industry has emphasized the dangers of sex and sexuality. This negative approach to sex has been filtered through a view of gender which stereotypes men as predators, women as victims, and fails to recognize the existence of transgender people. The flipside of “women as victims of bad sex” discourse is the “men as sexual predator” one. Transgendered people are likely to face particular sexuality-related issues. While development focuses on risks, in many contexts a parallel current runs through popular and commercial culture, focusing only on pleasures, with glamorous sexual images in advertising, media obsession with love and romance, and pornography widely available.
