Today approximately one in five adults cheat on their significant other and almost 41 percent of marriages end in divorce. With the help of websites like ashleymadison.com, affairs have become as easy as the click of a mouse.
SMU students filled chairs and sat on the floor to listen to “Inevitability of Infidelity: Love, Marriage and HIV,” a phrase no one wants to hear from his or her significant other, by Dr. Jennifer Hirsch Wednesday.
Hirsch spoke on issues dealing with fidelity and women’s growing risk for HIV, specifically in Mexico. She based her theories on recent participant observation and marital case studies in Degollado, Jalisco. Thus, she believes these problems stem from a combination of the culture and social rules on sexual reputation and gender.
“It’s not who you screw, but what you’re neighbors think about the gender appropriateness of your sexual behaviors that defines who you are as a public sexually person,” Hirsch said about the importance of reputation in Mexico.
She observed that it was unacceptable for a man to meet his mistress in any populated place. However, it’s acceptable for a man to meet a woman at the bar.
It is this openness paired with migration that is believed to have lead HIV to increase in rural Mexico from 3.7 percent to 6 percent in 1997.
Socially, women’s reputations affect not only them, but also the ability of their children to marry. Dr. Hirsch established the fact that this gender inequality is not easily defined.
Hirsch added that while men having affairs propose a risk, the root of the problem is that the marital sex is a risk practice.
While extramarital sex is frowned upon, it has become the norm in many cultures. It is the desire for companionship with one’s spouse that keeps discretion alive and affairs under raps, she said. When fidelity prevails men define their masculinity in being a good husband and father.
Junior Chris Castaneda said, “As a Mexican–American, I’ve seen the types of people she talked about. I can see the negative affect it can have on the health of the people in relationships there.”
In her closing statement, Hirsch said, “I’m not pro-extramarital sex. I’m just pro-recognizing reality.”
