Paper short abstract:

This article will discuss street healers' narratives to understand the tale of 'moral' masculine sexuality in the Bangladeshi context.

Paper long abstract:

Street healing provides an opportunity to consider the moral boundaries of sexuality in Bangladesh. Street healing practice focuses on creating a 'crisis' of male sexual potency. Street healers intertwine a narrative of morality and health to create a problem which they can then resolve for their male clients. Their narratives publicly tell of a crisis of masculinity and sexual health. This paper, based on an ongoing ethnography of street healing in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is focused on understanding the construction of masculine sexuality and sexual health-seeking behavior in Bangladesh. In their narratives, street healers describe heterosexual masculinity as a moral practice and homosexual practices as immoral. They also describe masturbation, sex with a sex worker and sex during menstruation as immoral. In their narratives, they intertwine their knowledge of traditional medicine, Western medicine, as well as established Bangladeshi moral codes concerning sexuality. In this space there are limits as well as possibilities for sexual health promotion which this research attempts to describe.