Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how Swedish public health policies have developed over the years with emphasis on regulations with impact on social minorities, such as gay men. It asks what the anthropologist can do to affect knowledge production where white heterosexual hygiene is often left undisputed.

Paper long abstract:

Although Sweden never experienced an 'actual' AIDS epidemic, the response to HIV has been one of the toughest in Europe. With over 40 people brought to court, and coercive isolation still in use, Sweden is the leading country when it comes to prosecuting people living with HIV. Several motions of the most extreme nature were put forward, such as tattooing HIV-positive people in the axilla or confining them to separate 'camps'. The most inhuman suggestions did not go through. Still, Swedish AIDS politics were characterised by certain political coercion. Gay bathhouses were banned in 1987, resulting in gay men losing their most prominent arena for social gathering. One year later, the Diseases Act was revised to authorize compulsory care of people suspected of violating the health regulations.

Decades later, certain groups and spaces are still being marked as particularly 'risky'. Gay men are still banned from donating blood, unless they agree to abstain from having sex for 12 months. Africa is still treated as the source of disease. Not only because of the situation with HIV, but also because of the recent outburst of Ebola in West Africa. This paper sets out to examine what researchers like Catherine Waldby (1996) noted: why have some groups become the targets of AIDS education, while white heterosexual (men) are exempted? With Swedish AIDS politics and strategies as objects of investigation, it asks what the anthropologist can do to affect knowledge production where white (male) heterosexual hygiene is 'prioritized' and left undisputed.