Choosing Unsafe Sex

Book excerpt: Choosing Unsafe Sex focuses on the ways in which condom refusal and beliefs regarding HIV testing reflect women's hopes for their relationships and their desires to preserve status and self-esteem. It also discusses the related issue of seropositivity concealment or non-disclosure. Many of the inner-city women who participated in Dr. Sobo's research were seriously involved with one man, and they had heavy emotional and social investments in believing or maintaining that their partners were faithful to them. Uninvolved women had similarly heavy investments in their abilities to identify or choose potential partners who were HIV-negative. In either case, women sought to present and to view themselves as wise and their men as monogamous. Women did not see themselves as being at risk for HIV infection, and so they saw no need for condoms. But they did recommend that other women use them; they saw other women as quite likely to be involved with sexually unfaithful men. Choosing Unsafe Sex includes recommendations for educational strategies that are sensitive to cultural expectations for relationships. Dr. Sobo's findings have significance not only for inner-city HIV/AIDS educators but for all who seek a deeper understanding of mainstream assumptions about heterosexual relationships.