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Chapter 7 The Psychosocial Benefits of UnsafeSex This chapter uses study findings to show that unsafe sex is part of a psychosocial strategy for maintaining one's status and sense of self—a strategy that involves telling patterned narratives (as regarding a partner 's faithfulness) and acting out scripts (as by engaging in unsafe sex) that optimisticallyconfirm the quality of one's choice of a partner and so of one's relationship with him. Economic motives do, in some cases,play a role in encouraging some women's unsafe sex (e.g., Campbell 1990; Ward 1993a; Worth 1989) but, as Chapter 6 showed, purely materialist or economic approaches to urban minority women's risk-taking are inadequate (cf.Kline et al. 1992). Such approaches ascribe the sex-related profit seeking motivations of many inner-city prostitutes or sex workers to all inner-city minority women, despite the fact that sexworkers comprise onlya small portion of inner-city female populations. Moreover, they disregard women's own testimony about their self-sufficiency, the high rate of unemployment among inner-city men of color, and the fact that inner-city men can and do seek and receive money from girlfriends (Weinberg and Williams 1988; Liebow 1967). In addition to these flaws, materialist models of inner-city heterosexual coupling may be further diminished by the relative sizes of condom using and non-using women's paychecks (these were bigger, on average, for non-users in this study), and the relative amounts of money that users and non-users receive from men (these were lower, on average, for non-users). Findings from this research suggest that emotional and sociocultural factors are more important determinants of most Black inner-citywomen's condom use decisions than financial considerations are. The connotations of condoms, which implicate users as philanderers and carriers of disease, need not be confronted if condoms are not used. The Psychosocial Benefits of Unsafe Sex 107 This chapter shows how, through barrierless sexual contact, women assure themselves that their relationships are committed, close, and intact, for onlywomen with faithful partners have the freedom to have condomless sex. Unsafe sex provides women —particularly those dependent on relations with men for status and self-esteem—with a way to feel good about their lives (cf.Worth 1989). The emotional and social dependence of women on men is promoted through heterosexual relationship ideals and the status and self-esteem considerations linked to these ideals. It seems to be associated also with the shape of women's immediate social networks and the style of their conjugal unions. Womenwithjealous partners appear to be more dependent on their men for emotional and social resources, as their social circles are kept small by and for the men. Such women seem to focus more on their conjugal relationships than do women who have larger social networks1 and less jealous partners; therefore they may tend to engage in more wishful thinking about honest monogamy. This, in turn, may facilitate and depend on high levels of AIDS-risk denial and the practice of unsafe sex. Before discussing the study women and the ideals affecting them, I must mention some suggestive findings about the women's perceptions of men's condom-use patterns. Only about one in five of the eighteen first-phase interviewees believed that the majority of men would agree to use a condom if asked to do so.2 Just over three in five were sure that most men would refuse, by casting the woman as the HIV carrier ("Why? Do you have AIDS?"), by trying to talk her into believing that he could not be infected, by lying that, as one focus-group participant said, "I have some in my pocket" and then later claiming to have been mistaken , or byjust saying "No." (Note that these attitudes and actions were attributed to men in general and not to any woman's particular male partner.) Unsafe sexmight provide some men awayto dominatewomen who are bold enough to ask for condom use (cf.Anderson 1990, 118-20; Worth 1990). Refusing to use condoms and so claimingdominance overwomen (and, for believers in a genocide plan, over whites)appears important for Black men, as racism, poverty, and poor education means that few other avenues to masculine self-esteem are open. W.Penn Handwerker (1993) notes that, among Blackmen in Barbados, non-use of condoms is related to perceived disempowerment and the desire to inflict abuse on women. More research into this is clearly needed; we know...

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