It’s the ‘90s and Casual Thrills Can Kill. Experts Warn : Mere Talk Won’t Do. They Suggest a Whole New Attitude for . . . : Safe Sex
Sex in the late 20th Century, often known among singles as “HIV roulette,” is about to take a new turn.
Prepare for “negotiating safer sex,” “condom management strategies,” and even dialogue coaching to generate voluntary safe sex “compliance.”
Indeed, if the social scientists who recently gathered for a conference here are right, sexually active singles who want to be alive during the next millennium had better learn how to bring bargaining-table tactics to the bedroom.
And those with concerns beyond AIDS--such as how to create effective birth control agreements or protect against other sexually transmitted diseases--may also profit from the tactics discussed at the Bay Club Hotel.
But first they can forget about putting on their three-piece suits, attaching their beepers or exchanging fax numbers. These sex negotiations have to proceed gently. Playfully. Even humorously, if possible.
In fact, the researchers, from universities throughout the country, were so unanimous on the need for lighthearted deal-making that they all agreed that they had given their conference a misleading title: “Negotiating Safer Sex: Social Science Theory and Research.”
They quickly found the term negotiating counterproductive: far too serious, strategic, hard-edged and suggestive of lawyers and the adversarial process. In short, they judged the idea of negotiating safe sex to be unromantic and unsexy.
Thus, they concurred at this two-day conference, funded by the University of California’s AIDS Research Program, that safe sex negotiation is precisely the sort of thing that would deter people from safe sex. Especially considering that research by conference organizer Lynn Miller of USC shows that safe sex is frequently discussed after a decision has been made to have sex. As a result, Miller said, would-be safe sex partners are often discussing their options in “the heat of the moment.”
“The notion of negotiation is associated with mental activity. We need to study the improvisational quality of sex if we want to help people to practice safer sex,” urged Mara Adelman, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s communication studies department.
Adelman also pointed out that the term safe sex is an oxymoron, simultaneously implying caution and abandonment, planning and spontaneity, rationalism and eroticism. Or as Miller put it, “The AIDS crisis pits two basic human goals and needs against one another: avoiding death and seeking love.”
The 10 researchers--chiefly communication and psychology professors--also agreed that former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop may have unwittingly provided harmful advice when he said that knowing one’s partner was good ammunition against becoming infected with the AIDS virus.
(Koop’s 1988 report on AIDS prevention, which was mailed to the public, advocated condom use and warned readers to “become careful about the person you become sexually active with. . . . Had this person had any sexually transmitted diseases? How many people have they been to bed with? Have they experimented with drugs?. . . . If you know someone well enough to have sex, then you should be able to talk about AIDS. If someone is unwilling to talk, you shouldn’t have sex.”
“I would argue that the advice to know your partner is dangerous, particularly to women,” said Rebecca J. Welch Cline, an associate professor in the department of communication studies at the University of Florida. “You can’t know enough. You’re assuming your partner is being honest and knows everything he or she needs to know--not only about their own history but also the histories of their partners and their partners’ partners.”
Describing the findings in a 1988-89 study she conducted with 588 randomly selected students at the University of Florida, Cline told the group that “many college students, particularly women, appear to be talking about AIDS with their partners as a substitute for, rather than as a precursor to, condom use.”
Cline also found very few students to be practicing both parts of the standard AIDS-prevention advice targeted to college students (know your partner and use a condom). Though she discovered that about 85% of her subjects were sexually active, only about 20% reported always using condoms. About the same percentage said they talked about safe sex. And only 5% of the students reported implementing both pieces of advice.
Cline concluded that many college students are probably taking a “crystal ball” approach to preventing AIDS, assuming that they can determine the riskiness of a potential partner through intuition or general conversation. She found one finding particularly troubling: students who reported talking about AIDS but never using condoms also reported they had greater-than-average numbers of sex partners during the previous five years.
“Women are attracted to guys who talk because they’ve been socialized to want to be with people who will self-disclose with them,” Cline said. “We found that men who talk with their partners about AIDS, but only sometimes or never use condoms, have 9.4 partners on the average in their sexual history over the previous five years, compared to 7.3 partners for the full sample of heterosexual men.
“Then you have the surgeon general advising people to seek partners who will talk with them about these intimate details. The advice may function to lure women into ‘dangerous liaisons.’ ”
More unsettling news came from two researchers at a major Northeast university, who asked not to be identified because their research is still in progress. They found that the college students participating in their study rarely questioned the veracity of information provided by partners. They also discovered that many students trusted their own, self-determined guidelines about which partners would be HIV-risks or risk-free. Some said, for example:
* “Sexual experience can be determined just by observing how they act.”
* “If he was wild, I would back off.”
* “I can judge by the amount of resistance the person has to having sex.”
“We even had people say that they would consider someone who was wearing leather to be high-risk. You figure that out,” said one of the researchers. “If you know college students, and I do, you know their internal logic may not be governing their bodies. We think these strategies are incredibly fallible.”
What prompts reliance on such “logic” and keeps people from simply using a condom?
There was general agreement among conference participants that the real problems with safe sex are rarely technical. The information on what to do and how to do it has been widely disseminated. And, for most people, access to condoms is no longer a stumbling block.
Rather, interpersonal issues were seen by conference participants as the more serious, possibly more genuine difficulty. Condom consciousness is high, they have found. But their studies show that self-consciousness is too.
“The most serious obstacles (to safe sex) seem to involve interpersonal negotiations such as talking about safe sex, buying and presenting condoms and negotiating safer sex in the heat of the moment,” said Lynn Miller, an assistant professor at USC with a dual appointment in the department of communication arts and sciences and the psychology department.
In her study of 25 female and 25 male introductory psychology students at USC, Miller found that psychological makeup can predict the types of obstacles people will encounter with regard to safe sex.
“People whose goal is to avoid conflict encounter the greatest number of obstacles in negotiating safe sex,” she told fellow researchers.
Those whose goals Miller termed “narcissistic” (making a good impression, avoiding pain, desiring physical intimacy and desiring physical fitness) also had problems. They were most likely to consider condoms use “unromantic” and interfering with “the heat of the moment.” And those whose goals were acceptance and emotional closeness (avoiding rejection, being well liked and popular) typically had problems with buying or presenting a condom, being pressured not to use a condom and fearing loss of the partner after insisting on condom use.
What does all this mean for those who might like to practice safe sex?
“It comes down to what does it mean to use a condom, what do you say about yourself by not using a condom,” said Daphne Bugental, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara.
“The best advice would be to use a condom or abstain. I’m afraid at this point there are no safer alternatives,” offered Miller.
Depicting an improved, future scenario, UCLA psychology professor Barry Collins added, “Wearing a condom might mean the same thing as brushing your teeth, putting on a seat belt, eating good food. We need condoms to be a part of everyday life. We’ve got to find some way to assimilate condom use into the current value system.”
The University of Florida’s Cline proposed a means towards that end. “I think what needs to happen with condoms is similar to what happened with smoking,” she said, referring to the personal changes Americans made after social institutions began implementing anti-smoking policies such as banning cigarette advertising from TV and prohibiting smoking on airplanes.
What about critics who have argued that pro-condom messages aimed at altering public attitudes and behaviors would be tantamount to promoting more sexual activity?
Cline shared with the group her favorite response: “You can’t sell what’s already been bought.”
Or, until recently, research it.
Several conference participants remarked that the life-and-death implications of AIDS have been largely responsible for the increased academic study of once-taboo sexual issues.
“AIDS has opened up what we can reasonably study without invading people’s lives,” explained UCLA’s Collins, whose pilot research has concluded that people who announce that they are “concerned with AIDS” may unwittingly communicate negative messages about themselves that they are self-concerned, sexually unattractive, boring and possibly infected with the AIDS virus.
Until the AIDS crisis, the researchers acknowledged, there was little funding for sex-related studies. They estimated that there are now as many as 50 social scientists such as themselves who are conducting safe sex research throughout the world.
“Before, we could never be funded to study pleasure,” said Northwestern’s Adelman, who recalled wanting to research the language of sex while in graduate school but was advised against it because it might jeopardize her academic career.
“We’re only funded to study pleasure now that people are dying of it. Pre-AIDS, we couldn’t study sex talk or we’d be labeled voyeurs. Now we’re thought of as Mother Teresas.”
Top 10 Obstacles to Safe Sex
With the help of students at USC, researchers Lynn Miller and B. Ann Bettencourt identified 101 obstacles to safe sex.
The student responses were written as personal statements, for instance: “If I carry condoms, it may imply that I am sexually promiscuous.” The 101 obstacles were then categorized and ranked according to frequency of occurrence.
The leading categories of obstacles, with examples of personal statements are:
* The heat of the moment. (“I am not thinking about the possible dangers of unprotected sex.”)
* Talking about safe sex. (“I find it difficult to bring up the subject of AIDS.”)
* The act of presenting or buying a condom. (“I would feel embarrassed when the condom was put on.”)
* The condom is unromantic. (“I feel that using a condom is not sexy.”)
* Pressure not to use a condom. (“I feel pressured to please my partner by not using a condom.”)
* Anticipating a partner’s problem. (“The condom might be irritating to my partner.”)
* Difficulty with the condom. (“I find it difficult to use a condom”)
* Rejection from a partner. (“I feel that my partner will lose interest in me because of the implication that he or she had a disreputable past.”)
* Loss of partner. (“I risk losing the relationship if I insist on using a condom.”)
* Availability of a condom. (“We do not have immediate access to a place that has condoms.”)
Other significant obstacles involving special conditions included alcohol use and the sexual encounter being the first sexual experience.