AIDS, addiction and condom use: Sources of sexual risk for heterosexual women

This paper presents an analysis of interviews with two women, in intravenous drug use and a sex partner of an intravenous drug user. Their discourse reveals how women may assume different relations to traditional ideals of womanhood and heterosexual intimacy as defined by mainstream culture, and how the circumstances underlying their everyday personal experience are often in conflict with ideal gender roles. Analysis demonstrates that decisions regarding the use of condoms are constrained by this tension between the circumstances of addiction and mainstream ideals. Interview segments focus on sources of ambivalence toward condoms and the way in which economics, emotions, and addictions may affect women's willingness and ability to negotiate sexual risk reduction with steady male partners.