ABSTRACT
For more than a decade now, the unchecked spread of HIV/AIDS around the world has made our profound ignorance concerning human sexuality painfully evident. The long-standing neglect of research on sexual behaviour, and, consequently, an almost complete lack of understanding concerning the complexity and diversity of sexual expression, has made it almost impossible to respond to AIDS by drawing on a pre-existing data base or body of knowledge. The absence of a more fully developed tradition of theory and method for conducting sex research has restricted the development of new studies, offering AIDS researchers little founda tion for the assessment of sexual practices relevant to the spread of HIV, and has limited their ability to contribute significantly to the design of more effective strategies for AIDS prevention (see, for example, the discussions in Abramson 1988,1990,1992; Abramson and Herdt 1990; Chouinard and Albert 1990; Gagnon 1988; Herdt and Lindenbaum 1992; Parker 1992; Parker and Carballo 1990; Parker, Herdt, and Carballo 1991; Turner, Miller, and Moses 1989, 1990).
