ABSTRACT
Plenty of evidence demonstrates that lesbians are not immune to HIV. When the Lesbian AIDS project began in 1992 in New York City, “It started with a caseload of 30 women and by the end of two years had jumped to 400 HIV positive lesbians. Currently the Lesbian AIDS project serves more than 1,000 HIV positive lesbians” (Mbondgulo, 2009). In fact, from the early years of the pandemic, groups like the ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group (1990) called for lesbians to engage in safer sex practices to protect themselves from HIV and AIDS; their mantra was “It’s not who you are that puts you at risk, it’s what you do” (p. 114). More than two decades have passed since then and yet messages about the importance of using safer sex practices still are not reaching lesbians, many of whom consider themselves at very low or no risk of contracting HIV due in large measure to authoritative messages that drastically minimize the risks. This essay looks at the construction of safer sex narratives and the continuing assumption that lesbians do not need to take measures to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS unless they use injection drugs or have sex with men. Specifi cally, it looks at the ways in which even the most well-intentioned safer sex messages are disturbed by the argument strategies that have been used to reach what are considered high risk populations, but have the regretful side effect of defl ecting the awareness of risk for lesbians.
