Inner-city women and AIDS: the psycho-social benefits of unsafe sex.

The paper describes and analyzes findings from a larger study of the links between low levels of condom use and impoverished, urban, African-American women's experiences and understandings of heterosexual relationships. The research identifies and explores psycho-social barriers to safer-sex. This article examines, in detail, HIV/AIDS risk denial and women's strategic use of unsafe (condomless) sex and "monogamy narratives" to build and to maintain this denial. The tendency to view urban African-American women's conjugal affiliations as instrumental is questioned.