Safe sex or safe love: competing discourses?

The way in which sex may be constructed as safe through its relationship with 'love' is the concern of this study. Interviews with 112 heterosexual women and men from discos and bars in Melbourne, Australia, catering to single adults revealed the pervasive construction of sex within the discourses of 'love' and 'romance'. The relationship of these discourses to unsafe practices is discussed and the article presents an analysis of the normative function of the sex-as-love/sex-as-desire opposition in terms of safe sex and HIV/AIDS prevention. We conclude that health messages which emphasize that 'sex is unsafe' may be counterproductive. We illustrate how women and some men construct casual sex as a strategy for obtaining the possibility of 'love'. For these women and men, 'safe sex' as 'unprotected sex' is viewed as a strategy for maximizing the possibility that the casual encounter will result in a longer term relationship. On the other hand, 'unsafe sex' as 'unprotected sex' is viewed as a strategy that is more likely to interrupt the construction of romance in the causal encounter thus risking the possibility of love as the desired outcome.