Motivations of low-income substance using heterosexual Black women in New York City for having multiple sexual partners are explored in this paper. Individual-level motivations for extra relational sex fell into four dominant themes: sexual pleasure, partner infidelity, sex exchange and past main partners. Using a Black feminist framework, we describe how participants displayed considerable autonomy by actively forming and withdrawing from sexual relationships with men. However, women described low rates of condom use with main partners and inconsistent use of condoms with more casual sexual partners. This contradiction becomes an important area for sexual health interventions.
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Recruitment to participate in a 6-month study examining microbicide acceptability was conducted at a school-based health clinic and local colleges in Galveston, Texas and through snowball sampling. Girls reported on their demographic and sexual history at the intake interview. Their mean age was African-American girls were significantly less likely than whites and Hispanics to have had oral sex; no differences were found for anal sex. African-American girls were significantly older than whites and Hispanics when they initiated oral sex. African-American girls had a greater difference between ages of vaginal and oral sex initiation than whites and Hispanics. Oral sex history was associated with a 6-factor increase and anal sex history was associated with a 3-factor increase in the likelihood of an STI history. Future studies should explore these differences in greater depth in order to develop culturally specific STI prevention efforts. The importance of culturally specific interventions to promote positive sexual decision making among adolescents has been well-documented. While white adolescents progressed through a predictable pattern of non-coital sexual behaviors of kissing, above the waist touching, and below the waist touching before engaging in coitus, black adolescents engaged in very little non-coital behaviors before advancing to coitus.
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It was troubling to realize that I had undoubtedly been confronted with the same type of results before but had learned, or been trained, to somehow become inured to it, to take it as a given that any search I might perform using keywords connected to my physical self and identity could return pornographic and otherwise disturbing results. Why was this the bargain into which I had tacitly entered with digital information tools? And who among us did not have to bargain in this way?
At age 21, she was abducted and forced into sexual solicitation. I had no limits on what I should have been doing, however, sexually. I secretly did what I could to mentally deal with this at the time. In overwhelming numbers, the persons most likely to be victimized are vulnerable Black girls and women. Black youths are three times more likely to be victims of reported child abuse or neglect, three times more likely to be victims of robbery and five times more likely to be victims of homicide. With law enforcement more likely to see a Black sex trafficking victim as a prostitute and not as someone needing help, trying to find solutions toward keeping our girls safe may require a radical examination of the core beliefs American society is currently based on. Yes, but she would not have done it had her pimp not first held a gun to her head.
