JANUARY 12, 1996

GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE 11

HEALTH WATCH

Lesbians can be at higher risk for HIV than straight women

by Susan Kane

I'd like to say that I attended the "Lesbians and HIV” workshop at the Creating Change conference in Detroit last November because I wanted to bring back vital and important news to my community. But mostly, I went because Amber Hollibaugh, writer, director of the Lesbian AIDS Project, and in-yourface femme, was presenting. And partially I guessed-correctlythat all the cute, twenty-

something dykes might be there.

My cruising was interrupted, however, by some scary stuff, so listen up: in some communities affected by HIV,

the .8 percent HIV rate for all women in San Francisco.

Although no one suggests that HIV is being widely spread through sex between women, the Centers for Disease Control does have five female HIV cases in which the only known risk factor was sexual contact with an HIV-positive woman. That means there was no drug use, no sex with HIV-positive men. Attempts by lesbians to get the real story

There are HIV positive lesbians in our community. Unsafe behavior does put us at risk for AIDS.

heterosexual women are not at greatest risk for infection: women who sleep with women

are.

Now before you divorce your lover and whip out that vibrator, let me explain. This is not about woman-to-woman transmission. However, a number of studies show that among IV drug users, women who sleep with women are consistently in higher risk categories than women who sleep with men only.

For example, in one group of women coming into a drug abuse program in New York City, women who sleep with women were more likely to have used crack, to have traded sex for drugs, to have hepatitis B and to be HIV positive. In the only blind seroprevalence study done for lesbian and bisexual women in the San Francisco Bay area, nearly two percent of women who identified themselves as lesbians were HIV positive. Hardly a significant number in a city where estimated HIV rates for gay men are 50 to 70 percent. However, this rate was higher than

on just how much our sexual behavior puts us at risk are frustrated by a homophobic and ignorant medical and research community. The CDC's official

definition of a lesbian is "a woman who has not slept with a man since 1978.” (Do you qualify?) Still, HIV-positive lesbians are often disbelieved by their medical practitioners when they insist they don't use IV drugs or sleep with men. In addition, the stigma within the lesbian community around drug use, rape by men, and bisexual identity or behavior prevents us from talking to each other about what's really going on.

Hollibaugh and New York Gay and Lesbian Health Concerns director Marj Plumb suggested a number of explanations for the statistics. Women who sleep with women may simply be women who are taking more dangerous risks in all areas of their lives. Women who sleep with women may be more likely than women who sleep with men only to have multiple sex partners of both genders.

It's also possible that friendship, or drug using, or sexual networks among women who sleep with women may be tighter, so that if one woman in the network contracts

HIV, more women become infected faster. No one knows.

I'll leave you with the questions Hollibaugh and Plumb put out to us in the room: Who is in “our” community? Who is a lesbian? Women who have never slept with men? Women who don't shoot drugs? Are lesbians in prison in "our" community? Lesbian sex workers? Women with HIV? Bisexual women? Who do we care about? Who will we advocate for? Who will we help?

"We don't get AIDS." The working assumption in the lesbian community is that AIDS is a boy problem-not something we need to worry about, not something that really affects us. The myth that women are

safe, that lesbian identity protects us, is dangerous and false. Identity protects no one. There are HIV positive lesbians in our community. Unsafe behavior does put us at risk for AIDS. It's time to open our eyes and realize we are living with this disease.

More information about lesbians and HIV, lesbians and cancer, female-to-female transmission and lesbian health issues can be ordered free from the Office of Gay and Lesbian Health Concerns, 125 Worth St., Suite 601, Box 67, NYC NY 10013, 212-7884310, fax 212-788-5243; and from the Lesbian AIDS Project, 129 W. 20th St., 2nd Floor, NYC NY 10011, 212-337-3532.

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