STD Prevention: Behavior Change

Safer Sex - Problems of Safer Sex Promotion

Cultural Problems - Subcultural
In addition to ethnic minorities, many majority cultures also contain subcultures of their own. These may be regional, age-specific, professional or organizational. For example: Life styles may differ between city and countryside, between certain professions, civilians and the military, the young and the old, the well-educated and the poorly educated, etc. Many modern societies have also developed very specific sexual subcultures. These may have their own organizations, meeting places, jargons, and journals. Examples are gay men and lesbians, transvestites, sadomasochists, certain fetishists, “swingers”, and sex workers. In addition, there is often also a more diffuse and less organized, but still distinct subculture of drug users.

AIDS prevention in multi-faceted societies can work only if, in addition to the general population, both the non-sexual and the sexual subcultures are targeted as well. This requires their full cooperation, indeed, their active involvement at every stage of the campaign.

Many Western industrialized countries have learned this lesson and thus have produced a great variety of strategies and materials aimed specifically at their various subcultures. Countries that are just beginning to face these issues may very well profit from the experience.

Guidelines for specific subcultures
From left to right: Two AIDS prevention brochures for intravenous drug users (USA), one brochure for female sex workers (Netherlands), and four pocket-size booklets for male sex workers in Germany. Many of the latter are arriving from the counties of Eastern Europe, and most of them are uninformed about AIDS and its prevention. The German health authorities therefore distribute these booklets in several languages. Shown here are the Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian versions. (Click on pictures.)