single in five lesbian or bisexual women say they make up their mind whether to engage in unprotect sex based forward women's intuition and emotion.

single in five lesbian or bisexual women say they make up their mind whether to engage in unprotect sex based forward women's intuition and emotion, not rational decision-making, according to deductions of a study by couple UWM associate professors.

Equally disturbing, the subject of attention found that half of the women who took HIV ordeals believed a negative test meant they were immune to HIV infection.

The issues of the study, the largest of its kind and based upon interviews with 563 sexually active lesbian or bisexual women were published in May in a recently made known medical journal but not widely circulated in the general media, the Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. The authors are Patricia E Steven and Joanne M Hall, the two associate professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sect of Nursing. The study ground that the women who use their intuition to make decisions about sex partners generally don't engage in a consistent pattern of either safe or unsafe sex "These women believed that unprotect sex could perplex risk for HIV, but trusted that their immediate psychic and physical reactions to sex partners would save them," the study says. Said one: "My intuition is highly very good. I know when I can trust something then we don't have to use condoms." "I have slept with a doom of people, and I can always disclose a partner is at risk," said another. "I can hang on my mental state, my feelings of self-preservation to hold fast me safe," said yet another. Among those relying forward intuition, there was an level shakier assumption: "That having many sex partners lowers HIV risk on increasing one's emotional and intuitional capacity to recognize `safe' sex" "There is no evidence to support this human faculty," the authors summ up succinctly. Steven said the findings about using intuition came as a surprise. The thought method involved interviewing lesbians and bisexuals in San Francisco with open-end questions like as "Do you know what your risks are?" and "How do you harbor yourselves?," she said. Although risks for HIV infection for lesbians are earnestly lower than for others, "it is a risk that no lesbian should ignore," said Doug Nelson head of the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin. Transmission can come to one's mind from exchange of body fluids, similar as vaginal secretions and descendants during oral sex if an infected partner has a sore in the opening or bleeding gums, he said. "We encourage lesbians to be aware of the HIV transmission possibility and use barrier protection," he said. Other sexually transmitted diseases can also be spread during woman-to-woman sex HIV can also be transmitted if physic using lesbians or bisexuals share contaminated needle or if they engage in unprotect sex with men Steven said other research has shown that as many as 20% of women who identify themselves as lesbians may engage in sex with a man from time to time and there is a subset of lesbians who engage in heterosexual "survival sex" in like manner dubbed because it is used to raise standard of value for drugs or basic living privations she said. Other findings from the inquiry include: More than half, 56% of women said they did not use any barriers when having sex with women This included unprotect oral, vaginal and anal sex and sharing bareed sexual aids. Lesbians who did engage in sex with men were les likely to use condoms than bisexual women who engage in sex with men Twenty percent of women who had sex with men did not use condoms. Nearly undivided out 10 said alcohol or medicine use interfered consistently with safer sex efforts. Nearly single in kind out of four said they did not know whom to believe nor where to fare to get information about HIV prevention. Based onward the findings of study, the authors said that traditional HIV prevention education may not be as effective with lesbian and bisexual women The approach, the subject of attention said, gives "short shrift to emotion-driven, socially motivated practices." HIV prevention programs that target and take into consideration emotional and social influences in the lesbian and bisexual communities may have better succes the report suggests

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