Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity (Intersections) by Garcia Lorena

Author:Garcia, Lorena
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2012-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

5

Playing Lil’ Games

Partners and Safe-Sex Strategies

Stephanie was an hour late for our second scheduled interview. As I waited for her in the lobby of Hogar del Pueblo, I began to worry that she had changed her mind about participating in the study after our initial interview. I checked my cell phone again to make sure I had not missed her call and decided to head home. As I walked down the street on that cold and blustery November afternoon, I spotted Stephanie and her friend hurriedly walking toward me. Greeting me with a wide smile, the charismatic young woman shook her head and exclaimed, “Girl, I had me some drama!” After settling down in a private room at Hogar del Pueblo, Stephanie pulled out a small, crumpled paper bag from her backpack. Inside the paper bag was a small blue and white package labeled Plan B.

She shared her drama with me, recounting that the previous evening, after “doing it,” she and her boyfriend realized the condom had “broke.” Upset and scared, she placed the blame on her boyfriend:

I was like, “You probably didn’t put it on right!” So he got all pissed off when I said that and he was like, “I know what I’m doing, you’re the one that don’t know how to put one on! I never see you tryin’ to put one on me!” I mean, damn, what the hell does he want!? I’m the one that usually gets the condoms ’cause I know he’ll say he forgot to get some.

Stephanie, who had highlighted the importance of self-respect in her paper on teen pregnancy, explained that she was late for our meeting because she had had to wait for an available appointment at a health center to obtain the morning-after pill. Her friend helped her locate this resource and accompanied Stephanie because her boyfriend had to work that afternoon. When I asked her if she and her boyfriend had ever made it a point to discuss their perspectives and practices related to safe sex, she shrugged her shoulders and replied, “We’ve never been like, ‘Okay, time to sit down and talk about safe sex.’ But, we kinda do sometimes. Like if we know someone who got pregnant or something like herpes, we start talking about how we gotta be careful.” She continued:

Once or twice he’s tried to do it without a condom and I like start telling him why it ain’t gonna happen like that and he’s like, “All right, all right! I know!” He got mad that one time ’cause I told him, “Well, you act like someone who don’t know.” I think he was mad ’cause he’s a guy and don’t want no female telling him stuff like that.

Like Stephanie, most girls described encountering resistance from their partners to discussions about safe sex. They expressed a desire for more safesex communication with their partner, referencing gender as a key reason why it was difficult for them to sustain a dialogue with their partners on this topic.

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