Australian public health promotion positions safe sex as a biomedical, heteronormative concept. Consequently, there is a dearth of scholarly research examining queer young women’s sexual health. To fill this knowledge gap, this article considers how Australian bisexual and queer young women understand ‘safe sex’ and conceptualise ‘good’ sexual citizenship. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 participants in Tasmania, findings reveal that although queer women understand heterosexual safe sex, there is little awareness of safer sexual practices with female partners. We argue that gendered sexual scripts shape perceptions of sexual health risk whereby queer women adopt multiple situation-dependent approaches to safer sex.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	queer, women's health, Tasmania, safe sex
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Gender studies
Research Field:	Sexualities
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health)
Objective Field:	Women's and maternal health
UTAS Author:	Grant, R (Dr Ruby Grant)
UTAS Author:	Nash, M (Associate Professor Meredith Nash)
ID Code:	122485
Year Published:	2017
Web of Science® Times Cited:	13
Deposited By:	Office of the School of Social Sciences
Deposited On:	2017-11-15
Last Modified:	2018-04-19
Downloads:	1 View Download Statistics