Women's Educational Panel Promotional

When you have sex with someone for the first time, you are sleeping with all of his or her past sex partners. That's the warning from AIDS, educator, Genie Boyle, and that warning, she says, is not just for men, it's for women, too. AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease, period. And as all sexually transmitted diseases, women can get it and women can pass it along. AIDS is on the rise for women throughout the United States, especially in New York and California, where the majority of diagnosed AIDS cases overall are concentrated. But it's spreading in, and it's becoming more and more a heterosexual disease. New Mexico figures show only men with diagnosed AIDS right now, but New Mexican women have tested positive here for the antibody. Which means that in the future this will be a problem in the state of New Mexico. Boyle, who is a member of the National Women's Health Network, says the key is risk reduction. That means safe sex. Otherwise, Boyle says... Every sexual encounter that someone has with a positive AIDS antibody, they will pass it on with every single sexual partner they have.

And you can see the snowball effect. If the rule of thumb were simply not to sleep with anyone in a high risk group, AIDS prevention would be a lot simpler according to Boyle. However, contracting AIDS is not as difficult as we've been led to believe. There's a big pool of heterosexuals, male and female who have no idea that they have the AIDS virus in them, that they have developed antibodies toward it. And they're continuing on with their lifestyles, figuring that they're not in the gay and bisexual male community. They're not drug abusers, so they're not having any problem. They're feeling fine. They have no idea that they might be positive for the AIDS antibody. And they are practicing unsafe sex practices. They are going ahead and having relations, not realizing that they are spreading this. And for those heterosexual men out there who think they don't have to worry about contracting AIDS... Women now has been found out just early this spring that women do transmit it to men through their cervical secretions.

It wasn't spelled out before March of this year. And we were unclear. The researchers were unclear as to how, if at all, females were able to pass it, but it has been defined that females through their cervical secretions definitely can pass it to males through heterosexual sex. Since there's no cure for AIDS, when the Surgeon General has recently released the Dauer News that a cure is much further into the future than originally thought, the whole country is being urged to use safer sexual practices. Rule number one, according to Boyle, be discriminating in your initial sexual encounters. If possible, it would be wonderful to interview and find out who your prospective bedmate has been around for the last eight years. And like it or not, the use of condoms is the second rule for AIDS prevention. We're telling women and men to use condoms. If you're a gay and bisexual man, we encourage that you use condoms and a spermicide. And if you're a woman, by all means, carry a spermicide and several condoms with you.

Boyle says the only person who doesn't have to worry is the person who is celibate and who has never used IV drugs. Boyle and other organizers of the Saturday forum hope to reach everybody else. Besides eight different presentations, various scenarios will be outlined describing common situations for women to review and determine if they fit into one of them. There are many women now finding out that their husbands have been bisexual. Unknowingly, she has been put at risk for AIDS. What would you do in that situation? Another scenario is that you meet a man who you feel is right for you and he has been all over the world. He's exciting. He's a journalist. And you know the next step is bad. It's time to get AIDS up front. We've heard that before, says Boyle, but apathy or fear is still the most common reaction to AIDS education. Everyone seems to assume that when anyone talks about AIDS, they're either gay or bisexual themselves or they simply want to hit a gay or bisexual person for the information, for

the dialogue, for the education. But we want to just keep insisting along with Sierra Cooper, the surgeon general, that it is a sexually transmitted disease and it is caused by a virus and the virus does not see males over females. The virus does not see an appropriate victim and jump into it. The virus has to be allowed to come into your bloodstream. It has to be allowed and asked in. And we, nobody wants AIDS, so why is it spreading so much is because we're asking it in and we don't even realize it. Genie Boyle is a nurse and one of the coordinators of the Women's Educational Panel and a member of the Board of Directors of the New Mexico AIDS Services. The forum today will be held in Savage Auditorium in the basement of the Presbyterian Professional Building and is free to the public. It starts at 1 o'clock. 4. Focus on Women. The Grassle.