Interview with Siobhan, 24, Irish, middle class, Roman Catholic. Women, Risk and AIDS Project, London, 1989. Anonymised version including field notes. (Ref: LJH32)

This interview is part of the Women, Risk and Aids Project (1989-90) archive which was created as part of the Reanimating Data Project (2018-20).<br>Anonymised transcript of an interview with Siobhan who moved to London four years ago for nursing training. She has been with her boyfriend for two years, and is certain that they will marry one day once she's ready to settle down. This is her second sexual relationship, though she regrets having sex before marriage and having an abortion, and feels a lot of shame around this - this is partly due to her very religious sex education in a convent. Her aunt gave a more comprehensive sex education when she was thirteen. Siobhan has some interesting thoughts on gender and sexual pleasure, and different gendered expectations of sexual intercourse, as well as her shock at young women's permissiveness in London compared to back home in Ireland. She thought AIDS public health campaigns were effective in terms of fear-mongering, but thinks that they should be more consistent. Siobhan doesn't think she could ask a sexual partner to use a condom, and doesn't think any of her friends use them either.