Interview with Amanda, 18, White British, middle class, Roman Catholic. Women, Risk and AIDS Project, Manchester, 1989. Anonymised version including fieldnotes (Ref: MAG19)

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).Anonymised transcript of an interview with Amanda, eighteen, who is at college and works in a bar. She enjoys horse riding and looking after animals, and having a good social life with her friends (which she feels has negatively impacted her academic work). She now has a car, which has had a positive impact on her sense of independence. Amanda comes from a middle-class background, but has lots of friends from working-class backgrounds in poorer areas of Manchester as well as more 'pretentious' ones from college. Her boyfriend of four weeks lives in Hulme with his flatmate, and regularly engages in alcohol and drug use. She has had quite a lot of sexual partners, more than her girlfriends, but doesn't agree with one-night stands and these sexual experiences have typically involved those that she has been friends with for a while first. Amanda expresses her own feminist thinking around equality and sexual reputation and pleasure, though there is sometimes conflict between her way of thinking and expressing her sexual identity and wider social norms and gendered expectations among her peers that leads her to question this, as well as her need for validation. She first had sex when she was fifteen and a half, and drunk. It was a while after this before she had had sex while sober, and she feels her views on sex have changed since her first time. She has found it difficult to say 'no' within heterosexual sexual experiences, and does not want to be known as a 'prick tease'. Amanda doesn't remember much of her Sex Education at school, but learnt about AIDS through programmes on TV and pamphlets that came through the door. She was using condoms, but now relies on the pill as her main method of birth control and protection and would continue to use condoms with a new sexual partner. Her friend was using the rhythm method to track her 'safe days', but this failed and resulted in pregnancy and a miscarriage, so Amanda is much more conscious and careful now. Amanda had learnt about contraception at school, namely the cap and the coil. However, she feels using the cap would ruin the 'heat of the moment' within sexual encounters. In terms of AIDS protection, she has considered using condoms or the withdrawal method. She would feel ok to ask a sexual partner to use a condom to avoid pregnancy, but would not feel as comfortable to ask them in the contect of AIDS protection, as there is stigma around AIDS and promiscuity. She thought that those at highest risk of AIDS would be homosexuals and needle-users, but now recognises that this risk is not confined to specific groups within society.

本次访谈记录属于1989-90年间创立的《女性、风险与艾滋病项目》档案，该项目是2018-20年间的《数据复苏项目》的一部分。访谈对象为一位名叫Amanda的18岁女孩，她正在上大学并在酒吧工作。她热爱骑马和照顾动物，并享受与朋友们共同度过愉快的社交生活（但她认为这对其学业产生了一定的负面影响）。她现在拥有自己的汽车，这极大地提升了她的独立性。Amanda来自中产阶级家庭，但在曼彻斯特的贫民区和一些较为‘自负’的大学朋友中也有很多朋友。她的男友与她相识四周，住在Hulme区，与室友同住，并且经常参与饮酒和药物滥用。她拥有众多性伴侣，数量超过她的女性朋友，但她不认同一夜情，并且这些性经历通常是在与她相识一段时间的朋友中发生的。Amanda表达了自己关于平等、性声誉和性愉悦的性别女性主义思考，尽管有时她的思想和表达其性身份的方式与同龄人中的社会规范和性别期望之间存在冲突，这让她对此产生疑问，同时也对自我认同的需求感到困惑。她15岁半时在醉酒的情况下首次发生性行为，之后有一段时间她才在清醒状态下发生性行为，她认为自己的性观念自从第一次以来已经发生了变化。她在异性性经历中发现自己很难说‘不’，并且不想被称为‘挑逗者’。Amanda对学校的性教育记忆不多，但通过电视节目和门缝里传来的传单了解了艾滋病。她曾经使用安全套，但现在主要依靠口服避孕药作为主要的避孕和保护手段，并且会继续在与新性伴侣的性行为中继续使用安全套。她的一个朋友曾使用节育法来跟踪她的‘安全期’，但结果失败，导致怀孕和流产，因此Amanda现在对此更加警觉和谨慎。Amanda在学校学习了避孕知识，包括避孕帽和避孕环。然而，她认为使用避孕帽会破坏性生活中的‘激情时刻’。在艾滋病防护方面，她考虑过使用安全套或体外射精法。她认为要求性伴侣使用安全套以避免怀孕是可以接受的，但要求他们在艾滋病防护方面使用安全套则不那么自在，因为艾滋病和滥交存在耻辱感。她认为最易感染艾滋病的人群是同性恋者和吸毒者，但现在她认识到这种风险并不局限于社会中的特定群体。