Safe Encounters
While the United States AIDS epidemic began in 1981, the global crisis continues today. The Center for Disease Control reports that by 1989, 100,000 AIDS cases had been reported in the United States. According to Avert, 145 countries had reported 145,000 AIDS cases at this time, but the World Health Organization estimated up to 400,000 cases worldwide. In 2016, the CDC reported nearly 675,000 people with AIDS in the US have died since the beginning of the epidemic in 1981, and today, nearly 13,000 people die each year.
In a 1988 presentation transcript from a meeting of the Society of the Scientific Study of Sexuality (S.S.S.S.), Dr. Ogden wrote, "Mainstream AIDS education that advises abstinence, monogomy, or testing and condom use may miss the mark--especially for women." Ogden published Safe Encounters with Beverly Whipple, PhD, R.N., in 1988. In it they address the need for sex education that centers women's pleasure and agency, two themes that echo through Ogden's career. The book is a direct response to the AIDS epidemic and its subsequent panic and misinformation, and the implication it had for women's sexuality:
"Safe Encounters demonstrates that pleasurable sex does not have to mean danger and that safe sex does not have to mean deprivation. In fact, it teaches readers that once they move beyond the myth that intercourse is the goal of all sexual encounters, or even that sex means genital contact, there are literally 1,001 ways to sexual satisfaction." (Safe Encounters, page xiii)
The following pages compile materials from the presentation file on Ogden's visit to Lehigh University on April 18, 1989, shortly after the release of Safe Encounters. These records not only provide a snapshot of what is available in the presentation series of the Ogden collection, but they also contextualize a crucial historical moment in her career and the history of sexuality in the United States.
The items I've chosen reflect the variety of materials found in the presentation series. The "Safe Sex Bill of Rights" reflects the book's thesis and its accessibility across audience groups. The correspondence with Karen Hicks provides details of Ogden's visit as well as further evidence of her note-taking and quotidian habits. The notecard features the major talking points of her health class presentation. Finally, the newspaper article exhibits both Ogden's meticulous record-keeping practice and evidence of public reception to her work.
To browse a list of other Kinsey materials related to HIV/AIDS, click here.