Sexual risk behaviors have inspired profound ideas and effective teamwork. But as the early history of AIDS demonstrates, when sexual practice is part of the equation, the same bold thinkers may be stymied, or just silent. Safe sex and monogamy have been proposed as answers to a gamut of social problems, but there is frequently little consensus on what these terms mean.

Sexual Partnering, Sexual Practices, and Health replaces myth and stereotype with meticulously documented findings on real people and their behaviors in their social, environmental, and individual contexts. Author Sana Loue examines the range of partnerships not only in the U.S. but also Europe and the developing world, focusing on both consenting relationships and exploitative sexual interactions:

• Varieties of monogamy between consenting adults

• Relationships involving multiple adult partners

• Incest, pedophilia, and child marriage

• Sex work, trafficking, and pornography

• Fetishes and related behaviors

All chapters cogently address the health issues that arise from these arrangements, concluding with implications for research, prevention, and intervention.

Throughout, Loue argues for a common language across disciplines and challenges her readers-therapists, health care providers, and policymakers alike-to rethink their assumptions about clients, their health needs, and the communities they represent.

Dr. Loue’s work is a truly significant scholarly contribution to a topic too often characterized by pseudo-science and ideological distortions. Sexual Partnering, Sexual Practices, and Health should prove an invaluable resource for researchers and community practitioners alike in helping understand dimensions of sexual practice, and designing more effective approaches to sexual health and violence prevention.

-Earl Pike, Executive Director, AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland