Safer Sex

Safer sex emerged as a strategy to prevent the spread of disease with the advent of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, two gay New Yorkers, first outlined the theory and application of safer sex in their 1983 tract, “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.” As an alternative to the confusing, all‐or‐nothing early approaches to HIV prevention, safer sex offered a practical strategy. People were going to have sex. As such, it was best to do it in a safe, mutually satisfying, caring manner. Berkowitz and Callen presented a harm‐reduction approach now recognized around the world as a model that allows for both intimacy and protection.