Historically, views of sexuality have been used to marginalize poor women,
women of color, and colonized women. The concept of deviant sexuality remai
ns discernible today in scientific and popular responses to drug addiction
and the AIDS epidemic that essentialize low-income, drug-using women as dis
ease vectors and dangerous mothers. Using data from in-depth qualitative in
terviews with 28 women, this paper brings to light the perspectives and exp
eriences of these materially and culturally marginalized women-speaking on,
interrogating, and analyzing heterosexual relations. This paper finds that
commodified ("deviant") sexual relations are not homogeneous; that some in
timate ("normative") relations incorporate sex as a form of reciprocity; an
d suggests that these varied forms of exchange are not confined to poor and
drug-using women but are consonant with dominant cultural practices. Ultim
ately the presence and form of exchange are conditioned by women's (and men
's) positioning within economic systems and cultural norms delineating gend
er and sexuality.