Continue reading »]]> *Long rant today. Informative if you care to read, otherwise skip down if you aren’t in a ‘heavy reading’ mood*

A small firestorm was set off yesterday in the twitterverse w/the announcement of IML banning the sale of bareback¹ videos in the future. (It would probably help if you read the article before continuing)  You can also read the fallout from Joe.my.god. I bounced it over to him and he posted it as well.

I thought I’d give it a thorough beating here rather than endless broken comments on twitter and elsewhere. Personally, I have mixed views on the decision. While I support the idea, in theory, I honestly don’t see it having any real affect as is on the problem. Educated informed adults watching a fetish barebacking video does not necessarily equate having unsafe sex in person.

Had this decision been part of a broader effort to unite the neg/poz camps thru acceptance and education, I think it might have had much more of an impact. As is, it 1) is divisive thru the prevailing but misguided belief that blame and finger-pointing is productive, 2) fetish’izes (made up word of the day) the taboo further, and 3) caters to the failed idea that censure has ever worked w/human behavior. Sexuality is tied to our base instincts as human beings and has never been as easy as right from wrong. If it were would the Catholic church still be fighting the ‘abstinence only’ fight? Oh yeah, they’re really winning that battle. /sarcasm

As usual, there are several important distinctions overlooked in the often heated battle over barebacking. From my perspective, the good/bad sides of barebacking, seeing boths sides of the issue (neg and poz), societal re-enforcement of conflicting do’s and don’ts, and finally dispelling the myth(s) often propagated thru irrational fear and ignorance. Otherwise, we end up bickering and solving nothing. Meanwhile, HIV continues to rise in the gay community.

In itself, barebacking is not bad. In closed neg/neg, poz/poz couples it is an entirely normal healthy behavior.² But this isn’t really the part people focus on. The very real and dangerous connotation of barebacking is in anonymous, public, and/or online hook-ups where the sero-status of a sex partner is assumed, unknown, or undisclosed. This is the true heart of the debate which routinely seems to get lost in the name-calling, mud-slinging, blame game.

There are always two sides to any story and this is no exception. On the one side, we have neg guys who out of ignorance and/or fear constantly disassociate by pointing fingers and blaming poz guys. This allows them to abdicate any personal responsibility. They further attempt to avoid poz guys by sero-sorting thru a variety of often unsuccessful but comical methods. One very popular method is you can look for tell-tale signs that a guy is poz. In the early days of the epidemic that might have been true but not anymore. Most drugs or cocktails on the market today have few to zero side-effects. Then there is the ‘its the poz guy’s responsibility to disclose their status’ argument. While true in its intent, this approach misses two very important but often completely overlooked realities.

The first reality is ultimately, no one is responsible for your health but you. You can project all you want but if you are neg and wish to remain so, it is your job to educate yourself about HIV transmission³ and act accordingly. Otherwise, the epitaph on your tombstone might read, “the other guy didn’t divulge he was poz”. Right or wrong, you could still end up dead. Is that the approach you really want to take? As a sexually promiscuous gay man, you should as a rule develop a list of sexual acts you are comfortable with regardless of a persons HIV status. This eliminates not only the fear but also the temptation to engage in risky behavior with a stranger who may not really know their status or flat out lie about it. Yeah, there are some dipshits who lie, but if you take responsibility for your health you negate their lies completely. Guys who follow these common sense rules can have fun, productive, hot, fear-free sex lives.

The second reality is the real culprit in the continuing transmission of HIV are guys who don’t know or refuse to find out their status.⁴ If you are sexually active, you should be getting tested once every 3-6 months. It is often free (or very cheap) and there are plenty of places to go for it. In this day and age, there is absolutely no excuse for not knowing your HIV status. And, if you don’t know or have reason to doubt your status, it is your job to act responsibly and have safe sex. Hiding behind fear makes you a coward at best and at worst could potentially land you in jail.

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On the other side, we have poz guys who equally disassociate by attempting to sero-sort by only playing w/other poz guys. This often stems from being feared, stigmatized, rejected, etc. I would also argue this is probably where the incorrect but prevailing perception that the poz community ‘glamorizes being poz’ comes from. Pick any poz guy you know and ask him how glamorous he thinks being HIV-positive is. I think you’ll find very quickly they do not see it that way. From my own experiences, I find most poz guys are open and honest about their status and act responsibly. Others are less forthcoming but still act responsibly by practicing safe sex w/their sexual partners. Both approaches in my mind are acceptable forms of behavior, one being better than the other respectively. Me personally, I’d prefer to have sex with an openly sero-discordant guy over a guy who had no idea. And yes, there are a few who know and take no responsibility at all and leave it up to their partners to force the issue or not. Then you have the really crazy fucks (commonly referred to as ‘seeders’) who deliberately try to spread it. Don’t even get me started on them. But the latter, while often publicized broadly, makes up the tiniest fraction of the poz community.

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We are never going to get anywhere by continually polarizing the issue and laying blame. Constructive and positive re-enforcement has consistently demonstrated the ability to change people’s behavior vs negative. Barebacking was here before, during, and after the hardest part of the AIDS epidemic, whether we can all agree or not, it is doubtful it will disappear anytime soon. Instead of fighting over points of view, both neg and poz folks need to reach out to each other. We need to tackle ignorance, fear, and stigma around being poz head on. We need to educate ourselves and others and act/behave responsibly.  Until we do something more constructive, nothing will really get done and we’ll see more and more young gay men sero-converting. 

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Jumping back to the article, we have an organization/event known for its rampant hedonism suddenly coming out (pardon the pun) against barebacking by banning the sale of those videos. To me this smacks of a total political attempt to divert responsibility away from the event owner/organizers. But to be fair, maybe thy are legitimately concerned. Maybe it was a gut reaction poorly thought out or merely a first step. As is, I fear it will have virtually no impact on curtailing anything. There has been no mention on policy, education, or prevention efforts to actually curtail barebacking. How exactly does such a conflicting message combat the problem? Simply put, it doesn’t. What it does do is send a symbolic but failed message about the dangers of barebacking. A message that will fall on deaf ears as many will see this as the event taking a side thru blame and censure, furthering the divide between the neg and poz camps.

1. sex w/o condoms
2. There is still a debate over poz/poz barebacking creating super-strains. However, after 2 decades it has failed to materialize as a real threat.
3. no risk, acceptable risk, risky, and very risky
4. For the purpose of this debate, I am leaving out IV drug users who often share dirty needles.