Hey there Guys,
When it comes to the world of porn, in particular bareback porn it’s been a very interesting few weeks.
Just this week GMFA have release the findings of their porn study with the following results:
- 87% of gay men report watching porn at least once a week (1 in 4 watching porn every day)
- the most popular act watched was anal sex (91%)
- 69% reported actively choosing bareback porn with 96% having ever watched bareback porn.
Of course this brings forward the question if gay men are being exposed to regular bareback sex, in particular anal sex that is considered the highest risk sexual act for transmission of HIV, is there likely to be a wash over effect to actual behaviour? Does watching bareback porn promote actual bareback sex?
Interestingly 7% of survey takers said that yes, watching bareback porn lead to them having unsafe anal sex, with almost all (96.8%) saying that this would not stop them watching bareback porn.
By far the most interesting question I found was “do you think watching bareback porn can lead others to having unprotected sex?”. More then 50% of the people taking the survey said yes, watching bareback porn was likely to make other people have unsafe sex. Is this a case of “well clearly I can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but I can’t speak for others…”?
Bareback porn has been a controversial topic for many years now. Recently legislation was passed in Los Angles forbidding the production of bareback porn.
What we can say is that clearly there is money to be made in the production of bareback porn. When production houses like Sean Cody who used to be staunchly “safe sex only” start producing bareback the question has to be asked why? High demand from the already subscribed members? A decline in members with the current porn dollar being spread ever thin by sites like x-tube?
On one side of the argument is production houses like Treasure Island Media who’s director Paul Morris has stated:
…all acts of queer sex should be represented on screen with equal honesty. The entire spectrum of behavior from innocent to depraved, from life-affirming to death-enhancing should be available for the viewers.
On the other side are porn producers like Chi Chi LaRue who released the following PSA
In his post “Homo Bareback Porn = Child Porn” Dan Savage goes further to say:
Child pornography cannot be produced without children being raped. That’s the reason why penalties for consuming child porn—even “vintage” child porn—are so severe. Someone that consumes child porn is creating more demand for child porn which leads to more child porn being produced which means more children are being raped.
Consumers of bareback porn—that is, porn produced for gay men that not only features unprotected anal sex but fetishizes unprotected sex—creates a similar destructive loop. Someone that consumes bareback porn is creating more demand for bareback porn which leads to more bareback porn being produced.
And you can’t create bareback porn without putting porn actors at risk of HIV infection. Consumers of bareback porn argue that these actors are adults, and they’re aware of the risks they’re running, and so consumers of bareback porn are not quite as culpable as consumers of kiddie porn. And they’re right. But many of the actors in bareback porn are very young, very naive, and very vulnerable, and the demand for bareback porn is doing real harm to real people.
You know the topic is controversial when online new outlets like Huffington Post release articles questioning movies like “Dawson’s 20 Load Weekend” as “the most important gay porn film ever made?”
I think the importance of this film is debatable. The act however, is it liberating, a right, an act of defiance as reported by gay anthropologist Eric Rofes? Or is bareback porn an act of exploitation of vulnerable actors in a fickle market throwing demands where increasing competition means anal sex without condoms is the only way to make money…
Are models being put at risk for the sake of public demand?
Are the public being placed at risk with depictions of raw sex separate from safety measures that may be in place to reduce risk of HIV infection?
Is porn purely about the depiction of sex or can it have a role in education?
I’d love to hear your thoughts guys.
Yours in good health.
Photo Cred: Andre CharlandDr George
I agree with Garret on the idea that focusing on each of our own’s integrity and awareness of our choices and boundaries around safer sex is much more effective approach than “blaming the porn”. I’ve experienced the amazing capacity in our fellow gay men to create alternatives that support our erotic pleasure. My understanding of Leather scene- play has made me aware that we can take extreme bodily pain sensations and re-frame them as a route to Ecstasy. If we can eroticise deep scenes like fisting, sounding, mummification, suspension, bondage, saline injection, CBT, and more, eroticizing the micro-inches of a latex condom shoud not be impossible. My personal experience tells me it’s possible. Where the challenge lies is in the willingness to embrace change to comfortable patterns that feed our ego. I hope that we can continue to each make the changes and choices for ourselves that we can be at peace and in health with.
PEACE, PLEASURE, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS!
D. J. PEREZ
Bedford, MA
There is a basic problem with almost all the research in this field – it presumes association equals causation. Just because viewing bb porn is associated with doing bb porn does not mean that people are more inclined to do it because they see it. An equally valid explanation is that people who enjoy barebacking also enjoy watching it. Also, many men describe bb porn as a fantasy outlet that allows them to enjoy barebacking virtually without necessarily doing it. Also, almost all the psychologically-based research in this area fails to account for desire and simply presumes that any evidence of risky behaviour is necessarily pathological.
The other issue being overlooked in discussions of BB porn, and indeed of barebacking generally, is what is the actual risk involved. If it involves two men with the same HIV status, and they can be reasonably certain of that, then there is no HIV risk. If the pos men involved have undetectable viral load then the likelihood of transmission is negligible. If the neg men involved only top then the risk is substantially less than if he bottoms. And if he does bottom, then the risk may also be reduced if his partner withdraws before cumming. Obviously, using a condom is safer, but most men who bareback use some or other of these strategies to reduce the risk of getting or passing on HIV. As Geoff already noted, mostly the men in BB porn are all pos. it’s also likely they are mostly on treatment with undetectable viral load. Assumptions that they are recklessly endangering themselves and each other may be a misrepresentation of what they believe they’re doing – even if you yourself might believe the level of risk is too high.
BB porn may be problematic but in itself it is not necessarily proof of either pathology or recklessness, nor does it necessarily change men’s behaviour. It is, however, a convenient excuse. Something to blame rather than taking an honest approach to gay men’s ( in general, and our own, in particular) sexuality and a more rational assessment of men’s decisions around relative risk versus pleasure.
So what behavioural influence do porn videos have if any? Especially given the point raised previously about the minimisation of condom use in non bb videos ie the “magic” condom that appears spontaneously out if nowhere in safe sex pornos and disappears without a trace before the money shot.
I don’t have a definitive answer and I don’t think the GFMA study has either. The 7% reported influenced are not even defined as to what extent they were influenced. Did they watch a bb porno and go and have one instance of unprotected anal intercourse or did they then become committed bare backers and never practise safer sex again ?
I have a sneaking suspicion from my own experience as a sex worker that bb videos may even have a positive safe sex effect. I realise in saying this that I am giving anecdotal evidence on a very same sample base so it’s nowhere near definitive but before bb porn was available I would get several mid job requests every week for unprotected sex. Now I get lots of requests to show bb porn (which I do) and only very occasional requests to actually perform bb sex. So maybe bb porn can actually act as some sort of safety valve.
Cameron I can only really relate with I have patients tell me at work. In particular there are many men who do compare things like the sustaining of erections to porn. They are genuinely surprised when I explain that pron erections are carefully shot and sometimes chemically enhanced. There are a lot of men who feel that their cock getting a little wobbly when they put the condom on as some sort of complete failure of their ability to have erections.
Sadly these sort of conversations are pretty rare guys to guys so I am always happy to be able to explain the normal ebb and flow of erections to guys.
Certainly before I was sexually active I had a massive porn collection and took a lot of cues from it.
Hey George looks like there is a bit of cross over in the work we do, especially when it comes to explaining hard ons in porn being not as real as they sometimes look
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Interesting that you cite taking cues from porn at a younger age. Am not sure if you are aware but there is a fierce feminist debate that cites male violence and especially male sexual violence against women as stemming from cues contained in porn.
Currently in Australia it is not legal to sell or import porn that combines violence and sexual acts. I’m pretty sure that this data is behind this legislation.
Actually models don’t get paid a lot, regardless, unless they’re major ‘Exclusives” etc and for most guys it’s a pretty brief stint. Most make more out of escort work for which the movies act as the marketing arm and therein lies one of the reasons why you never hear a whole lot from the BB studios about the universality of positive serostatus……
Some of the big studios – Titan, Falcon, etc – won’t employ models who have appeared in BB so in many instances it’s likely to be an end of career move…t
Hi George you are incorrect about extra money for bb porn at least as far as gay porn goes. Gay porn pays poorly whether it is safe sex or bb with most porn actors making much more from their escort and sex work careers. So Geoff is pretty well spot on in his previous comment.
I work in the industry and I and my collegues male and female are at times offered extra to bb and we are adult and professional enough to make our own informed decisions on this matter. In fact it’s a little insulting to have it implied that we might be easily influenced on safe sex practise if we were in a tight spot by the offer of some extra cash.
Must be a studio dependant thing Cameron.
I used to do a lot of porn writing and interviewed a few actors with the gay for pay studios ie Sean Cody and the models there basically explained there was a pay per act with the “more gay” the act the more money there would be.
Surely bareback would just be part of the same sliding scale?
I understand that the bigger studios, in particular the bigger production houses are very different. Is this the case?
Thanks George. While I agree that a reader survey in a UK HIV prevention NGO magazine on the effects of BB porn is interesting, I think responses to a couple of your points can be found closer to home.
Australia is blessed with some pretty outstanding social/behavioural researchers in the area of HIV and gay men. One study (of many) that comes to mind is the Kirby Institute’s’ Pleasure and Sexual Health’ (PASH) Study which got right into the guts of what Australian gay men think about HIV, how they balance pleasure and risk etc. I’d recommend it to your readers along with innumerable other studies from the Kirby, from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) in Melbourne and the National Centre in HIV Social Research at UNSW. Check out the websites of all three for the reports in question.
But to respond to your question to me directly, yes – and I think we kind of know why it’s happening. Michael’s comment above goes there pretty much. I also agree with Michael on the remarkable fact that thirty years into this bloody thing, the majority of guys continue to maintain safe sex practice most of the time, despite the fact that there have been seismic shifts in the lived experience of HIV. And to your excellent point about the fact that not every act of unprotected sex is unsafe, it was actually Eric Rofes who pointed out to me that gay men and their sexual practices had been on a seroadaptive journey since day one: negotiated safety, barebacking (originally a descriptor for poz/poz sex) serosorting, strategic positioning, etc, etc were all ‘invented’ by gay men themselves in the pleasure/risk balancing continuum, as indeed was the use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission.
Guys make choices ultimately and I reckon the role of educators is to ensure that they’re informed choices as far as possible. Condoms remain the safest most assured way to reduce the risk of transmission but guys use a range of other strategies as well, none of which are without risk – and they need to know that too.
So, I think we live with BB porn. I don’t think ‘banning’ it would work – every iPhone is a movie studio potentially and guys clearly enjoy watching it. We’d also have to ban the sale and distribution of every gay porn movie made before the epidemic which seems a bit draconian. As Cam Cox said earlier, it’s about individual agency ultimately and most guys are smart enough to use it.
No matter what the health consequences are, fucking without rubber feels better, feels more spontaneous, and that is the hardest thing for safe-sex campaigns to fight. On a sensory level bb fucking just feels better. And what is really amazing is how well and for how long so many gay men have managed to use condoms effectively.
But to pretend that fucking with a condom is qualitatively and sensually as good as fucking without one is just that – pretending. And that’s a real problem for condom campaigns.
My own experience with condom -clad sex has meant for me a re-framing of my own sensory focus and the meanings of those sensations to me. I’ ll agree that re-focusing the experience of pleasure with a condom on my dick was an adjustment. It IS different. And, (inportant to ‘get’) I’ve come to accept it is DIFFERENT; not “worse than what I used to do”; but DIFFERENT. By adjusting my value judgement around the meanings of the sensations, I’ve opened up the possibility of Really Enjoying hot sex that meets my needs for reducing my risk of infection.
I already manage a Bi-Polar mood condition (med’s, counseling, disability support). I don’t care to have any more conditions to manage; so my choice of safer sex boundaries works for me. Nothing is hotter to me than a cumshot free of the worry of getting infected for life…..
..Now, to get this re-conditioning adjust around exercise and fitness! Next on the list!….
i really appreciate the way you said “adjusting my value judgement around the meanings of the sensations,” because to me that is also what it’s all about.
there’s definitely the purely physical sensation, carnal side of sex, that’s enjoyable, but my perspective shifted once i entered an extremely emotionally (corny, but spiritually) fulfilling relationship.
it may sound like a bunch of baloney, but the mind is a pretty powerful thing. i think i read about it being the ‘largest erotic organ’ or something once. my priorities became finding a safe, sustainable way to be intimate (and in particular for me, for a whole lot of reasons more than just carnal satisfaction). so rubbers feel different – but value judgments are things you make for yourself.
and i agree, ‘nothing is hotter to me than a cumshot free of worry’