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| By David Menadue
Vice President of People Living With HIV/AIDS
The need to invent a new name for a sexual practice which has been
around for an eternity suggests that there is a change in the way some gay
men are viewing the safe sex culture which has dominated our lives for the past
decade or so.
To me, 'barebacking' conjures up sexy images of cowboys riding their broncos through the Wild West, living dangerous, if carefree existence, with little concern about the perils or obstacles which might lie around the corner. The term 'barebacking' for unprotected anal sex was first coined in 1995 by U.S. gay HIV+ porn star and writer Scott O'Hara in an editorial in Steam, his magazine for people into sexual adventurism. In it O'Hara wrote, "I'm tired of using condoms and I won't, and I don't feel the need to encourage negatives to stay negative."
Why this is happening at this stage of the epidemic is a complex question. Safe sex fatigue is an obvious explanation with some gay men talking about "never being able to enjoy the sex they enjoy the most" again, and others who have not known anything else in their sexual lives probably letting their guard down to see whether skin-to-skin sex is as good as some tout it to be. Some people attribute the advent of combination therapies and protease inhibitors as the cause of greater risk-taking on the part of both HIV-positive and negative gay men. Some positives think that they are less infectious because the treatments have lowered their viral load counts (true for some, but not all, and transmission is still possible even with low or undetectable counts). Some negatives think that these treatments have made HIV a much more manageable condition and even if they do become infected, a cure must be just around the corner and they will be able to benefit from it.
By far the biggest reason that barebacking has become a big issue in the
media in recent times, in my opinion, though is the Internet.
Numerous barebacking sites have developed in the past year or so, providing opportunities for people to meet others interested in barebacking, to organize barebacking parties and to generally enhance the acceptance of the idea amongst some gay men. I don't think this is a necessarily wicked thing as I think an argument can be made that there are only relatively small health risks involved when both men are positive. There are issues of STDs to be considered, which could place a strain on already compromised immune systems. There is also the issue of uperinfection with another strain of HIV (it has been proven possible for individuals to be separately infected with HIV-1 and HIV-2, with HIV-2 often being a more virulent strain).
They also state that "Ads seeking seroconversion will not be tolerated." It is difficult to understand why such a statement would be necessary until you access some of the more extreme barebacking sites in the U.S. which not only do not give any sort of safe sex message or warning, but actually provide sections of their websites for negative guys who want to be infected by someone with HIV. Called the "Bugchasers" sections, these provide for negative guys looking for someone to provide them with the "demon seed" or the "Fuck of Death" to list their stats and details! And to add to this outrageousness, there are also the cutely-named "Gift-givers" sites for positive guys who want to oblige, to state their details. As someone who has lived with HIV for more than fifteen years and had to endure a number of extremely nasty AIDS-defining illnesses which to date I have somehow managed to survive, I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want to be infected with HIV! Such people should be made to take my twenty-seven pills a day on a trial for a month or so before they are infected just to see what they could be in for! Suggestions in overseas gay magazines as to why people want to solicit to become HIV-positive include low self-esteem, feelings of inevitability about eventually becoming infected (particularly in cities with a high number of positive gay men) and a desire on the part of some negatives to join in some sort of solidarity with their positive brothers! Speaking for myself and my positive friends I can only say that we feel such loyalty is misplaced and misguided. This is one "club" we don't want you to join – for your own benefit! As for people who actually want to infect others with this horrible virus one can only guess at what sort of weird, mixed-up agendas must be going on in their heads. Guilt transference? Revenge? Indifference? I actually give most gay men more credit for their sense of what's right and wrong around HIV transmission than these "extreme sex" sites might suggest. That is not to say that it is not incredibly easy to be tempted into unsafe sexual activity or to momentarily slip up from your normal codes of behavior. If there are added pressures with such barebacking sites being seen by some as eroticising or validating unsafe sex then we need to talk about these developments and not ignore them. Gay men need to be given safe spaces to talk about these pressures and temptations without fear of recrimination or, indeed, prosecution. Barebacking may be a new name for a centuries-old activity but while we still have HIV around, we still need to talk about any threats or changes to the safe sex culture which many have so far been able to successfully live by. Courtesy of the Melbourne Star Observer Subscriptions: $100 per 52 issues (Australia), $175 ($Australian) Overseas. Cheques or money orders payable to: Designer Publications Pty Ltd. Or, charge through your Mastercard, Visa, Bankcard, Amex. Send card number, exp. date, signature, name, address and telephone number to: MSO Sales PO BOX 205 Fitzroy, 3065 Australia. Fax: (03) 9926 1199. E-mail: subs@bluestone.com.au. Telephone inquiries to: (03) 9926-1160 |
Barebacking advocate Tony Valenzuela (pictured) wrote a cover story on the controversial subject in Poz 
© 1997-99 BEI