Leather Bound #39

Just when you knew it wasn’t 100% safe to fuck without condoms…

The controversy of bare backing and the impact of bareback porn in the leather community reignited this summer when the president of the International Mr. Leather contest sent a letter to vendors announcing that companies whose products include bareback porn would be banned from his circuit party’s Leather Market starting next year.

In his letter, Renslow acknowledges that three decades into the epidemic, no cure has been found and new infections are reportedly on the rise. 

“Too many in our community believe HIV/AIDS is curable or manageable. Too few understand that HIV/AIDS infections dominate life. We believe that it is our duty to inform and educate. Several years ago when ‘Meth’ was the scourge of our community, IML drew a line in the sand and raised awareness and used all our influence to try and stop this addictive madness. As is the case with HIV/AIDS, we believe it is our further obligation to do everything in our power to prevent future infections.

“To that end, after considerable discussion, the Executive Committee of International Mr. Leather has decided that it will no longer allow participation in the IML Leather Market by any entity which promotes bare backing or distributes/sells any merchandise tending to promote or advocate bare backing. This restriction will also apply to distribution of gifts, post cards or any other information via our facilities,” he wrote.

When Renslow made this announcement publicly he received a standing ovation by party-goers, but reactions have been very mixed through the leather community and online bloggers and social networking sites.

Some folks applaud Renslow’s leadership in taking a position toward advocating safer sex practices at a personal expense (loss of revenue from businesses now banned by the event).  Others have questioned what kind of leadership is displayed when you’ve waited three decades to take a position. 

Some critics have even questioned whether Renslow is being hypocritical by banning bareback sex products at IML, while owning and promoting Man’s Country, a Chicago bathhouse not known for its monitoring of safer sex practices.  Why is it acceptable to profit from unsafe play in one business but not another?

From online leather forums to mainstream gay websites, I have seen praise and perplexity, hosannas and outrage, and occasionally some fascinating and perhaps unanswerable questions.

Does the IML organization have enough clout to make a difference in the lifestyles and play styles of its participants, or are critics just being cynical by viewing this as a publicity stunt?

Does bare backing porn have any real impact on the choices we make?  Does banning such porn affect any change beyond a sense of censure among those who manufacture, distribute or enjoy it? 

There is a real risk here. 

After all, for some of us, being renegades and “bad boys” just adds to the thrill of it all.  The more taboo bare backing is, the more intriguing and exciting it becomes.  If you looked at porn dating back before mid-1980s, before the height of the epidemic, you don’t see a hell of a lot of fluid exchange. 

But these days, the potential danger and risk in consuming another man’s cum, tasting it or taking 40 loads up your ass over a weekend, can be (and is) exciting to many, many of us.   To take away these images and videos does not take away the inherent reasons why we’re drawn to this porn in the first place.

So let me be very clear on my position about bare backing sex:  It’s hot and it feels fucking great.  Any top who tells you that fucking with a condom feels as good as fucking raw is either a liar or hasn’t tried both.  

Having said that does NOT mean that I endorse the idea that everyone should have unprotected sex with everyone else.  Obviously that wouldn’t be wise or healthy.

But full disclosure and complete honesty is often missing in public discourse about bare backing.  At the risk of seeming politically incorrect or being denounced as not caring about the health of our brothers, we often tell less than the truth to advocate what we perceive to be appropriate social or play policies.

So I confess that I have played both raw and safe, and I prefer it raw. 

That’s not to say that I can’t have a good time fucking with a condom, but raw is always (at least) a little bit better for me.   I will even admit that if I’m playing wrapped, I’m usually fantasizing about taking off the condom when I’m shooting my load.  I know how good it feels – physically, mentally, emotionally—to bury my cum deep inside a hot hole.  I love the idea of leaving a part of myself inside another man, of marking someone as mine (even if it’s only for an afternoon or a night or until he needs to take a shit).  

I have no illusions: latex is a barrier not only of body fluids but, for me, a block of physical sensation and a bit of an emotional barrier.  I’m sure I’m not the only man who feels this way, and until we have honest communications and approaches that address all of our needs, we will continue to have more “controversy” than constructive dialogue.

We need to move beyond punishing or demonizing folks who play without condoms and work instead on finding ways that we can all achieve equally satisfying fun in a way that reduces our risks as much as possible.

I can have fun playing safe, and I support folks whose only way of playing is with condoms.  If I were to play with someone new, someone who I couldn’t necessarily play raw with, there are ways that we can work around the reality that safe play is not always as physically pleasurable, but ultimately can get me off. 

But if we’re talking about porn and getting into the visual fantasy of what’s on that screen, the last thing I want to see are condoms.   It’s bad enough that reality can impose on our real-time play; I don’t want it killing my fantasies too.

From personal experience, I can say that sometimes a bottom cannot tell the difference between a wrapped or a raw dick (on more than one occasion, I’ve used a blindfold and a condom and faked bare backing in a scene), but my personal history has shown that even an experienced bottom’s asshole will give out faster when a condom is being used (there’s simply more friction involved when latex is part of the equation).

For many of us, leather identity is very much tied to freedom of sexual expression.  Our leather identity has allowed us to feel comfortable breaking from the social norms by taking personal responsibility for what we and our partners do to achieve sexual gratification. 

If we take our play seriously and responsibly, it’s all good.

I know many leather folk who are hypersensitive about the risks associated with their play—whether the risk is cutting off blood flow/circulation with inappropriate rope work, obstructing airflow or oxygen with knockout drugs or strangling, possible infection from playing with unclean toys, etc.—and they are hyper-vigilant in their preparedness going into a scene. 

This is appropriate, and as it should be. 

Cutting, whipping, gut punching, electricity, fire, suspension, breath control—virtually any form of edge play is (by definition) not “safe.”  Lives can be at far greater immediate risk with these fetishes or kinks.  Yet these forms of kinky play are not being banned at the IML Leather Market because they are not on the forefront of an epidemic wave of chronic illness and death. 

It makes you wonder when the IML board made its decision whether it considered other play that could have a negative impact on quality of life or safety concerns.  Or perhaps only size matters—and the universe of bare backers is undoubtedly their largest audience, if a recent study correctly identified that about half of gay men still have (at least on occasion) unprotected anal intercourse.

In responding to news of the bareback porn ban at IML, one man on the “Feast of Fools” website suggested other potential porn genres that could be banned in the future:

Oral sex porn -> Can get herpes, throat cancer.
Foot fetish porn -> Can get mouth fungus.
Bear porn -> Promotes obesity/unhealthy lifestyle.
Cake sitting/eating porn -> Unhealthy food. From now on only green-salad-and-rice-toast sitting.
Smoking fetish porn -> Smoking is bad for you.
Gang bang porn -> Yes kids, being raped is not good either.

Bare backing is the most vanilla of all edge play, and it’s the most common.   It’s not the most dangerous (not every act of unprotected anal sex exposes the horny fuckers to HIV/AIDS— for instance, two HIV negative men will not spontaneously generate a strain of HIV by coupling without condoms), but it could be the most negotiated.

As I’ve noted before, there is a movement within certain leather circles to move beyond the simplistic “Safe Sane and Consensual” message of the 1980s and follow the mantra of RACK, or Risk Aware Consensual Kink.  We need to move beyond the all-or-nothing, black-or-white approach to condoms as the only ways of controlling HIV transmission.

In RACK, bare backing has a perfect context in the leather community in which negotiations can take place, risks ascertained, and personal responsibility can be assumed. 

As we mentor one another, teach and play together, we should understand the risks we’re taking with the lives of our playmates as well as our own, and make choices that we can all live with.   Telling someone to only fuck with condoms won’t make them do so, but it can have a disastrous backlash effect.  Some safe sex campaigns may cause as much harm as they do good.

As a community we should be concerned not only about pushing for better treatments for those living with HIV infection, but treatments for those of us who may become exposed to HIV. 

For instance, there’s nothing controversial about using spermicides to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  We should be seeing an international cry for antimicrobials to kill HIV, particularly those that would be effective in the ass (without killing the bacteria, etc., that is necessary for other proper body functions).  We should be pushing for a “morning after” type pill for those whose judgment lapsed or failed them.

Even in this day and age, we need to remind ourselves that HIV is a health issue, not a punishment for being gay or cosmic retribution for making bad decisions.

We should support research and greater non-judgmental discussion about sero-sorting and adaptive measures around men who have sex with others of the same HIV status (how much more at risk of getting sick is a man living with HIV if he has unprotected sex with another man with HIV)?   What are the risk ratios for transmission if the top is HIV-negative and the bottom is HIV-positive?

And how do those risk ratios change if the person who is positive is also on treatment and/or being monitored for viral load counts?  (I would suspect that someone being treated for HIV and with a low viral load would be FAR less risky for transmission than someone who doesn’t know their status at all.)

And are there statistics to support the theory that generous use of lubricant (by reducing the friction and therefore reducing the chances of tearing inside the ass) might also reduce of risk of HIV transmission?, if gay porn was so powerful, most

As is so often the case with me, I have more questions than answers.

I don’t have a strong position on the IML board’s decision.  I assume they are taking the steps to feel that they feel are being responsible and I can appreciate that.  But I also doubt the steps they have taken will have the effect they are intended to make, and believe that there are steps that they could take that would be more effective that they are not making (educational workshops during the contest weekend, for instance, on risk negotiation). 

Ultimately banning bareback porn is the equivalent of “Just Say No.”  It’s a simple solution to a terribly complicated and complex issue.  And the contest will just grow more confounding if moving forward they continue allow bareback porn stars to compete—after all, what kind of message is it that you can’t sell bareback products at IML, but you can be a bareback star and still place?)

At this point in the epidemic, having waiting so long to respond, the IML board‘s position seems curious, patriarchal and patronizing to a community of adults who attend their events.   Although banning bareback porn may be a valid choice for them to make, it just does not seem to go far enough if they really want to make a different.   If anything, it feels like too little and too late.

Fortunately, the IML board coordinates a contest weekend and not the community at large.  Real leadership requires more than what we’ve seen from the Windy City circuit party. This is not to minimize the possible effects of bareback porn, but to put it into context.

I welcome feedback and responses to this and my other writings at [e-mail].