-- Michael Scarce
Safer sex was initially conceived and implemented in the 1980s as a stopgap measure. Gay men and others' early faith in medical science to quickly produce an effective treatment, cure or vaccine eventually proved to be short-sighted. The consistent hope that an end to the mounting toll of death and grief was "just around the corner" allowed some gay men the tenacity to give up unprotected sex, the only sex they had ever known, and begin to use condoms, abstinence, and mutual monogamy as strategies to avoid infection with HIV.
Whereas some gay men have continued to engage in unprotected anal sex since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, only lately has there emerged a heightened eroticization, premeditation, and form of structured organizing devoted to the practice of unsafe sex. An abundance of Internet web sites, online chatrooms, e-mail listservs, personal ads, private parties, jargon and slang terminology, and even amateur and professional videos dedicated solely to barebacking have been created in the past two years. A few of these venues extol the pleasures of intentional infection with HIV as well as the open exchange of bodily fluids. Taking place against the current backdrop of sex controversies permeating gay male communities, barebacking has become a lightning rod of political contention in the United States.
As the basics of AIDS and safer sex education were presumed to be common knowledge among gay men by the late 1980s, new infections in the 1990s have been increasingly characterized both within and outside gay communities as irresponsible, fatalistic, immature, selfish, reckless, and hedonistic. Many community members and AIDS prevention specialists have attempted (and unfortunately continue) to use a combination of sexual shaming and fear-based coercion to create a culture of rigid adherence in which a single absence of condom use is met with harsh admonishment rather than honest discussion and caring support.
It should come as no surprise that a cultural phenomenon of conscious and sometimes defiant resistance to safer sex has emerged among some gay men, both HIV-negative and -positive. Some barebackers discuss AIDS prevention workers as "latex-obsessed" and "condom Nazis." Perhaps most interesting is a cross-cultural comparison. In countries such as Australia where harm reduction and negotiated safety were instituted early in the epidemic, it seems that no culture of barebacking has emerged in the sense that gay men have not created social movements based on their unprotected sex.
But the practice of anal sex without condoms should not be cast purely as a backlash against AIDS prevention. For several years, social scientists have slowly begun to unpack the multiplicity of reasons why many gay men continue to engage in unprotected anal intercourse. The complexity and diversity of gay men's sex, however, defies the currently popular portrayal of barebacking as a new trend of soundbite-sexy menace and murder. The unwillingness of policy-makers, journalists, AIDS prevention specialists, and gay community leaders to acknowledge the valuable meanings of anal sex and bodily fluid exchange, in all their physical pleasures and cultural significance, has fashioned a rhetoric that is as reductive as it is misguided.
Gay men bareback for a multitude of reasons, including increased physical sensation, a sense of greater connectedness or intimacy with their sex partner, excitement in transgressing the paternal proscriptions of many AIDS prevention campaigns, sharing semen as a symbolic act of bonding, and more. Journalists like Michelangelo Signorile continue to construct alarmist origin stories of unsafe sex, however, tracing the root cause of barebacking to a singular culprit. Most recently, protease inhibitors have become the El Nino of all unsafe sex, and the queer barebacker has become the latest posterchild of infectious demonization. He is scapegoated and held responsible for everything from loss of government AIDS prevention dollars to the supposed decay of urban gay culture, embodying the sum total of AIDS prevention frustrations.
For years now, AIDS prevention programs have struggled to meet gay men where they are rather than where we would like them to be. Now that barebacking has emerged as a distinct identity unto itself, however, most health experts seem to have written this population off rather than attempted outreach to them in a way that will be productive yet still acceptable to their adopted practices. Across the country, several AIDS organizations have made statements to the media that they have "heard" about barebacking parties in their cities and are either "concerned" or "stunned" by such behavior. Yet, prevention specialists within these agencies have made little or no attempt to learn about the culture of barebacking, and instead have either abandoned these men or driven their behavior further underground. In order to reach barebackers, prevention workers must become culturally competent and knowledgeable enough to understand why some men have created social identities based on their unprotected sex.
What we need is a set of non-condom guidelines for barebackers to reduce the potential harm associated with their sex. This model of harm minimization, neither romanticizing nor vilifying barebackers, would be tailored to men who have made firm decisions to forgo condom use. In the same vain as needle exchange, perhaps we can reduce the potential for damaging consequences associated with barebacking in spite of a refusal to use condoms. Strategies such as early withdrawal before ejaculation, internal and external washing after sex, rationing sex over time, avoidance of drugs like amyl nitrates and Viagra that could cause rectal blood vessels to become vulnerable from dilation, and better negotiation with partners may be imperfect solutions, but could still reduce rates of sexually transmitted infection.
Whether we like it or not, barebackers have organized around their sex. Can we afford not to work with them rather than working against them?
Michael Scarce is the author of Male on Male Rape: The Hidden Toll of Stigma and Shame, and a forthcoming book, Smearing the Queer: Science and Gay Male Sexual Health.