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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Barebacking and Other Gay Issues

I was just checking out the other Blogs today and came across this one on Jason Curious’s blog and it was getting a little heated. I was going to post a comment there but it turned in to this long dissertation so I thought that I would just make it a post on my Blog. The subject was about the sudden upswing in bareback porn and its effect on the industry and the young gay men of today.With companies Like Hot Desert Knights, Eurocreme, Cobra Video and Treasure Island Media to name a few producing this product and their sales climbing because of it, will this be the new trend in gay porn?. There are a few things I Have to say to start this off when I first started looking at Gay Porn it was all bareback. The whole Aids crisis had not yet begun. The boys were young and hot and the sex was wild and uninhibited. But that started to change in the early 80’s when a few models started to get sick. Then more were getting sick and dying and I’m talking fast. Some people got sick and were dead in a few months. No one knew what it was but it was bad whatever it was. The gay community went into a literal panic. People were scared to touch each other or even drink from the same glass. There was a period that if you did not see someone for a couple of weeks you assumed they were dead. I’m not being over dramatic here I am just stating the truth as to what I experienced. So I made a conscience decision to learn as much about what was going on as possible. During this period I watched hundreds of young men die from this dreaded disease. It was hard and it was tragic. One week in 1988 I went to 10 different memorial services. And one was for 4 guys who were all friends who died in the same week. So I think I have a really good idea of the affects and the effects of AIDS. I knew a few Gay porn stars Jon King, Lance Chisolm, Ron Pearson and Mike Henson and they are all gone now and the all died from aids or was HIV Positive when they died. And they all preformed in bareback Porn the common denominator here. And now we are watching all these companies who are shooting bareback porn again.

The big question you should ask is what precautions are they taking to protect their models? Are they taking any at all? Is the draw to perform in bareback porn the lure of the money? And now we are having a few of the current gay porn performers coming out and saying that they have contracted the virus. This is a serious problem and one that should not be taken lightly. I am not saying that these models contracted the virus on a movie set because they do have sex outside of the videos that they film but it is going to directly impact the porn industry again just like it did 20 years ago. This is a really good debate and it is something we all should rethink. I have been through the gay pandemic and came out the other end still negative. But during the late 80’s and the early 90’s I lost a great number of close friends and acquaintances to AIDS.
It was Hard at the time and It still is today as well. The recent amount of Bareback companies popping up has me a little worried to say the least. I mean Jason is correct when he says that the education system is lacking on the subject. He is also right when he says it is a personal choice. So the mission of the older generation of gay men is to help get the message across to the younger generation and to help them make an educated choice. There is one problem with that statement though and it is the previous generation: mine that took the biggest hit from AIDS and HIV and of the many hundreds of thousands of men and woman who have succumbed to the disease are not here to tell there stories.
That leaves a few of us to impart our knowledge of the effects of AIDS and HIV. I am all for personal choice and freedoms but you have to be educated on your choices. I will not say that I have never had unprotected sex because that would be a lie. But I am saying that when I did it was an educated choice. I read about how the virus is transmitted and I was there at the beginning of it.. I choose to not get fucked by just anyone but only by people who I had some faith and trust in and was in a relationship with. And if I did choose to have sex with someone who I was not to sure of a condom was used. There is still risk in having anal sex with a condom. The use of a condom is at best is only 65% safer than receptive anal sex without one. So you see there is still a 35% risk involved anyway. There is also a risk of contracting the virus through oral sex. It is much smaller but if you have any cuts in your mouth and you suck some one off there is a greater risk. The virus hides in body fluids semen, vaginal fluids, and the blood stream. It has been known to be present in saliva. If you are healthy the virus is harder to contract. But if you use drugs and or alcohol they lower you immune systems ability to fight off the virus and they lower your inhibitions to make a conscious decision about who with, how and where you have sex. They also affect whether you use appropriate protection. In truth the only way to remain sure that you will not contract the virus is to remain abstinent. But that is not a viable solution for most people. So you take the risk and go out and have sex anyway. Life is filled with a lot of choices and tough decisions and to use a condom is really not a hard one to make if you want to live a healthy long life. HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was but it is a life altering one nonetheless. I have some friends who have been positive for 20 plus years and are still healthy but they know that it could change at any moment. Some have had serious setbacks and were literally swirling around the drain so to speak and the meds kicked in. So you can make an educated choice to not use a condom but you must be well aware of the possible ramifications of your decision. This is where the education system has failed us. They just say unprotected sex = death, not that you can live with HIV. What they should show the young people of today is how it will affect them and what is required to try to stay healthy once you have contracted the virus. This subject is not cut and dry by any stretch of the imagination but it is something we must deal with in an informed manner. Sorry this was so long but it's a really important subject. As for the porn industry they should not be looked upon for their stand for or against bare backing because to them it is really all about your dollars. Bare backing in gay porn was the norm until a few studios took a stand against it and they did this because the models were all dying. As I mentioned before I knew quite a few of the models from the late 80’ early 90’s and most of them are dead now. It is really a sad commentary to see that we have come full circle with a new generation of young men who really have no older generation to look up to and to help guide them through the tough period called youth. I was one of the lucky ones to survive the pandemic and I will try to impart my knowledge on the next generation. I was also lucky enough to have the experience of learning the ropes on how to deal in the New World of being gay from the experienced men who came before me. And a New World it was, filled with the excitement of new encounters with new men and sex. The gay community was a community then and it still is but society has changed in such a way that we are now not confined to the gay ghettos. Gay people live their lives out and proud anywhere they want to now. There are still the risks of hate crimes but we are not isolated as we once were. This is where we have the big problem. We are not as centralized and we don’t have the programs that we once had because of the de-funding by the government of such projects. The current political atmosphere is fighting world terror and the rest of the country is under siege by the rightwing conservatives who are spouting phrases from the bible of our damnation and that AIDS is Gods will. We need to regroup as a community and start to provide more out reach programs for at risk gay youth. These kids are coming out much earlier and they are being raised by parents who may still love their gay child but are ill equipped to deal with the realities of the fact that there child is gay. I have many straight friends who have sons and daughters who are now at the age where they are becoming sexually active and the parents are freaked out. They want to believe that their children will be like they were and not have sex until they are much older say late teens early twenties but the facts are their kids are having sex as early as 12 in some cases and the parents are clueless. I have been available to these kids as a kind of a mentor, because most of their parents just can’t handle the facts that their baby’s grow up. The parents know what’s going on because the kids know if something serious comes up and they are scared to tell there parents they can tell me and we can all talk about it together with their parents. I have one friend who has a son who is 16 and we were in the garage working on putting in some shelving. I said to her "Did Costco have a sale Kleenex" and she said that her son has allergies and goes through a box a week. I looked at her and said, "since when does josh have allergies?" and her response was "since he turned 13". Needles to say I lost it and her response was "what’s so funny?" I looked at her and said "you really don’t have a clue do you?" and she was "about what?" I said "Josh doesn’t have allergies and it’s not his nose that’s running." She was like "well what is it then?" and I gave her a look of mock disgust and she finally got it. Then she said "eww I just cleaned his room and there were Kleenex everywhere". We had a good laugh and when Josh came home I told him about it and we both had a good laugh too. This is just an example of how naïve parents are about the sex lives of their children. So we really need to give the young gay community some guidance and help in navigating the waters of there new found sexuality. Brent Corrigan had a post on his Blog in the ask Brent section where he tells how he got involved in the whole bareback scene in porn and how he feels about it now. So I hope this does not sound to preachy but it is important to love yourself enough to care about yourself and make the right decisions to protect your health.

This is Elmysterio and I'm out

6 comments:

  1. I think you're right, but I think it is also important to educate how little is actually known about HIV. And that you can, for instance, get AIDS without being HIV+. Or be HIV+ and never get AIDS. Those two things are so closely linked and yet... by medical definition, they are not.

    There is a lot we still have to learn about HIV and that's why research is so essential. If we knew more, we could cure it. But we don't know all that much unfortunately and therefore it is important to educate on the varied theories of HIV -- not just the facts of what is known, but the blanks of what is missing and what that could or could not mean.

    And the student then can be left to make their own decisions and become truly responsible of their actions and fully aware of the consequences.

    It's just not as cut and dry as: "You'll get HIV if you don't wear a condom." That's obvious. It never has been. So let's stop pretending it is and talk about what we know vs. what we don't.

    xo

    L,
    J.

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  2. I agree with you 100%. I for one do not believe that a virus does exist. There has always been desention among the ranks on that issue from the day they supposedly first discovered it. There are all kinds of theories bandied about that it could be a drug resistant form of syphilis or it could be related to the first trials of the hep B vaccination. There has also been talk that some people are missing a gene that the virus feeds on and will never get infected. There is just so much information out there. There was a doctor who had the theory that if you super heated a patient’s blood it would kill the virus. To this day I still don't think they have isolated the virus. They keep saying that it mutates and can not be pinpointed. There was also one doctor who had the theory that it was caused by mixing different blood types in incremental amounts and this caused the bodies immune system to go to war on the foreign bodies killing it’s own immune system in the process. In the first cases of AIDS it was the meds that were killing the patients. They thought it was a cancer so they were using diluted chemo drugs to treat it. So as you say we don’t know for sure that much about it almost 30 years later. People are still getting false positive results as well as false negative results. And they are really just testing for antibodies to the virus. But we do know one thing education will help stop the spread of it. And as it stands there are to many people making to much money fighting it to cure it. I was talking to my father about 25 years ago and we were watching the news and they were talking about AIDS and he asked me if I knew any one who had it? I told him yes and he went on to tell me that he and a bunch of his colleagues thought it was man made and it was a form of genocide. I was not sure what to believe. My Father was a nuclear Chemist and he worked in research for the federal govt. and he tells me this. Talk about a reality check. He only said one thing about it me, and it was to be safe and use common sense and I would be OK well I guess he was right. I really think it helps us to have parents who are aware of our sexuality and are willing to talk to you about it. It worked for me.

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  3. did you all see Drakes's all too innocent "drop by" Harlows new blog...sounds like Drake may have been left out of the loop on a few things, so to speak. :-)

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  4. "And that you can, for instance, get AIDS without being HIV+. Or be HIV+ and never get AIDS. Those two things are so closely linked and yet... by medical definition, they are not."

    just by definition you cant get aids without being hiv+. the virus infection is the basis for the destruction of the immune system. this later results in what is called aids. not all infections lead to the full picture of a disease like with all other infections too. some people just carry the virus but never get sick from it. same with hiv.

    there are many other reasons which can destroy your immmune system as well. the result is as an aids like disease. but it is not aids.

    when doing safer sex and that means wearing condoms you cant get hiv during sex. (just in the case the condom breaks and stuff like that, but the risk is significantly reduced).

    while antibody tests can fail they are a standard test procedure but not the only one. the virus was discovered. even pictures of it were shown. there is no reason to doubt it´s existence. how aids develops depends on several factors drug use and other infections might play a role. but even without that hiv will destroy the immune system in shorter or longer time when not cured. and there is no effective cure.

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  5. ElM - I am so impressed at how much you know about it! I am usually a little afraid to speak up about shit like that, for fear that people start thinking I've been drinking Jeff Palmer's koolaid or something. But I have been in long-term relationships with people who were HIV positive and managed to remain negative. And I also, because I cared so much about him, spent a year researching the subject and found, exactly as you have, that there are SO many theories it is astounding and so little truly known if you ask a real doctor, it's sadenning. xo L, J.

    ab - You may be right, but I don't know that this is true. While I haven't known anyone personally, I have read of cases where people were diagnosed with AIDS but were NOT tested as HIV+. It's the destruction of your immune system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't it is the destruction of your immune system as cause only by HIV.

    By sheer definition alone... I don't see HIV mentioned...

    AIDS /eɪdz/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[eydz] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
    –noun Pathology. a disease of the immune system characterized by increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections, as pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and candidiasis, to certain cancers, as Kaposi's sarcoma, and to neurological disorders: caused by a retrovirus and transmitted chiefly through blood or blood products that enter the body's bloodstream, esp. by sexual contact or contaminated hypodermic needles.

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  6. I was researching this whole bareback phenom and was shocked to find out that TIM's Dawson didn't start doing porn until he tested positive and seroconverted. So I had to go back and figure that everybody he did a scene must have been positive or didn't care if they became positive. Then I started figuring the men who worked with actors after he worked with them wer the same. It truly destroyed an pleasure in that form of entertainment. I felt like it was somehow watching a snuff film or something. I am totally in awe of how careless people. Just like bug chaser's and people considering a Positive load as a gift WTF? And one article even said these bug chasers equate accepting positive loads of semen with pregnancy. Those people need MENTAL HELP BADLY. But even if two people are positive and do a film together, there are 3 known types of the HIV Virus and then the types have subtypes. A new one was just discovered in a cameroon woman living in france that they think crossed directly from gorillas to humans because the type is so closely related to the form found in gorillas. AYE .... the world is just dangerous now. Thats why my celibate life serves me very well. I can sleep at night!!

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