It’s very important to recognise that bareback sex is a fetish and has only really existed and grown as a supposedly desirable “thing” since around the year 2000.
Before AIDS became a huge issue in the early 1980s, gay men didn’t use condoms. But that doesn’t mean they were focused on cum (semen) and the various obsessions which we see amongst barebackers today.
At the time, condoms were regarded as being to prevent pregnancy and STIs amongst the heterosexual community. In fact one of the largest producers of them here in the UK made a big point of stating that they were for “vaginal sex.” Odd though it may seem now, many gay men didn’t know whether it was even physically possible to use a condom for anal sex!
Barebacking fetishises semen and cumming inside a partner. Despite the claims of the gay health charities that it is about “intimacy” there is often a sleazy element to it which is about degrading someone or being degraded and “used.” There are even some very ill gay men who feel they “deserve” to get HIV and who apparently fantasise about it. We have seen desperate photographs on one UK bareback hook-up website of a young man with “poz me up” written across his cheeks.
This is why we at Gay Men Against PrEP (GMAP) link barebacking with mental health and self-esteem issues and we say that it is a form of self harming.
40 years ago there didn’t seem to be much of a fetish for cumming inside your partner. In fact often it was regarded as a bit messy. Many gay men preferred to see the top pull out and shoot, as happened in numerous porn films of the time.
SO HOW DID BAREBACK SEX BECOME A FETISH?
Around about the year 2000, hook up websites devoted to gay bareback sex began to appear with many members in cities such as New York, which had originally been at the heart of the gay AIDS epidemic.
Unfortunately it seems these sites were largely driven by men who were HIV+ but negative men were pulled into this sick world too. Particularly gay men who had low self-esteem, who weren’t educated about HIV, who didn’t care about themselves and some who thought they were invincible and would never contract the virus, but then did.
At the same time, positive men began to promote barebacking within the gay porn industry and begin its transition into a fetish.
Unfortunately this was enabled largely because very welcome and effective treatment for HIV had come along in the mid-1990s. Positive men began to feel more healthy, less apologetic, and a culture of entitlement emerged along with a “poz community.” Some mentally ill men felt that being HIV+ should be actively celebrated along with “forbidden” condomless sex, with particular focus on semen (cum) which had caused them to become HIV+ in the first place. Like immature naughty little boys.
This was hyped and promoted to such an extent that sometimes, bizarrely, in some cities where there were a lot of positive gay men, negative men felt left out and wanted to “join” by becoming HIV+. Again a mental health issue.
SOME POSITIVE MEN ARE RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALS
It’s important to note that there are many HIV+ gay men who behave in a responsible way and are condom users. Unfortunately there are others who see a positive diagnosis as a green light never to use a condom again and who, through their irresponsible behaviour, have actively help to build a culture of barebacking here in the UK, when we had previously done so well over the years encouraging condom use.
What isn’t realised is the extent to which the gay scene in major UK cities is populated by men who are HIV+. The percentage seems to be much higher than among the general gay population nationwide.
Many positive men are in high profile jobs in gay charities, the gay media, the gay porn industry and pubs and clubs on the scene. And where those individuals have a fondness for bareback sex they have sometimes used their positions to promote and try to normalise it. Making bareback porn, hosting bareback club or sauna nights, publishing pro-bareback articles and formulating policies which justify and encourage barebacking.
And this has been helped along by the rather insane notion that no behaviour should be judged or condemned, no matter how depraved and damaging it is to others and wider society. These manipulative, narcissistic gay men have even hijacked and used the feminist phrase “slut shaming” as a further defence.
THE GAY (ILL) HEALTH BUSINESS
Which brings us to the gay health industry. Originally the sector was focused on funding and promoting condom use and helping gay men who were stricken by AIDS.
It was natural that some men who are HIV+ would work in gay health to represent the interests of positive gay men. But no doubt that has been bolstered by a good helping of the political correctness and cronyism which is endemic in the gay community.
This has become a crisis because it appears these organisations are now full of HIV+ gay men who are using the platform to actively promote bareback sex. They hate condoms (always did – and in many cases it’s how they became positive) and, given the chance, some even demonise condoms as somehow “unreliable.” It isn’t going too far to describe doing that as evil…
Much time is spent coming up with justifications for bareback sex, demonising condoms (or avoiding any mention of them at all) and these individuals seem to view PrEP as something which will create a level playing field and remove the “stigma” from HIV. No nasty condoms anymore, all gay men on the same HIV drugs (because that’s what PrEP actually is) and all barebacking together with no awkward questions asked about HIV status anymore.
Bareback gone mainstream and no longer just a niche fetish for a few. But not a return to the days before AIDS either when there was no great focus on the particularly dangerous elements of bareback (for negative men) involving cumming in partners. An extreme fetishised sexual environment created, which never existed for gay men previously.
We have been told by someone who has inside information about these mainly-London-based gay health charities that there has indeed been, and there still is, a bareback agenda amongst those who control them.
Their ideology and thinking is political correctness gone beserk but they are rigid in it, and obsessed and addicted to the bareback fetish. They spend their time coming up with twisted justifications for why everyone is, supposedly, barebacking or secretly wants to. A world they are immersed in.
A great many of us are staying safe by using a condom every time as we always have. However, insisting on condoms for sex has become much more difficult over the last 15 years. Whereas it used to go without saying that one would be used.
These days men who are anti-condoms can be pushy. This has come about in part because of the stupidity of the gay (ill)health organisations which have helped to foster a sense of entitlement in men who bareback and will not condemn any kind of behaviour, no matter how destructive.
All very dangerous for impressionable young gay men who have just come out and read and believe their rubbish, some of which is funded by public money.
ON THE BRINK?
We could be on the brink of something very worrying indeed if increased barebacking amongst gay men, enabled by PrEP and normalised in the gay community by these wicked individuals, leads to drug resistant strains of HIV beginning to take hold, along with other antibiotic resistant sexually transmitted diseases. It would be a great danger to negative men but also to positive (especially if barebacking) who might find that HIV medication becomes less effective for them. It’s just a pill a day they claim, however many are on 3, 5 or more due to resistant HIV strains.
Imagine a gay world in which there is untreatable gonhorrea which you can get in your throat or dick from a blow job… It wouldn’t just be condoms for anal sex. It would be condoms for oral too and fewer partners. If a drug resistant strain of HIV emerged in your city, and if your only “protection” was PrEP which didn’t work against it, would you find out in time? Or would you be like the men in the 1980s who heard about AIDS and condoms too late or didn’t believe AIDS existed?
We have ended up with an utterly insane situation where positive gay men who are clearly in favour of bareback sex are in charge of formulating safer sex and health policy for the 93% of gay men nationwide who are negative. They even have tentacles reaching into the NHS in the form of doctors who also favour bareback.
HOW DO WE FIGHT THIS?
As we have already said, many men who are HIV+ behave in a responsible way and don’t have bareback sex. It is essential that those men speak out now, along with gay men who are negative, against what is happening.
Finally, the mentally ill bareback enthusiasts who have managed to dominate so-called gay health organisations MUST be removed from those positions of influence as soon as possible. And if that can’t be done, public funding must be withdrawn until they leave.
It is completely unacceptable to encourage young gay men to ditch condoms in the face of the threats we face.