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What’s
all this bareback business? Does it just mean having sex without condoms or
is there more to it than that? Is it about a mental attitude? Apparently the
term comes from the straight community and has become fairly obsolete since
the wide availability of the pill. It was basically about vaginal
intercourse without a condom. During the early 80s asking another guy for a
bareback would be as puzzling to them as asking if they had any condoms.
There was just having sex and that was that. Later, prevention messages
started talking about high, medium, and low risk sex; later still there was
safer sex and unsafe sex. Having sex without condoms was unsafe sex. Still
there was no bareback. Condoms or no condoms, sex was sex.
All
of a sudden, there was an ad that ran on the internet that announced someone
looking for “bareback” sex. All hell broke loose. Similar messages
appeared on the Internet. At first it was positive guys looking for other
positive guys. Later they became less specific about status, or even
declared themselves to be negative. Speeches and articles were made. It was
revealed that the hard core videos that sold best were those that bore the
mark of the barebackers.
Young
positive men turned up at conferences speaking of the joys of bareback sex
and seduced the righteous (who then wrote articles about their experience).
Bareback
riding does not just mean having sex without condoms. It implies a mental
attitude of knowing the risks and not caring about the consequences, whether
that means pregnancy, infecting or being infected with HIV, or (in the case
of two people who are positive) of cross infection, the transmission of
opportunistic infection. In this case, the “on-line” and “off-line”
thinking about unsafe sex are one and the same. It is not about lapsing, of
“hard to reach” men who don’t know the risks, nor is it about those
who restrict unprotected sex to men with whom they are in a relationship. It
can include, and for a while solely included, cases where both men are
positive and have declared to each other that they are. Reinfection or no
reinfection, most people would agree that this is a whole different kettle
of fish to guys, whether positive, untested, or “negative,” who have sex
unsafely regardless of status.
If
anybody is under any illusion that this sort of behavior is something new,
then the CAMPsafe program has news for them. There has always been a
substantial minority of men having unsafe sex with other men and within that
minority a number who do so with a large number of different partners.
Do
we really understand where someone requesting bareback sex is coming from?
If they are still negative, why don’t they care about becoming infected?
If they are positive, why don’t they care about infecting others? Has
treatment by previous sex partners been a factor? Why the obsession with
having sex without condoms, to the exclusion of any other sexual activity?
Start answering questions like this, and we might make some progress.
CAMPsafe,
an HIV/AIDS education and prevention outreach program of CAMP Rehoboth, is
targeted toward men who have sex with men. For more information, call
302-227-5620 or email campsafe@camprehoboth.com.
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