(URL to the report at the end of the mail) Hi All, For those, who do not follow porn with a degree of gay diligence, Rod Daily is a HUGE name in gay porn. Also he has never been in any porn (in spite of speculation to the effect, and reported offers of generous amounts from studios) that did not use condoms. In screen he was always covered by rubber.
Bareback porn is a trend that started on the gay porn scene with Eastern European porn studios starting the trend a few years back and then many mainstream studios like Corbin Fisher and Sean Cody jumping on to the bandwagon to an extent where they have now become almost exclusively bareback studios. The industry proclaims that it has stringent standards of health checks that keeps its actors safe. This is largely true. But what is less understood is how proliferation (and even celebration) of barebacking acts in popular porn works at normalising it, even when there is no clear indication that the same standards of safety as practiced by the porn industry can or will be practiced by the average gay kid who sees it and feels that it is ok to not use a condom. May be even that it is cool. And finally what happened to Rod Daily also shows that even the best precautions of the industry may not be good enough, and there could be incidental exposure to risk (oral sex?, ejaculate on urethral region of another? Ejaculate on external anal tissues that could have suffered abrasions or tears during sex?) The debate on bareback porn has oscillated between the yeas and the nays for some time now. All kind of arguments, from freedom of expression, to "it's fantasy, lets not hype it", to "the world is about to collapse in an AIDS epidemic Big Bang" has been doled out. The truth lies somewhere in between. The arrival of Pre exposure prophylaxis (PreP), where you pop a pill before being exposed to HIV risk, to provide yourself with an added layer of protection has queered the pitch even more. At least in some quarters PreP is looked at as the medical panacea that will take people to barebacking nirvana! All this is heavily confusing to many. But what can we do as a community, other than scaremongering or succumbing to the 'cool' of barebacking, is what we need to be thinking about. And her is what I think. Both barebacking in the popular (porn is popular) media and PreP are here to stay. HIV is also here to stay at least for a while. So I feel it's the messaging that we give out in our prevention interventions that need to be moderated and calibrated to the need and reality of the day. We need to give full information not only of the risks of barebacking in spite of (and in light of) barebacking porn, we also need to give full information about the limitation of both Condoms and PreP. And ultimately it would be for individual to decide the degree of risk or safety that is acceptable to them. Only we should help them in arriving at that decision from an informed perspective instead of from fads out there. We need to make that a conscious part of our information dissemination strategy. The gods of intervention who make policy should take note. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3866682 Regards and best, Aditya Bondyopadhyay (Sent from my iPhone)
