Happy hump day my lovelies. Man, it was hard deciding what to write about. There's a shit ton of news, and reviews, and spotlights I wanna do but I don't wanna do post after post and do a porn overload. Or maybe I should just say fuck it and do that. I was worried about doing multiple posts a day but I think to stay current with the news and spotlight all the movies and performers and studios I'm gonna have to do that. If you guys want let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Anyway, this came totally out of the blue and I thought I would share it with you guys as I find every aspect of these two links I'm going to share very interesting. Now I know I may be opening up a huge can of worms here but let's talk a little about bareback porn and HIV+ performers who perform in bareback porn.
What are your thoughts on it? Do you get more turned on watching bareback porn then you do watching porn with condoms? What about performers who have been open about their HIV status perform in it? How about HIV+ performers who only perform with other poz performers or performers who are undetectable? Do you think this lessons the stigma? Greatens it? Do you think these performers are making informed choices? Being irresponsible? I'm really quite curious to know your thoughts on this.
For me, this is a tough one on many levels. Okay, real talk here. My cousin Donnie died of AIDS back in the 90s; the early 90s when HIV and AIDS was a death sentence. Even then the doctors still weren't quite sure how it spread so I wasn't allowed to see my cousin, I was only about six or seven and Donnie's doctors and the rest of the family were worried that possibly I could catch it if it was spread through air born or even, as a kid, if I had a cut or a scrape. My family would wear surgical masks and gloves when they went into his room. The doctors told my Aunt Marie and Uncle Shortie to feed him lots of rare steak as the proteins may help and to have him drink a lot of Pedialite and Pediasure since those are what doctors recommend for kids to build up their immune systems they figured maybe it would work with grown ups whose immune systems were weak. So I've seen first hand the devastation, sadness, shame unfortunately, that the disease brought onto an Italian Roman Catholic family. My family use to tell everyone that Donnie was either working or had a cold and that's why he wasn't around. He stayed at my Aunt Marie and Uncle Shorties house and they took care of him as the family didn't want to put him in a hospital and have word get around. His funeral, which I wasn't allowed to go to, was a closed casket.
Fast forward to 2015 and yes I know we have Prep and that a lot of the performers who are doing bareback scenes are on it and people think that it's fine and cured but it isn't. There are new drug resistant strains of HIV developing and they just discovered a new strain of HIV in Cuba which leads to AIDS three times faster then the current strain. And the cost of medication is expensive. A lot of my young gays are positive and it breaks my heart. I've been with them while they've cried on my shoulder and I've had to hold it together. I've seen the GoFundMe's and Kickstarters and Indiegogos so they can get meds and treatment.
I guess my point is that we still have to be cautious. And I hope I don't come across as a martyr. God knows I've had some slipups in my time, we all have, that's why we're human but, and I'm guilty of this myself, we should all be using condoms unless we're in committed relationships, getting tested regularly and disclosing to our partners.
I realize these are consenting adults and I'm not naïve to not think that maybe some of the performers are possibly bug chasers who want to catch a different strain or want to pass on another strain to someone out of anger. What I'm saying is is the money really worth putting your health at further risk or putting someone else's health at risk?
Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me some thoughts in the comments below.
Now, here's where all this started. So two very interesting pieces on Str8upgayporn caught my eye.
First is this: http://str8upgayporn.com/rocco-steele-bareback-eli-lewis/ it's an interview with Eli Lewis about his bareback scene with Rocco Steele. Now, if you are a fan of Rocco's you know he has been very upfront and honest about his HIV status and the fact that he's positive. He even stated in an interview that he will not do scenes with negative performers and only performers with other poz performers or those who are undetectable.
In the interview Eli talks about how he thought long and hard about making the transition to bareback porn and goes on about knowing the status of his partners in his personal life and making informed choices. The interesting thing that struck me was, on Eli's RentBoy profile he lists his status as negative and that he always practices safe sex. So my question then became this: is he lying on his RentBoy profile so he doesn't lose clients, has he not updated his profile or did he not know/was not informed about Rocco's status? And if that's the case and Eli is/was negative then has Rocco changed his views on not working with negative performers? Is Eli on Prep? Is he undetectable? This has sparked quite a big discussion in the comments section of the interview and a lot of them really get you thinking. I strongly suggest you read them.
The other article that is getting some very interesting discussions going is this one: http://str8upgayporn.com/deviant-otter-bearded-boy-bareback/ in which Deviant Otter has unprotected sex with an HIV+ scene partner. He then says, in a video that he posted online, that he hates safe sex, stating that condoms are not 100% effective against STD's (true but they are pretty damn close) and that he also hates using condoms because it takes away the gruff and grittiness of sex. He then says that he believes in smart sex-yes that's not a typo and I probably made the same face you made when you read that, he doesn't use condoms but practices smart sex????!!!-because, here's the reason, he's on Prep.
Again, these two are consenting adults who can make their own decisions and it's their lives and health but is this the kind of message that really needs to be said? That whole thing about condoms is what the wacko religious fanatics use as an argument on why sex ed shouldn't be taught in schools. And to say, oh you can just pop a pill and fuck without protection and that's smart sex is, in my opinion, highly dangerous to be posting online. You don't know who's going to see it, who's going to follow your example, who's life could change and go in a direction they may not want it to go just because someone thinks that you are right and it's online so it must be true.
Whew, I think this the longest, rantiest, most soap boxey post I've done. But I think it's something that needs to be addressed. And maybe I'm a hypocrite since I do work as a talent scout for a studio that does do both bareback and condom porn but all of our boys are tested for STD's before every shoot every time. And maybe I don't have the right to say anything since most of the erotica I write features unprotected sex with multiple people and sometimes multiple strangers but what I write is fiction, no one's health is actually in danger. But you'd be surprised how many religious nuts and prudes say my writing is the reason we have AIDS and STD's are spreading so rapidly.
Okay, anyway, off the soap box, rant over. As I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, leave me some comments people! I've gotten almost 5500 of you to read these posts, why y'all so quiet!?????!
XOXO
-JOE-
No comments:
Post a Comment