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Journal of Homosexuality Volume 67, 2020 - Issue 1
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Articles

Gay Porn’s Bareback Momentum

Joseph BrennanIndependent Scholar, Sydney, AustraliaCorrespondence[email protected]
ORCID Iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7388-954X
, PhDORCID Icon
Pages 127-157 | Published online: 11 Oct 2018
 
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ABSTRACT

A profound shift has occurred in the last decade in mainstream commercial gay pornography from condoms to “bareback” (condomless) depictions of anal sex between men. This article explores gay porn’s “bareback momentum” as demonstrated by the displacement of condoms in the 10 most visited gay porn Web sites (that have operated for 10 years or more). While all 10 began by releasing condom pornography, the study finds all except one (Falcon) have since gone bareback—represented visually as a timeline. The sites analyzed are, in order of popularity: Sean Cody, Helix Studios, Lucas Entertainment, Corbin Fisher, Bel Ami, Next Door Studios, Randy Blue, Falcon Studios, Cocky Boys, and Chaos Men. Textual analysis reads each site’s transition individually, yet connections between the sites are the article’s central concern, from which an emphasis on couples and break-up narratives is revealed. Falcon’s commitment to retain the condom is attributed to its brand identity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ranked 14th on my list of the most visited gay porn Web sites that have been in operation for 10 years or more.

2. Analysis of the trend beyond the 10 most popular would be worthwhile. That the trend toward a state of condomlessness is widespread is suggested by the attentive tallying efforts of non-scholars, such as gay porn blogger Zach Sire (Citation2017).

3. That TIM came so close to qualifying for inclusion in the present study stands as further evidence for the general mainstreaming of bareback in gay porn.

6. The earliest bareback scene on Helix’s site was released April 26, 2004 and titled TJ Jordan and Mark Mathews. See https://www.helixstudios.net/video/533/tj-jordan-and-mark-mathews.html. Accessed October 17, 2017.

8. “At the time” is, of course, a gesture to the HIV preventative technologies now available, including pre-exposure prophylaxis, better known as PrEP.

10. “Serviced” scenes involve a more experienced, sometimes gay-identifying, model attending to the sexual needs of a new recruit, usually via fellatio.

19. Bareback sex resulting in ejaculation into the anus.

22. Regarding the figures Duroy presents, he cited eight AIDS-related deaths in the first 25 years of the epidemic, a period of 1984–2010. Yet a 2011 report from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for Europe and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) puts that number at 36 in the Slovak Republic alone (WHO ECDC, Citation2011). A report into the state of HIV infection and AIDS in Europe during the year 2010 noted that the numbers of newly diagnosed HIV infections per 100,000 population increased by 50% in the country since the beginning of the epidemic. Of course, these numbers are comparatively modest, as is the country’s population (5.4 million in 2010 compared with the US’s 309.3 million). In its “Key Facts on Global HIV Epidemic and Progress in 2010” report (http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/progress_report2011/global_facts/en/. Accessed October 19, 2017), the WHO also noted that while AIDS-related deaths have steadily decreased worldwide from 2.2 million in 2005 to an estimated 1.8 million in 2010, between 2001 and 2010 there had occurred an 11-fold increase in AIDS-related deaths in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (from 7,800 to 90,000).

23. On the January 2014 scene Paul and Johnny, included is the following note: “You may notice that we created a new category for content as well, as the supply of material shot in condoms has decreased in our archive, and it’s [sic] presentation on the web becomes more infrequent we decided to give it an identifier, so now we have the ‘condom archive.’” http://club.belamionline.com/entrance/Content.aspx?Id=8668. Accessed October 25, 2017.

25. Czech Hunter, which I rank as the 11th most visited gay porn site at time of writing; in fact, it would have made my final top 10 had it not been for my 10-years-in-operation requirement (the site being founded in 2011). Bareback from its inception, there is something to be said here about sites that have emerged within the last decade that were bareback from the start and have been popular (though, admittedly, this is outside the scope of the present article).

27. This is notably much different to the “open and available” (aka semi-public, such as a “porn booth store”) spaces that Morris (in Morris & Paasonen, Citation2014, p. 216) described as being central to TIM’s presentation of bareback, “in the beginning particularly.”

29. See Note 19.

33. That a connotation of “gift-giving” and “-receiving,” and alignment with the “bug-chasing” (see Grov & Parsons, Citation2006) movement—voluntarily contracting HIV—is also unavoidable here is not lost on me, further emphasizing the “stickiness” of bareback with HIV (Morris & Paasonen, Citation2014, p. 218).

34. With 3,536 likes, behind Stu, who has 3,653 likes, correct as of August 8, 2018. https://www.seancody.com/tour/models/letter/toprated/. Accessed August 8, 2018.

35. With 6,746 likes, correct as of August 8, 2018. https://www.men.com/models/popular/. Accessed August 8, 2018.

36. Sean Cody’s performer-driven DVD titles are demonstrative of its intention to encourage star-driven followings, e.g., Brandon (Citation2015), Brandon 2 (Citation2016), and Brandon 3 (Citation2017).

37. Brandon’s stardom was further evidenced in 2015 when “finally tak[ing] a dick up his ass” in Brandon Bottoms: Bareback is described in the description as a “piece of SeanCody history.” At 185,359 views, the scene ranked at time of writing as the 11th most viewed across the site (from a total of 2,436 scenes). Correct as of August 8, 2018. https://www.seancody.com/tour/movie/8471/brandon-bottoms-bareback/trailer/. Accessed August 8, 2018. However, there are also signs of a slowing in his star status, as typified by a feud between the performer and his new employer (Men) at time of writing, which seems suggestive of “the dangerous currents of the retrogressive dynamic” that many gay porn performers face after several years in the industry (Escoffier, Citation2007, p. 186).

47. See https://cockyboys.com/pages.php?id=meet-the-morecocks. Accessed October 26, 2017.

50. Although outside the scope of the present article, Cocky Boys timing the premiere of its bareback transition to coincide with Valentine’s Day, together with the “fans only” logic behind the transition, is suggestive of some associated ethical quandaries, especially given the heightened feelings of loneliness non-couples, or those still suffering from a bad break-up, often feel at this time, and the coupling media narratives that accompany the holiday (see Shelley, Citation2009).

51. Whether or not it is reasonable to expect respect from pornographers is a debate connected with the brand identities of particular studios and extant statements from certain producers on the matter (i.e., Lucas, Citation2006). Regarding brands, the demarcations between so-called gay-for-pay porn studios (i.e., Sean Cody, Corbin Fisher) and those with a more gay community focus (i.e., Falcon Studios and Cocky Boys) may result in differing priorities around respect for gay history; this is an area that warrants further research.

52. And was certainly one I preferred over other condoms-only sites such as Men at Play (menatplay.com; ranked 12th on my list of sites that have been in operation for 10 years or more), which includes a “Safe Sex” section of its Web site (menatplay.com/safe-sex) on which the “glamorized fantasy” of “these hung, muscled guys fucking a perfectly clean bottom guy” is contrasted with “the reality” of “a drunken or drug-fuelled messy encounter with an easy stranger.” To my eye, such constructions come uncomfortably close to the emergence in recent years within the gay community and HIV organizations of a “PrEP whore” discourse and the slut shaming, dirty/clean binaries that underscore it (see Spieldenner, Citation2016). This would be a worthwhile avenue for future research.

53. It is important to temper this by pointing out that while increasing, the uptake of PrEP by those MSM candidates who meet the criteria for PrEP candidacy remains low (Parsons, Rendinam, & Lassiter et al., Citation2017), especially among the young (Holloway, Dougherty, & Gildner et al., Citation2017); and also to bear in mind that a range of social, cultural, and economic barriers preventing widespread adoption remain. Treatment is expensive, for instance, and still prohibitively so for many, especially in the US (Dean, Citation2018).

54. With such expanded consideration also come questions that were outside the scope of this present article. Around potential representational harms of this trend, for instance, with sites that have distanced themselves from the gay community (e.g., gay-for-pay sites Corbin Fisher and Chaos Men, which fetishize the straight male) versus those closely aligned with the community (e.g., Falcon and Cocky Boys) and how the promotion of bareback on these sites relate with existing theories on both sides of the debate: Bersani and Phillips’s discussion of barebacking and shame (Citation2008, pp. 31–56) versus Morris’s view that “a gay man who doesn’t have a virus in his blood is no longer a complete gay man” (in Morris & Paasonen, Citation2014, p. 218), for example (see Note 50).

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