Note: I talk in here about HIV/AIDs as it pertains mostly to white gay men, and white straight people. There's a lot more to be said on the topic of STIs pertaining to people of colour, particularly African Americans and people in Africa itself. Rather than speak to that, I want to link to people of colour who have written on these topics and I encourage you to use these articles as a starting place, as well as linking me to more resources in the comments:

STDs: the Stakes are High for Black Women

How Black Denial is Creating an STD Epidemic

CDC: Incidence of STDs High Among African Americans

So I just read VICE's article on Treasure Island Media and their film, "Viral Loads", which eroticizes the threat of HIV transmission through the use of words like "POZ cum". I read the copy for the film, which I noted never explicitly mentions HIV ("Mansex is a virus", they say. "We shoot viral loads every time. Our jizz ain’t for making babies"), though one of the main performers, Blue Bailey, is open about his HIV+ status. The VICE article is written from the perspective of a straight man who is bewildered that anyone would make porn, bareback porn, flirting with "bug catching" fantasies. The comments are especially telling, where mostly straight men are saying "how could you possibly do something like this?!?"

Oh yeah? Is it so out there?

I doubt every one of these guys knows their herpes and HPV status. When getting an STI test you have to specifically ask for it your options to get tested. Never mind that there's not really any screening test for HPV for men as far as I know- the infection is diagnosed only by visual inspection or biopsy of genital warts, and not everyone who is a carrier has visible symptoms. And no *good* screening test exists for herpes- a doctor may take a tissue scraping or culture of blisters or early ulcers, if you have them, for examination in a laboratory. But a negative test doesn't rule out herpes as a cause for genital ulcerations. Even a blood test also may help detect a herpes infection, but results aren't always conclusive. Getting a standard panel done doesn't cover either of those.  And I want to ask- do you know all of your partners statuses? Their STI history? The history of their partners? Of course HPV and herpes aren't prevented by condom use, and some strains of HPV increase the likelihood of cervical cancer in women while men are unaffected. Never mind trichomoniasis!

Yet despite all this I've met a lot of straight men (and some women) who believe that unprotected sex just feels "better". It's more intimate, they tell me, it's sexier, it's more impulsive. I mean, their partner might become pregnant, or STIs might be exchanged, but that doesn't stop the eroticism of condomless sex. That sounds to me like knowing something is potentially dangerous, yet being turned on by it anyway. I've done it before, weighing the unlikelihood of getting pregnant while on my period with the stress of the possibility I still might and my desire to have condomless sex anyway. Are we just shocked at this when gay men do it?

This might be an unpopular opinion, but using a condom doesn't mean there's no risk in sex , or in porn. Condoms break, especially if using them for extended periods or without enough lubrication. Gay companies that only film with condoms mostly do not test models (or even ask about their HIV status at all) during the casting and hiring process. Things can go wrong. People have slipped through the cracks, as has been recently proven with multiple HIV cases within the mainstream straight porn industry. NEVER MIND that adult performers are often only DEFINITELY tested for HIV, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. You have to opt in (and pay extra) for another test panel covering hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis. I work for a company where I have the power to decide what sort of sex acts I want to do and what safer sex precautions to use- I'd like to see condoms be an encouraged, unpenalized choice, rather than forced to be used or not used.

Then there's the question of who performs in this sort of porn, and who buys it. That doesn't surprise me in any way, that there's a market. If anything this belief that it's weird to eroticize things that are dangerous is what's strange to me. Have most people not read books of sexual fantasies, like "Women on Top"? We eroticize a lot of potentially dangerous things, including things we may never want to do ourselves- gangbangs, kinky sex, one night stands, rape fantasies, bareback sex itself (like most heterosexual porn is). I'm turned on by the idea of creampies, for fuck's sake! It's not exactly a "safe" fantasy, and it's certainly not a rare one. And it's not a financially rewarded one, either- bareback gay porn either pays equal to or less than condom-using porn, and is usually not populated by porn performers, but people living out their fantasy. Says Paul Morris of Treasure Island Media:

When people come to me, we have one of the most extensive interview processes of any company in porn. We get to know not just what their health status is—whatever “health” means—but we find out who they are. We talk with them about what books they’re reading. “Why are you coming to do porn?” We encourage people not to do it if there’s the slightest indication this isn’t something they really want or should do. Then they tell us everything. We put them into situations they want to be put into. Everyone who’s in one of our pieces is doing exactly what they most want to be doing.

Am I crazy for thinking that sounds like a potentially responsible and ethical way to create porn? Something mainstream companies could learn from?

It's not just about getting off, either. "While I know not all HIV-positive people like or approve of bareback porn, there are some for whom it is the only instance of media, gay or otherwise, portraying HIV-positive guys as not depressed or dying," points out Owen Hawk, HIV+ porn performer. "I can’t think of any media realm other than bareback porn where HIV-positive men are considered sexy, strong, powerful, and active. For this audience, the message that bareback porn sends is an empowering one."

I think that's a point worth making. In my bouts of slutty behaviour, I've had a lot of sex with a lot of people. I personally get tested every 6-9 months, depending on how much I'm hooking up. I've been vaccinated against HPV while I was in the United Kingdom, and I get my blood tested for herpes when I go. I've had maybe 5 people tell me that they have one of these two STIs, considered so common by the CDC that clinics will often dissuade you from being tested as they assume you already have it. Statistically, that's pretty unlikely that only those 5 carried herpes or HPV. Yet the people who told me were terrified of being honest about it, because they were afraid I'd recoil in horror. Instead, we adjusted some of our safer sex practices and had a great time. As long as we create this idea that people with STIs are terrifying untouchables who shouldn't be sexual, we're creating a culture of silence and shame that will perpetuate the problem.

As a culture, we used to live in terror of syphilis, because it rotted people's faces and drove them into madness. We didn't understand it, so we labeled it a sin disease, punishment for having sex. Some doctors refused to treat it because it was considered divine retribution. We even named it the "______ pox/disease", with the blank being filled with whomever our enemy was so we could blame them for it:

Syphilis had a variety of names, usually people naming it after an enemy or a country they thought responsible for it.  The French called it the ‘Neapolitan disease’, the ‘disease of Naples’  or the ‘Spanish disease’, and later grande verole or grosse verole, the ‘ great pox’, the English and Italians called it the ‘French disease’, the ‘Gallic disease’, the ‘morbus Gallicus’, or the ‘French pox’, the Germans called it the ‘French evil’, the Scottish called it the ‘grandgore‘, the Russians called it the ‘Polish disease’, the Polish and the Persians called it the ‘Turkish disease’, the Turkish called it the ‘Christian disease’, the Tahitians called it the ‘British disease’, in India it was called the ‘Portuguese disease’, in Japan it was called the ‘Chinese pox’, and there are some references to it being called the ‘Persian fire’.

Now syphilis is curable with an over the counter drug (as long as you have access to it, and testing). We don't live in terror of getting syphilis anymore as a society, though rates are rising and the CDC is officially recommending that people have monogamous relationships , specifically with STI negative partners. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens with HIV.

If people are making decisions based on informed consent I don't see that trying to forbid or shame them is the way forward. Do I think an HIV+ performer can decide that he's comfortable having cum dumped in his ass? Yeah, I do. I think it's infantilizing to say he can't make that choice, especially when everyone on set is aware of his status.

And I think the way we try to teach people about STIs, through terror, suggesting people with HIV are like giant fucking scorpions, is doing far more to hurt STI prevention than some bareback porn.