What’s utterly bizarre to me is what started this thread: bottoms who refuse to be fucked with a condom. All through the HIV times before PrEP (which I consider an absolute miracle and am so grateful for) and up to just a few years ago if there was an objection to using a rubber, it was the top fighting it. Except for the “bug hunters,” which was a psychological malfunction I’ll never understand.
There was never a question that wearing a condom changed the feeling of topping, although condoms have come a long way from my early days when a Trojan-Enz was as fancy as it got…with a good poly one these days you barely feel the difference.
But as someone who was a 50/50 vers, I know damned well that it makes zero physical difference as a bottom. It’s totally a mental thing, and in the PrEP and undetectable era (also amazing how far HIV+ management meds have finally come) the dramatic reduction (but not elimination) in barebacking risk has just been fetishized. If being a cumdump is your thing, no problem, easy skip for me, just like water sports and whatever else I don’t care for. But freaking out if someone you’ve not said that to and started an encounter with because you wanted to fuck them is just weirdly childish.
A little empathy and respect for those of us who lived through the sex is deadly ‘80s and ‘90s and self-awareness that bottoming bareback is just a preference and not some kind of moral stance worthy of a soapbox would be nice. For many of us, barebacking was an intimate thing reserved for a trusting serious relationship and wearing a condom is more comfortable for a hookup. Call that its own fetish if you want.