Should Treasure Island Media Be Shut Down?

[JoshChgo]

Buh bye.....

 

"They say hard work never hurt anyone, but I say why take any chances"...Ronald Reagan

[+ deej]

I'm certain your confusion resides within your own flame of superiority.

 

My only regret here is that I wasted limited free time on you.

 

Thank you for playing.

[Guest]

So every person who eats a Big Mac should pay, I hope you lead a perfect life: you must be very fit with 3-4% body fat right? You ever drink alcohol? I'm sure not. Must be hard to work with all the exercise to keep yourself so fit so you are never a burden for your actions.

 

Yes, you have a moral view of everyone who doesn't live the "clean life" you preach and clearly follow and want the others who don't share your view to pay.

 

I have similar views: I would like to stop paying taxes so all the takers in the ghetto who make poor decisions about education don't buy their twinkies with my hard earned cash.

 

Just curious, what's your BMI? What's your cholesterol? Just want to see if you are doing things I don't approve of and can judge about you because you will be a burden on me, the taxpayer.

 

For what it's worth, I'm quite fit, my cholesterol is great, and one of the researchers in a longitudinal medical study I've been in for some 30 years said I had the best blood pressure among the 1500 members of the group (without medication, mind you). Rarely do I exercise fewer than 2000 calories per week. But I never said I never dabble in unhealthful behaviors, nor that I shouldn't contribute my fair share. Yes, I do enjoy wine with dinner, and I probably have about 6 non-diet sodas in any given year. I certainly believe I should pay into any tax for unhealthful behaviors to the extent that I engage in them. I don't know what the calculations are, but 2 cents per ounce of sugary drinks may be somewhere in the right ball-park. So $1.44 per year for me, and 60 cents a day for the guy who drinks a 7-11 Big Gulp each day.

[instudiocity]

Isn't there by now a more culturally advanced and historically mature way of personally dismissing, or removing ones-self or at least avoiding all together a difficult and challenging life, and social issue, which touches us all, other than a call to arms for pizza?

 

When you attempt to reduce the conversation to those who would hopefully benefit from it, by ordering pizza, you become exactly what your own personal history once inflicted upon you, then rose you up to fight for you, and continues to fight - for YOU - and for your path-way to a disease free life. You reward that with "toppings"

 

And that's a disgrace upon all of you to live with for all of your days ahead of you.

Actually, we who ordered pizza were merely wanting nourishment while reading the flaming war that was about to arise on this thread. Thanks be to Sir Deej for turning up the flames for faster cooked pizza, and all the while you sir arise to sanctimonious levels of acrimony with your intolerant stances!

[sfguy]

Men don't bareback because they saw it in porn. If anything, it works the other way around. Men watch bareback porn because they bareback or have an interest in bareback (whether as a fantasy or the desire to actually do it). If you're going to make the argument that porn companies should be required to use condoms, arguing that bareback porn is responsible for increasing HIV rates is a very weak argument. Gay men are not stupid. We know how to make personal decisions about our own health. And just in case you didn't know barebacking itself doesn't give you HIV. Yes, it greatly increases the risk. But gay men know that and can make decisions with the sexual partners regarding condom use. Sometimes gay men make poor decisions, but that has nothing to do with porn.

 

Frankly, I think Treasure Island Media is the only responsible bareback studio. TIM's philosophy is "If you bareback, you're putting yourself at risk. Be prepared to accept what may come." That's the truth, and that's realistic. It's not the "We test all of our actors with the best tests before shoots" farce. Regular testing isn't going to prevent HIV. The goal of regular testing is to detect it early enough to limit exposure to others, but testing itself does not and cannot prevent HIV.

 

If porn studios have a role to play in HIV prevention, it's the condom studios that must lead the way. In real life, condoms don't just magically appear on your dick. But in porn, that happens all the time. A number of studios do make a point to show the men stop to get a condom and put it on. I've seen some where one of the guys says, "Let's get a condom." We need more of that.

 

HIV counselors say that some of the reasons they hear most often for not using a condom (other than how it feels) are "It interrupts the flow of everything and kills the moment," and "I didn't know how to ask or bring it up." A lot of men simply do not know how to ask for a condom or are afraid of what their sexual partner will think of them if they ask for one. We need examples of positive condom use (as in properly putting one on and showing how pausing to grab a condom doesn't kill the moment) and models on how to negotiate safe sex. It's one thing to sit in a testing room and discuss these issues with an HIV counselor. It's another for men to actually see how it plays out. We need to make the behaviors we want to encourage more real and more tangible.

 

Trying to end barebacking simply will not happen. Barebacking will always exist, especially since most men, even safer sex advocates, would like to bareback once they are in a long term monogamous relationship. Discouraging behaviors through moral admonitions never works. And we can't just keep repeating, "Use a condom, use a condom, use a condom." That simply is not working. We need to focus on identifying and addressing the barriers to condom use.

[Steven_Draker]

Men don't bareback because they saw it in porn.

 

It's more complicated than that !

 

According to the US magazine The Advocate, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in California is planning on petitioning for a law to require condoms being used in adult movies. The arguments that the AHF uses are that workers in the adult industry should be protected, which is of course a very valid point. Another point though is absent from the statement, and that is the question whether or not what is happening in adult movies may influence perceptions of “normality”, and “what is expected”, which is part of an ongoing research project we are working on. Our research is grounded in the Theory of Reasoned Action/Theory of Planned Behaviour (see image below).

 

In other words, what we are interested in is, if people do form their views of what is expected and “normal” from media consumption, even if this is not (usually) a major plot line (as using a condom or not using a condom would be) – and how that then in turn does (or does not) influence their intentions and potentially behaviours, especially behaviours that are often very private and for which there are only limited other experiences apart from media and own experiences. This is, of course, ultimately leading us to ask if and how this can be used for social marketing purposes. In other words, while the original AHF petition maybe mostly about workers in the adult industry, it may be, that if such a ban comes into force, and if the TRA/TPB model guides us in the right way, such a ban on condomless sex on screen may have also a prevention effect in the much wider public that consumes adult movies.

 

http://dahl.at/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/tpb.jpg

 

source: http://dahl.at/wordpress/2009/12/21/california-condoms/

[Michael Wayne]

an excellent thread indeed. I will NOT give my opinion on the issue but I will say that I must lean on the side of , "FREEDOM." I think most of us would agree that abortion (for example) is a bad thing....certainly for the fetus. In fact most stauch pro choice people I know are ANTI ABORTION however they would DIE for a womans riight to choose. Similar situation here. Years ago when I had dozens of offers to do porn from nearly all the studios I went on set. To my abject horror I found the sets riddled with cocaine and every other illegal drug you can think of. The boys could not get hard and I was being hired because I was clean and could always get and stay hard. But I just could not take it! Suicide or watching suicide is not for me! That is why I became an escort instead of a porn star. Barebacking is todays cocaine! I can report to yall from the FRONT LINES of the biz that among clients under 35 that NONE of them wants me to use a condom! This is the reality. I have to INSIST and sometimes they CANCEL on me because of it. Yes, we are on the verge of a new epidemic so JOSH I appreciate your stand. However if we follow your lead then we certainly must return to prohibition and ban all smoking and french fries for as bad as HIV is it pales in comparioson to the evils of alcohol, smoking and my belovede FRIED CHICKEN!!!! So forget the pizza.... lets all go down to nawlins and meet at Lil' Dizzys for some southern fried chicken!! http://www.rentboy.com/magicmikey

[Steven_Draker]

I promise you the article below provides a very interesting read on the subject ...

 

Pros and Condoms: S.F. Emphasizes HIV Treatment, but a New Generation Advocates Bareback Sex

 

SAN FRANCISCO WANTS TO GET RID OF HIV/AIDS BUT TIPTOES AROUNDS RISKY BAREBACK SEX

 

 

Everything had to come off when Claude Wynne arrived at the Frisky SF party in the loft above the Mr. S Leather sex shop. This was a naked dance party — sex was a given.

 

Sex parties appeal to Wynne. Here, it doesn't matter that he's 55, on the pudgy side, or in an open relationship with his husband. The men here aren't really looking for a love connection.

 

Wynne paid $25 at the door and checked in his clothes. Signs and a presentation by the San Francisco Stop AIDS Project reminded participants to have safe sex. Founded in 1984, the Stop AIDS Project was a response to the toll that the human immunodeficiency virus and its often fatal counterpart, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, had taken on San Francisco.

 

Wynne recalls his shock at seeing how many partygoers were forgoing the free condoms from Stop AIDS. He spotted the DJ barebacking — a term coined by the gay community as a sexy alternative to "unprotected sex." Now they see it as a word outsiders use to stigmatize them.

 

But barebacking and unprotected sex are not the same, according to experts who see barebacking as a separate "phenomenon" of the late 1990s. More men began consciously rejecting condoms, while simultaneously, medical breakthroughs were allowing people with HIV to live longer without getting AIDS. But left unchecked, AIDS weakens the immune system, inviting other deadly diseases that may not develop for years later. Moreover, treatments may have side effects, and they don't work for everyone. "It may not be a death sentence, but it's still a life sentence," Wynne says.

 

Hence, one definition of barebacking: intentional, unprotected anal sex, while accepting or seeking the risks.

 

In recent years, the risky business of barebacking has found a home in sex clubs that rent out their spaces to private parties for the night. Often, these third-party organizers, including bareback porn companies, screen attendees through RSVPs and membership fees.

 

The club-goers like this selectivity. They have a good idea of whom they will be able to hook up with, especially if the party was organized by a dating site they belong to.

 

The parties share some features: consistently bad techno music; furniture such as beds, couches, and slings; low lighting; so-called glory holes; and wall-to-wall sex. Whereas the San Francisco Department of Public Health asks that sex club operators monitor for safe sex at their events, anything goes at the private parties.

 

Until that night in May 2010, Wynne had not seen so much unprotected sex in a venue since the 1980s, when the city's bathhouses were considered a breeding zone for HIV. Wynne had campaigned for the bathhouses to require patrons to wear condoms, so when he caught wind of an upcoming party specifically for bareback enthusiasts, he began writing impassioned e-mails to the Health Department. He wanted to know: Were officials aware that bareback porn companies were inviting people at the Folsom Street Fair — San Francisco's annual leather and BDSM extravaganza — to attend their parties afterward? If so, why wasn't anything being done about events that condone, even sanction, unprotected sex? To Wynne, public sex was a privilege, not a right, and its safety should be regulated by the city as such. He wasn't asking to end the parties. Just for safe sex.

 

Wynne wondered how Folsom's beneficiaries, HIV/AIDS organizations, could feel comfortable sharing the event with bareback porn companies selling products and promoting barebacking parties?

 

Finally, this September, he received a promising if vague reply from Dr. Grant Colfax, the director of SFDPH's HIV Prevention Section. "The balance between the duty to inform and protect and the rights of informed individuals to take risks is particularly dynamic. You raise a number of specific issues we are in the process of clarifying and will share with you soon," Colfax wrote.

 

Historically, SFDPH has hesitated to take a firm stance against unprotected sex as it relates to the spread of HIV/AIDS, despite its being a main driver of the disease. At the same time, the department is overhauling its approach to HIV/AIDS, hoping to cut new HIV infection rates by half within five years.

 

If the city government were to get tough on public barebacking — abetted as it is by bareback porn, the Internet, and passive HIV/AIDS organizations — it would not be the first time the city played Father Knows Best. Here in San Francisco, toys with McDonald's Happy Meals, sweetened beverages on city property, and cigarettes at pharmacies have all been banned in the name of health. But sex is sticky, and regulating how people have it, even more so.

 

At the Folsom Street Fair during the last Sunday of September, debauchery is celebrated and on full display. Despite the gloomy weather, thousands have turned up wearing nothing but leather harnesses across their chests or lower extremities.

 

Mario Mastrosimone and Scott Morris have set up shop at adjoining tables in a prime spot near the entrance. Mastrosimone founded BarebackRT.com (RT for Real Time Sex), a website for men to facilitate hookups with each other. He is lanky and reserved compared to Morris, the president of San Francisco porn studio Factory Video Productions, whose imposing build and crew cut are offset by a gregarious personality. Young men with barely a hint of peach fuzz, called "twinks" in the porn industry, run up and embrace Morris. "I just did a video," one gushes. Later in the evening, BarebackRT and Factory Video subsidiary CumHunt.com will host CumUnion, the party that riled Wynne up enough to contact the Health Department.

 

Mastrosimone rattles off the appeals of bareback: It feels better. Some feel more of an emotional connection. And it's a little bit taboo.

 

Experts say it is hard to pinpoint why individuals choose to bareback. A combination of the availability of treatment since the 1990s, safe-sex fatigue, increased substance abuse, and more complex decision-making are considered primary factors in its popularity. Also, Internet technology has allowed people prone to riskier behavior to meet their matches in a matter of minutes.

 

In fact, according to a study co-authored by SFDPH's Colfax in 2002, 14 percent of surveyed men said they barebacked with someone other than a primary partner — and that's before sites like BarebackRT took off.

 

Morris readily acknowledges that working in the bareback industry puts him in the line of fire between privacy advocates and HIV/AIDS prevention activists, including the government. "The government also says we can't get married," he says.

 

Mastrosimone, who is known to the bareback community mostly by his nickname, "PigMaster," met Morris in 2008 at Chicago's International Mr. Leather event. They immediately forged a friendship. Though Mastrosimone is based in Tuscon, he and Morris have teamed up to make videos and throw monthly CumUnion parties in cities such as Palm Springs, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa.

 

Despite barebacking's promiscuous, irreverent reputation, Mastrosimone and Morris suggest that what they do does not aid or promote the spread of HIV, but helps make the bareback lifestyle safer.

 

Mastrosimone says he is "totally anti-drugs," and will kick people out of his parties who appear to be under the influence. Moreover, members of his site can disclose their HIV status on their profiles. Mastrosimone says this feature sets his site apart in two ways: People with HIV don't feel they need to hide it, and it helps those who wish to serosort — choosing sex partners who have the same HIV status as they do. It is widely believed among the barebacking community that HIV-positive men who have sex only with each other are not doing further damage. But researchers say there is a possibility — albeit a small one — of incurring different, untreatable strains of the disease.

 

Morris reveals an interesting paradox: "I wear condoms because I'm negative. I also make barebacking movies." Factory Video originally shot porn with condoms, but then branched out to include bareback.

 

Morris says he sees more used condoms at his CumUnion event than at parties where condom use is enforced, citing a reverse-psychology effect: By making condoms available without requiring them, people become more open to using them because it's entirely their choice.

 

Whether or not that is true, the year after their meeting, Mastrosimone and Morris would not be welcomed back to Chicago's Mr. Leather. The event's organizers released a statement explaining that HIV/AIDS had not been cured, and even at a celebration of sexual diversity, it would be irresponsible not to ban bareback porn.

 

Demetri Moshoyannis, the executive director of Folsom Street Events, the nonprofit that hosts Folsom Street Fair, says that is not how San Francisco operates. "We feel that the fair is a reflection of the community. For better or for worse, we are not here to judge," he says. "The way we address these things is through a community dialogue. We don't address it by saying this group of people is no longer allowed to be part of the community."

[Steven_Draker]

One group, however, was noticeably absent from the Folsom festivities: Treasure Island Media, San Francisco's self-proclaimed first bareback porn company, founded in 1998. Gay porn without condoms existed before HIV, but TIM maintains it was first in the world to go sans condom post-HIV. It was banned from the fair because it allowed sex at its booth. Conveniently headquartered close by, TIM posted signs this year daring fairgoers to visit: "Banned. Come See Why." Those who did were treated to live sex shows.

 

TIM seems to revel in its risqué reputation; the company is upfront about not testing its actors for HIV, and how sex has broken out at its meet-and-greets in bars. One press release boasts of the company's hiring an HIV-positive and HIV-negative couple.

 

David Downs, who distributes videos for TIM, says its videos are mainstream, and more popular than any other genre of porn on sites such as the Adult Entertainment Broadcasting Network. "Our goal is to produce authentic images of men having sex. Ultimately we're not going to sacrifice the merit of our art to satisfy a minority's viewpoint on bareback."

 

Despite its devil-may-care attitude, TIM is forthcoming about its support for HIV/AIDS organizations that promote protected sex.

 

"We don't want to paint a picture that we don't support HIV/AIDS organizations. We're a part of this community," Downs says.

 

Mastrosimone says he also has contributed more than $100,000 to HIV/AIDS nonprofits through a private foundation he created, because he believes they will not accept the money if they know it is connected to barebacking. (For that reason, he asked that the name of his foundation remain confidential.)

 

Morris too declined to say whom Factory Video gives to, although he says the organizations ask him for donations. Often he donates bareback DVDs for HIV/AIDS charities to raffle off at their fundraisers, which prove to be a big hit. "More people want to watch barebacking," he says. "It's all about the money [for the organizations]."

 

According to Downs, HIV/AIDS organizations are not trying to hide the fact that they request and receive donations. The majority of organizations Downs mentioned and SF Weekly contacted, however, did not respond to interview requests.

 

Most of the HIV/AIDS organizations given an opportunity to confront barebacking head-on have not done so, even when Folsom's Moshoyannis says he has intentionally placed bareback companies next to HIV/AIDS organizations to spark a dialogue. The money the event raises is awarded to several HIV/AIDS nonprofits of Folsom Street Events' choosing. Last year, the funds totaled $320,000. This year's recipients overwhelming said it's not their place to protest the presence of exhibitors whose messages conflict with their own, and stress that money from barebacking has not influenced their position. Regulating barebacking encroaches on privacy too much, they say; prevention education and incentives are the best tools.

 

HIV/AIDS activists in the city also say it is unclear how much bareback porn affects its viewers. Some argue that people are smart enough to keep fantasy and reality separate. But others contend that it has played a direct role in how people choose to have sex.

 

On a recent sunny day in the Castro, Billy Twee strolls into Superstar Satellite Video, past the new Hollywood releases and into a back room, where the bareback porn selection is vast: videos like Oliver Twink, G.I. JIZZ, and the occasional sequel, Double Fuck My Ass 2.

 

Twee is an avid porn reviewer and barebacker. Sparing no detail, he writes about it on his blog Bareback Pozboi: A Documentary ("Poz" is slang for HIV-positive). His first post says his name is William Harry. From there, as far as the blogosphere is concerned, he is Billy Twee. He is also vague about his age, only offering that he is "not 21, not 22, and older than 45" — a thinning head of hair covered by a faded baseball cap tips the scale toward 50 or so.

 

Even before sites like Mastrosimone's BarebackRT made it easier for him to find people nearby to hook up with, Twee always had a lot of sex partners. But he insists he practiced safe sex until after he tested positive in 1995. What followed was years of abstinence, attending bareback parties in Palm Springs hotels to watch but never participate. One day in 2000, it dawned on him that the men he was living vicariously through weren't getting any sicker. He went bareback and never looked back.

 

"I'm older than most of these guys now, so I'm trying to make every day count. When I resumed my sex life, it was fabulous. I haven't stopped," Twee says.

 

Nor has he stopped writing about it. His raunchy tales are not for the faint of heart, but in person, he speaks much more seriously about the realities he faces. "No one really knows how long the medication is going to be good for. I know most of us have our livers checked on a regular basis, because that's the greatest danger."

 

That is why he is taken aback by the amount of young people he sees entering the porn business and joining bareback sites.

 

"The amount of bareback porn has quadrupled in the last couple of years, and most of it is focused on really young guys, twinks, between 18 and 22," he says. "It blows my mind. These kids aren't even scared. They didn't live through the era of AIDS. You want to be on medication for 40, 50 years? Is that what you want?"

 

Twee surmises that the young men are looking to be part of a subculture within the gay community where they too can get invited to people's homes for barepacking parties, where methamphetamine use is "de rigueur."

 

Yet despite the surge of younger men, Twee says that when the action is moved offline, there isn't so much talk about one's status; it's assumed men at parties are HIV-positive, because common sense says no one is trying to get HIV, or is oblivious to the risks of unprotected sex. Studies show that a majority of barebackers identify as HIV-positive. At the same time, Twee says he has seen more young people at barebacking parties in the last year than ever before. But he says he can't worry during every encounter whether he is exposing someone to HIV. And sexually transmitted diseases "go with the territory."

 

Jim Illig, the previous director of the SF Health Commission and currently director of government relations for the nonprofit Project Open Hand, says he too worries that teenagers and twentysomethings aren't paying HIV enough heed. "It's shocking that people aren't taking this seriously. They grew up after the introduction of the antiretroviral [drugs]," he says. "But this is a serious disease. It's not something you want to catch. In the younger population, there are higher infection rates." Experts cite increasing HIV rates particularly among young black men who have sex with men.

 

Joseph Butler, 23, of Oakland, validates those concerns. He began barebacking at age 16 after he was inspired by a porn movie. He says he has considered intentionally getting HIV, a case of what researchers call the rare "bug-chaser." It would make him feel unique and "different." Something to set him apart, he says. When a friend and "secret lover" in his early 20s died from AIDS, Butler expressed regret that he couldn't share the experience. Currently, he is HIV-negative. He uses BarebackRT and hosts his own website to meet partners.

 

"If I got HIV, I would accept it, and just move on with my life," he says. "I would look for people who have it as well, and get in that community."

 

Though Butler is not representative of his generation, his lifestyle shows that barebacking is not exclusive to men who are avoiding transmitting or receiving the disease by practicing risk-reduction strategies.

 

Whether it's the city's responsibility to step in is a different question — something it has grappled with at length during the last 30 years.

 

Back when little was known about HIV/AIDS, gay men congregated at bathhouses for anonymous sex. As awareness of the disease increased in the early 1980s, and the public learned that it was mostly concentrated among the gay population and spread through sex, the bathhouses became an obvious target for debate.

 

Ultimately it was San Francisco Public Health Director Dr. Mervyn Silverman's decision to keep the bathhouses open or shut them down. He waffled for more than a year. "By the thousands, gay men continued to go to the baths, and by the thousands, they would later die," wrote Randy Shilts in his 1987 novel And the Band Played On.

 

Dr. Silverman's main concern was not putting the Health Department and gay community at odds. He wanted consensus.

 

Those who wanted the bathhouses closed said it was a no-brainer: If gay men were having high-risk sex in bathhouses, then bathhouses presented a public health hazard that Dr. Silverman should use his authority to close.

 

Bathhouse advocates took offense to the department sticking its nose in their business. The bathhouses symbolized the sexual freedom and civil liberties that men gained in San Francisco.

 

Finally, toward the end of 1984, after attempts to post safe sex education messages in the bathhouses failed, Silverman ordered their immediate closure. A court countered that they could stay open, but would have to follow regulations that included monitoring for and expelling people having unprotected sex, and eliminating private rooms with locked doors. Between HIV/AIDS and the new rules, the bathhouses swiftly lost their appeal and went out of business. Silverman resigned. Attempting to regulate gay sex was shaping up to be the stuff of political suicide: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Steven_Draker]

More sex clubs followed the bathhouses in the mid-1980s. They met considerably less resistance. In 1990, a group of concerned individuals formed the Coalition for Healthy Sex to draft a set of minimum standards for sex clubs and parties. The hope was that the guidelines would be made law, when and if the sex clubs were required to have special business licenses. The rules ranged from general to specific: condoms at all times; frequent monitoring; no locked rooms; and no shared use of sex toys, to name a few.

 

In 1996, a proposal to license sex clubs flopped — there simply wasn't enough political support. Several members of the Coalition withdrew their endorsement. SFDPH adopted the standards anyway, but only as voluntary guidelines. While the department still attempts to check that they are followed, there is no penalty for a breach.

 

Today, Wynne says he feels alone in his efforts to call the department on its lack of firm policy. Gone are the days when a man punched him in the face for suggesting the bathhouses remain open as long as condoms were required. His attacker had just lost a friend to AIDS. Wynne could have done without the assault, but says he wishes more people were passionate about the issue — or at least talking.

 

With San Francisco upending its approach to eliminating HIV/AIDS, that might happen sooner than he thinks.

 

A week after the Folsom Street Fair, the national Road to AIDS 2012 town hall meeting made its first stop in San Francisco on its way across the country. The issues discussed here at City Hall would inform what the global HIV/AIDS community will talk about in July 2012, when the U.S. hosts the International AIDS Conference for the first time since 1990.

 

The Bay Area panelists, including Dr. Colfax, began with one of the big talking points: 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of the first reported HIV cases in the U.S., and while more people are surviving with the illness, there are still thousands of newly infected people every year.

 

This reminder, coupled with the country's first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy from the Obama administration, signals a renewed determination to stamp out the epidemic. Released in 2010, Obama's strategy first acknowledges that U.S. citizens don't regard HIV/AIDS with the same urgency as before, and examines how traditional prevention approaches have grown stale. "We must also move away from thinking that one approach to HIV prevention will work, whether it is condoms, pills or information," it says.

 

San Francisco released its own ambitious plan along the same lines: reduce all new HIV infection rates, and new infections among men who have sex with men, by 50 percent by 2015. With funding cuts on the way, the city is forced to zero in on which methods yield the best results and are most cost-effective.

 

As a result, the new local strategy calls for more emphasis on testing and treating people, just as the national strategy recommends. The city is attempting to test thousands more people each year; knowing their HIV status decreases the likelihood that they will inadvertently transmit the disease. According to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, in 2008, 23 percent of men who have sex with men in San Francisco had HIV, and 19 percent of those infected did not know they had the disease.

 

This approach, "Prevention with Positives," involves identifying who is HIV-positive faster, and then treating and linking them to continued care quicker. Treating people sooner and lowering their viral load — the amount of disease in the blood — makes it less likely HIV will spread, even during unprotected sex.

 

The department is also in talks to begin piloting a pill called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) that HIV-negative men would take daily as another form of protection against the disease. Because condoms serve the same purpose, this indicates that men could respond better to some prevention strategies than others. As part of this rollout, the city would first give pills to the men most susceptible to HIV, which include men who have multiple male sex partners or a primary partner who is HIV-positive.

 

The strategy came to a head on Sept. 1, just weeks prior to the town hall meeting, when SFDPH's new funding contracts for community-based HIV/AIDS organizations went into effect. It was evident from the allocation of the available $7 million that SFDPH was prioritizing testing and treating over risk-reduction programs.

 

Several organizations were left with little choice but to scale back their prevention programs. The Stop AIDS Project, for example, announced at the end of October it was merging with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Up until that point, Kyriell Noon, the Stop AIDS Project's executive director, said that the organization had halted in 2011 its visits to sex clubs to give presentations and provide condoms.

 

Experts around the country largely herald SFDPH for leading the pack in HIV/AIDS research and treatment, though they caution the city not to lose sight of traditional behavioral models of prevention that help the uninfected change and avoid risky behaviors, and keep the infected from abandoning their treatments and jeopardizing the health of others.

 

It is curious then that the department says it is revisiting the issue of sex clubs at a time when it is shifting its focus toward more tests, treatment, and care, and when funding has prevented organizations from doing their usual outreach in sex clubs.

 

The Department of Public Health began formal, internal discussions about the sex clubs and private parties during the second week of November. The STD Prevention and Control unit oversees most of the department's outreach in sex clubs, from checking to see if its guidelines are voluntarily followed, to offering on-site HIV and STD screenings (as of September). Director Dr. Susan Philip says the city has a good relationship with the clubs, but that it is difficult to reach out to the private parties, since they are not permanent fixtures, and because the clubs are not required to regulate or report their activity.

 

If the city were to try to extend its voluntary sex club standards to the private parties, it would likely be futile, especially at parties people attend to bareback.

 

Gehno Sanchez, the man behind some of TIM's press releases, and organizer of the sex party SF Cockpit, says as much. He has worked with the department to arrange HIV and STD tests for Cockpit members, and says he too is concerned about the ambivalence he sees in the younger generation to finding out their HIV status. Sanchez says he is all for providing resources to encourage safe sex. He is even changing his party from a one-size-fits-all format to separate parties for people of different statuses. But he says he draws the line at telling people to wear condoms, if that ends up being what SFDPH wants.

 

"If I started monitoring people, they would hide," Sanchez says. "I want people to monitor themselves."

 

Philip declined to offer any fact-based or anecdotal information to suggest the department believes barebacking at sex clubs or private parties is increasing or that it is a setback to its new HIV strategy. Rather, she says the department's discussions were prompted by community complaints.

 

"Any decision we make ... we would want to make sure it actually promotes public health, instead of decreasing privacy and people's ability to determine their own levels of risk," she says, singing a familiar tune.

 

Interestingly, the biggest setback to the bareback movement has come not from SFDPH or HIV/AIDS organizations, but from the state's Division of Occupational Health and Safety. Cal/OSHA's rule prohibiting the spread of blood-borne pathogens in the workplace, including through semen, has caused TIM and BarebackRT to take their filming out of state rather than put on condoms.

 

"From what I understood, they had already fined Treasure Island, and we were just like, 'Yeah, that's not going to work,'"Mastrosimone says.

 

Meanwhile, SFDPH continues to deliberate doing anything more than the status quo. Philip says a decision will only come after heavy community input.

 

The department can count on at least one person to participate.

 

After Wynne checked in his clothes at the CumUnion party, a man approached him. He wanted to have intercourse. But Wynne hesitated, and bargained for other sexual activities. He wants to stay HIV-negative.

 

Wynne acknowledges that continuing to go to bareback parties doesn't send the strongest message of opposition; in fact, it borders on hypocrisy. Temptation has gotten the best of him before; he has had unprotected anal intercourse, but has never been on the receiving end, which reduces his odds of infection. Still, it is a constant battle.

 

"In a way, I'm asking the government to protect me from myself," he says.

 

source: http://www.sfweekly.com/2011-11-09/news/hiv-aids-porn-barebacking-sex-parties-gay-culture-taylor-friedman/

[Phil_musc]

That last line is telling, I think.

[sfguy]

The arguments that the AHF uses are that workers in the adult industry should be protected, which is of course a very valid point.[/u]

I agree. This is a valid point, but it wasn't something the original poster mentioned so I didn't bring it up. He seemed to base his argument on the influence it has on the younger generation.

 

What I mean by "Men don't bareback because they saw it in porn" is that barebacking is the (can't quite find the right word here) "natural"/"default" way of fucking. Safe sex on the other hand is something that has to be taught. If someone is never told about barebacking or safe sex, they'll bareback, even thought they aren't aware of it as a concept. We aren't born with condoms on or with the idea of even doing so. Barebacking isn't a learned behavior so you can't really eliminate it by pretending it doesn't exist. So men aren't learning to bareback from porn. Bareback porn isn't creating anything new. Barebacking always existed.

 

I agree that it is more complicated than simply men don't mimic what they see in porn. Media certainly plays a role in shaping our perceptions of normal and socially acceptable behavior. But I think images of men using condoms and how men use condoms would play a larger role in shaping those perceptions than images of barebacking because condom use is the behavior that needs to be taught.

 

I think we need to also be careful about how we promote condom use and how we discourage barebacking. Sometimes our best intentions have the opposite effect. For example, in many effectiveness studies, students who received drug prevention education from D.A.R.E., with it's famous "Just Say No" slogan, actually ended up using drugs at higher rates than students who did not go through D.A.R.E.'s program. (In other studies, the was no effect at all). Very strong anti- messages tend to make the very thing they are against seem more transgressive, and thus more appealing, to some.

 

Additionally, there has always been a political element to sex in the gay community. In the early 80s, the fierce resistance to shutting down the bathhouses was motivated in part by identity politics (and greed and not fully knowing how AIDS spread). Sexual liberation and gay liberation went hand and hand. Many gay men saw attempts to get gay men to be less promiscuous as anti-gay attacks. They spend their whole lives being told that being gay was bad and how they loved was bad, and for them, sex had become a symbol of their freedom from that. Being told not to go to the baths and to use condoms and sleep with less men was viewed as once again being told how they are supposed to love. I think that mindset persists, and men, especially younger men, resent being told that you have to always use a condom and if you don't, then you are bad and HIV is all your fault. The stridency of some safe sex advocates is repelling men away from all safe sex messages.

 

There's a balance that we need to strike, and I think we are currently missing by a large margin.

[Steven_Draker]

What I mean by "Men don't bareback because they saw it in porn" is that barebacking is the (can't quite find the right word here) "natural"/"default" way of fucking. Safe sex on the other hand is something that has to be taught. If someone is never told about barebacking or safe sex, they'll bareback, even thought they aren't aware of it as a concept. We aren't born with condoms on or with the idea of even doing so. Barebacking isn't a learned behavior so you can't really eliminate it by pretending it doesn't exist. So men aren't learning to bareback from porn. Bareback porn isn't creating anything new. Barebacking always existed.

 

As pointed out in the article above "barebacking and unprotected sex are not the same, according to experts who see barebacking as a separate "phenomenon" of the late 1990s" ... namely "intentional, unprotected anal sex, while accepting or seeking the risks"

 

 

barebacking is the "natural"/"default" way of fucking.

I believe this is a personal opinion and not the universal truth. I think more of a generational difference. Myself and folks from my generation, didn't live in pre-AIDS era. I was a young teenager when I first heard of HIV and all my sexual relations were protected until I was in my late 20's and had my first monogamous and exclusive relationship. For me the only way (the "default" way, as you say) was protected with condoms.

 

Actually the AIDS campaign in the 80' had such a strong impact on me that I was absolutely put off by having unprotected sex (even with my partner). Note, I didn't know anything else than protected sex at that time. The campaign certainly did work for me.

 

Later we saw the AIDS campaign showed its own limits. Today, thinking about younger generations, we can draw one conclusion from all this, which is that we cannot let our guard down.

 

The Revolution starts at home.