A Bareback Topic Worth Considering...

[LavenderLounge]

I feel the most important part of harm reduction is sero-sorting (poz with poz, neg with neg), and you need testing in order to do the sorting properly.

[gaybucks_chip]

Chaz, I completely agree with you. For the studios willing to handle the testing in-house, as you said, there are a number of test kits available for self-administered tests with 20 minute results. For the studios not willing to handle it themselves, Labcorp has draw locations pretty much all over the US, so regardless of how far in the sticks you are, there is probably a location within 20 or 30 minutes. There's absolutely no excuse not to do testing.

We have never produced bareback content, and we still test every model on arrival, both because we want to be sure test results are not faked, and because few models do more than HIV; we test for hep-C, syphillis, and HIV.

However, even if one is only considering model safety, there are multiple issues. The tests don't guarantee safety because of the latency period, and it is the period when a person is first infected, BEFORE a test would show positive, when he has the highest viral load and is most likely to transmit the virus to someone else. Also, as Patti and others regularly point out, hep-C is in many cases even more difficult to treat than HIV, is transmitted the same way, and is spreadking phenomenally. And syphillis is at epidemic levels among gay men in several areas, and is also very difficult to treat if not caught early.

Then, as Squirt said, there's the issue of the message being sent to gay youth and others. Barebacking is glorified in video, it's marketed as "hot" and "spontaneous." One of our own models has admitted to barebacking in spite of his awareness of the risks because, for some delusional reason, he likes the danger aspect of it. (I think he will feel otherwise when he gets infected one day.)

Finally, on the serosorting issue, the evidence is pretty solid that reinfection and mixing of multiple strains of HIV, through unprotected sex among poz people, is a serious concern that significantly complicates the treatment and prognosis for the HIV+ person.

A studio that insists on doing bareback absolutely should test everyone, and in my opinion, should make an effort to educate even poz models on the reinfection issue.

A studio that puts the safety of its models first, and is also concerned about the message it is sending to the public will simply not produce bareback at all.