Lessons in Human Behavior

All of a sudden, there's a new onslaught of accusatory articles being aimed at the bareback community. HIV infection is rising again, hence some old, almost forgotten fears are again finding their way to the surface of public consciousness. And along with the rise of such fears come a whole new variety of myths surrounding those of us who bareback and what our alleged intentions are.

First, there's the renewed hysteria over "bug chasing". It seems, in the eyes of the oft-hysterical press, that all us barebackers are on a (one would assume organized) mission to acquire and spread the HIV virus. Have these writers actually thought about what they are writing? They're saying that one by one, we are all blindly and willingly subscribing to a mass genocide pact. These "reporters" seek out a few examples of people who are either so recklessly cavalier, or tweaked out on a sufficient-enough intake of party drugs, to allow them to admit wanting intentional sero-conversion. And then this information is extrapolated and exploited into some kind of mass behavior that supposedly defines the entire bareback community.

That's part of the reason that I crusade against PnP in our community. Tweakers have a knack for shooting themselves and everyone else around them directly in the foot. And they literally donate plenty of garbage to these reporters to assemble into a 'story'. And the problem with these types of reporters is that they first form their opinions, and then make up 'facts' to make their own hypothesis work. And then they go ahead and print their garbage without researching much of it beforehand.

Take for example an article recently published by a writer named Sam Adams for the Philadelphia CityPaper.net. The article, titled 'Over The Edge' covers Mr. Adams' concern about the rise in barebacking, the subsequent rise in HIV conversions, and a review of a new little film called "The Gift", which is making quite a stir at the indie film festivals. "The Gift" is a documentary-slash-expose that follows the goings on of a couple of bug-chasers. In his review of the film, Adams (with input from Louise Hogarth, the director of the film) suggests that bug-chasing behavior is growing within the gay community. He claims that HIV-Negative men are being pressured into at least pretending they are HIV+Positive for popularity's sake. He also cites me, Bareback Jack, as being one of the people out chasing the bug and organizing and attending conversion parties. Yeah, right.

In actuality, the site (and individual) Mr. Adams meant to name was Bareback City, and Kenboy, respectively (who, at the time of filming, was one of the owners of Bareback City, and who appeared as one of the two bug chasers in "The Gift" saying he isn't afraid of acquiring AIDS). And while I'm somewhat grateful for the free advertising, it doesn't speak well of Mr. Adams if he can't even cite his sole web example with any accuracy. It also shows that Adams does not research his statements ~ or worse yet, the statements of others ~ thoroughly enough to avoid making libelous mistakes.

There is also another article that recently came out by British right-wing journalist Brian Deer (Sunday Times, London) in which Deer publicly flogs the VaxGen company for many reasons, among which is his allegation that the vaccine company intentionally allowed (or as he puts it, recruited) barebackers to be a part of their three year HIV vaccine Phase III trial. And, he has insinuated that VaxGen and Barebackjack.com purposely collaborated to recruit as many barebackers as possible into that study. Mr. Deer is yet another "yellow journalist" who takes whatever liberties to the truth might be necessary in order to build his case around his own unsupported assumptions. But the 'collaboration conspiracy' he believes he has "exposed" is nothing more than a rich figment of his overly fertile imagination... at least insofar as my involvement in the VaxGen study and this website are concerned. Again, the journalist can be accused of not researching his statements. The problem is that people read his garbage and believe it.

Sadly, from what I have read, Mr. Deer has done NOTHING constructive in the effort to find a vaccine to stop HIV transmission. Instead, he has criticized the one company given FDA approval to conduct such research and caused them to fall under a huge cloud of suspicion. While I cannot claim to know the inner workings of VaxGen and what all transpired behind the scenes, I can ask what Mr. Deer thought he was accomplishing by trying to thwart VaxGen's efforts to find something that might help bring about the end of HIV. And while his fingers go pointing in all sorts of accusatory directions, I'd like to remind him that he has neglected to point his finger back at himself. Who exactly ruined the study? Barebackers? Or maybe some hotshot who calls himself a reporter? If Mr. Deer has the solution to vanquishing AIDS, I would hope he might bring it to light. Otherwise he should shut the fuck up and let the research be done. There's more at stake here than just his ego.

And then, if you think that's outrageous, there are a whole lot of people who are becoming angry with us barebackers again because the media has been reporting that the rate of HIV infection among gay men is going up. And yes, as a group, we are the ones who are at the highest risk of HIV transmission, along with women of color and intraveinous drug users.

Now here is where I am going to make a very strong statement that these so-called reporters and others should take to heart: Not everyone who has bareback sex is a "barebacker". Likewise, not everyone who owns a pair of running shoes is a marathon runner. And, more importantly, not every individual who owns a typewriter is a journalist.

Straight people who fuck without rubbers are not referred to as "barebackers". And gay guys who act like stray cats in heat every now and again, or who forego using condoms in situations where their judgment is impaired through alcohol, drugs, or pure lust aren't really barebackers. Why? Because they have made no conscious and pre-determined exception towards safe sex.

To be identified as a "barebacker", I say one should have consciously sworn off condoms in at least 50 percent of his sexual encounters. A barebacker is one who fucks rubberless by intention, not because of a temporary lapse in personal judgment. And the trouble here is that (from what I've seen in my 5 years as Bareback Jack) it's not so much the dedicated barebackers who are becoming newly infected, although it does happen. In fact, more than half of the devout barebackers are already HIV+positive. It's the 'accidental' barebackers ~ those who give in to barebacking in the passion of a moment, or while under the influence of alcohol or drugs ~ who seem to be turning Poz in larger numbers. And then, many of them become devout barebackers after their results have come back positive.

I have to wonder, have any of these reporters and panic peddlers ~ who are so quick to point fingers at all barebackers and promote general untruths ~ have they done any studies to detect whether the rise in number of substance abusers has any direct relationship to this recent increase in new HIV cases? I'll wager they haven't. And I would bet the farm that such a relationship between drug use and HIV exists. I know it does. I've witnessed it with my own eyes, and I have had my opinions confirmed by health-care professionals in my region. But these reporters, anxious to get their 'story' in print, will pick the easiest scapegoat available rather than digging beneath the surface to get at some actual nugget of truth. Meanwhile, while they are busy pointing fingers at yours truly and the rest of the bareback community, they patently overlook including HIV statistics among their own: straights, teenagers, and hetero ethnic minorities. Why isn't that information being included in these stories? Because the straight world still wants to cling to the falsehood that HIV is a gay disease.

I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: You heterosexuals sure have a lot of fucking nerve! You expect us homosexuals to bear the sole burden of containing and eradicating HIV and AIDS within the timespan of a quarter century when you haven't exactly done a smashing bloody job of containing and eradicating syphilis and gonorrhea in what... 3,000 years' time? While you exhibit a certain righteous opinion that homosexuals should all be required to wear condoms to get rid of that AIDS thing, you forget that your straight siblings, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, great and great-great, and great-great-great-great grandparents didn't work tirelessly and unselfishly to end the scourge of VD, even in times that were far less sexually permissive. It should have been a relatively easy chore to make VD a thing of the past, especially since men were expected to keep it in their pants until marriage, and there was very little of that disgusting deviant sex going on back then. So what went wrong? How is it the great majority of heterosexual people throughout twenty-plus centuries couldn't collectively manage to eradicate VD?

It has to do with a little something called Human Nature. It is no less, nor any more of, a natural act for a straight guy to slip his manhood into a sheath before entry than it is for a gay man. And with disease harboring no bias towards sexual orientation, straight men have always had that one big extra incentive to use protection that gay men don't have ~ the stork. Remember, condoms were invented (probably by women) to keep guys from getting girls pregnant. They were originally made of things like stitched-up sheep gut. Then, after plastic was invented, they were marketed as a means to protect folks from getting VD. And so again I ask 'what went wrong?' Why do we still have VD in today's world? When it comes to condom use, the hets have had a long, long time to set the proper example. And they have failed. Thus, for the same reason that syph and clap are still hanging around, HIV is gonna be here for a while.

The reason: Human Nature.

No matter how progressive you hets believe yourselves to be; no matter how open-minded you think you are, or how many gay friends you surround yourselves with, you still hold gays to a different set of standards. You create bullshit reasons to prevent us from marrying, raising kids, and attaining equality in employment, healthcare, and many other areas. And you expect us to voluntarily make super-human sacrifices that you haven't had the capability of performing in order that we homos rid the world of AIDS. It's as if you think that by making every homosexual practice safe sex, the number of heterosexual AIDS cases would simultaneously vanish. Poof!

Well, I hate to bust up your convenient little fantasy, but the two are independent of each other. All that can truthfully be said regarding gay men and condom use is that if every last homosexual male had used rubbers in every single gay sexual encounter since 1982, HIV and AIDS would probably be gone from the male homosexual population today. Period.

The reality that you don't want to accept is that not all gay men cottoned to the idea of using rubbers as you expected we should, just as many of our straight forefathers opted not to use them. And we still have HIV in our community, as do you hets in yours. So, if your unrealistic expectation had happened ~ if all gay men had worn little bags on their dicks every time they mated ~ HIV wouldn't be a "gay" disease any longer because it would no longer affect our community. But it would still affect yours. And the same conclusion can be applied to any group, any culture that would collectively practice 100% safe sex until they had rid their community of it. But this hasn't happened anywhere, in any culture, be it American, Latin American, African, Asian, or European, straight, bi, or gay. So what does that tell you?

It again tells you that putting plastic bags on penises is one of those things that offends human nature and instinct. When even the more devout safe sex players can get drunk or high or super-horny and trade off their sexual safety for a passionate bare encounter, it tells you that safe sex goes against the signals supplied by our biological wiring. That flaw is species-wide. You hets have had over two hundred decades to practice what you're preaching, and you still haven't succeeded with ridding the world of two fairly simple STD's. Sure, both syph and clap can be remedied with widely-available medication. But there still is no remedy for HIV. I guess that means that there really is no excuse that syph and clap are still around, outside of the long-term laziness of heterosexuals and that old double standard that says we fags have to practice what you preach.

Look to straight porno to see the truth in that. While every major gayporn studio insists on having their stars wrap before packing, most straight porn studios don't. And now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. Of course, now that straight bitches in porn movies are getting AIDS, the straight-dominated industry wants to mandate federal legislation that requires everyone industry-wide to don the plastic hat before doing the deed, and to take HIV tests regularly. Why? Because they have finally discovered that heterosexual porn stars are just as receptive to HIV as their gay counterparts. But we could have told you that...

Now, if AIDS is really a "gay disease" and we fags are responsible for it, then how did all those straight people get it? Hmmm. Well, first of all there's the matter of people who 'say' they're straight but lead double lives so they can stay in the closet, thereby avoiding the non-supportive ridicule and derision guaranteed from their peers (that's another of those great no-win situations you hets set yourselves up for). Second, if you straights were living by your own rules, there probably wouldn't be AIDS in the straight world today. But not only do you still have AIDS to contend with, you also have all those kids borne to unwed mothers to account for. And each one of those kids represents a sexual situation where condoms weren't used when they should have been. There are enough children of these circumstances crawling around and chewing up our planet's resources to prove that a lot of straight people aren't using condoms in their recreational encounters. Why?

Chalk it up to human nature.

With all this stuff about human nature in mind, perhaps homosexuality is NOT as against human nature as is widely believed. Especially not if all those straight men are dipping their wicks in, or getting dipped by, other males. Men follow their instincts. Women follow their emotions, and invent reasons why men shouldn't follow their instincts. And if a man wants the thrill of plowing a guy's tight patoot every now and again, ain't no woman or her rules gonna stop him. To put it in more vulgar terms, 'guys actually do like screwing ass'. Period. But I've gotten off track.

Anyway, I don't think it's necessarily the fault of any woman why a straight man would want to have sex with another male (though I won't rule out that the Mars/Venus thing might be a contributing factor). Homosexual encounters involving married men have been happening both covertly and openly throughout the history of mankind. The married men of Ancient Greece are reputed to have kept young males around for their carnal gratification. The Romans bu-fu'd among their own sex too, though to a less open degree. Who knows... Cain and Abel may have even shared a passionate shag or two, given that God had endowed each of them with a penis and hormones, while neither God nor their parents bothered to provide them with anybody else of the opposite sex to mess around with... except for their mother. Sex, no matter who it's between, is a natural and basic biological requirement of any living creature. Even those humans who have taken a vow of celibacy in order to serve a divine being keep proving over and again that it is too super-human a task to suppress what your DNA keeps signalling you to do.

Just the act of humping is instinctive. You put a hard dick anywhere near a warm, wet, tight anything ~ doesn't matter what it is... could be a blow-up doll, or a greasy hand, or a pussy, or ass ~ a male knows without thinking exactly what to do. Putting on a condom requires thought, responsibility, and effort - three things that serve to separate the instinct from the act. There is nothing purely automatic or instinctive about digging out a foil packet, tearing it open, determining which way the thing should roll, and applying it, while trying to maintain the passion of the moment. The actual instinct is more along the lines of 'stick it in and hump 'til you shoot'. Anything that isn't automatic, anything that requires thought to perform, isn't instinctive.

Another aspect of human nature is to criticize that of which you have no acquired experience. I read this criticism all the time: married people telling single gay people to do that which they themselves have no need to do. Well, frankly, if you aren't in a position to have to use condoms, or to even have to consider a question over whether or not to use them (ie: you're married, too old for sex, Catholic, or any combination of the three), then you are probably isolated enough from the issues to have little more than an armchair opinion. Sorry, that's not good enough. You no longer have the power to criticize with any merit the actions of an entire class of single citizens when you have been married for twenty years and not a part of the sexual recreation scene. And you have even less room to criticize if you also believe that homosexuals should not marry. Because by promoting that one single belief, you set up the circumstances that create the same sexual underground that you fear and despise. And so, although you forbid us the right to marry, we homos are supposed to abide by the same rules set up to govern married couples? Interesting logic. Go fuck yourselves.

Only a complete numbskull would think that the same-old safe-sex messages are still valid, even after two decades of proving they don't completely work. The old notions that said the ONLY ways of preventing HIV transmission are either through abstinence or using condoms have proven to be not entirely true. And the old methods of HIV prevention education, ie: social pressure and doom and gloom scare tactics, have become outmoded by mankind's own technology. What is needed now is a fresh approach toward actual education and HIV awareness, sans the tired old bullshit rhetoric. How can a man continue to believe that having sex without a rubber is tantamount to a death sentence when daytime talk show hosts fill their programming with young bitches who don't even know who the fathers of their babies are? How can people take something seriously when the evidence shows otherwise? And who, outside of the Church, really believes that the best way to enforce behavior is through lies and half-truths? Only those idiots who believe that we should all be treated as children, with no respect towards our own individual ability to think for ourselves and make value judgments based on actual information. That's who.

The reality is this: human males know the difference between what feels natural and what doesn't. And no matter how pretty or ugly you package it, there are always going to be males who will not use unnatural contrivances such as condoms in their sexual exploits, regardless of how the male identifies himself sexually. Condom use goes against the grain of natural human instinct. You can only enforce something like that for just so long. The challenge is to develop new approaches that deal with the real-world situation instead of relying on pie-in-the-sky dreams that nagging, finger-pointing, name-calling, fear mongering, and general panic-peddling may some day be 100% effective. People need to be taught their options in a non-judgmental manner that shows them a certain level of trust in making their own educated decisions. They need to be positively taught of how they are not only personally responsible, but responsible to each other... and not by calling them names to get them to respond. The existing method has been rooted in fear and negativity. It hasn't worked. Learn from it. Any method that insinuates the individual is incapable of forming his own conclusions is never going to work for too long in this information age.

I think we at barebackjack.com do a pretty good job of educating people in the areas of personal and societal responsibility. I think we send a clear message to our visitors that HIV is still out there, but that there are ways of making unprotected sex safer for all parties involved. And we do try to convey the message that the decision to have sex without condoms is not a free license to screw recklessly... we work to encourage people of like HIV status to play exclusively with others of that same status. We encourage open discussion of HIV status and barebacking. But most importantly, we come from the standpoint that it is every human being's responsibility to contain the virus as much as possible, with or without condoms.

It's a pity that Adams, Deer, and other so-called reporters haven't bothered to do the research and discover this for themselves.

Keep it bare, but keep it smart,

Jack