I Don't Know How I Got Pregnant,
and other sorry excuses.
Perspective, September, 2001
I was surfing the net, looking up what's new in the wide world of barebacking, when I
came across something from the Netherlands that just stunned me. Perhaps you have seen it.
It's called "Stop_Barebacking.com",
and it is a most pathetic example of that
human pastime we call "passing the buck".
Let me preface the remainder of this article by vowing that I am completely of the belief
that each man is entitled his opinion. Likewise, each man, by the power vested in his
webserver, is entitled to air his opinion to the entire interested world. And I would
be quick to jump to the defense of
anyone who was being denied his or her right to express himself in this or any other
civilized country. I would be a tremedous hipocrite were I to believe or act otherwise.
So, while I encourage each man to form his own opinions and speak his mind, I reserve that
support for those who at least have the desire to think for themselves and the decency to
accept their own responsibility in
matters of their individual lives. This, however, is not the case with StopBarebacking.com.
From the start, the site reads of anger. Viewers are assaulted by a vivid red background
and a barrage of stop signs in various sizes which read, "STOP Barebacking Now".
Below the initial visual and aesthetic assault, the text begins to unwind a short tale
about a poor unfortunate man who went to a bareback party, let someone cum up his ass,
and now regrets it enough to warn the world against the evils of barebacking and the
men who do it.
"I went to this party.. horny as hell. I knew that was irreversable.
When this hot dude shot his load into me I knew the countdown had started. There at that
moment I had litterally someone fuck me to death. The countdown had started for me... Now
I regret...."
Oy vey is mir. Such drama.
Is this what we have come to? Some dude who can't keep it in his pants goes to a party,
sticks his fanny in
the air, lets a guy breed his ass simply because he was "hot", and because of this the
rest of us should have to stick our dicks in baggies?
It is certainly one thing to take a stand and counsel someone if you think you can help
them aviod making the same mistakes you have. It is entirely another thing to try to use
outrageous hysteria to frighten and anger people into both pitying you and siding with you.
That is the sign of a weak man.
The opening page provides us with a link to a new page of "Shocking News". The
shocking news is that some big, bad, nasty men in the Netherlands have bareback parties
of mixed status which are open to guests ages 16 and older. While 16 could get you twenty
in the US, 16 is also the legal age of consent in most European countries. Now, of course
this StopBarebacking.com Shocking News page is penned with the same tried-and-true yellow
journalism techniques that keep the Weekly World News on the grocery store rack. This
is not a story of adults having consensual unprotected orgiastic sex with each other. This
is an "expose" of how young teenage men are lured to their imminent and guaranteeable
death in these evil Russian Roulette parties... As if we old men have nothing better to do
than devise ways of decimating the next generation of cocksuckers.
Now that's a stupid career move. Who'll be there to service us if we kill off all the
chicken?
What I want to know is... who forced the author of that website to go to that party, take
at least one raw cock up his ass, and then take the load when he knew that wasn't "safe"?
His own dick, that's who. Okay. I'll cut him some slack. After all,
there are many unclear thoughts in this man's story, due largely to the rough translation
into English from Dutch provided by the webmaster. Many details are left out. We don't even
know for sure whether he sero-converted or if this whole site is built solely out of overwhelming
guilt for having barebacked (though we are led to believe he went from neg to poz as a
result of this event).
We do know the
guy was horny. Either so horny he was out of control, or using something which may have
heightened his horniness and lowered his judgement. He says he went to this party, though
he is unclear as to whether or not he was expecting it to be a bareback party. He doesn't
say what motivated him to open his ass for someone without a condom on, or what kept him
from saying those two special words: "pull out".
And, amazingly enough, he knew even before the cock (that had just sprayed the inside of
his ass with hot, delicious protein) slipped out of his juicy hole that his countdown had begun. He knew
it with such certainty he mentioned it twice! Ever hear of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
What I find most appalling about this webmaster and his crusade is that he seems rather
ignorant of his own contribution to his ambiguous sero-conversion. I don't care what they taught
you in Catholic school. Each man is in control of his own destiny. If you allow any man
with a dick to blow a wad up your ass without asking about his HIV status first, you aren't
demonstrating a sincere desire to remain HIV negative.
A sign I once had on my counter at work read,
"Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.".
It seems rather appropriate here. Why should the rest of the world come to a screeching
halt just because one man didn't stop to think, or ask a simple question?
How could he imagine that his lack of personal responsibility should warrant the mandatory
cessation of barebacking altogether? FACT: He didn't just go
to check out this party, he stayed and got fucked! Now there's
as logical a reason as any for us to start using condoms...
Reading further on his site, he proposes that a law should be passed to prevent people from
barebacking. He links his brilliantly archaic suggestion to the same laws that put suicidal people in padded
cells. It seems he feels we need to be saved from ourselves and our 'suicidal tendencies'.
And this is where he and many, many other people make the biggest leap to judgement:
Barebacking = suicide.
Ok. That's been the battle cry of the Condom Nazis for a while now. But how exactly did all of barebacking's naysayers get
here to begin with? By what means? I think it had something to do with bareback sex.
The truth is that barebacking is only "suicide" when you screw without condoms
in order to purposely contract HIV, and then disregard all medical advice and treatment
to facilitate the complete destruction of your immune system. THAT'S suicide, skin-to-skin
style. In order for an act to be suicide the act has to be performed with the intention
of dying by one's own efforts. Most men don't go into a bareback situation hoping that
this fuck will cure them of living. Most of us go into it in celebration of being alive,
gay, male, and (most importantly) virile.
I suppose if you absolutely HAVE to attach some kind of aberrant, socially misunderstood
behavior to barebacking,
you could say it seems reckless in nature... but then you're probably not talking from
experience.
Recently, the St. Paul Pioneer Press published a series of articles on HIV-positive men
and barebacking. The author of these articles, Hannah Allam, says in regards to the
apparently popular Twin-Cities-ism "Do you 'C' or 'BB'?" (regional internet lingo for
"do you Condom or Bareback?"),
...how chatroom users answer could mean the difference between life
and death if a sexual encounter is arranged.
Thank you, Ms. Allam for again pushing on that tired, outworn panic button dated 1985. Didn't
anyone inform you that the particular brand of snake oil you keep peddling doesn't work? If
you want people to attach any credibility to your messages, you might avoid using cliches
that can be disproved by a leisurely walk down your city's streets. Because there is where
you'll find healthy teenage mothers wheeling around the end-products of their own bareback
encounters.
It's also there where you might pass by any number of HIV-negative men, striaght, bi, and
gay, who don't routinely use condoms... men who know that it is easier to get
herpes from a fleeting kiss than get AIDS from a really good fuck, with or without a
condom. As AIDS diminishes in stature, people are slowly but surely getting over the
blind hysteria which once reigned supreme and made corporate giants out of nearly
bankrupt condom vendors.
But that's what happens when one group of people reacts out of fear at the expense of fact,
and zealously broadcasts prophecies of doom and gloom which the evidence cannot support.
Eventually the panic will calm as it
disproves itself. The reason is simple: panic
is an emotional response, not a logical one. And while emotions run hot and cold, logic just
keeps ticking steadily away in the background. Here's a towel, honey, to wipe that
egg off your face.
We have become a society that feeds off of the hysteria of others. It's the means by which
Ms. Allam and many others in her profession keep bread on the table. We no longer question
what the truth is. We just accept the sensational and allow the producers of senastionalism
to tell us how to think and act and respond to their sensationalism. We no longer accept
our own fault in our injuries, either. Nearly every product that can be misused in any way, from
ladders and hair driers to frozen food and brewed coffee, comes with warning labels to
protect the makers from lawsuits. And people with new cases of HIV can now blame their
sex partners for their own lapses in judgement. In some states, that can get you a tidy
little jail sentence. In Iowa, the State doesn't even have to prove infection occurred.
They'll get you on intent.
And then when it seems you've heard it all come the goofballs on the net who make asinine
statements in their profiles like,
" and if you're the type to even THINK of barebacking I wouldn't have sex with
you if you were the last man on earth!"
Question: How does what I do in either my bed or my mind affect what other people (strangers) do in their beds?
My screwing a guy without protection somehow prevents him from using a condom with the same
guy next week? One would think from such statements that to bareback once is to become permanently
polluted; contageous; that
somehow a mind-numbing barebacking vibe will rub off of me and transform any man in my presence into a
condom-hating, cum-starved zombie against his will, powerless to resist his lust-induced desires.
As I said before, oy vey is mir!
Let's see if I can put this in the simplest of terms: Nobody (sexually speaking)
gives you HIV. You get
HIV based on your own actions. There are ways to enjoy sex without condoms and maintain
an HIV-negative status. How you play and who you play with is strictly up to you. Barebacking
is not a mental disorder, a suicidal act, a rebellion over a bad childhood, or a death wish. For most
it is an informed choice as well as a responsibility ~ to our individual selves as well as
to any others. That responsibility includes not intentionally bringing harm to anyone else. It
is a global human responsibility which supercedes all political and religious boundaries. But the
bottom line in personal responsibility is still this: You are responsible for anything you let go up
your butt. (or any other orifice in your body)
I'm sorry if I seem to have little
sympathy for the author of StopBarebacking.com. I'm sure he thinks he's saving the world with
his website. But I find it a little difficult to feel sympathy for a man who, for whatever
reason, went to a mixed-status sex party and stuck his ass out to get bred only to spend the
rest of his life in his own private hell of guilt and remorse. He made his decision, albeit
not perhaps the wisest one for him. But his anger over his own lapse isn't enough to cause
me to stop wanting to get the most enjoyment my partners and I can out of our sexual
encounters, or from actively and unashamedly going after such satisfaction. And it sure won't stop me from trying to dismantle
the panic centers with truth and logic instead of hysteria. When the fires of hysteria
are burning their hottest, truth and logic often end up as casualties of the holocaust.
My advice to the webmaster of StopBarebacking.com: Stop whining!!!
What's really behind all this anger?
Keep it bare, but keep it smart,
Bareback Jack
