Queerclick Open Forum: HIV, Gay Porn & You

Rod Daily’s recent admission that he tested positive for HIV (after his girlfriend Cameron Bay’s similar announcement the week before that shut down the hetero porn industry LA-wide) has re-ignited a whole bunch of conversations, and no small amount of finger-pointing.
Today, we’d like to put the finger pointing away (we have no information on how Rod came to be infected, and frankly, we don’t think it’s really any of our business) and concentrate on one particular conversation that’s doing the rounds since Rod’s announcement: we’d like to know what you think about the rights-versus-wrongs of condom-free porn.

At QueerClick, we’re of the opinion that porn of any kind does not influence its viewers’ behaviour to any substantial extent. We might learn the odd line of sexual dialogue (“Yeah, suck my dick” – who among us hasn’t said it?), but since when did people watch any kind of visual material – including porn – and race out and re-enact what they’ve seen? It’s a bit like the dreary argument that violent movies make people act violently, despite the fact that people line up by the hundreds of millions around the world to see such movies every year, and nothing more violent ever happens than the occasional angry complaint about ticket prices. And in any case, a recent clinical study concluded that the impact of porn on behaviour is negligible, at best.
But, plenty of people are of the opinion that bareback porn is only encouraging and endorsing barebacking in general (bare in mind (no pun intended) that bareback porn grew out the subculture of guys doing it raw – not the other way around). So what’s your view? Does watching guys doing it raw make you want to explore that kind of experience in your own sex life? Or, on the contrary, does watching raw porn act as a perfectly safe way for you to explore your interest in barebacking, since you can get off watching other guys doing it without having to take any risk of your own?
And how about less explicitly bareback porn studios like Sean Cody or Chaos Men, where raw scenes are increasingly common and overtly promoted at the cost of other scenes from the same studios? It’s one thing to watch (presumably) positive guys go for it on Treasure Island and think “Wow, these guys sure are _______.” But does seeing younger, sportier “gay for pay” frat-house style guys doing it without condoms make you think twice about who chooses to forego condoms, and why?
And remember too, that bareback sex on camera is still bareback sex. The risk of HIV transmission is not magically removed by the presence of a camera. Do you worry that if your favorite performers choose to do it raw on camera, even with stringent on set testing practices, that they then might start making a habit of doing it without condoms in their private lives, where things are a bit more of a free for all?
Lastly, what do you prefer – porn with condoms, or porn without? Why the sudden trend towards studios of all kinds going crazy for raw scenes? Is that what the market wants?
Let’s talk about gay porn, barebacking, and you.