On today’s special edition of Feast of Fun, we’re teaming up with Lifelube and Project Crysp in conjunction with the 2009 National LGBTI Health Summit to bring you Risky Business- a raw discussion with a live audience at the Center on Halsted on the sex and intimacy we crave and the risk we’re willing to take.
How do adult films with bareback sex affect our sexual desires and practices?
Are videos depicting sex without condoms a hot but safe way for viewers to find pleasure or is it a dangerous normalization of risk?
We have a panel of experts here to break down the ins-and-outs of condomless sex.
Tony Valenzuela, Writer and Activist whose work focuses on the politics of gay sex, subcultures and assets based perspectives. He’s known as AIDS activism’s most misunderstood man.
Mufasa Ali, Minister and Activist, as well as co-founder of ONYX, a leather group for men of color.
Dr. Braden Berkey, Clinical psychologist whose practice focuses on gay men, and the director of the Center on Halsted’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Institute.
Chuck Renslow, the founder of International Mr. Leather Conference and Convention, was in the audience to talk about why he recently banned bareback porn at IML and the future of the ban.
This is a frank talk about the kind of sex men have in real life and how they “seroadapt” or reduce sexual harm.
For many people, this is just the start of the conversation surrounding sex without condoms, it is not the final word. If you have any questions or insight, please leave a comment and keep the conversation going. Please be respectful and refrain from personal attacks, inflammatory remarks or general hysteria.
Make a comment on today’s show using twitter- Include #fofrisky in your update for it to magically appear on the site.
To learn more about Twitter hashtags and how the work,
please visit the Twitter Fan Wiki.
Check out today’s sponsor:
How Are You Healthy? Find out at Lifelube.org
A blog on sex, drugs, physical, mental and
emotional health, spirituality and more.
RSS FEED | SUBSCRIBE ON iTUNES
SUBSCRIBE ON: GOOGLE
South Carolina Votes to Cut All AIDS and HIV Funds
FOFA #983 – Jack of All Trades – 02.16.09
Behind the Scenes on the New Dining Out for Life Campaign
Social Network for the Dead
5 Comments
Comments
Just to reiterate, for many people, this is just the start of the conversation surrounding sex without condoms, it is not the final word. If you have any questions or insight, please leave a comment and keep the conversation going. Please be respectful and refrain from personal attacks, inflammatory remarks or general hysteria.
Hey Fausto and Marc, You guys amaze me. I just listened to Feast of Fun’s podcast of the Center on Halsted forum on bareback sex. Overall it was good to do this. However, Andrew Deppe’s comments at the forum were exceptional and brilliant. I bet you guys could also moderate a great forum along the ideas he suggested. Hey, feature him and one or two colleagues as panelists. How about a “how to” forum: tackle eroticism, sexual pleasure, and real sexual satisfaction (both quickies AND long term). I’d definitely get a babysitter for my kids so I could get out of the house to attend that!
I understand that the next forum will be about just that topic and we’re leaving the safe sex talk at the door.
In the meantime here’s a show with Barbara Corellas, author of “Urban Trantra : Sacred Sex for the Twenty First Century.”
Part 1 and Part 2
If open relationships are your thing, here’s a show with Tristan Taormino. Can you believe she’s Thomas Pinchon’s niece?
More on Relationships
Making Relationships Work
How to Hook up Online
Health and Wellness Topics
Interview with Jack Mackenroth
Interview with Ongina
AIDS and the Law
How Gay Men Stay Healthy and Vibrant with Jim Pickett
I still think sex without condom is wrong unless people who have sex got recently tested and know their status. But it is still a risk. Unless there is another, more effective way to protect ourselves against sexual transmitted diseases like HIV we should use condoms.
Hey – if you wanna see pics from the event – check out the photo set here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim_pickett/sets/72157622074014612/
Looking forward to hearing more feedback on this forum!
And a point of clarity – our next forum (set for Nov 11) will not “leave safe sex at the door.” Rather – it will leave HIV/STDs and anal sex at the door – and talk about other ways in which we can experience – give and receive – pleasure.
Thank for this When I was working here in Switzerland on the campaign for the LGBT “marriage” in 2003 (which we won!!!) I met a lesbian now a friend. She told me about the early years of the fight for LGBT rights in our country. How she was involved with lot of other people, men and women during the 1970-1980. She told me “of all those people all the men are dead. They died because of AIDS”.
This happened everywhere, in every city when people where talking about others it was a necrology. SF, LA, NYC… the same.
Yes, today you can survive for a very, very long time with HIV. But AIDS is still deadly. My question is: Do we want our community to become again a necrology?
What kind of question is that? Say what you really mean Max.
Sorry I shouldn’t have said that I was questioning. That wasn’t a question, I am wandering.
Everyone is free to do what ever one wants, it’s his/her choice. There are consequences. In this case the risk are diseases.
In the 80s – 90s we were afraid, now with the pills one thinks one has the choice. Hell this is a choice! The medicines save your life for how long? We do not know for sure they say 40 years, but the pills are there since ‘96. And honestly the pills? If AIDS doesn’t kill you, the pills will. They are not really healthy. But once you are positive, you must take them, every day, several time pro day.
Back to bare backing: how much does it take to have sex? 5 minutes, 30, 60…? In a life time that is nothing. The risk of diseases and pay the consequences until one is dead?
… Have to go to work, have to leave it there for the moment.
#fofrisky
Fausto & Marc,
Wow! I thought the Risky Business podcast was phenomenal! I am a gay man who has had in the past condomless sex, and sex with condoms for years. This podcast really put into words for the first time the thoughts and feelings that I have had in my head on these issues.
Yes, what we all long for (every human being) is connection. And all the preaching about using condoms and protection does not reach the depth of the feelings and needs we have inside to connect with that other person skin to skin. HIV education and prevention is important, but we have to couple that with respect and understanding for the individual so that he/she can make informed decisions.
I am so very glad that the panelists, who were all amazing, started a dialog on people’s innate human needs and challenges.
Keep up the good work!
You talk about “alarming” new infection rates during the intro. I have a problem with language like this when you don’t give the actual statistics. I know here in SF the Health Department has downgraded HIV infection from epidemic status because infections had DECREASED so much in the last several years from previous infection rates. I would be interested to have “alarming” quantified. It’s unnecessarily vague and carries such an air of fear around it that it doesn’t work very well in a discussion.
Sorry, to be clear, the alarming figure is 1 in 5 gay men in Chicago is HIV+ and half of those HIV+ men didn’t know their status.
http://www.chicagopride.com/news/article.cfm/articleid/7846225
Excellent forum guys. It’s such a fascinating and important topic. The surface of this topic was barely scratched. Every point made in this forum would be worthy of longer and more thorough examination, perhaps even a show dedicated to just that aspect…
I don’t think barebacking has really taken on identity level status in people’s lives. I think it more realistically is just an activity or particular way of having sex. None of the people I know who bareback (and I know many) would describe themselves as capital “B” “Barebackers”. They might be willing to say they are barebackers as a way of describing what they enjoy in bed, but I really don’t think any of them see it as rising to the level of an identity.
Labels are always tough. Is a chubby chaser an identity or is just what they do? If I’m into leather does that make me a leatherman?
There is research on the “bareback” construct – both as identity and as behavior.
Check this out:
“Is ‘bareback’ a useful construct in primary HIV-prevention? Definitions, identity and research”
http://irma-rectalmicrobicides.blogspot.com/2009/03/journal-article-is-bareback-useful.html
Also read:
“Bareback Sex” motivations in HIV risk contexts
http://irma-rectalmicrobicides.blogspot.com/2009/05/bareback-sex-motivations-in-hiv-risk.html