BEING MORE RESPONSIBLE

Gentle Readers,

I'd like to take a moment to discuss a practice I think is imperative for this industry to adopt: sero-sorting.

Show of hands… Who here doesn’t know what sero-sorting is?

If you raised your hand, allow me to enlighten you. Sero-sorting is the common-sense practice of choosing sex partners whose HIV status matches yours. Sero-sorting helps prevent the possibility of HIV transmissions taking place. That should be a primary concern to those of us in the BB porn business, where sero-sorting would mean only hiring performers who are already HIV+Positive. Some of you might think that goes without saying. But apparently it doesn't.

Perhaps the harshest and most accurate criticism that people speaking out against bareback porn have levied against the industry is that filming bareback scenes puts performers at risk. There is truth to that allegation. Take for example a situation in the UK where three young men of the "barely legal" set were diagnosed with HIV after performing in a bareback video where all were thought to be HIV-Negative. The fellow who infected his co-workers only tested Positive after the shoot had taken place and he’d infected the other 3 boys. This would not have happened if the producers of the video had adopted a POZ-ONLY hiring policy. As easy and sensible as a POZ-ONLY policy is to implement, there’s no excuse that this should have happened.

There’s more to be concerned with. When this kind of thing occurs, the "victims" tend to claim that they were infected as a direct result of performing in a bareback video. I don't mean to discredit the claims of the performers mentioned above, but in reality that may or may not be 100% true as we don’t know what the infected boys have done in their private sex lives. And therein lies the trouble.

If you hire someone who tests negative for HIV and he becomes positive some time after the porn shoot, you don’t know whether he got infected on set or in his private affairs. That doesn’t mean he won’t go pointing the finger of blame at you. You ‘re the easiest and safest (and perhaps wealthiest) target. And there are some who might throw such an accusation at you just for the sake of being spiteful. This kind of accusation could potentially ruin your business or get you thrown in jail. Or both.

Yeah, yeah, you could have a contract that includes a waiver of liability. But you won't need that waiver or the legal headache that goes with it if you hire only HIV+Positive performers.

If you hire HIV-Negative performers for a bareback video you will always be carrying the unnecessary potential of putting some of them at risk. If instead, you hire only HIV+Positive performers, there will be no risk of anyone acquiring HIV on set, nor causing you trouble over it down the road. You will be doing your part to prevent new infections AND disproving the claims of the anti-bareback-video folks who like to paint us as reckless and careless smut peddlers.

I remember being told that the American Disabilities Act forbids asking job applicants and employees to disclose their HIV status. That rule is in place so that people who are HIV+ will not be discriminated against. I don’t believe the law prevents you from only hiring HIV+ people (also called discriminating in favor of HIV+ persons). In fact I would think the law would be supportive of any effort to stop the spread of HIV in the porn industry, including this kind of reverse discrimination. Keeping HIV-negative men out of the bareback business is one sure-fire way of achieving that goal.

And here’s a tip for EVERYONE in the porn business, gay or straight: You can also dispense with the cost of testing before shooting if you only hire HIV+Positive performers. No risk, less cost… what could be better?

There are plenty of hot looking HIV+Positive men of all ages out there. I strongly suggest that we all adopt a policy of only hiring POZ performers from now on. That is how I intend on conducting my hiring policies. I hope you will do the same from here on in.

Two stories about the UK situation:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7041.html
http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=93&id=17079

Let me leave you with 2 questions which I'd like you to weigh in on:

1) Are you already excluding HIV-Negative men from your hiring practices?

2) With HIV disclosure a sensitive issue, how would you feel about going on record as a studio that only hires HIV+Positive performers?

Don't be shy. I want to hear what you have to say!

PART 5: THE FANTASY

Whether or not you are aware of it, porn is cinema. It’s that part of cinema that Hollywood leaves out. While the big Hollywood studios are making donuts, pornographers make donut holes. The industry of explicit gay porn began underground through the creation of little stories that were loaded up with sex to fill the void that the Hayes Code forced the motion picture industry to create. Some of those stories were borrowed from Hollywood in the form of gay-themed parodies. The practice still exists today, though mostly in the form of lampooned titles if not the actual content.

I believe porn is a unique form of motion picture art. Not only can it tell a story, it can also tap into people’s most secret fantasies and fulfill the viewer in a way no regular motion picture can. Porn also gives us a look at life as it is, as it was, and as it could be. Right now, however, our industry is making documentaries – or more accurately, "dickumentaries". We’re simply videotaping pieces of our sex lives and showing them to the public. And by doing so we’ve allowed the fantasy to wither out of the fantasy business.

Fantasy is as important to successful porn as milk is to cheese. Portrayals of fantasies personalize the sex and create richer sexual scenarios for the viewer to enjoy. It’s not enough to show just the sex act. People enjoy watching how we get there. It’s what we as humans do every waking moment. When we see a person we think is sexually attractive, we begin building a fantasy in our heads about how we will meet him and how we will seduce him into our beds. Or in a public bathroom. Or by the pool side. Or in the bottom of a submarine. Or in the back of a semi… Our minds are always creating rich scenarios. The traditional role of porn has been to inspire the viewer; to enrich his portfolio of fantasies, and to present creative ways in which a seduction can occur. But dickumentaries only serve to portray the act of sex itself, making the only aspect of fantasy in the mind of the viewer the fantasy of being with the performers he sees onscreen. If someone can come up with richer and more complete fantasies in his head, why the hell would he want to buy the fantasy-bereft porn that’s currently out on the market?

I also believe porn allows us to diffuse stress and anger in a non-violent manner. Just as we substitute ourselves for players in a porn scene to heighten our fantasies and get us off, so can we also substitute someone we are angry with and mentally put them into the video. In our minds we can give them the fucking they deserve, and receive satisfaction in return without having to act on it in real life. But if the actors are already naked or fucking when the scene begins the viewer has to fill in the fantasy that we left out. Some people just aren’t that inherently creative. And we shouldn’t be making our audiences work that hard.

If a person can connect with something in a fantasy video, it has a deeper significance to him. If he can’t, he’s just an outsider watching people have sex. Porn can allow people to experience fantasies they don’t even know they have. It can inspire, teach, and entertain. It has all of these potential ingredients that we could explore, but instead we give our audiences junk food.

At some level I think pornographers are filmmakers at heart or we would never pick up a camera. We have stories we want to tell; rich fantasies we want to share. So why are we collectively not doing that? Why are we cheapening our medium with an endless supply of throw-away porn? I dare say the answer is because many in our field are more interested in turning a quick buck than creating something that contains meaning, substance, and the fine art of fantasy. Certainly it is easier to point a camera at men who are already naked and on the verge of engaging in sex. But just as all cats are gray in the dark, these types of porn scenarios are barely identifiable from one studio to the next, aside from the general choice of models that each studio specializes in.

In the beginning of bareback video, the audience was largely composed of gay men over 30 who identified as barebackers. That is no longer true. Today’s audience is broad and includes adult gay and bisexual men of all ages and types, closeted or openly gay, some who engage in unprotected sex, and some who do not. Of course, with such a wide audience there is a correspondingly wide range of fantasies just waiting to be tapped (and capitalized on). I am interested in seeing who will make the move to restore fantasy into the business of making bareback porn. Any takers?

Next up: New Directions