This current era of bareback porn, which remains simultaneously highly controversial and wildly popular, is not likely ever going to be the proudest moment for gay culture. But nevertheless people have their tastes and prejudices, and just on the surface not all bareback porn is created equal.
Let’s take it as a given that no sex is 100% safe, and that gay porn performers take some amount of risk when they have any sort of sex for money. And let’s also take it as a given that all porn studios, bareback or not, are performing some kind of STD testing as per the industry-wide standards, which are now set at every 14 days for active performers. Also, let’s just assume that the models themselves are not betraying each other by going out and getting gang-banged raw by a bunch of status-undetermined strangers in between testing and shooting their scenes.
In the last several years, as the gay porn studio system has shrunk rapidly but still stuck their condom-only guns, and online-based scene-pumper-outers like Sean Cody and Corbin Fisher have continued to thrive but were very quick to throw condoms out the window, most of us have had to take it as a given that bareback is here to stay. So, out of the 23 sites and studios that have gone the bareback route, at least some of the time, let’s look at a couple of the bigger ones and see which ones you think, on the surface and based on earlier statements by producers (as well as based on your own biases as fans), are keeping things above board and doing their absolute best to protect the health of their models.
Founder George Duroy said in this 2010 interview (at the time he had only made a couple handfuls of bareback scenes, but that number has grown exponentially), “Bel Ami is the only company in this business which (in seventeen years) hasn’t had a single case of ANY STD on the set. I have the good luck to work in a country [Slovakia] where, in the first twenty-five years of the AIDS epidemic, only eight people died of HIV infection as compared to 400,000 in the U.S. If I lived in California, I certainly wouldn’t shoot without condoms, but I see no special reason to stick to the same rules here. Eight deaths in twenty-five years doesn’t constitute an epidemic — many more people die of ordinary flu here. Therefore, I think that while in the U.S. bareback equals Russian roulette, it is here merely condom-free. To put it another way, we also don’t keep a hurricane watch here, just because the Gulf of Mexico has that problem.” This of course doesn’t answer how he handles testing when it comes the import of American models like Max Ryder and Mick Lovell. But anyway… here’s a shot from Bel Ami’s latest bareback scene featuring Rick Lautner and Alec Rothko.
The whole “straight college guy” thing they have going on at Corbin Fisher includes threeways involving women, which is just gross if you ask me. But someone must be watching them. And like Bel Ami’s George Duroy, Corbin insists they “do not recommend or endorse” unsafe sex, even though they do tarry terms like “seed” and “raw” and all that.
Anyway, here’s that famed santorum moment when Harper “seeded” Chandler last year.
While I can’t speak to how practices may have changed over at Helix, we have testimony from one formal model that once upon a time they were one of the studios that offered models $100 extra if they’d do a scene bareback. That comes with obviously huge implications for the idea of choice and consent when you’re dealing with broke twinks, but we can say that these days a lot of Helix’s scenes are done with condoms, and this most recent “real cam” bareback scene features real-life fiancés Jessie Montgomery and Jamie Sanders, who are presumably probably doing this at home too. Update: Helix’s Casey Roman reached out to clarify, “Helix does not pay extra for bareback or otherwise encourage models to bareback, it’s always their option. The $100 bonus was a thing at one point a couple years ago but is no longer the practice for obvious reasons.”
Once upon a time, Next Door founder Stephan Sirard equated bareback porn studios that don’t test for HIV to murderers. Then in October 2013, surprisingly, the studio went bareback, but Sirard was quick to clarify to The Sword that “We have been one of the most aggressive studios on model STD testing. Our panel testing is more elaborate than any other studio out there; we test for every sexually transmitted disease.” Also, he said that all models who choose to shoot bareback will be tested a total of three times beginning three weeks prior to their scenes and including RNA testing that has a shorter window of accuracy. And, to their credit, they haven’t done a ton of promotion around the bareback stuff, and on the Next Door Buddies homepage there isn’t even any distinction between bareback and condom scenes. Below, their most recent bareback adventure Fuck Dynasty, starring approved bareback bottom Christian Cayden, and Mark Long.
Sean Cody waited until December 2011 to turn to bareback, and these days they do 100% bareback duo scenes, meaning that models who don’t want to do bareback are relegated to solos only. They took the “we don’t recommend or endorse” route, being cautious enough at first to run a disclaimer before every bareback scene, which they ultimately quit doing in 2012. Still, they say, they use the RNA test on every model, and in the two-plus years since they started bareback shoots we haven’t heard of any cases of models there getting infected, and I’m pretty sure we would have if it had happened by now since it likely would have led to a public lawsuit and/or an industry-wide moratorium. That said, it could happen anytime, and distraught viewers still write them letters.
This is their latest bareback scene, which admittedly is pretty fucking hot, featuring big-dicked Peter and big-dicked Jess.
Treasure Island’s founder Paul Morris has made many a controversial statement about bareback sex and the movies he produces, including that time in 2011 when he declared the AIDS crisis over. You’ve heard them all. And he’s all for employing openly HIV+ models and not stigmatizing them. Lately he’s fending off fines from the California state employee health and safety board (Cal/OHSA) regarding that seminal (and semenal) classic The 1000 Load Fuck. But, he wants everyone to know, that white goop they were turkey-basting into that hole was “definitely all real human semen” despite claims to the contrary. Also, Treasure Island’s porn remains wildly popular whether you like it or not.
Below, a still from The 1000 Load Fuck.
