Eighteen months ago, three young men contracted HIV on the British set of a porn movie. It was the first time actors were known to have become infected with the virus during a UK production. The reason was simple: the film, Bareback Vacation, was shot without condoms.
As the Aids activist Spike Rhodes told a debate in London last week, HIV positive gay men started the bareback film industry as a way of feeling good about themselves. Once R18 films became legal in Britain, this changed: it became a free-for-all with "barely legal" HIV negative actors starring in UK productions with life-changing consequences.
Craig (not his real name) was one of the young men infected on the Bareback Vacation set, and spoke to Boyz magazine. He has learning difficulties and at 27 he was the oldest of the three to contract HIV. Doctors have advised Craig to prepare himself for anti-retroviral medicine. His T-cell count has dropped to the crucial 250 mark. "I'm not ready," he told me. "It's a big responsibility and once I start taking them, I know I've got it."
Craig's story brings home the reality of barebacking – a reality missed by the glossy HIV prevention adverts and messages aimed at my generation of gay men (I'm 23). Those responsible for the ads, organisations such as the Terrence Higgins Trust and GMFA, the gay men's health charity, insist that harder hitting representations of life with HIV do not work and that they stigmatise those living with the virus.
But I believe that a refusal to show the harsh reality of HIV is encouraging attitudes like that of one of the three men infected. John, 22, told me and Newsnight (video) that he wasn't bothered he had HIV, and that being gay he always knew he'd get it. Time Out's Paul Burston told the debate's audience of a conversation he'd had with a 22-year-old in Liverpool, who said he was more worried about catching gonorrhea than HIV.
My stance against bareback porn needs to be understood in the context of the HIV awareness campaigns currently being produced. We don't know people who have died of Aids. Icebergs and tombstones don't mean anything to most of us. We're not scared of HIV, and it's no wonder. Sex education in schools barely touches on HIV and gay sex, and many of us had our sex education through porn. When schools have failed, it should be the HIV prevention charities that catch those who fall through the net.
Yet instead of giving us a picture of what our lives could be like if we bareback, they choose to "empower" us. They do that by saying: "If you are the active partner you're less likely to get HIV" and "If you withdraw, then you and your partner are at less risk of contracting HIV."
When was the last time you were told that if you're going to drink drive you should opt for a bottle of wine instead of tequila slammers? Or saw the withdrawal method advocated to prevent pregnancy?
The very nature of sex, when arousal clouds your judgment, means even stronger messages on safe sex are required. You need an authoritative voice at your shoulder, not a voice as clouded as your judgment telling you that you're at less risk if you do this or that.
I have learnt the reality of HIV through speaking to the three men infected on that porn shoot. I've heard stories of one man losing his job and another trying to commit suicide. But shouldn't we all have known the dangers of barebacking? Shouldn't we be scared of HIV once more? We need to think again about HIV safer sex campaigns for gay men, and break the consensus of organisations that are unwilling to say "Don't bareback" for fear of stigmatising those already infected.
