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Apr 26, 2001 at 4:00 am
Is the Seattle Eagle Promoting Risky Sex?
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David Richards, Lifelong AIDS Alliance (LAA) education director, wasn't aware that a local gay bar was hosting a bareback-themed night, and refused to comment. LAA's P.R. director, Sophie Petersen, later assured me that LAA's outreach workers would be at the Eagle on Thursday nights to hand out condoms and literature. "Obviously we're aware that it's a pun on the barebacking thing," said Petersen, "but as a form of damage control, we were planning on having an outreach worker there to hand out condoms and pass out information. We would be kidding ourselves to believe that this event isn't a draw for people interested in that kind of play." Petersen continued, "We are also aware that the clientele [at Bareback Thursday] won't be that responsive to what we're doing."
"I'm pushing the edge," admits Keith Christensen, the manager of the Seattle Eagle. "But it's humor more than anything else. It's not an invitation for people to come in here and have bareback sex. It's a shirtless night, but we use the word 'bareback' to pull people in." And as far as Christensen is concerned, LAA's outreach workers are welcome at the Seattle Eagle. "[LAA] can come and hand out all the condoms they want," says Christensen. "I give more condoms away than anybody in this city. We are the number-one condom distribution spot in town."
AIDS organizations once challenged bar and bathhouse owners to act responsibly when AIDS was an emerging health crisis. LAA insists AIDS remains a crisis, yet the group is unwilling to demand that the Seattle Eagle end the promotion--or at the very least change the night's name to, say, "Show-Us-Your-Tits Thursday." Despite the risk barebacking poses to gay men, Petersen feels it "might not be prudent" for LAA to interfere with the Eagle's "marketing strategy."
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Zachary Zane is a Brooklyn-based writer, speaker, and activist whose work focuses on lifestyle, sexuality, culture, and entertainment.
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Learn about the history, risks, and how to do it safely.
"Bareback sex" is a common term in the gay male community that originated in the mid-'90s; it means having anal sex without a condom.
The phrase stems from equestrianism: You're said to be riding “bareback” when you're riding a horse without a saddle. When you're riding a man—or a man is riding you—without a condom, well, that’s bareback sex. (More recently, the term has been co-opted by some straight folks to describe unprotected vaginal penetration , too.)
There are serious risks to having anal or vaginal sex without a condom—STIs being the main one. (Vaginal sex comes with the risk of unplanned pregnancy, but that can be mitigated with other forms of contraception.) Still, there are plenty of people out there who knowingly take the risk to have bareback sex with their partners. Some folks say they hate the feeling of condoms ( though we'd argue they haven't found the right one yet ); others say it makes them feel closer to their partner, or that they like the fact that it's "taboo."
If you're curious about the origins of bareback sex, what the risks are, or how to do it safely—or all of the above!—you've come to the right place.
Let's be clear: People have been having condomless sex since the dawn of time. But the term "bareback sex" emerged in 1996 following the advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART), says Perry N. Halkitis , Ph.D., MS, MPH, and dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. Halkitis is also the author of Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches .
In 1997, Stephen Gendin wrote about his desire for unprotected anal sex in Poz Magazine entitled “ Riding Bareback ,” which helped to popularize the phrase. In the article, Gendin expressed his belief that there were no significant enough reasons for him to wear condoms with other men who were also living with HIV, as both men already have the virus, and the concern was about spreading HIV to those who were negative.
Of course, we now know that people living with HIV who have an undetectable viral load have zero risk of transmitting the virus to HIV-negative people through sex . But at the time of Gedwin's essay, the notion of bareback was revolutionary. But it also received a lot of flack from gay and straight people: As Gedwin notes in the essay, many folks describe the decision to bareback " as callous, even malicious."
Following Gedwin's essay, barebacking continued to gain popularity. “It was suggested that barebacking was a mechanism by which HIV-positive men could feel closer and more emotionally intimate with their sexual partners, particularly within a society that continues to stigmatize them for having sex,” Halkitis explained in his book.
In an op-ed for Poz Magainze in 2013, Mark S. King talked about the double standard when it comes to gay people and straight people having bareback sex. Barebacking among gay men is deemed a “shameful, shocking [and] murderous behavior… but when straight people do it, we call it sex,” he wrote.
If you don't wear a condom during anal sex, you're potentially exposing yourself to HIV—especially given that 1 in 7 people don't know they have the virus .
“Anyone who is engaging in consistent anal intercourse without a condom should consider taking PrEP,” says Halkitis. “This is particularly important when engaging in anal sex with partners of unknown (HIV) status or if they haven’t been tested in years.”
There are currently two FDA-approved antiretroviral medications, Truvada and Descvoy, which can be taken as a means of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis). These daily medications decrease the likelihood of acquiring HIV through sex by about 99%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report .
As the CDC points out , If your partner is HIV-positive and has an undetectable viral load—meaning the levels of HIV in their blood are below the threshold of detection—there's no risk of transmitting the virus through bareback sex (anal or vaginal).
The CDC came to this conclusion after reviewing multiple pioneering studies. "Across three different studies, including thousands of couples and many thousand acts of sex without a condom or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), no HIV transmissions to an HIV-negative partner were observed when the HIV-positive person was virally suppressed," the CDC wrote in an open letter to the public and medical community in September, 2017. "This means that people who take ART daily as prescribed and achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner."
Individuals with HIV can obtain and maintain an undetectable viral load by adhering to ART.
If you're thinking about having bareback vaginal sex, know that you'll potentially be exposing yourself to syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, chlamydia, and HIV, Halkitis says. You can minimize your risk of getting Human Papillomavirus (HPV) by getting all three doses of the Gardasil vaccine.
If you and your partner are monogamous and want to start having sex without a condom, you both should get tested for STIs and make sure you're negative across the board. (Oh, and you really, really need to trust that your partner isn't fooling around with other people.)
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Bored after 18 years with her husband, Robin Rinaldi placed an ad seeking casual encounters with new men and women. She tells what happened on her yearlong sex odyssey in her memoir "The Wild Oats Project."
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Trapped in a marriage where the sex was routine, freelance journalist Robin Rinaldi , now 50, embarked on a 12-month experiment in which she lived apart from her husband during the week and took lovers. As she publishes her memoir, “The Wild Oats Project,” on Tuesday, she talks to The Post’s Jane Ridley about her erotic journey.
Pulling on his pants after our intimate encounter in my Las Vegas hotel room, the cute 23-year-old I’d just picked up holds out his cellphone, urging me to tap in my number.
“You really don’t have to take it,” I say.
Having sex with a stranger is thrilling, but I’m not that interested in a repeat performance.
Two minutes after he’s gone, I climb back into bed and text my husband, Scott, whom I’ve been with for 18 years. “Just saying good night,” I type. “Good night, dove,” writes back Scott from wherever he is.
Scenarios like these were typical during my year of living dangerously — the crazy 12 months in 2008 and 2009 I jokingly call my “Wild Oats Project,” when Scott and I had an open marriage.
Stuck in a rut — our once-a-week sex life was loving, but lacked spontaneity and passion — I was craving seduction and sexual abandon. I was having a midlife crisis and chasing this profound, deeply rooted experience of being female.
Before then, starting a family had felt like one route to this elusive state of feminine fulfillment. But Scott had made it absolutely clear he never wanted a baby, and even had a vasectomy.
Many people will find this hard to understand, but, as the door to motherhood closed, I found myself rushing towards this whole other outlet of heightened female experience — taking lovers.
I’d always been “the good girl,” and had slept with only three guys before getting involved with Scott at the age of 26. I was pretty conservative.
Sexually, I was experiencing what happens to a lot of women in their late 30s and early 40s. I was approaching my sexual peak and was relaxing into myself.
I broke the news to Scott that I wanted an open marriage in early 2008, a few months after his vasectomy. “I won’t go to my grave with no children and four lovers,” I told him repeatedly. “I refuse.”
Against the idea at first, he eventually relented. According to our deal, I’d rent a studio apartment during the week and come back to our home on weekends. Both of us could sleep with whomever we chose as long as we used protection. It was a case of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
My first step was placing an ad on nerve.com , a kind of intellectual version of Craigslist’s Casual Encounters . Under the heading: “Good girl seeks experience,” it read: “I’m a 44-year-old professional, educated, attractive woman in an open marriage, seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality. You must be trustworthy, smart, and skilled at conversation as well as in bed.”
I added: “Our time together will be limited to three dates as I cannot become seriously involved.”
Within 24 hours, my inbox offered up 23 prospective suitors.
The first lover I met through nerve.com was a 40-something lawyer called Jonathan*. Slim, handsome with glasses and a stylish haircut, he suggested we kiss to test our sexual chemistry. “There’s a lot of heat there,” he said.
On our second date, the following week, he came to my studio after work with a cooler of snacks and some wine. We stumbled to the bed, where he turned me onto my hands and knees and took me from behind.
We had intercourse twice and, after he left, I felt satiated.
Around the same time, I took workshops at OneTaste , a sexual-education center, which has branches in New York and San Francisco, where I lived at the time. A sort of “sex-friendly” yoga retreat, it taught me something called orgasmic meditation, which is centered on the woman.
OneTaste was the place where I selected most of my lovers, although I picked up a couple of guys, like the 23-year-old in Vegas, on business trips. OneTaste was populated by cool, open-minded San Franciscans who wanted to expand their horizons.
They included an astrologer named Jude, 12 years my junior. The moment I saw him, I was irresistibly drawn in.
Slightly built and neo-hippy, he was spiritual, calm and centered. I was an Italian, meat-eating, busy magazine editor. But we had a real connection. I became infatuated with him, but the sex soon fizzled.
And then there was Alden, a writer, in his late 30s, who answered my nerve.com post.
“So your ad said only three dates,” he said, as we ate dinner in a crowded restaurant. “Yes,” I replied. Without missing a beat, he reached over and lightly took my fingertips in his. “Do you think we’ll be able to do that, to limit it?”
I loved our conversation, the fact he was a writer, the books he read. Things in the bedroom were mind-blowing and, before I knew it, I was hooked. But I’d made a pledge to my husband that I wouldn’t get involved with any of my lovers. I stuck to that.
And so the year went on. I had lots of “firsts,” including being intimate with women.
But the lessons I learned weren’t purely physical. They were about growing up, making mistakes, learning to live without so much fear, owning up to my dark side and, eventually, finding out the difference between being a “good girl” and a good person.
I owned up to my dark side, finding out the difference between being a ‘good girl’ and a good person.
On weekends, I’d go back to Scott. It wasn’t as strange as you might imagine. I liked it. It was the perfect balance, living on my own during the week and then returning home.
We knew we were both sleeping with other people, but we kept to the rules and never spoke about it. We had sex as always and the open marriage spiced things up — at least at first.
But, by the end of t
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