Barebacking, Pt. 2: 5 Reasons Why Men Do It To Each Other by Kyle Phoenix

Whoooooooooo, doggie, the previous blog essay about barebacking really got me a wave of responses, emails and such.  That's a good thing because it immediately forced me into conversation with some men to discuss myself, themselves, their sexual practices mine and to bounce back and forth the reasoning for raw sex (sex without protection---condom, dental dam, female condom, etc.).  I'd previous done several episodes on this topic on The Kyle Phoenix Show but in the emails I get from that audience, their emails had included issues, comments and questions about barebacking.

The main questioning came to why do men do this?  I went back to one of my work/television sources Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches, an excellent book (purchase link on this blog--- ) to get some survey data that would specifically ask and answer that question.

Reason 1: Anger/Self Destructive/Fatalism

Universally accepted, however you choose to perceive sexualities outside of homosexuality, there is a greater chance for depression.  I have a whole series of blogs and YouTube videos and TV shows about it it's so prevalent with MSM (men who have sex with men----a proud net generalization I'll use to encompass everyone).  Shame turned inward becomes depression and self destructive behavior.  Shame turned outward can manifest itself as destructive actioning towards others.  Essentially I don't like myself, I don't agree with my lot in life, I'm assuming that my sexual identity and "normal" society will never jive together, I'm alone, I'm hurting, I feel alienated and ostracized so why practice safe sex?  The ultimate fuck it.


Reason 2: Pleasure seeking/Risk Taking/Escapism

Sex, around for hundred sof thousands of years for humans, is fun.  It can be adventurous, stimulating, relaxing, intense, intimate and the prospect of having to stop for: THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX---excuse me one second as I was nibbling your inner thigh we are at the pre-penetrative stage, let me lean over, bend down, roll over there, open the drawer, my pocket, your pocket, that box get the condom packet out, open it, get the lube, put the condom on, a little dab of lube within more lube within you anally, lube then onot the condom------okay, where were we?

Not easy, pleasant or romantic.  It's easier to be wild with this incredibly passionate hottie (known or unknown) who you've had a crush on for awhile or a night or who you've been dating for a week or a year and just be close, be free, be spontaneous!  Because passion, the passion of touching you, being touched by me, the smell of you next to me and your lips, oh, God, your lips!!!!!!!----there's no time!  Take me!  Take me!!!!  Reason be damned!!!!

Reason 3: Intimacy Needs/Rational Choice Making

Human beings, especially those who believe or are in love, want and assume this is the forever love.  Or this is the true love.  This is the good love.  Let's ratchet it back from love and say I tell you I'm negative, you promise me you are and you're trustworthy, right and so am I?  We're not like those others.  We're both employed, rational, respectable, employed, educated, loving people.  We can be close without a condom.  In fact our love, or just our humanness needs to feel closer, no barriers, no artificiality between us.  I love you.  I really, really do.  I would never intentionally hurt you.  I loves you, Porgy.  I want to feel youuuuuuuuu.  Don't you want to feel meeeeeeeeeee?

Reason 4: Erroneous perception of Risk

Look at what great shape he's in.  Look at what great shape I'm in.  You can tell when someone is infected.  Their skin seems ashen or glistens or has less collagen.  The meds do that to them.  But you, you look like the perfect specimen of health. There's no possible way you could be HIV+ at your age, you're too young.  I can tell just from sight.  I didn't think some of the things we were doing, just rubbing that against this, just a little bit of insertion, just oral was risky.

Reason 5: Erectile Related Dysfunction.

Condoms don't fit me right,  Condoms are too tight.  I'm allergic to condoms.  I can't stay hard/maintain an erection with a condom on.  I can't get hard in a condom.

Here we are---several thousand men answered surveys and I licensed it up with some fun language but those were their reported actions and reasoning.  I want to add as a caveat to this that women too roll through these 5 Reasons or hear them as well and as infection of women skyrockets, particularly women of color, we're seeing impact of such reasoning.

But I promised I would consider the information from my own perspective with you, reader and I have.  In approximately 1995 I wrote a magazine cover story on AIDS, it was a big thing getting the cover to be in color, red, the AIDS ribbon as I was spinning off of an AIDS conference that was occurring in Buffalo. A year or so later a former girlfriend of a lover came up infected.  Ok, she was a bit of a----------extremely sexually liberated, physically generous young woman with a public...reputation.  Yeah, I could've worked that out with just one word but let us not judge the past.  Around the same time my mother's close friend, Walter died of HIV related complications.  They'd known each other close to a decade and it left a deep impression on her, even surrounding funerals and death.  My mother was very vocal/engaging around safe sex, afraid that I would become infected, that I was infected, that infection was only a hairs breadth away.

Suddenly HIV wasn't simply TV and Red Hot cd compilations and free condoms in night clubs, it was really, really real.  Then I started volunteering places in, seeing death upfront---here today, gone tomorrow and I thought about the future, my future.  I thought about marriage and children.  I thought about ok, I might meet a partner who was HIV+----would I maintain the relationship longterm or just find a way to fade to black within a date or two.  Logically, statistically, even if my sexual partners had reported as negative (or thought they were) I'd been sexual with someone who was HIV+ and may've had the other multitude of STIs. Most importantly to me---children.  How would I parent children if I was sexually negligent around risk?  Biologically parent children first (yes, I know there are other options) but then what about child rearing?  How long did I want and need my own parents in my life?  How long would my children need me?  If the outside range of HIV survival is 20+ years and I were to get infected in my 20s or 30s wasn't I then also voluntarily perpetuating the usually social force of men of color dying early?  Is unsafe sex a way of men of color being removed from the community, the community that needs them during their highest wage earning/educational/potentiality fulfillment years, regardless of their sexuality?

I know, a lot to think about, right?

Here I am, brown as the floor, safe sexing it, in LTRs and not because of the future.  Because of to some degree my family, my children, not wanting to impact my parents negatively, not wanting to be in my community, giving of my skills over a shorter period of time.

When THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX moments happen for me---what flashes through my mind what makes me crack jokes and try to make what is the oddest commercial break on my personal passionate moments---are the above reasons.

How though does one negotiate that no matter how fine, how trustworthy, how in love we, you, I am that I'm taking this precaution?  That seems to be the rub.  We know how to prevent HIV.  But 30 years in, prevention strategies/tips/mandates are not working.

Next: Raw Sex/Barebacking, Pt. 3: Black, White, Puerto Rican, Is Everyone Freakin'? , Part 3


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Raw Sex, Pt. 2: 5 Reasons Why Men Do It To Each Other by Kyle Phoenix

Whoooooooooo, doggie, the previous blog essay about barebacking really got me a wave of responses, emails and such.  That's a good thing because it immediately forced me into conversation with some men to discuss myself, themselves, their sexual practices mine and to bounce back and forth the reasoning for raw sex (sex without protection---condom, dental dam, female condom, etc.).  I'd previous done several episodes on this topic on The Kyle Phoenix Show but in the emails I get from that audience, their emails had included issues, comments and questions about barebacking.

The main questioning came to why do men do this?  I went back to one of my work/television sources Barebacking: Psychosocial and Public Health Approaches, an excellent book  (purchase link on this blog--- )  to get some survey data that would specifically ask and answer that question.

Reason 1: Anger/Self Destructive/Fatalism

Universally accepted, however you choose to perceive sexualities outside of homosexuality, there is a greater chance for depression.  I have a whole series of blogs and YouTube videos and TV shows about it it's so prevalent with MSM (men who have sex with men----a proud net generalization I'll use to encompass everyone).  Shame turned inward becomes depression and self destructive behavior.  Shame turned outward can manifest itself as destructive actioning towards others.  Essentially I don't like myself, I don't agree with my lot in life, I'm assuming that my sexual identity and "normal" society will never jive together, I'm alone, I'm hurting, I feel alienated and ostracized so why practice safe sex?  The ultimate fuck it.


Reason 2: Pleasure seeking/Risk Taking/Escapism

Sex, around for hundred sof thousands of years for humans, is fun.  It can be adventurous, stimulating, relaxing, intense, intimate and the prospect of having to stop for: THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX---excuse me one second as I was nibbling your inner thigh we are at the pre-penetrative stage, let me lean over, bend down, roll over there, open the drawer, my pocket, your pocket, that box get the condom packet out, open it, get the lube, put the condom on, a little dab of lube within more lube within you anally, lube then onot the condom------okay, where were we?

Not easy, pleasant or romantic.  It's easier to be wild with this incredibly passionate hottie (known or unknown) who you've had a crush on for awhile or a night or who you've been dating for a week or a year and just be close, be free, be spontaneous!  Because passion, the passion of touching you, being touched by me, the smell of you next to me and your lips, oh, God, your lips!!!!!!!----there's no time!  Take me!  Take me!!!!  Reason be damned!!!!

Reason 3: Intimacy Needs/Rational Choice Making

Human beings, especially those who believe or are in love, want and assume this is the forever love.  Or this is the true love.  This is the good love.  Let's ratchet it back from love and say I tell you I'm negative, you promise me you are and you're trustworthy, right and so am I?  We're not like those others.  We're both employed, rational, respectable, employed, educated, loving people.  We can be close without a condom.  In fact our love, or just our humanness needs to feel closer, no barriers, no artificiality between us.  I love you.  I really, really do.  I would never intentionally hurt you.  I loves you, Porgy.  I want to feel youuuuuuuuu.  Don't you want to feel meeeeeeeeeee?

Reason 4: Erroneous perception of Risk

Look at what great shape he's in.  Look at what great shape I'm in.  You can tell when someone is infected.  Their skin seems ashen or glistens or has less collagen.  The meds do that to them.  But you, you look like the perfect specimen of health. There's no possible way you could be HIV+ at your age, you're too young.  I can tell just from sight.  I didn't think some of the things we were doing, just rubbing that against this, just a little bit of insertion, just oral was risky.

Reason 5: Erectile Related Dysfunction.

Condoms don't fit me right,  Condoms are too tight.  I'm allergic to condoms.  I can't stay hard/maintain an erection with a condom on.  I can't get hard in a condom.

Here we are---several thousand men answered surveys and I licensed it up with some fun language but those were their reported actions and reasoning.  I want to add as a caveat to this that women too roll through these 5 Reasons or hear them as well and as infection of women skyrockets, particularly women of color, we're seeing impact of such reasoning.

But I promised I would consider the information from my own perspective with you, reader and I have.  In approximately 1995 I wrote a magazine cover story on AIDS, it was a big thing getting the cover to be in color, red, the AIDS ribbon as I was spinning off of an AIDS conference that was occurring in Buffalo. A year or so later a former girlfriend of a lover came up infected.  Ok, she was a bit of a----------extremely sexually liberated, physically generous young woman with a public...reputation.  Yeah, I could've worked that out with just one word but let us not judge the past.  Around the same time my mother's close friend, Walter died of HIV related complications.  They'd known each other close to a decade and it left a deep impression on her, even surrounding funerals and death.  My mother was very vocal/engaging around safe sex, afraid that I would become infected, that I was infected, that infection was only a hairs breadth away.

Suddenly HIV wasn't simply TV and Red Hot cd compilations and free condoms in night clubs, it was really, really real.  Then I started volunteering places in, seeing death upfront---here today, gone tomorrow and I thought about the future, my future.  I thought about marriage and children.  I thought about ok, I might meet a partner who was HIV+----would I maintain the relationship longterm or just find a way to fade to black within a date or two.  Logically, statistically, even if my sexual partners had reported as negative (or thought they were) I'd been sexual with someone who was HIV+ and may've had the other multitude of STIs. Most importantly to me---children.  How would I parent children if I was sexually negligent around risk?  Biologically parent children first (yes, I know there are other options) but then what about child rearing?  How long did I want and need my own parents in my life?  How long would my children need me?  If the outside range of HIV survival is 20+ years and I were to get infected in my 20s or 30s wasn't I then also voluntarily perpetuating the usually social force of men of color dying early?  Is unsafe sex a way of men of color being removed from the community, the community that needs them during their highest wage earning/educational/potentiality fulfillment years, regardless of their sexuality?

I know, a lot to think about, right?

Here I am, brown as the floor, safe sexing it, in LTRs and not because of the future.  Because of to some degree my family, my children, not wanting to impact my parents negatively, not wanting to be in my community, giving of my skills over a shorter period of time.

When THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX moments happen for me---what flashes through my mind what makes me crack jokes and try to make what is the oddest commercial break on my personal passionate moments---are the above reasons.

How though does one negotiate that no matter how fine, how trustworthy, how in love we, you, I am that I'm taking this precaution?  That seems to be the rub.  We know how to prevent HIV.  But 30 years in, prevention strategies/tips/mandates are not working.

Next: Raw Sex/Barebacking: Black, White, Puerto Rican, Is Everyone Freakin'? , Part 3



Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Raw Sex: Anything Goes, Part 1 by Kyle Phoenix

The challenge of dating in the 21st century or even working in/with groups tht involve particularly men who have sex with men is the shadow of STI---Sexually Transmitted Infections (HIV, HIV-2, HPV, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Mano, HCV, Syphilis, Herpes, etc.) because the population one is dealing with is ground zero.  The deeper, social challenge is not simply the risk but the what can feel like sheer insanity around non-protection. Unfortunately, as statistics suggest, from Black and Latino men,  Somehow, some way along the road of sexual liberation there has come the mentality that unsafe sex---exchange of bodily fluids---is cool and the gang.

As I write this I contemplate how to be both honest and at the same time sound reasonably non-judgmental but maybe it's about time that someone said: "Hey, are you out of your fucking mind?" to risky sex.  When someone calls me brother and suggests we engage in unsafe/raw sex they are literally offering to fuck me to death.  Now that may sound extreme but how else can another human being literally strip you of your immune system?  There are cases of partners unknowingly infecting one another, drugs and blood transference but to actually willingly, willfully give or take the risk with another human being---have we become sociopaths to pleasure?  Can a man of color talk to me about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Obama or hegemony or racial struggle while capitulating to infect other human beings?  Better yet, is it racially motivated?

Can we look at race, men of color, sexually involved with other men of color, and say---the weight of homophobia coupled with racism drives, otherwise, seemingly sensible men to actively, consciously try and infect or get infected?  Has oppression and disdain, violence and prejudice, driven us so insane that I'm talking about the "need for love and healing in the  Black community" in one breath and infecting with the next?  Is it such  lack of value for men of color, men of color who may be homosexual or bi-sexual (or even heterosexual---don't think your straightness excuses you from unsafe sex) by other men of color that we have to lynch each other with bodily fluids?

Or, if we expand the scope, are men (and women---gender does not excuse you from exposure) of any race so self-hating, other-hating, homo-hating that infecting another is plausible?  That "breeding" parties is normal?  That wanting to be bred (HIV infected on purpose) is acceptable?  Not just acceptable to the individual seeking but more importantly to those of us who watch them.

In this work I do, education, identity, sexuality, I frequent a lot of dating sites, for all genders and sexualities, and what I see is terrifying.  Too many men of color without a regard to being infected or infecting.  I'm often eschewing two out of three out of hand just for their risky profiles.  But now a trend I've started to notice---White men, particularly over 30 seeking Black and Latino men for raw sex---pointedly as the Caucasian, HIV+, insertive partner.  So it's a minefield---Blacks and Latinos (45% under 30) infecting one another and now White men seeking out particularly minorities to infect.  Now I could lash into a rant about racism and entitlement and the capacity of someone in dominant culture feeling oblivious to moral conventions around infecting people of color but when I see/am offered infection by people of color, I must ask: whose holding the rope and who's doing the lynching?  Has racial liberation lead us to sociopathic hatred of ourselves rather than racial love?

But I don't want to wholesale judge or condemn, in fact I write this to educate so next time I'll run down the 5 factors of why men report they bareback and more importantly, I'll search myself for where I'm at in this debate, hitting myself with some of the above questions as I hope you will too.

Coming Next: Barebacking: Top 5 Reasons Men Do It To Each Other


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
www.kylephoenixsite.com

Barebacking: Anything Goes, Part 1 by Kyle Phoenix

The challenge of dating in the 21st century or even working in/with groups tht involve particularly men who have sex with men is the shadow of STI---Sexually Transmitted Infections (HIV, HPV, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Mano, etc.) because the population on is dealing with is ground zero.  The deeper, social challenge is not simply the risk but the what can feel like sheer insanity around non-protection. Unfortunately, as statistics suggest, from Black and Latino men,  Somehow, some way along the road of sexual liberation there has come the mentality that unsafe sex---exchange of bodily fluids---is cool and the gang.

As I write this I contemplate how to be both honest and at the same time sound reasonably non-judgmental but maybe it's about time that someone said: "Hey, are you out of your fucking mind?" to risky sex.  When someone calls me brother and suggests we engage in unsafe/raw sex they are literally offering to fuck me to death.  Now that may sound extreme but how else can another human being literally strip you of your immune system?  There are cases of partners unknowingly infecting one another, drugs and blood transference but to actually willingly, willfully give or take the risk with another human being.  Have we begun sociopaths to pleasure?  Can a man of color talk to me about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Obama or hegemony or racial struggle while capitulating to infect other human beings?  Is it racially motivated?

Can we look at race, men of color, sexually involved with other men of color, and say---the weight of homophobia coupled with racism drives otherwise, seemingly sensible men to actively, consciously try and infect or get infected?  Has oppression and disdain, violence and prejudice driven us so insane that I'm talking about the "need for love and healing in the  Black community" in one breath and infecting with the next?  Is it such  lack of value for men of color, men of color who may be homosexual or bi-sexual (or even heterosexual---don't think your straightness excuses you from unsafe sex) by other men of color that we have to lynch each other with bodily fluids?

Or, if we expand the scope, are men (and women---gender does not excuse you from exposure) of any race so self-hating, other-hating, homo-hating that infecting another is plausible?  That "breeding" parties is normal?  That wanting to be bred (HIV infected on purpose) is acceptable?  Not just acceptable to the individual seeking but more importantly to those of us who watch them.

In this work I do, education, identity, sexuality, I frequent a lot of dating sites, for all genders and sexualities, and what I see is terrifying.  Too many men of color without a regard to being infected or infecting.  I'm often eschewing two out of three out of hand just for their risky profiles.  But now a trend I've started to notice---White men, particularly over 30 seeking Black and Latino men for raw sex---pointedly as the insertive partner.  So it's a minefield---Blacks and Latinos (45% under 30) infecting one another and now White men seeking out particularly minorities to infect.  Now I could lash into a rant about racism and entitlement and the capacity of someone in dominant culture feeling oblivious to moral conventions around infecting people of color but when I see/am offered infection by people of color I must ask: whose holding the rope and who's doing the lynching?  Has racial liberation lead us to sociopathic hatred of ourselves rather than racial love?

But I don't want to wholesale judge or condemn, in fact I write this to educate so next time I'll run down the 5 factors of why men report they bareback and more importantly, I'll search myself for where I'm at in this debate, hitting myself with some of the above questions as I hope you will too.

Coming Next: Barebacking: Top 5 Reasons Men Do It To Each Other


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
www.kylephoenixsite.com