SEXY SATURDAY: IML'S BAREBACK POLICY REVISITED - A GENUINE RANT

"To that end, after considerable discussion, the Executive Committee of International Mr. Leather has decided that it will no longer allow participation in the IML Leather Market by any entity which promotes barebacking or distributes/sells any merchandise tending to promote or advocate barebacking.  This restriction will also apply to distribution of gifts, post cards or any other information via our facilities." - IML press release July 2009

Now I know you just want to have a quiet little Saturday free of thought and consequence but a new friend brought up something this past week that really got under my skin and needs mentioning here on the blog.

You may remember, a few months ago that Chuck Renslow, owner of the annual International Mr. Leather competition in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, announced that bareback videos would no longer be sold at the IML Leathermart (multiple floors of leather goods - clothes, lube, porn, toys, magazines, etc - it's like the San Diego Comic Con but with leather instead of Spiderman costumes - although the super hero costume thing is a legit fetish). This caused great controversy, because somehow people haven't lost enough of their friends to AIDS over the past 30 years and they still don't understand that while condoms aren't 100% effective, they sure do work better than nothing at all.

In any event, this new friend made the point that he and several of his friends were boycotting IML because of this decision because they were 'tired of Chuck running their lives".

I'm not picking on this friend because I'm sure (I"M SURE) that there is a sizable contingent of people out there who feel the same way. It's the same group of guys who call people condom Nazis as if safer sex advocates are literally in their bedroom forcing them at gunpoint to wear a rubber each and every time they have sex. Ridiculous. I only force someone to watch LOST and ONE LIFE TO LIVE with me at gunpoint! :)

The argument that Chuck (or anyone else) is running someone's life by not selling any particular product at their own event is absurd and tired. I heard this ten years ago and it was tired then and it's really REALLY old now. Don't look to anyone else to give you validation for doing something that you want to do. If you want to bareback, bareback.. but don't look to Chuck and IML to validate that decision. Because not selling those products doesn't invalidate that decision either. It works both ways.

By my estimation, Chuck Renslow has exposed immeasurable amounts of gay men (and not, I'm sure, a small amount of women both gay and straight and probably not just a few straight guys either) to fetishes that they didn't know they had. 

Like, as a kid, it's easy to figure out that you think football players are hot because football is all over television and in the community.. but it's harder to know exactly how fabulously kinky you are until you get turned on by seeing someone being muzzled or being punched or living in a straightjacket overnight or having metal prickly objects rubbed up the side of your dick. IML is a great place to meet lots of kinky guys who explore every fetish, and Chuck made that happen - and spawned hundreds of other events worldwide as people figured out - hey there's a lot of kinky people out there who want to get together and have sex, hmm I can make some money and have a good time while doing it. 

If anything, Chuck is about ten years too late but I guess better that than twenty years too late, right? Hell, even the Eagle here in New York (who used to actively promote Treasure Island) quietly stopped showing bareback porn (at least at the times I've been there the past few months).. are they running your life too because they don't (or won't, whatever) show it? Am I running your life because I don't think bareback porn is something that I want to give away at Porno Bingo? 

By the way a friend of mine compiled a list of all of last years vendors and out of about 100, there were only 7 bareback video companies that wouldn't be able to sell their movies (although there were about 8 other companies that we weren't sure of because the websites were down. If you want me to email you the spreadsheet he made up, I'd be happy to, you can get my email addy from my profile here on this blog). Even in the worst case scenario, that's still 80 vendors.

BTW leather community credo USED to be "safe, sane and consensual" .. but as the barebacking trend gained hold of the leather community (ironically, historically one of the hardest hit in the early days of the AIDS crisis), the 'safe' was sort of kinda dropped and people decided to stop saying it. 

OK rant over..let the hate mail begin! <wink>

Comments

[Charles Barrett]

I am an avid consumer of porn, including "bareback" titles. My partner of over twenty years and I are both HIV-, and always use safer sex practices when we play with others, but "bareback" fucking and conspicuous cum eating really ring our bells, as does porn portraying that. True, I can (and do) make my purchases outside of fairs and festivals, but a categorical ban does not sit well with me.

What about vintage, pre-HIV era porn? Is it okay because of its era, or banned, because it does not convey and instruct modern preventative prophylaxis? Arguments can be mounted for either school of thought. I see nothing but a slippery slope here.

[Fennis2000]

No, you are completely right. It's not about controlling lives, censoring or condemning... merely about not endorsing something that could encourage dangerous behavior.

[Michelle Jackson]

Just love your polite and patient style of rant blogging. Had a conversation with my grandson turning 18 yesterday and told him to treasure his HIV negative status as if it were GOLD. That, and a good credit history, remain two things to be cherished and kept intact. Condoms won't help your credit score, but they will help you score without losing your life in the process.

[Will Clark]

thanks Michelle, that's really a beautiful thing to do for your grandson.. but how can you be a grandmother, you're only 29! :)

[Will Clark]

I get it Charles.. I don't think Chuck (nor am I) wagging the finger and saying "bad boy, don't watch this, don't get turned on by it" but as a business person it's up to every individual what he or she will "sell" (whether or not it's actual purchases or like in my case a giveaway) in their own business.

As for the pre-condom stuff, for me personally find it difficult to watch porn knowing that the guys in it are dead of AIDS. The difference that everyone conveniently forgets as the difference between pre condom and bareback porn is the guys in the pre condom videos (well, maybe not the 80s porn, you could debate I suppose) had no idea what was going on and if Al Parker's biography is any indication they might have worn condoms had they known what was out there. The more modern stuff comes with the context of "fuck you I'll do what I want to do! You can't tell me what to do!" which is, I'm sure most of the appeal - it's a really teenagery attitude but not without it's place in society I suppose. :)

[Will Clark]

Thanks Fennis!

[Donald]

At Last, I'm not the first one to make a comment!

Well said, Mr. Clark. I've always been of the opinion that if I don't like your ______ (you fill in the blank), I will take my business somewhere else. I choose the businesses I support and the events that I attend based on that.

Anyone who feels that Chuck Renslow and IML is "running their lives" needs a serious reality check. The last time I checked one of the major prerequisites for playing the games we play is that we are consenting ADULTS. The operative word in that sentence is ADULT, as in one responsible for making their own decisions. Chuck Renslow made his decision to ban a certain product and is willing to accept the result. Why does your friend feel that Chuck's decision is "running" his life? Does he feel that Check is involved with other aspects of his life? Your friend needs to Man Up and accept responsibility for his own decisions. As an Adult "Daddy, Chuck is being mean to me" just doesn't cut it.

[Will Clark]

dude, I think my dick jumped a little bit when reading your letter.. right on. :)

[Jeff Barbose]

Charles,

I beg to differ on the "slippery slope".

The only safe, level ground at which to take a stand is YEAH or NAY on whether to permit bareback videos for sale at IML.

Bareback videos for sale at any sex-related event is tantamount to de facto tacit approval. That's how people will interpret it. I'm with Will on this one.

In fact, didn't one of the bareback video companies actually make a video ABOUT barebacking AT one of these kinds of events? Probably Folsom.

Imagine what all that implies: Folsom Street Fair is the place to go where you can hook up for plenty of hot bareback action--and you won't even have to leave the Fair itself!

At Folsom, there are lots of free condoms available from everyone. I've never heard anyone express the same kind of vehemence towards those efforts or organizations.

Why not?

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

Every day, in fact, I feel an odd sort of sadness seeing stars like J.W. King and R.J. Reynolds, Glenn Steers, Ed Dinakos, and countless others in videos. Unbelievably erotic, and equally sad that they are no longer so except in these stored images, but I have to say, I feel even queasier when I see what you see as being adolescent rebellion (correctly, but) and I see as intentional and willful fetishization with regards to barebacking. Not just "You can't tell me what to do," but, "Yeah, it's deadly, but who cares? Because it's hot, and you know you want to do it too."

I mean, I can tolerate (and participate) in a lot of different kinks, but celebrating hurling oneself headlong towards death without safety equipment (even base jumpers wear a helmet and a harness) is simply incomprehensible.

[Will Clark]

Jeff

Thanks for your letter... yes there are tons of free condoms at Folsom and yes the event does benefit AIDS orgs.. and yes there are also tons of bareback companies represented there. And that's exactly the message that the Folsom Street folks want you to get - come to San Fran for a wild, crazy unbridled time. Granted, you may leave with something more than what you came with but that's your fault not ours. I'm not criticizing Folsom, because people are going to do what people are going to do... but as organizer, must you hand the loaded gun to them? (OK I'll admit that I wrote that just to be sensational. See, I can act out too).

IML is really the same way- there are tons of condoms there too and many events over the weekend that benefit AIDS orgs (like Chicago's Being Alive) but there is also a huge bareback presence in the city. And yes bb videos have been shot at both events.

As you may know, I've been a safer sex advocate for many years .. in oh, about 2003,2004, I forget which now, I was MCing a small fundraising event at Gentry on Halsted featuring a couple dozens porn stars talking about their upcoming projects. It was an official Grabbys event and the place was quite packed. At one point, I was later told, two younger stars slipped into the bathroom and reportedly barebacked each other. Apparently they thought it was 'tee hee' fun to bareback at a Will Clark event. You see the kind of mentality that goes on (and then I wonder why no one takes people seriously who have done porn seriously.. but that's a whole 'nother discussion).

You can't legislate what people will do in their homes and apparently not in the bathroom of a gay bar if they feel the need to act out, but I've always felt that as a party promoter and businessman, it's part of my job to promote sexy but safe.

[Jeff Barbose]

WIll, I only used Folsom as an example because I've never been to IML (neither Leather nor Chicago hold any interest to me), but I've been to Folsom because I live in San Francisco.

I was in college, and not out yet, when the arguable "Golden Age" of gay porn (Al Parker, Jack Wrangler, etc.) and the very start of video rentals (you had to make sure you got the right format: vhs or beta!), and remember the frightening spectre of the unknown of the disease.

Gay Cancer, then GRID, then AIDS. And still there were videos where they weren't using condoms.

But they still WERE publishing when this pornstar or that pornstar had died of AIDS.

It became difficult to watch the porn which had those who had died. I was just a kid, and everything scared me and I couldn't help but get morbid when I watched the videos: I'd see a scene and know that the one was dead and wonder: "am I watching the moment when he seroconverted?"

Of course times are different now and everyone copes in different ways and I'm FAR from being a kid, but there's Godwin's Law on the internet which, paraphrased, says that when someone mentions Nazis or HItler in an argument, the argument is effectively over because clearly everyone's stopped having a reasonable discourse.

So times are different, but some patterns never change: the barebacking contingent know they have no justifiable stance beyond personal, INDIVIDUAL choice.

And in that individual choice, they're limited by the fact that their own choices do affect others and that's something they don't want to think about because if they did, it would impede their "free right to fuck however they want to".

"Personal responsibility" is a phrase they never want to hear because it's become the enemy and so, by extension, so has everyone who uses it. Enemy to the extent that those people get called names like "Condom Nazi".

If it weren't so tragic, I'd giggle.

Condom NAZI?

Like safe sex adovcates are charging into Dutch houses, up hidden stairways and rolling condoms onto the circumsized penises of the entire Frank family before they take the whole lot off to a concentration camp to gas them?

That kind of condom Nazi?

I just want the barebackers who call *anyone* a Condom Nazi to be consistent. I want them to call the ones who hand out condoms at IML to call those people Nazis as well. And STOP AIDS volunteers. And Planned Parenthood employees.

Hell, they can stand in picket lines with the Pro LIfers to protest Planned Parenthood and attend Mass in Catholic Churches in solidarity against the unnaturalness of using condoms.

Or I'm just being silly: I've seen gay men get worked up because no one warned them that a bit-torrented download was actually a BI scene and they had to actually see a vagina, but maybe that's a discussion for another day.

[Seaguy]

To me this is censorship on IML's part. America is a free country and men are going to be fucking bareback at these events no matter what happends. But to ban a specific group or practice under the guise that your protecting them against themselves is a poor excuse for being a A CENSOR!