Last year, after meeting a guy at a party, I ended up back at his apartment in an all too familiar situation: Neither of us had any condoms. Under normal circumstances I would have told him to go out and get some or just settled for some nonpenetrative fun. But this guy was really hot. And I was drunk. And the nearby shop was closed. And I was on birth control. And he was really insistent that it didn’t matter . . . and so, eventually, I gave in. I woke up the next morning terrified. I knew nothing about him, and felt stupid for being so easily pressured into a situation that clearly seemed so routine to him—not a good sign. I spent the next three months, which is the length of time it takes for HIV to show up in a test, on a double dose of my anxiety meds. I’m part of a generation that started having sex in the new millennium. For us, and the generation born after mine, the AIDS epidemic wasn’t something we lived through. We didn’t witness the loss of our friends and our community—with no cure in sight—and as a result, many of us naively behave like we’re not at risk. The trend of bareback sex is reentering the gay community; I know I’m not the only one of my friends to have “messed up” and had sex without condoms. But even though we privileged young Americans might feel invincible at times, that’s unfortunately not the case. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 50,000 people in the United States are newly infected with HIV each year—that’s roughly one person every ten minutes. In total, there are about 1.1 million Americans living with HIV/AIDS today, and it’s estimated that 16 percent of them are undiagnosed. Gay and bisexual men continue to bear the greatest burden of HIV, accounting for an estimated 63 percent of new infections, and black and Latino men and women are disproportionately affected by the virus—black people are estimated to have an HIV incidence rate that’s almost eight times the incidence rate of white people. And just because the virus can be managed, it doesn’t mean that living with it won’t dictate how and who you have sex with for the rest of your life. People still get sick. It breaks my heart to write that earlier this year, a friend of mine—a gay artist in his mid-twenties—was diagnosed with AIDS, after carrying the virus, undiagnosed, for a period of time. He’s almost completely lost his vision at this point, which is not an uncommon side effect for those familiar with the damage the virus can cause. When I heard the news, I was completely stunned. All I could think was: Why and how could this happen in the year 2014? For one, most of the sex we see—on TV and movies and porn—is condom-free. When was the last time you saw someone stop to put on a condom during a sex scene in a movie? In Lars von Trier’s recent sex epic Nymphomaniac, there isn’t one mention of condoms in nearly four hours of constant fucking. Especially (and most concerning) is the scene where Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character is being double-penetrated by two bareback men in either the nineties or the early aughts. While gay porn largely tries to set a good example by using condoms, in straight porn, it’s rare that people use barriers. Our vast consumption of porn undoubtedly influences the way we have sex (a point made well by Cindy Gallop, whose site, MakeLoveNotPorn.com, aims to reverse bad habits picked up by people whose sex education comes solely from X-rated movies). And porn is a huge influence on how we groom ourselves “down there.” Why do you think so many women today (as well as a growing number of men) shave it all? So okay—we’re aware that porn is influential in the way we think about sex and what we find permissible. But given that porn is a fantasy, how do actual sex workers feel safe?
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I spoke with porn superstar and writer Stoya, who has been in the business for seven years and is the secretary of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, which advocates maintaining and improving safety and working conditions in the adult-film industry. Stoya told me: “Just because you see us not using condoms on camera doesn’t mean that’s the only way we have sex. Most performers, when going outside of the regularly tested talent pool of porn, will use barriers.” There’s also a rigorous regime of STI testing that goes along with being in porn. Today, most performers who work regularly are tested every fourteen days. And according to the Free Speech Coalition, which is an adult-film industry trade group, condoms aren’t perfect when one is having sex at such a high frequency. “They break,” reads a blog post on Free Speech Coalition’s website. “In the shoots that can take several hours, they can cause abrasions known as ‘condom rash,’ which, paradoxically, can make it easier to transmit an infection if one does break. For this and a host of other reasons, performers generally prefer to rely on the testing system over condoms.” “There’s no such thing as safe sex—it just doesn’t exist,” Stoya said. “And actually, I think the myth of safe sex puts people at higher risk because they think condoms are the answer to everything. Having safer sex, however, consists of a series of roadblocks. The Adult Performer Advocacy Committee is in the process of creating a system of basic education and harm reduction for new adult performers before they start working, and a big part of that system is getting sensible information on STIs. You don’t just show up in Southern California, take your clothes off and have Louboutins start falling on your head from the sky, you know?” But testing is not always enough, as evidenced by porn star Cameron Bay, who made headlines in August of 2013 after she tested positive for HIV on set. A six-day moratorium was imposed on filming and the actors working with Bay were also tested and eventually cleared. The following month, Bay’s boyfriend, Rod Daily, publicly announced that he, too, had tested positive for HIV. Bay and Daily both have spoken up about the need for more safety and more condoms on set. The photo of Bay crying in front of the press is heartbreaking, and a stern reality of the kind of risk her profession runs. Which is why I’ve often been surprised at the naivety of some of my friends surrounding HIV-risk awareness—one friend, for example, didn’t know that having anal sex puts you at higher risk of HIV than vaginal sex. And let’s face it: It’s not often discussed in intimate circles that topping is less risky than bottoming for gay men, or that it’s easier for a hetero guy to give a girl the virus than vice versa. It’s an interesting contrast when you consider that the people having the most extreme and riskiest sex, with the highest number of partners, are actually thinking and acting much more seriously about safer sex. I realize, of course, that these stories are scary, and that we can’t suddenly all become celibate. Beyond the obvious safe-sex roadblocks such as using barriers and getting tested, another important defense, according to Stoya, is common sense. “There’s definitely something to be said for having a basic knowledge of the people you’re sleeping with,” she said. “The idea of picking someone up at a bar and being pretty sure his name is Dan, but it might also be Ted, seems so horrifying to me now, even though I did that all the time when I was younger. It’s a very effective roadblock to ask yourself: What do you know about this person, and how likely are they to be engaging in high-risk activities? For example, are they getting their ass railed by 20 strangers in a night, or injecting dirty needles underneath their toenails?” It might sound obvious or cheesy to say, but every time we have sex, we’re gambling. In the real world, we take for granted that people are tested regularly. But how can we know for sure? I can’t even count the number of times a guy’s given me some variation of the line: “It just feels so much better without a condom, and I’ll get so much harder if we don’t use one.” But if a guy is pressuring you not to use protection, that likely means he’s giving the same spiel to every girl, which means he’s possibly having unprotected sex often, which makes him a higher risk. I legit once had a 40-year-old guy I was dating tell me, “I don’t have to worry about STDs, because I only sleep with girls from good families.” As if that was supposed to be valid consolation. And please don’t think the point of me writing this is to wave a scolding finger in the air—I’m talking to myself here, too. I realize I’m saying a lot that’s been said before, but that’s kind of the point. Being safe isn’t new or revolutionary or even that exciting. But it’s something we need to remind ourselves of, again and again. Hair: Eric Jamieson; Makeup: Junko On Sciortino: Michael Kors blossom-print belted dress, $1,875; michaelkors.com
The post Roughly 1 Person Every 10 Minutes Is Diagnosed with HIV in the U.S., so Why Aren’t We Taking AIDS More Seriously? appeared first on Vogue.
