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Porn laid bare: Gay men, pornography and bareback sex

Sharif Mowlabocus, Justin Harbottle and Charlie Witzel
Sexualities 2013 16: 523
DOI: 10.1177/1363460713487370
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DOI: 10.1177/1363460713487370
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Sharif Mowlabocus
University of Sussex, UK
Justin Harbottle
Terrence Higgins Trust, UK
Charlie Witzel
Terrence Higgins Trust, UK
Abstract
This article details the preliminary findings from Porn Laid Bare, a collaborative research
project between the University of Sussex and the Terrence Higgins Trust, Brighton. We
explore the multidimensional relationship that respondents identified as having formed
with pornographic material, together with its role within gay male subculture. We then
consider how interview respondents understood and conceptualised bareback pornog-
raphy. Our findings reveal consistent contradictions between general discussions of gay
pornography and specific discussions of bareback representations. Utilising Dean’s
(2009) work on bareback subculture and the ‘ambivalent gift’, we develop a critical
reading of these contradictions in order to identify the methods by which the anxieties
and pleasures of bareback pornography were handled by respondents.
Keywords
Bareback, gay men, gift-giving, pornography, sexual health
The academic study of pornography has been revitalised during the last 10 years
with the publication of numerous anthologies and monographs engaging with
pornography from a range of critical perspectives (see for example, Attwood,
2009; Lane, 2000; Morrison, 2004b; Paasonen et al., 2007). Extending the work
undertaken by second-wave feminism, scholars such as Jensen (2007), Kendall
(2005) and Bishop (2007) have rearticulated the problematic gender dynamics
Corresponding author:
Sharif Mowlabocus, University of Sussex, Silverstone 338, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK.
Email: S.J.Mowlabocus@sussex.ac.uk

524 Sexualities 16(5/6)
that structure much commercial pornography. Meanwhile, and echoing Williams

(1992), authors such as White (2003), Jacobs (2004) and Attwood (2007) have
argued for a re-evaluation of pornography’s potential to liberate and subvert gen-
dered norms.
Within the specific arena of gay male pornography, academic studies have
explored a variety of issues within sexually explicit representations of male–male
desire. These include the (often problematic) representation of gender dynamics
(Escoffier, 2003; Stoltenberg, 1991), and of race (Fung, 1991; K Mercer, 1991, 1992;
Radel, 2001); the issue of whether pornography can have a pedagogic function
(Kendall, 2004, 2005; Patton, 1991, 1996) and the role of pornography in the
lives of gay men (Burger, 1995; Dyer, 1985; Morrison, 2004a).
The emergence of bareback pornography (pornography that depicts unprotected
anal sex – UAI – between men) in the late 1990s, and its journey from that of niche
‘kink’ to a feature within a wide variety of gay male pornography, is perhaps the
most notable shift in gay male pornographic content. During the mid-1980s, the US-
dominated gay porn scene sought to normalise condom use within pornography
(Mowlabocus, 2010). This was in response to the burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis of
the mid-1980s, the effects of which were first felt in the gay male communities of
coastal cities such as Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Unlike heterosex-
ual porn studios (which relied on regular testing and surveillance of performers and
their on-screen sexual contact1), commercial gay male pornography adopted the
condom code in a bid to protect their actors (and their reputations). In the UK,
anxieties over the legal status of gay pornography meant that the 1980s was also a
time when over-the-counter gay pornography often shied away from ‘hardcore’
scenes of penetration and erect penises. While these anxieties dissipated during the
1990s,2 by the time hardcore material was ‘freely’ available, the condom code had
become an entrenched part of commercial gay male pornography.
The result of this policy was manifold and meant that, up until 2000, it was rare
to find gay pornography featuring sex without condoms for sale in gay bookshops
and sex stores. Today the situation is markedly different and it is now uncommon
to find such stores not stocking material that explicitly markets itself as ‘raw’,
‘risky’, ‘bareback’ or ‘condom-free’ (see Rofes, 1998 and Escoffier, 2009 for further
discussion). The representation of unprotected anal sex (UAI) has gone from being
an under-the-counter commodity, to a ‘legitimate’ product marketed in similar
ways – and via the same distribution channels – as other forms of gay pornography.
It is this movement – from margin to centre – that provides the impetus for the
research under discussion here. Earlier studies have identified the formation of
disparate ‘barebacking communities’ and have often positioned barebacking at
the periphery of gay male culture (Scarce, 1999; Tewksbury, 2003). While not
disputing these earlier claims, the authors of this article identify an increasing
‘mainstreaming’ of representations that depict bareback sex. Recent forays into
bareback pornography by larger commercial studios such as Sean Cody, Corbin
Fisher and Chaosmen are good examples of this ‘normalising’ of bareback porn-
ography, with UAI being incorporated into the existing aesthetic of these studios.

Mowlabocus et al. 525
Of course this journey from margin to centre has not been without controversy.
Successive editors of Boyz magazine, the popular weekly scene publication, have
spoken out against those who choose to bareback and those who seek to profit
from selling representations of UAI. Meanwhile bareback pornography has been
discussed in the British Parliament, with Anne Milton, Under-Secretary of State for
Health, calling for an end to the promotion of bareback pornography on World
Aids day, 2010 (Hansard, 2010). These recent criticisms echo concerns raised a
decade earlier by Signorile (1997) and Rotello (1997). Yet while there has been a
great deal of discussion over the issue of bareback sex and bareback subculture,
there has been relatively little research into bareback pornography – and even less
that has focused on the role that bareback pornography is playing in the lives of
gay men today. This article sets out to respond to this dearth of academic com-
mentary and explores how gay men approach pornography (in general) and bare-
back pornography (as a specific genre) in different ways.3
Methodology
Beginning in December 2010, and with funding from the Terrence Higgins Trust’s
Informed Passions project (itself funded by the Big Lottery Fund), the research
employed a two-stage methodology that involved a textual analysis of a corpus
of pornographic material and a series of focus groups with gay and bisexual men
based in the Brighton and Sussex region. In the first stage of the research a total of
125 pornographic scenes taken from popular websites and DVDs were analysed
and coded separately by the three researchers.
Data from the coding exercise were triangulated and a set of common themes,
generic conventions and sexual ‘markers’ were identified. These themes and mar-
kers centred around different sexual practices, the number of performers involved
in each scene, the different body types displayed, the representation of ejaculation
and the use of condoms. Importantly, both sexual and non-sexual elements of each
scene were analysed For example, the location of the scene was recorded, as was the
quality of the footage and whether the material was user-generated or commer-
cially produced.
The themes underpinned the development of a set of interview questions that
were then tested using a pilot group and with an external moderator. Following a
redrafting of the interview script based on feedback and a review of the pilot
interview transcript, participants from the Sussex region were recruited to a total
of seven focus groups that lasted between 90 minutes and two hours. Focus
groups were chosen as the preferred method for interview as they have previously
proven to be a useful method for data collection within health and medical
research (see Kitzinger, 1994; Powell and Single, 1996) and have also been
used effectively in previous research focusing on gay male pornography
(Morrison, 2004a).
Recruitment utilised online methods (including the use of social networking
sites and gay dating sites) and offline methods that employed the Terrence

Higgins Trust’s local outreach scheme to distribute publicity material and pro-
mote the research in bars, clubs and PSE’s.4 The sole exception to this recruit-
ment policy was one focus group interview that involved participants drawn from
the London region. Owing to difficulties in recruiting younger HIV positive men
locally, the researchers extended their field of recruitment in order to secure an
interview with this less visible (and perhaps also smaller) but no less important
cohort.
Taking into account recent research that has identified differences in HIV trans-
mission and testing rates according to age group (Smith et al., 2010), focus groups
were divided into two age categories, 18–25 and 40–55, providing the researchers
with an opportunity to explore differences in attitudes and responses according to
age. Respondents were then subdivided according to HIV status in order to identify
differences in perceptions of bareback pornography according to serostatus (see
also Davis et al., 2006; Gendin, 1997; Goodroad et al., 2000). Excluding the pilot
group, 50 men were interviewed. Following transcription, the interview data were
uploaded to qualitative data analysis software before being coded by all three
researchers using a grounded theory approach (Glaser, 1992) Individual coding
was then cross-referenced in order to triangulate data and articulate the key
findings.
Doing things with porn: Gay men’s uses of pornography

The importance of pornography within gay male subculture has been well docu-
mented previously (Burger, 1995; Macnair, 1996; J Mercer, 2004; Strossen, 1995;
Watney, 1996; Waugh, 1985, 1996). As Dyer noted almost 30 years ago:
Gay porn asserts homosexual desire, it turns the definition of homosexual desire on its
head, says bad is good, sick is healthy and so on. It thus defends the universal human
practice of same sex physical contact (which our society constructs as homosexual); it
has made life bearable for countless millions of gay men. (Dyer, 1985: 123)
Two decades on, very similar sentiments were expressed by both older and younger
respondents in the focus groups:
I think with . . . with porn like, especially with people my generation like there wasn’t
anything on TV. So it’s . . . the only place to go to, to find out what being gay is about
like, so you kind of grow up with it like that’s the only place, like no one else talks about,
it doesn’t get talked about in school, it doesn’t get talked about on TV. (18–25 HIV
Negative cohort 2)
we don’t see other gay men other than in porn really. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 2)
Such claims provide one explanation behind why gay male culture has historically
been more accepting of pornographic imagery than mainstream society
(see Mowlabocus, 2010) and why, for instance, gay sex shops are ascribed a far

more legitimate place within the environs of the gay village than the local high
street:
what immediately springs to mind is, there’s a sex shop in Hove called Taboo. You can’t
see in the windows. It says . . . It says exactly what it’s there for, what’s inside, but you
can’t see inside. There’s no imagery, there’s nothing. That’s there. You look at St James
Street [the centre of Brighton’s gay village] and it’s all there, it’s all open, so we’re not
hiding anything [general agreement from others]. In a way, it’s just there, part of life,
it’s mainstream, ‘what’s your problem?’ (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 1)
While respondents felt that the contemporary mediascape was becoming increas-
ingly open to representations of (some forms of) gay masculinity, these continued
to be staid, safe and ‘polite’, in comparison to the plethora of representations that
feature heterosexual identities and practices.
Yeah, I mean you don’t really see it that often in like TV programmes, it’s mainly like a
kiss, more like you know, a touch of a hand, it’s not really anything sex based, it’s, you
know, it’s very . . . very, very frowned upon. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 2)
[the media] seems to hype up the fact there’s going to be a gay kiss for six weeks before
it actually happens, like on . . . what is it, like at the moment . . . and then it’s only ever a
kiss, like what . . . you could go a step further with like heterosexual on TV, but not,
I think with gay men. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 2)
Respondents also identified the various ways in which they used pornography in their
everyday lives. By far the most popular understanding was its perceived educational
dimension, offering instruction on, and experiences of, gay male sexual practices:
Porn was more like . . . it’s exciting and erm, when you find . . . when you want to find out
about it more, it’s kind of like a research tool because you want to find out the right positions
to do, the right methods, you know, the right actions, to help . . . just to help pleasure
someone properly, you know. And you kind of . . . it sounds weird, but you kind of learn
that in the back of your head and you keep it there. (18–25 HIV Positive cohort 1)
One benefit maybe is for erm younger people who come out as being gay or realise that
they are gay that might be the first err thing that they do to see what it’s about. (40–55
HIV Negative cohort 2)
It’s got two main, as I see it, aims or . . . It’s to entertain, and there’s also to educate. (40–
55 HIV Positive cohort 1)
Although for one participant, not seeing gay pornography during his formative
years was, he felt, perhaps a positive absence to his emerging sexual identity:
I was kind of relieved that I didn’t see it, I think it would have actually err inhibited me
coming out because it was all very – it’s this sort of shit again, it’s all very beautiful, hung
like a donkey [Tom of] Finland types, you know. (40–55 HIV Negative cohort 2)

This latter response, the sole contradiction to an overwhelming belief in the (posi-
tive) pedagogic dimension that gay pornography had in participants’ lives, echoes
concerns raised by scholars regarding the challenges that gay pornography might
pose for its audience in terms of body image issues, sexual and social confidence,
prejudice and discrimination (see Stoltenberg, 1991 and Ayres, 1999 for discus-
sion). As important as these issues may be5 this criticism of pornography was
but one voice amongst an otherwise positive attitude towards the educational
use of pornography.
I think pornography is a lot of people’s first erm encounter with sex . . . particular gay
sex, erm in that they, you know, this isn’t . . . something that they will be coming across
quite regularly, erm it’s not something talked about for a lot of people and not in families
or around their friendship group . . . it’s certainly important in just the way in which
people sort of first . . . first become aware of sex and how it is supposed to be done.
(18–25 HIV Negative cohort 1)
Beyond its perceived pedagogic dimension however, respondents also regularly

identified how gay pornography functioned as an aid to forming and maintaining
relationships with other gay men, be they sexual, social, virtual or imagined:
I was, yeah, I was . . . I was going to say erm talking about my own experience erm
I always found it exciting to . . . to go shopping for some gay porn with my partner,
and either do whatever was showing or if it’s crap have a good laugh about it. (40–55
HIV Negative cohort 2)
I think that gay people generally will talk, or share porn with each other more openly
than straight people will . . . And not only with people that you are shagging or have
shagged or want to, but also with friends where you don’t necessarily have a sexual
relationship. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 1)
Well I think the fact that lots of people have access to the internet and to gay pornog-
raphy means that if you are living in a community where you like you can’t come out
whatever and you can see that on the internet you sort of think, okay well there’s people
like me out there, there’s, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of people
out there like me that do this, this is . . . it might help them accept themselves. (18–25 HIV
Negative cohort 1)
This latter quotation builds upon Burger’s (1995) discussion of gay porn consump-
tion in socially conservative states in the USA and highlights two significant factors
regarding gay male pornography and gay male life. Firstly, the respondent identi-
fies how, outside of metropolitan areas in which gay villages are perceived to thrive,
gay men continue to face obstacles that may limit their ability to ‘come out’ and to
be open about their sexual identity. As the life narratives and oral histories of gay
men demonstrate (Hall-Carpenter Archives, 1989; Porter and Weeks, 1991) one of
the most challenging aspects of living in such environments is the lack of contact
with other gay men, and the sense of isolation and loneliness that this can engender.

Secondly, and leading on from this point, the respondent identifies how, in
contexts in which other gay men are equally hidden from view, internet-based
pornography might be one way of forging a connection with other gay men that
exist ‘out there’. Respondents regularly cited the internet as an important resource
for people when it came to dealing with issues of sexual identification or accessing
sexual communities:
I never knew anybody gay. Obviously there were people that I didn’t know because it
wasn’t as open, there was no areas like this. So I looked on the internet and then I started
to identify like other gay people and then in . . . in the coming out years when you’re first
discovering yourself that’s probably the main way to do it. Because you haven’t got the
confidence to walk into a gay bar and actually approach someone. You . . . you kind of
find yourself looking at porn a lot more and going on the dating websites, just chatting
around. (18–25 HIV Positive cohort 1)
While the foregoing quotations are characteristic of the type of responses articu-
lated across the different cohorts, one use of pornography appeared to be identified
solely by older HIV positive respondents. In this cohort, several interviewees sug-
gested that pornography had been used as a means of gaining sexual satisfaction
without having to engage with the gay scene. While for others, the issue of medica-
tion-related erectile dysfunction was overcome through the use of sexually explicit
material:
As somebody who’s been positive for a long time, before Viagra, with a non-working
dick, at least I could get some stimulation from watching porn, and that generally has
gone on as you get older and the places you feel comfortable going out in perhaps become
more limited. And it’s one way of going out without leaving your home. (40–55 HIV
Positive cohort 1)
The (over) investment in the penis as the primary site of sexual pleasure within gay
male subculture, twinned with the ongoing difficulties that HIV positive men face in
terms of social and sexual discrimination have been well documented (see for
example Sandstrom, 1996). While interviewees were not asked to directly comment
on these two issues, it is reasonable to surmise that a penile-centric culture (in
which ‘a good dick is a hard dick’) and ongoing HIV stigma have created a context
in which pornography has become both a preferable and more satisfying alterna-
tive to sexual interactions elicited via the ‘traditional’ gay village. One respondent
later discussed how pornography provided a backdrop to his (non-penile) sexual
enjoyment, particularly in sex-clubs and S&M venues;
. . . if you’re watching as part of the backdrop [at a sex club], then it’s part of the
backdrop. You take a break, take a breather, then it’s going on and . . . [I’ve] used it
in that way and it’s just running all the time, and that’s great . . . (40–55 HIV Positive
cohort 1)

This statement was made within the context of a discussion regarding the import-
ance of ejaculation in gay pornography. For this respondent, the use of pornog-
raphy as ‘sexual wallpaper’ during his night-long sexual scenarios meant that
pornography wasn’t about ‘getting off’ so much as providing a ‘breather’ in
between episodes of (or during an extended episode) group sex. This comment
also underscores the fact that pornography should not be seen as existing ‘outside’
of other aspects of gay male sexual/leisure practices, but as part of these practices –
and the commercial industries that cater to them.
Taken together, the responses demonstrate that for many gay men pornography
is more than ‘just’ material for masturbation.6 Whether used as a means of learning
new sexual techniques, validating a sense of self, finding an alternative to conven-
tional sexual practices or a method for supporting existing social and sexual rela-
tionships, respondents demonstrated the multifarious ways in which they had
incorporated pornography into their own lives. Our research builds upon earlier
findings around gay men’s use of pornography and continues to identify the
important role pornography plays within gay male culture and gay men’s lives –
and, therefore, the ongoing attention that sexual health promotion must pay to
both the pleasures and politics of pornography. It also demonstrates how central
the internet has become in terms of finding and consuming different types of porn-
ography but also in terms of accessing a ‘gay world’ that is, at times, physically
inaccessible. However, while respondents openly discussed the multiple uses of
pornography in general, there was one type of pornography that was clearly
marked out as being solely for the use of masturbation and sexual fantasy:
barebacking.
‘Some people watch that type of porn because they don’t

have that type of sex’: Bareback pornography and the
ambivalent gift
The complex and multifaceted relationship that participants identified forming
with pornography was noticeably absent from discussions of bareback pornog-
raphy, with the sole exception of the older HIV positive cohort. Having spent
over an hour discussing the ways in which they related to pornography, respond-
ents immediately began policing their use and understanding of bareback pornog-
raphy as soon as it became a topic of conversation, often while admitting that they
used and enjoyed such material:
What [respondent] has said there, that porn has a role as fantasy, that people don’t
necessarily, although we did say it has an educative aspect, people don’t necessarily use
and copy exactly what they’re seeing, but they’re using it as a means of escapism, fantasy
escapism. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 1)
The only thing I can actually say is the fact that porn is fantasy. (40–55 HIV Negative
cohort 1)

No, I was just going to say then it falls into sort of fantasy there. It’s not saying, ‘Go out
and do this’, or ‘You must like this’, or whatever but I think it just falls into the fantasy
part of it. (40–55 HIV Negative cohort 1)
In porn it’s important it’s not real kind of thing I think sometimes, yeah. (18–25 HIV
Positive cohort 1)
At this point respondents often (re)framed their early responses about all pornog-
raphy, asserting that pornography had no relationship to their lives whatsoever.
In other words, having earlier identified a plethora of meanings that they attached
to pornography, respondents went on to contradict these assertions during the
discussion of bareback pornography. As such, all pornography moved from
being malleable and culturally relevant to being purely about fantasy when dis-
cussed within the context of UAI.
How might we account for this seeming contradiction? How can we under-
stand this sudden severing of pornography from reality? What might such a
contradiction reveal about gay men’s relationship to bareback pornography?
One way of comprehending this disparity would be to write such contradictions
off as a case of bad faith; that the contradictions and negations contained in their
responses serve as proof that interviewees were unwilling to acknowledge the
stark reality that bareback pornography is affecting the way they conceptualise
and think of gay sex, and that what they enjoy watching on screen is in fact
doing them harm.
This version of the direct media effects argument is, at best, problematic,
because it seeks to identify a single cause upon which to attribute a particular
social problem. In doing so, it marginalises the respondents’ ability to manufacture,
frame and negotiate complex textual meanings (see Hall, 1973). Meanwhile the
advent of the ‘circuit of culture’ response to the media effects debate (Du Gay,
1997) has decentred the primacy (and power) of the text over the consumer, not
least in relation to the consumption of media texts by LGBTQ audiences (see
Gross, 2002; Medhurst, 1998). Put simply, a ‘cause and effect’ explanation of
these contradictions serves to foreclose more productive discussions of this issue
– discussions that are sensitive to the complex negotiation work that respondents
demonstrated in their answers.
Echoing Hall’s assertion regarding hegemonic, negotiated and oppositional
readings of texts (1973), participants identified the possibility that bareback porn-
ography could be ‘in the mix’ when it came to identifying why gay men might have
UAI, but that it was far more complex than ‘simply’ a case of cause and effect:
Yeah, I mean it depends on the individual. Some people, no matter what you tell them not
to do, they’ll want to do it anyway. There are other people who have a, er . . . maybe a
status thing around it. (40–55 HIV Negative cohort 1)
You couldn’t, I don’t think, say it will make someone have bareback sex but when
someone chooses to have, you know, unsafe sex, I think it’s in the mix. I think it’s
significant; it’s not huge. I think there are far greater things but I think it’s, I don’t’

think it’s that big. I think it’s certainly there and it will . . . yeah, it’s there. (40–55 HIV
Negative cohort 1)
Of course, with recent calls such as those made by Anne Milton (Hansard, 2010) to
censor or otherwise ban bareback pornography, our participants may have been
unwilling to consider a direct causal relationship between bareback pornography
and their own sexual practices. However, if this was the case, the fact that respond-
ents were later willing to cite bareback pornography as one possible reason behind
rising HIV transmission rates, but only one among many others,7 suggests that they
were not living under some form of queer false consciousness, but were instead
constructing articulate and multifaceted readings of bareback pornography. Given
this fact, we seek an alternative, more nuanced understanding of participants’ appar-
ent reticence to relate bareback pornography (indeed all pornography) to their own
lived realities having previously articulated an ‘elasticity’ between their consumption
habits and sexual identifications, practices and communities.
Closer inspection of the transcripts reveals a high degree of concern during the
discussions of bareback pornography. Respondents were clearly worried that rep-
resentations of UAI might be having a negative effect on the sexual health of gay
men. However, echoing previous studies of potentially harmful products (Gunther,
1995; Hoffner and Buchannan, 2002; Lo and Wei, 2002; Shin and Kim, 2011)
respondents were reluctant to identify their own consumption as potentially harm-
ful. Instead, while advocating the right to watch bareback pornography, their
enjoyment of this material and the ‘naturalness’ of UAI, respondents regularly
displaced any anxiety onto an absent (assumingly vulnerable) ‘Other’. In many
ways, this echoes historical attitudes towards pornography, whereby women, chil-
dren and the working class were seen as ‘impressionable’ and vulnerable to the
effects of sexually explicit materials – perceptions often constructed and maintained
by middle-class men who saw themselves as ‘above’ any such vulnerability (see
Kendrick, 1987). This created a space in which interviewees could enjoy bareback
pornography, while shifting anxieties about its impact onto an ‘out group’. Most
often, and perhaps unsurprisingly, given the organisation of the cohorts, this
absent other was identified through age:
The other [younger] group, I think, won’t be necessarily exposed to as much life as we
have and so we’ll hold different views. The uneducated little twats. (40–55 HIV Negative
cohort 1)
Yeah. It is generational, so the people coming along who are young and growing up today,
etc. in 20s, 30s, who’ve only ever known that era since condoms were introduced, will take a
different view than my looking at a longer period of time. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 1)
You get that older generation coming out, they explode of the closet and they just do all
the things they thought they missed and it’s that’s put them more at risk because they’re
not starting to think about what they’re doing. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 1)
I’m not being rude at all but do you know because they’re older they might be more
desperate, more willing just to have sex with anyone that they meet whereas younger

people have maybe got more opportunity to pick who they have sex with? (18–25 HIV
Negative cohort 1)
Although in at least one group, the absent other was defined as of a lower socio-
economic status with limited education:
Yeah I think that would depend on the level of education of the individual watching the
porn . . . I think our backgrounds, highly educated, we’ve gone to university, it would be
quite interesting for me to see what somebody who had not finished their GCSEs but
didn’t receive proper sexual health education at school would say. (18–25 HIV Negative
cohort 1)
Such displacement is commonly found within third-person effects research, which

centres on textual representations that are coded as physically, psychologically or
socially problematic or risky (see McLeod et al., 1997 see also Lo and Paddon,
2001). These texts can include films and television programmes that include sexual
or violent content, or which feature ‘anti-social’ or ‘risk’ behaviours such as exces-
sive alcohol consumption, smoking and taking drugs. In third-person theory,
research participants are asked to comment on their perception of the risks that
potentially ‘dangerous’ or influential texts might have on others. While it can be
argued that the critically flawed8 media effects model continues to echo in the back-
ground of third-person research, the latter does seek to step away from direct cause
and effect and instead considers audience perceptions and community reactions.
It might therefore appear that third-person theory (see Davison, 1983; Gunter,
1995; JD Jensen and Hurley, 2005; Lo and Paddon, 2001; Lo and Wei, 2002; Rojas
et al., 1996) offers an obvious framework through which to interpret our findings.
However, there are difficulties in applying this concept to the research under dis-
cussion. These difficulties pertain to the already acknowledged investment in, and
multiple uses of, pornography within gay male subculture. As previously discussed,
pornography was regularly seen as a positive and life-enhancing cultural text that
offered more than just an opportunity to ‘get off’ – and even when it did only offer
the latter, ‘getting off’ was never framed in negative terms. As has been previously
discussed, for some respondents, getting off on pornography could in fact offer a
valuable alternative to ‘real sex’. This enjoyment of pornography extended to bare-
back material.
What makes the displacement activities witnessed in focus group interviews so
poignant is that the perceived ‘risks’ of bareback pornography9 also appear to be
central to the erotic economy of the pornographic scene. In other words, the self
same element that made many respondents express anxiety about the potential
effect of bareback porn was also what made it appealing:
It’s the taboo, you’re not supposed to do it. It’s something you are not supposed to do yet
you are watching two guys do exactly that. Emphasising the shots and the angles to
sensationalise it almost. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 2)

I mean, this idealism, of the thing that you can’t do because safer or safe sex or whatever
has become such a central point to a lot of people’s gay sex lives that now there’s this idea
that unsafe sex or bareback sex is more real, more natural, more, what’s the word, more
intimate, it’s more intimate to do that and because it’s a thing that you’re not allowed to
do, you’re saying about this, it’s a taboo. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 1)
I would think it’s because barebacking is really risky, but it’s quite erotic as well, they are
being naughty and doing that. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 2)
As such, the source of much of the anxiety surrounding bareback pornography was
also the site of its erotic meaning. In other words, respondents regularly found
bareback pornography to be both something that they enjoyed and something that
they felt might be dangerous for others. This poses a challenge for third-person
theory, which has hitherto framed the first-person’s understanding of the material
under investigation as either neutral or negative (see for example Lo and Paddon,
2001). Third-person theory therefore struggles to contain both the ‘promise’ of
taboo sexual activity that respondents identified as central to bareback pornog-
raphy and simultaneously the anxieties that that self-same promise embodied for
them (and which was displaced onto an absent other).
Faced with the sexual, social and erotic ambiguity that bareback pornography
appeared to present to our participants, it is to other writings on this sexual prac-
tice that we turn our attention. Dean’s (2009) ethnography of bareback subculture
in the USA is perhaps the most sustained discussion of the culture of barebacking –
including its pornography. Borrowing from Raheja’s (1988) work on ritual gift-
giving, Dean asserts that bareback sex – and, in particular, semen exchange –
should be understood as an ‘ambivalent gift’ – one that is burdened with meaning
and which is at once auspicious and inauspicious: binding and potentially
threatening:
The fundamental ambivalence associated with poz-cum is revealed in a flash as two

affective worlds collide – one in which viral transmission is a highly erotic act and
the other in which it is ethically abhorrent . . . There remains an irreducibly erotic
component to giving – regardless of what is given – because the act of giving
connects the parties involved, making one body of two (or more than two).
(Dean, 2009: 82–83)
Anthropological theories of gift giving are almost a century old, with the work of
Mauss (1925) widely regarded as the first prominent study of gift giving culture.
This early work has regularly been critiqued10 for the way in which it conceptual-
ises the motivations behind reciprocity. However, as Carrier (2005) notes, there has
been a recuperation and reorganisation of Mauss’s conceptual framework since the
1970s by scholars working mostly on the Indian subcontinent. He cites the work of
Raheja (1988), whom Dean also turns to for inspiration.
There is not space here for a full and complete exposition of Raheja’s work.
However, of primary importance to our discussion is her explanation of how rituals

involving specific Dan – obligated gifts – are invoked to transfer unwanted, evil or
dangerous elements from the donor to recipient:
In Phansu, the contextual equivalence of the Brahman, the Barber, and the Sweeper as
appropriate recipients of dan, the reluctance of all three to accept dan, and the fact
that ‘‘sin’’ and ‘‘inasupiciousness’’ are conveyed to all three as they accept dan from
Gujar jajmans make it evident that this ambivalence about the acceptance of dan
cannot be understood simply with reference to the supposed ‘‘inferiority’’ of the
donor. ‘‘Religious gifts’’ can and indeed must be given to Sweepers and Barbers as
well as to Brahmans if the well-being and auspiciousness of the donor are to be
maintained. (Raheja, 1988: 34)
It is the concept of the inauspicious Dan – the transferring of perceived danger or

future malady – that is at the heart of Dean’s appraisal of semen exchange during
UAI:
What Raheja calls the ‘‘transferal of inauspiciousness’’ is not just symbolic in bareback
subculture, because HIV marks semen with an irrevocable ambivalence. Although the
subcultural project of destigmatizing HIV involves an effort to transform it from a
punishment into a gift, the older connotation nevertheless lingers. (Dean, 2009: 81)
To repeat, there are marked differences between Dean’s field of study and that under
investigation here. Dean is focused on a marginalised subculture dedicated to UAI
whereas this project has been interested in representations of UAI as they operate
within ‘mainstream’ gay subculture. Yet despite these differences, and taking into
account both the earlier and more recent work on gift reciprocity and danger, one
can trace a line between Maussian concepts of Hua11 Deans’ appropriation of
Raheja’s work and the anxious responses of research participants in this study.
Bareback pornography represents a form of gift12 (dan) that is both highly
ambivalent and epistemologically unstable. For the respondents in this research
bareback pornography carried within it competing meanings, articulating both a
desire to watch unprotected ‘raw’ sex and a nervousness about what such a desire
meant. Of course, unlike the gifts identified by Mauss, in bareback pornography,
the ‘spirit’ of the gift cannot be returned; this is not a material gift that can neces-
sarily be exchanged.13 However, the anxiety that respondents identified may yet be
conceptualised as an anxiety over the ‘dangerous spirit’ of bareback porn – and
dealt with accordingly.
Working through Dean’s appropriation of Raheja’s thesis, we can deconstruct
bareback pornography along similar lines, whereby the bareback text comes to
represent an ambiguous gift within gay male subculture – and a collision of ‘two
affective worlds’ (Dean, 2009):
Well, I was just going to say on this gentleman’s point about bareback being a
fetish . . . at that end of the day, originally . . . To use a condom is a very good thing,

of course, in terms of health but it is an artifice. It’s that somebody told you that you need
to do it for whatever reasons and so if you’re now looking at bareback sex as a fetish,
then they have culturally . . . They’ve made it a fetish. (40–55 HIV Negative cohort 2)
Representing as it does a manifold increase in the transgressive nature of gay

pornography, bareback pornography acknowledges its outsider status precisely
because it is this status that it trades on. While bareback pornography is not
solely a matter of depicting UAI14 the penetration of the anus by one or more
unsheathed penises is nevertheless central to bareback pornography. As with the
vast majority of pornography, bareback porn relies on being understood as
‘naughty’, ‘taboo’ or ‘edgy’. Like some other pornographies15 bareback pornog-
raphy is reliant on the fact that, in representing a disavowed or stigmatised sexual
practice, it speaks to the desires of its consumers. These desires are often denied
expression within other spheres of gay male culture (including Health Promotion
targeted at gay men), and are otherwise repressed in favour of normative (and
potentially life-affirming) behaviours.
It is within this context that we must understand bareback pornography as a gift
– no matter how ambiguous. Like a gift, it articulates a connection between the
gift-giver and the gift-receiver and (when it works, when the gift is accepted) it
acknowledges both the desires of the receiver and the fact that those desires are
recognised by the giver.
By acknowledging the consumer’s desires we come to see the ambiguous dimen-
sion of the bareback gift. Bareback pornography speaks to desires that some gay
men may otherwise spend a lifetime policing and sublimating. Bareback pornog-
raphy not only acknowledges this sublimation, it responds to the reasons behind it
(HIV prevention work, sexual safety) at the same time that it depicts the ‘conquering’
or refusal of such sublimation. Viewed from this perspective, bareback pornography
is a mirror that gay male culture holds up to itself; the ensuring reflection is one that it
struggles to comprehend because what it sees – what it desires – does not line up with
what it thinks or, rather, what it has learned to think is appropriate sexual behaviour.
The position that bareback pornography occupies in contemporary gay male
culture was something that many respondents were both excited by and anxious
about as identified by these two respondents.
With my friend it’s quite a consensus, that we find it more exciting, even if we thought
that maybe risky for people, to support bareback porn industry but there is quite a
consensus. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 1)
I would think it’s because barebacking is really risky, but it’s quite erotic as well, they are
being naughty and doing that. I really don’t know. It really doesn’t bother me with a
condom or not. Some people just like to see flesh on flesh, that’s all. (40–55 HIV Positive
cohort 2)
For many respondents, identifying that they watched – and enjoyed – bareback
pornography was not at all problematic. While some respondents expressed strong

dissatisfaction with others’ use of this material, the overwhelming majority were
comfortable identifying their consumption of such material and did not see such
viewing habits as stigmatised. Yet while there was little ambiguity expressed about
watching bareback pornography, there was a high degree of anxiety around its
perceived meaning and effects. Developing Maussian gift-theory (by way of
Raheja) allows us to understand the seeming contradiction that respondents articu-
lated in their discussion of bareback pornography – their desire for it and anxiety
about its potential effects.
Faced with this desire/anxiety tension, respondents appear to have chosen to
divide the ‘gift’ of bareback pornography into two separate (though inexorably
connected) parts. We here characterise these two parts as the ‘erotic endowment’
and the ‘inauspicious bequest’16 (see Figure 1). The erotic endowment is that which
the participants themselves took from bareback pornography and contains within
it all that the respondents found appealing in bareback pornography (potential
risk, cultural taboo, sexual transgression, rebellion). Like other forms of endow-
ment, the erotic endowment here is positive in tone and meaning, offers a trans-
ferral of some form of ‘capital’ and seeks to benefit the recipient. It also places
the respondent in a comparatively ‘active’ position – the erotic endowment is
something that they took away from bareback pornography.
Meanwhile, the inauspicious bequest is that element of ‘the gift’ that participants
passed on to an absent Other, becoming a method for relinquishing the anxieties
that bareback pornography engendered but which were, ultimately, central to the
erotic capital of the text. We use the term ‘bequest’ here to acknowledge the con-
trast to the ‘active’ dimension of the erotic endowment. A bequest is bequeathed –
it is given to someone, and is an act of giving, rather than receiving. A bequest is
Figure 1. The ‘endowment–bequest’ legacy of bareback pornography.

bequeathed – whether we like it or not. While not wishing to set up a simplistic

‘passive/active’ dichotomy here, the bequest nevertheless acknowledges the fact
that the ‘problems’ of bareback pornography, (as perceived by our respondents)
are not actively sought out or wanted. The anxieties that bareback pornography
created for our respondents were unpleasant – they wanted no involvement with
them. As such, they bequeathed this inauspicious element of the bareback ‘gift’ on
to Others who were not present (and thus who had no opportunity to refuse this
bequest).
To summarise, when faced with ambivalent and contradictory feelings towards
bareback pornography, respondents chose to operationalise a ‘splitting up’ of the
text. In doing so, they parsed their various reactions and responses to such material
into two different categories in order to avoid or overcome the contradictions and
paradoxes that bareback material presented to them. This act of parsing lies at the
centre of our ‘endowment–bequest’ dichotomy.
The ‘endowment–bequest’ dichotomy helps to explain the type of complex ‘split-
ting’ that went on during group discussions, such as in the following, extended
excerpt:
Respondent 1: The thing is with porn I think you get to . . . you get to look at bare back
from a place where you’re safe from like . . . from . . . there . . . there’s no danger whether
you’re watching porn or not, you know from catching any STDs or anything from
watching it. Erm, so yeah, I think there’s . . . there’s a big difference between real life
and porn.
Respondent 2: No, [respondent] said it quite well actually I guess, that you can’t just
put . . . I’d like to think that we’re more intelligent than that.
Interviewer: Right.
Respondent 2: And watch . . . we watch pornography and then do what they will do on
screen. I’d . . . I’d like to think that it is just fantasy and that’s as far as it’d go.
Respondent 1: Then again I think it’s one thing being like, oh; I want to watch a porn
where there’s group sex like it’s a harder thing to achieve and bare back is just not
wearing a condom, so it’s, you can achieve that fantasy really easily as opposed to all of a
sudden having these men of different ages and ethnicities surrounding you, so.
Interviewer: Oh right, yeah, yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, any other thoughts?
Respondent 1: But . . . sorry . . . But also what we were saying earlier about just missing
out on porn being a big part of like our sexual erm, production I guess. I . . . I do worry
about the next generation coming up watching pornography because I think it . . . it could
have a effect on their attitudes towards sex and their appetites as well. But then I totally
disagree that video games are really damaging to children and things like that as well, so.

Interviewer: Okay, right, I’ve got like a really complicated picture in my head here.
Respondent 1: Yeah, it’s really contradictory, so. (18–25 HIV Negative cohort 2)
The endowment–bequest paradigm provides a means of understanding the com-

plex set of contradictions expressed by respondents across the focus groups. For
older participants, bareback pornography was understood as both a representation
of that which they had lost (the endowment) harkening back to the ‘pre-AIDS’
period of their sex lives when ‘real sex’ was ‘raw sex’, and a dangerous new trend
that might be putting the next generation in harm’s way (the bequest). Meanwhile
for some (but by no means all) HIV positive respondents, bareback pornography
illustrated the type of sex they felt they could now legitimately have with other HIV
positive men (the endowment), and simultaneously, represented something that
might pose challenges to those who were seeking to remain HIV negative (the
bequest). Through such splitting up of the bareback ‘gift’, respondents were able
to entertain the prospect that bareback pornography might be having an effect on
gay men’s sexual behaviour without having to relinquish their enjoyment of it.
Viewing bareback pornography through this dual lens allows us to recognise the
positive investments in bareback pornography that individual gay men are making,
as well as the anxieties and concerns that these investments raise.
This is not to suggest that bareback pornography was seen to have a direct effect
on gay men’s sexual practice. Only one participant felt that there was a strong
correlation between the representation of UAI in pornography and the subsequent
practice of UAI among gay men. Far more prevalent was the view that bareback
pornography was a potential concern for health promotion and that it may pose
challenges in terms of safer sex strategies for some gay men.
Conclusion: Important, but not necessarily interesting
. . . people will watch bareback because although they might say that they are interested
in safe sex, in reality they are not. (40–55 HIV Positive cohort 2)
The foregoing quotation articulates the challenge that gay men’s health promotion
currently faces – a challenge that is materialised in bareback pornography and
upon which it trades. Sexual health remains a priority for many gay men and
remaining HIV negative is still hegemonically desirable within gay male subculture.
In stating that ‘in reality’ gay men aren’t interested in safe sex, the statement that
opens this section should not be read as contradicting this assertion. Indeed, this
quotation comes from a discussion in which HIV positive participants identified
very large differences in attitudes towards UAI between HIV negative and HIV
positive men they knew, where the former were perceived to be wanting to remain
HIV negative. Instead, this statement should be understood as articulating the
complex sexual realities that gay men occupy today. Safe sex continues to be

understood as important by many, and recent research shows a high level of know-
ledge regarding HIV prevention among MSM in the region (Sigma Research,
2011), from which the participants were recruited. But being important isn’t the
same as being interesting. The presence of the endowment–bequest dichotomy
across all focus group cohorts starkly illustrates the fact that, in gay male subcul-
ture today, using condoms during sex continues to be regarded as important, but
watching bareback pornography is what is interesting. Or, to put this another way,
the desires articulated through bareback pornography do not necessarily displace
or otherwise erase the knowledge of safer sex that gay men have, and which they
prioritise when having sex.
Our research identifies both an anxiety over the perceived effect that bareback
pornography might be having on the gay male community, and an erotic invest-
ment in the source of those anxieties, namely representations of ‘risky’ sex.
Meanwhile, the very definition of what constitutes bareback sex in pornography
requires further elucidation. Understanding how these investments and anxieties
are dealt with by gay men, while seeking to recognise the validity of these at an
individual and community level, is paramount if health promotion strategies are to
be effective in supporting both long-term condom use and the validation of sexual
desires that run counter to the rhetoric of safer sex.
It is interesting to note that at no point did any respondent suggest that bare-
back pornography should be censored or criminalised. Given the level of invest-
ment that many respondents displayed in such material this is perhaps
unsurprising. However, this does not mean that interviewees saw bareback porn
as something that was ‘here to stay’. Many felt that it was ‘of its time’, while others
felt it was already beginning to lose its erotic potential and was on the wane. While
data from free and amateur sites would suggest otherwise, these two responses are
perhaps most useful when considered not as fact-based statements but as expres-
sions of a general sentiment towards the representation of UAI.
Bareback pornography – in terms of its style, its specific range of sexual prac-
tices and its erotic capital – has arisen at a specific time in the history of gay male
subculture, and speaks to desires that have, by and large, been marginalised by 30
years of highly effective and well-targeted sexual health promotion strategies. For
many of the men interviewed talking about the erotic appeal of bareback pornog-
raphy was not as difficult as conveying and identifying with the anxieties that such
enjoyment inevitably engendered. This difficulty in articulating these anxieties may
be an unintended by-product of successful health promotion work. The authors
here identify the need for such anxieties to be explored in more detail by health
promotion professionals, and for such investments in bareback representations to
be acknowledged and validated as legitimate– no matter how challenging these
investments might be. Writing of the tense and often fragile political affiliations
made between gay men and other oppressed minorities Bersani writes that:
The cultural constraints under which we operate include not only visible political
structures but also the fantasmatic processes by which we eroticize the real. Even if

we are straight or gay at birth, we still have to learn to desire particular men or
women, and not to desire others; the economy of our sexual drives is a cultural
achievement. (Bersani, 1995: 64)
Following Bersani’s line of critique, Kippax and Smith sum up the position that
gay male culture finds itself in – one that also speaks to the ‘problem’ of bareback
pornography:
It is unlikely that political reflection upon sexual practice is in itself sufficient to

cause an alignment between politics and desire: ‘sexual liberation’ does not automat-
ically follow the identification of ‘objectionable’ politics. (Kippax and Smith,
2001: 424)
Bareback pornography might be most usefully conceptualised as a fantasmatic

process through which the constraints that HIV/AIDS has imposed (via successful
health promotion) upon gay male culture have become eroticised. This is not to
place any blame on health promotion for investing in the rhetoric of the condom
code. Instead, we conclude this article by calling for a recognition of bareback
pornography as both a fantasy of unsheathed sexual desire and an expression of
the very real desires and concerns that gay men find themselves grappling with in
this ‘post-AIDS’ environment of ongoing prophylactic use.
Funding statement
This article was created from the work undertaken by the Porn Laid Bare (PLB) project as a
joint venture between the Terrence Higgins Trust, Brighton’s Informed Passions project and
the University of Sussex. The Informed Passions project, which seeks to better support the
sexual health needs of men who have sex with men within Brighton and Hove, is funded by
the Big Lottery Fund’s Reaching Communities programme. As such, PLB is funded entirely
by the grant from the Big Lottery Fund awarded to the Informed Passions project. It does
not receive funding from the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their construct-
ive feedback, and also Ford Hickson (Sigma) and members of the Terrence Higgins Trust for
their support and feedback.
Notes
1. The authors direct readers to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (n.d.)
http://aim.altpixel.com/ for further information.
2. According to Ford Hickson of Sigma Research, this dissipating was in no small part due
to the successes of gay men’s health promotion whereby the limits of the British obscenity
laws were tested through the use of images of penetration and anal intercourse in safer sex
campaigns (Hickson, 2012 in conversation).

3. The research objectives of this project, twinned with resource constraints meant that the
authors were unable to engage with the issue of bareback porn production. As such, this
article focuses on the consumption of said material. Further work is urgently needed
regarding the production side of this industry, but is, sadly beyond the scope of this
project.
4. PSE – Public Sex Environment.
5. Indeed, the authors of this article are by no means unwilling to criticise gay male porn-
ography – and gay male subculture – for its overinvestment in specific body types and its
taxonomies of race, class and gender performance. See Mowlabocus (2010) for further
discussion.
6. And even when pornography is used only for solo masturbation, the ways in which it
is used, the contexts of use and the various modes of stimulation and enjoyment
suggest that watching pornography to ‘jerk off to’ is a complex affair. The researchers
acknowledge this complexity while also recognising that an investigation into the role
of pornography in masturbation (and vice versa) is beyond the scope of this current
study.
7. Recreational drug use being a far more likely cause in the eyes of many participants.
8. See Gauntlett et al. (1998) for a complete discussion.
9. These risks include the real risk to the performer (of HIV infection), a potential risk to
the consumer (of being influenced by the text) and also a moral risk (namely the risk of
enjoying something which is considered morally wrong).
10. Carrier (2005) offers an insightful overview of Mauss’s work in this area, together with
a concise history regarding the fashionability of his work in anthropology over the last
80 years.
11. The spirit of the gift that must be returned to the donor via a reciprocal offering.
12. The notion of ‘the gift’ is, of course, not uncommon within bareback subculture, and
some of the most powerful critiques of UAI and its attendant representations have
centred on the idea of ‘gift-giving’. The conceptualising of HIV as a ‘gift’ was popu-
larised by the 2001 documentary of the same name (dir. L Hogarth), which sought to
highlight the rise of bug-chasing in the USA. Since its release, opinions as to the preva-
lence of bug-chasing and gift-giving within gay male subculture have been varied.
In bareback parlance, ‘gift-giving’ is understood as seeking to intentionally infect some-
one with HIV – its counterpart being ‘bug-chasing’, the act of intentionally seeking out
HIV infection. While arguments regarding the veracity of these two practices continue
to take up column inches in the popular press, the authors note with concern the fact
that, in focusing on such practices and identities, much commentary on barebacking
serves to unhelpfully polarise debates around bareback pornography. In doing so it
obscures several important facts: that bareback pornography is popular within the
‘mainstream’ of gay male culture, not just amongst the barebacking ‘scene’; that bare-
back pornography rarely (if ever) identifies itself using the terminology of ‘gifts’ and
‘bugs’; and that watching bareback pornography rarely (if ever) articulates a desire
either to seroconvert, or seroconvert others.
13. Although pornography can of course be given as a gift and gift economies around
pornography do exist – see the work of Slater (1998) for instance.
14. See forthcoming article by Mowlabocus, Harbottle and Witzel for further discussion of
how bareback pornography and its representation of risk fits into a broader erotising of
sexual and social risks and taboos within gay male pornography.

15. For instance pornography that eroticises anonymous sexual encounters in public spaces,
or which fetishises power disparities, particularly when those disparities are organised
according to racial or age-based differences between performers.
16. In choosing these two terms – endowment and bequest – the authors acknowledge the
respondents’ many references to bareback pornography being a form of cultural legacy.
Older and younger respondents identified generational shifts in pornographic consump-
tion and in understandings and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS and sex without a
condom. By employing these two terms then, we seek to recognise both the ‘handing
down’ of gay subculture and the transformations and translations that occur in the
process of such cultural movement.
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Sharif Mowlabocus is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of

Sussex. His research is situated at the intersection of digital media studies and
LGBTQ studies and focuses on issues of identity, sexual practice and health as
they are manifested in digital and mixed reality formats. He is a member of the
Centre for Material Digital Culture and convenes Masters and Bachelors pro-
grammes in Digital Media and Culture.
Justin Harbottle is the Programme Officer for Quality and Engagement at the
Terrence Higgins Trust. Justin has worked in the field of HIV prevention for
men who have sex with men for the last six years, and has specialised in providing
sexual health promotion across a wide range of online platforms and engaging
higher-risk populations. Previously completing a MA in Sexual Dissidence in
Literature and Culture at Sussex University, Justin’s research interests included
gay men’s usage of online spaces and shifts in the representation of gay

pornography, both of which proved central in his subsequent role at the Terrence
Higgins Trust.
Charlie Witzel has occupied a variety of posts at the Terrence Higgins Trust over
the last four years, in both London and Brighton and in both health promotion and
long-term condition management. Most recently Charlie has worked as coordin-
ator of the Health, Wealth and Happiness project, an initiative that supports over
50s living with HIV. Charlie completed his BA in Anthropology and Development
Studies at Sussex University in 2011 and is currently studying for a masters degree
in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Charlie’s research interests include minority sexual cultures, representations of ill-
ness and surveillance of disease.

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that structure much commercial pornography. Meanwhile, and echoing Williams

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Doing things with porn: Gay men’s uses of pornography

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Beyond its perceived pedagogic dimension however, respondents also regularly

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‘Some people watch that type of porn because they don’t

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Such displacement is commonly found within third-person effects research, which

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The fundamental ambivalence associated with poz-cum is revealed in a flash as two

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It is the concept of the inauspicious Dan – the transferring of perceived danger or

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Representing as it does a manifold increase in the transgressive nature of gay

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Figure 1. The ‘endowment–bequest’ legacy of bareback pornography.

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bequeathed – whether we like it or not. While not wishing to set up a simplistic

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The endowment–bequest paradigm provides a means of understanding the com-

Conclusion: Important, but not necessarily interesting

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It is unlikely that political reflection upon sexual practice is in itself sufficient to

Bareback pornography might be most usefully conceptualised as a fantasmatic

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Sharif Mowlabocus is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of

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