Public health officials recommended early in the AIDS epidemic that HIV-prevention education be targeted and explicit, using language and images familiar to those it is intended to reach. Controversy has swirled ever since over what, exactly, is meant by “explicit” prevention education and who should pay for it.
Prevention educators recognized early on the potential of sexually explicit media (also known as porn) to provide instruction in the mechanics of safe sex and, they hoped, increase the use of condoms and practice of safe sex among gay and bisexual men.
“Porn videos,” wrote Patton, “are useful if they suggest positive attitudes about gay male sexuality because that helps create and sustain a social environment in which safe sex is practiced because it is viewed as a positive aspect of gay male sexuality.” The group at AIDS Action Committee reasoned that gay men would practice safe sex if they were persuaded to view it as something positive rather than as a kind of punishment for being gay — as many men seemed to see it.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that “men who have sex with men” (MSM) comprise only 2 percent of the American population, we consume as much as 50 percent of the porn produced and sold in this country, annually spending as much as $6.5 billion on it.
Since sex itself is complex, it’s not surprising that the reasons men watch porn — and fast-forward to what for them are the “good” scenes — are equally complex. In an interview, B.R. Simon Rosser told me that 40 percent of the gay or bi men in his research prefer to watch “bareback” (condomless) sex; 40 percent have no preference; and 7 percent prefer safe-sex porn. “It’s a mistake to assume the people who prefer bareback porn are engaging in bareback behavior,” he said.
