A significant subset of gay men identify with refusing to ever use condoms. I just saw a guy on Twitter who had the phrase "Raw Top" in his tagline, like this is the first thing he wants anybody to know about him. He's not just a top, but a raw top, which in the gay vernacular means he never uses condoms.
Before AIDS came along, I don't remember guys identifying and advertising as raw or bareback. Maybe they did, that was a long time ago, there wasn't an Internet yet, and I didn't know all the gays. There were definitely gay guys who didn't like to use condoms, but I don't think they'd organized into a community like this.
I think it started during the AIDS years. Public Health officials and the gays who wanted to save lives tried to organize campaigns promoting condoms. Some of us called it the "Condom Code" -- this was how we were going to save our lives and the lives of those we loved, by using condoms when we fucked.
But this campaign led quickly to a rebellion by those who didn't want to wear condoms. I think this is when lots of gay fellas started to identify with barebacking. But back then, it was viewed not only as rebellious, but also as nihilistic. You were courting death, on purpose. You didn't give a damn about death so much, that you were willing to fuck without condoms. If it killed you, maybe that was even part of what turned you on about it, that you were deliberately sharing HIV, swapping HIV. There were guys who called themselves "Bug Chasers" because it turned them on to take HIV up their buttholes. I'm not making this up! And there were guys who got turned on by infecting others.
Nowadays, the availability of Prep in the rich countries has changed the equation. You aren't risking death by foregoing condoms. Instead you are celebrating the fact you can't die from sex anymore. "Fuck Without Fear" was one of the slogans promoting Prep.
As any reader of my LJ knows, I'm not one of those guys, I do not identify with going raw. I'll dispense with condoms if we're in a relationship and we have mutual communication and trust about our sexual behaviors. But otherwise I require a condom, even if you're on Prep or HIV-blocking medicines, because there are other STDs out there, including potentially new STDs or mutated STDs that we haven't "discovered" yet.
Generally the fellas I hook up with don't identify as raw, at least not if they want to fuck me. They're generally willing to use condoms if asked. Which feels like the polite thing to do. Maybe you prefer not to use condoms, but you would use one if asked. Doesn't that sound so very polite? Like if your dinner host asks you to use this spoon for the gravy, and that spoon for the stuffing.
But the raw guys refuse to use a condom if asked. It's part of their identity. They say stuff like "Raw is Law!" to each other. As I said, it is part of their identity. They put stuff like "Raw Top" in their tagline so you know better than to ask, don't waste your time, or their time, saying the word "condom".
I feel this wouldn't be a gay subculture if we'd never had AIDS. Just as the barebackers were rebelling against AIDS while AIDS was still killing half of us, today's raw fellas are still rebelling against AIDS. They're rebelling against the Condom Code that people like me built back during the 1980s and 1990s. Yes, this deadly STD exists, but I'm taking a pill, so I can't catch it, therefore I'M NEVER USING A CONDOM TO FUCK! It's defiant, it's an expression of power, an expression of community.
And, unfortunately, it's what will create the ecology for another disease like AIDS to take us by surprise someday.
But this raw identity sure feels a lot like the rebellion against using masks that we're seeing among Republicans today. I feel it's driven by the same set of needs -- the need to feel powerful, to feel defiant, to feel rebellious. In the face of death, you refuse to kneel. You are stronger than death!
I mean, it's ridiculous, but this is the attraction, feeling stronger than death. It's the same attraction that fuels Christianity. And maybe we shouldn't be surprised that the same political party that harbors the most demonstrably Christian among us, also harbors those who would defy Science, defy climate change, defy ecological destruction, defy public health, defy masks, defy death.
It's transgressive. To the extent that public health advice has become the standard, with required childhood vaccinations, sewage treatment plants, hand washing, pasteurization, and now wearing masks in crowded spaces -- these people are fighting back, reclaiming their own autonomy from public health, pretending to be stronger than death.
The group who holds a mask-free gathering indoors in late 2020 or early 2021 is the equivalent of the bareback gays gathering at the local bathhouse in the early 1990s. They explicitly refuse to let the fear of death tell them what to do.
