Objects, Consumption, and Desire

Failure to use a condom in men-to-men sexual relations is certainly not a new practice, but the fetichization of its absence is a more recent phenomenon. Since a few years, gay porn made before the AIDS crisis has started a second life with the proud label “pre-condom.” Then a new slang term “bareback sex” and the secondary “raw sex” have appeared to identify contemporary practices. Those words relate to their own niche within gay pornography, and they are widely used in practice among gay men. What is new is not simply the “kink” of unsafe sex, but its evolution in a subculture, with its own style and fashion. In fact, we are in the beginning of a gay “porn war” opposing the more established “mainstream” studios (that have irrevocably included condoms in their videos for a long time) to the rebel bareback pornographers. The large porn “corporations” fear that maverick producers counter their efforts to make the industry well accepted by society, while barebackers blame the “condom Nazis” for creating a hegemonic view of queer sexuality, for wearing a “behaviourial condom” that equates gay sex with disconnectedness. This “ideological” fight can be misleading: in the end, what matters is who will sell the most DVDs. Still, this competition is totally dependant on an object and its rhetorical articulations.

The objective of this paper will be to investigate the history of the condom to enable a better understanding of the actual polemic in gay sex culture and commerce. I will trace the marketing of the condom as a medical device and its publicity through some public health announcement in comparison to its “un-marketing” in the actual porn culture. Both ask gay men to experience their sexuality in different terms.

Condoms are relegated to the pharmaceutical market and not to sex shops, as opposed to other sex devices like lubricants, toys, and aromas. Gay sex shops offers a wide variety of sex accessories with different brands and fashion that will appeal to different kinds of gay men, but condoms are excluded from this market (for example, there is no condom specifically designed for a subgroup like leather men, as it is the case for lubricants and toys.) Therefore the assumption is that the way in which gay men relate to condoms does not have to do with the multiple choices within its consumption, but simply with the choice wether or not to use it; gay men do not differentiate themselves with the use of a certain brand, shape, color, of flavor or condom, but simply with the fact if they use it or not. Then it is my belief that in many cases, the choice to not use condoms might not have to do only with the characteristics of that item, but with the relation of an individual to the sexual culture put forth by barebacking (which is not simply to say that bareback porn leads to unsafe sex practices.) This subculture’s aesthetic is very similar to the “live fast, die pretty” style of the punk world. In opposition, condom marketing focuses of gay men’s need to take responsible choices. The condom thus embodies a struggle within gay community between the “good gay” citizen and the unruly queer that is not concerned with longevity. If condoms are “out of fashion” in the gay community, it is perhaps, on one side, that homosexual men are nostalgic of the more radical sexual past of the “pre-condom” era, and on another side, because it did not enter the gay sex accessories industry (but remained a regulated medical device).

Overall, this research will make use of queer theory works dealing with gay culture and commerce, on sociological texts on consumption and identity, media studies literature on public sex messages and on pornography, as well as a few medical and social work studies on condom use and standards. The issue addressed is in high need of research because of its relation with public health issues. The approach is innovative as it reminds us that to understand the use of an item like the condom, we have to investigate how the object organizes the aesthetic of the performance and experience of the user’s (or non-user’s) sexuality.