Brokeback Porn: Does The Appeal Outweigh Safety?

Rarely will you find us weighing in on gay porn – we relegate those depths to our more equipped friends – but a recent debate that just arrived in our inbox caught our attention.

Gay British porn review outfit (which wins the award for most aptly named site) GayBritPorn.com recently posted a review of English Lads, a Sean Cody-esque “amateur” porn site that delivers your typical assortment of handicam videos serving the English accent-inclinded niche. But English Lads seems to go one step further in its offerings than, say, Corbin Fisher: its “models” perform bareback. In reviewing English Lad’s “Action” department, GayBritPorn.com had this to say:

But when it comes to unsafe sex, many of us would draw the line. A recent set is advertised as “bareback”, the blurb stating that the models wanted to do it like this. Now, I know one of the models, and he told me that it wasn’t his idea. I don’t know wheter they had thought thruogh the risks or had sexual health checks. The point is that an activity regarded as unsafe sex is portrayed on the site as highly errotic and desireable, with no mention of risks or precautions. Personally, I think this isn’t innovative or sexy, its irresponsible.

So, this is a site that will deliver a tried and tested formula, but is willing also try something new sometimes – for better or worse.

Fearing reprisal from an audience of credit card clickers who likely wouldn’t give their last names to the press, English Lads’ purveyor Nick Baker fired back, defending his video.

In response, Nick Baker of Englishlads emailed the review site defending the video. “I don’t believe by having this shoot on my site it will result in a change of anyone’s attitude and influence them to having unsafe sex” he said. “These two lads decided to do the shoot bareback, taking appropriate precautions. I strongly believe in the use of condoms, though a significant amount of gay porn both for dvd and for websites is shot without condoms and I guess myself and other porn producers will get accused of being irresponsible. I think porn is understood to provide a world of safe fantasies and not to portray or influence real life.”

In a heated exchange of emails, the pornographer goes on to accuse the review of being “tabloid” – with no apparant hint of irony. However, he states that after the controversey, Englishlads will not be doing anymore bareback shoots, and will be providing safe sex information.

Gaybritporn said “Providing links to safe sex sites and undertaking to do no more bareback shoots is a partial victory. But its about responsibility, not censorship. We want an admission that he was wrong to hype bareback”.

In the same way we don’t fault Law & Order for promoting violence, we’re not going to fault English Lads for promoting bareback sex just by offering those types of videos — though certainly, at least ethically, Baker should be protecting his models by informing them of the risks of bareback sex and making sure they’ve been satisfactorally tested for HIV and other STIs. When it comes to the porn industry, self-policing seems to have worked best; it’s up to industry players to make sure the rules are followed. At the end of the day, if you don’t agree with what English Lads is doing, don’t buy their videos. Though you’re probably stealing them on BitTorrent anyhow.

Englishlads defends unsafe sex video [GayBritPorn – NSFW]
English Lads Review [GayBritPorn – NSFW]