Okay okay, so the title is overly dramatic. But bear with me. I'm here in San Francisco for the summer doing research on bottom identity. This article isn't related to my research, though, but out of my forays into online sex culture here in the Bay Area. I haven't had a lot of sex since I touched ground in San Francisco in May, mostly because of one issue that's been bugging the crap out of me for several years: Tops in San Francisco won't have sex with me unless I agree to go bare.

This is fucked up -- and it needs to end. Yea yea yea, people can desire to have the kind of sex that they want to have. But the boys I'm chatting with aren't the guys with "bareback only" in their profiles; many of them are the guys with "safe sex only" in their profiles. I sense a pattern here that I'm having trouble describing. I think most guys understand that bareback sex puts its HIV-negative practitioners at an increased risk for testing positive. As a result, I think many guys who want bareback aren't looking for (publicly) like-minded individuals; they're looking for guys who say "safe only only" as a strategy for reducing their risk. So, a top who wants it raw might message me instead of messaging "barebackbottom83" who publicly claims that desire, thinking that I'm a safer bet.

They also know that most guys here in SF think it's a "top's market." It's a standing joke here that San Francisco is a city full of bottoms. While my unscientific Manhunt and Adam4Adam searches don't necessarily bear that out (right now, for instance, there are 185 self-identified tops or top/vers on Manhunt, and only 127 self-identified bottom or bottom/vers guys), most guys in the city share the idea that getting laid in SF is tough for a bottom. I've chatted with more than one top that I suspected of using this myth to coax me into allowing him to go raw.

They don't ever explicitly say it, but I'm quite sure they've convinced a bottom or two to go sans condom. I had for several weeks been flirting with an attractive top who lives around the corner from me in Hayes Valley. We were both into each other, and I was hoping we'd meet up to see where things went. Two nights ago, I was frustrated when he abruptly asked me if I "played safe or bare." In my experience, 99% of the time a guy asks this question, he expects/wants you to confess the latter. I told him that I played safe, and his response was a simple "cool." Hah! I wrote back, saying "lol. which means you want to fuck bare, I presume?," to which he responded, "well, not necessarily - but it's hot." Indeed. (conversation is pictured above).

And it is hot. Nobody is denying that sex without a condom is sexy. Xtube and other sites are brimming with bareback porn, which is fast eclipsing studios that demand condom use in consumption. But trying to coax guys into having unprotected sex is going beyond expressing a desire for the kind of sex you like. It's knowingly perverting other guys' boundaries and desires for your own pleasure. And in situations like the ones I've been describing, it's especially problematic because bottoms are putting themselves in a position of MUCH higher risk than tops.

I'm not saying here that the reverse never happens. Surely there are bottoms out there trying to get tops to fuck them bare. But from where I'm sitting, as a bottom, it seems suspiciously like some tops are knowingly gaming the system.

The moral of the story: Respect guys' limits.

(P.S. This entry was inspired by a post over at Knucklecrack on the barebacking movement. Read it.)