Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Queer Potentiality of Barebacking: Charging, Whoring, and Breeding as Utopian Practices

  • Chapter
Book cover A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias

Abstract

Barebacking is generally defined as “raw”1 sex, or as having sex without a condom.2 For people who take on the identity of barebacking, it is the intentional act of engaging in unprotected anal intercourse.3 It is a “contemporary ‘subculture’ of male homosexual risk,”4 where the act of engaging in unprotected sex is premeditated and eroticized.5

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Dave Holmes, Patrick O’Byrne, and Denise Gastaldo, “ Raw Sex as Limit Experience,” Social Theory and Health 4 (2006): 322.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Alex Carballo-Diéguez and José Bauermeister, “Barebacking,” Journal of Homosexuality 47 (2004): 11;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Christian Grov et al., “Barebacking, the Internet, and Harm Reduction,” AIDS and Behavior 11 (2007): 528.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Octavio R. Gonzalez, “Tracking the Bugchaser,” Cultural Critique 75 (2010): 84.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Gonzalez, “Tracking the Bugchaser,” 82–88; Christian Grov, “‘Make Me Your Death Slave,’” Deviant Behavior 25 (2004): 333;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Christian Grov and Jeffrey T. Parsons, “Bug Chasing and Gift Giving,” AIDS Education and Prevention 18 (2006): 492–493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Gust A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and Alex Pagonis, “The Case of ‘Riding Bareback,’” Journal of Homosexuality 42 (2002): 8–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Richard Tewksbury, “‘Click Here for HIV,’” Deviant Behavior 27 (2006): 391.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Lisa Duggan, “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism,” in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 175–194.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 35.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Peter Keogh, “How to Be a Healthy Homosexual,” Journal of Homosexuality 55 (2008): 582–584.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Douglas Crimp, “How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic,” AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism 43 (1987): 237–271;

    Google Scholar 

  14. DeAnn K. Gauthier and Craig J. Forsyth, “Bareback Sex, Bug Chasers, and the Gift of Death,” Deviant Behavior 20 (1999): 87;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Mark Davis, “HIV Prevention Rationalities and Serostatus in the Risk Narratives of Gay Men,” Sexualities 5 (2002): 281–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Bryan S. Turner, “The Government of the Body,” British Journal of Sociology 33 (1982): 254–269.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. William C. Cockerham, Thomas Abel, and Günther Lüschen, “Max Weber, Formal Rationality, and Health Lifestyles,” Sociological Quarterly 34 (1993): 413–425;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Richard Tewksbury, “Bareback Sex and the Quest for HIV,” Deviant Behavior 24 (2003): 468.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Hamblin and Margaret A. Somerville, “Surveillance and Reporting of HIV Infection and AIDS in Canada: Ethics and Law,” University of Toronto Law Journal 41 (1991): 224–246

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Amy L. Fairchild and Ava Elyse Alkon, “Back to the Future? Diabetes, HIV, and the Boundaries of Public Health,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 32 (2007): 561–593.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Ruth Dixon-Mueller, “The Sexual Ethics of HIV Testing and the Rights and Responsibilities of Partners,” Studies in Family Planning 38 (2007): 287–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Gordon Mansergh et al., “‘Barebacking’ in a Diverse Sample of Men Who Have Sex with Men,” AIDS 16 (2002): 658.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Sharif Mowlabocus, “Life Outside the Latex: HIV, Sex, and the Online Barebacking Community,” in Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality, ed. Kate O’Riordan and David J. Phillips (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 217–219.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Gayle. S. Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michéle A. Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 4.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (Washington Square: New York University Press, 2003), 119–120.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Michael Warner, “Introduction,” in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, ed. Michael Warner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), vii-xxxi.

    Google Scholar 

  27. David J. Phillips and Carolyn Cunningham, “Queering Surveillance Research,” in Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality, ed. Kate O’Riordan and David J. Phillips (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 34.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Kevin P. Murphy, Jason Ruiz, and David Serlin, “Editor’s Introduction,” Radical History Review 100 (2008): 4.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25–26 (1990): 56–80;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place, Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 2.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 27.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  33. Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 92–96.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Pat Califia, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2000);

    Google Scholar 

  35. Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (New York: New York University Press, 1999);

    Google Scholar 

  36. Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1970).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Russell K. Robinson, “Structural Dimensions of Romantic Preferences,” Fordham Law Review 76 (2008): 2800.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Douglas Kellner, “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture,” in Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text—Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995), 5.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Jonathan Alexander and Elizabath Losh, “‘A YouTube of One’s Own?’ ‘Coming Out’ Videos as Rhetorical Action,” in LGBT Identity and Online New Media, ed. Christopher Pullen and Margaret Cooper (New York: Routledge, 2010), 37–50;

    Google Scholar 

  40. Nina Wakeford, “Cyberqueer,” in The Cybercultures Reader, ed. David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (New York: Routledge, 2000), 403–415.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Jane Ward, “Dude Sex: White Masculinities and ‘Authentic’ Heterosexuality among Dudes Who Have Sex with Dudes,” Sexualities 11 (2008): 419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Rosalind Gill, Gender and the Media (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 58.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Michael W. Ross, “Typing, Doing, and Being: Sexuality and the Internet,” Journal of Sex Research 42 (2005): 342–352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis (Los Angeles: Sage, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  46. Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” Daedalus 101 (1972): 1–37.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1978), 100–102.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Patrick A. Wilson, Pamela Valera, Ana Ventuneac, Ivan Balan, Matt Rowe, and Alex Carballo-Diéguez, “Race-Based Sexual Stereotyping and Sexual Partnering among Men Who Use the Internet to Identify Other Men for Bareback Sex,” Journal of Sex Research 46 (2009): 399–413.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Clara Mayo, “Training for Positive Marginality,” Applied Social Psychology Annual 3 (1982): 57–73;

    Google Scholar 

  50. Rhoda K. Unger, “Positive Marginality: Antecedents and Consequences,” Journal of Adult Development 5 (1998): 163–170;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Rhoda K. Unger, “Outsider Inside: Positive Marginality and Social Change,” Journal of Social Issues 56 (2000): 163–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Mary V. Alfred, “Reconceptualizing Marginality from the Margins: Perspectives of African American Tenured Female Faculty at a White Research University,” Western Journal of Black Studies 25 (2001): 9.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 120.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  54. Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 347.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Brandon Andrew Robinson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Farmingdale State College, State University of New York, USA

    Angela Jones (Assistant professor of sociology) (Assistant professor of sociology)

Copyright information

© 2013 Angela Jones

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Robinson, B.A. (2013). The Queer Potentiality of Barebacking: Charging, Whoring, and Breeding as Utopian Practices. In: Jones, A. (eds) A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias. Palgrave Macmillan’s Critical Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311979_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation