Unlimited intimacy: reflections on the subculture of barebacking, by Tim Dean

Abstract

In our current era of HIV and AIDS, barebacking (unprotected anal sex) has become a controversial subject provoking vigorous and heated debate. Numerous theories have been utilised to account for the existence of this 'problematic' behaviour, and countless means have been sought to reduce its potentially harmful consequences or to eradicate it entirely.In this new book, Tim Dean argues that psychoanalytic thought has an original contribution to make to our understanding a contribution overlooked in contemporary epidemiology. Rejecting the rationalist perspective, which has dominated discussion to date, Dean instead suggests that barebacking is an overdetermined behaviour that cannot be understood without reference to the fantasies that animate it and he makes the use of psychoanalytic thinking -which has a particular interest in fantasy, fetishism and desire -to offer an interesting and original perspective on unprotected anal sex: a perspective which goes beneath the behaviours to explore the role of unconscious wishes.Helpfully, Dean starts by carefully defining his terms, an important consideration which some other authors have neglected to do. He, therefore, distinguishes 'barebacking' from other forms of unprotected anal sex, such as negotiated safety in relationships, and makes clear that he is specifically interested in examining the motivations of men who have unprotected anal sex with casual sexual partners, including 'bug-chasers': men who have 'fetishized' HIV and who consciously seek infection with the virus. Unusually, Dean is honest about his own sexual practices, which include barebacking with casual partners in sex clubs. This gives his observations some credibility, as he is not willing to objectify, demonise, moralise or define the behaviour as simply pathological. Instead, he makes an attempt to engage with the complex psychological motivations of those who have unprotected anal sex with men whose HIV status is either unknown or believed to be HIV positive.A number of arguments (with varying degrees of plausibility) are put forward to explain the possible attraction of barebacking as a behaviour and as a subculture, including the association of risk-taking with hypermasculinity: by engaging in 'risky' behaviours, gay men are believed to be undertaking a physical test of courage, physical prowess and machismo that serves to challenge the spectre of effeminacy or gender inversion. Indeed, some men who have sex with men but who are not self-identified as gay may engage in barebacking precisely because HIV is seen to be a 'gay disease' which should not be of concern to them. Dean also suggests that HIV infection may provide gay men with forms of initiation and opportunities for kinship through consanguinity, creating new forms of relatedness which he likens to 'biosociality'.