It’s a well-known fact that, historically, gay porn has been more likely to use condoms on set than straight porn. But, with the advent of PrEP, advances in STI testing techniques, and better understanding around HIV transmission, that is beginning to change. There’s more demand now for “bareback” gay content these days, and gay porn studios are responding with more “raw” content…on paper, anyway. Slate’s Matthew Terrell reported in a recent article, many gay studios “Are tossing condoms entirely…Or at least it looks like they are.”

Enter what gay porn industry insiders are calling “the magic condom”—using a condom in penetrative sex scenes, but pretending not to, then selling the scene as “bareback.”

Terrell described a so-called “bareback” scene filmed with a magic condom: “The camera zooms in on the condomless dick slapping against the bottom’s ass. The scene then cuts to a medium shot from another angle, where the top fully penetrates the bottom. But if you look closely, the top is now wearing a condom. However, that condom will be incredibly hard to spot.” Using appropriate lighting, lots of lube, and low-profile, skin-tone condoms, Terrell wrote, “If the maneuver is executed successfully, most viewers will think they are watching an instance of real, and preternaturally effortless, bareback sex.” 

It may seem like a lot of extra work to use condoms and then hide them from viewers. But sometimes, wrote Terrell, “It’s just easier just to grab condoms” than work around condom laws, actors’ testing windows, or performer discomfort. 

But, as straight porn makers have always said, raw sex sells better. According to mr. Pam, a director of both condomed and bareback gay porn, “A large majority of new gay scenes being produced today are bareback (indeed, only two U.S.-based studios, GayHoopla and GayRoom, still use condoms 100 percent of the time), and the obviously condomed variety ‘can be hard to sell.’”

That’s increasingly true for gay porn audiences, who once prized condom use in sex scenes. In the eighties and nineties, after the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, condoms “had a hallowed place in gay porn (and gay culture more broadly),” which gave rise to their prevalence in porn, said Terrell. “But that was a different time.”

Today, with medical advances liberating sex practices for gay men, “Bareback sex can be a mentally and emotionally freeing practice,” Terrell wrote. “A condomless sex act can be a sort of triumph over the fear of HIV, a terror deeply ingrained in many of us. It makes sense that we’re attracted to experiencing that triumph in fantasy as well as real life.”

And, for the porn studios who film those fantasies, the magic condom is here to stay.

Condom stock photo by red2000 from FreeImages