“PrEP is a prevention strategy that
deals with sex, namely bareback sex,” says gay film student Chris
Tipton-King, “and I got tired of people tip-toeing around that fact.” The
young Bay Area resident had never seen a PrEP video that didn’t somehow
sanitize sex or the desires of gay men. “Everything I had seen about PrEP just
felt… awkward.”
And so, without
a dime of governmental or pharmaceutical funding, Chris used an assignment for
his master’s degree in cinema to create “The PrEP Project,” a
four-part video series that speaks honestly – and quite explicitly – to gay men
about their sex lives and why more of them should be using PrEP.
The result is
the sexiest (and maybe funniest) video series on the topic anyone has produced
to date. It’s exactly what PrEP advocates have been waiting for, because it
isn’t beholden to stiff health department guidelines or even political
correctness.
Stop everything
and watch it right this minute, as long as your boss doesn’t mind some bare ass
and explicit sex talk. Each episode is only five minutes.
Did I mention
the series features leatherman sexpert Eric Paul Leue, as well as a gay
porn star and a muscle boy also known as a drag performer? You’ve got to give
points to Chris for pure resourcefulness. Better yet, aside from the eye candy,
the series is adorably engaging.
The first
classic prevention message that Chris refused to promote in the video was “use
a condom every time.” The vast majority of people, gay or straight, do not use
condoms consistently. “The rate of consistent condom use among gay men has been
estimated to be as low as 17%,” Chris says, “and PrEP is the answer to that.
But we still conflate condom use with morality, which just isn’t helpful.”
Instead, the film speaks to the sex lives of gay men as they actually are.
The initial
backlash against PrEP as an alternative to condoms – the “Truvada Whore”
argument — doesn’t bother Chris. He knows where it comes from. “Condoms became
an emotional topic,” he says, after a generation of mortality that provided no
other options. “Now that there is an alternative, people have a hard time
letting that message go.”
Rest assured,
“The PrEP Project” outlines the risk of other sexually transmitted infections
that can occur without condoms. It just refuses to draw a false equivalency
between the consequences of HIV and those of other STI’s.
When the first
video in the series launched on Facebook, it got more than 40,000 views in the
first day. That is, until Facebook pulled it down for violating their irksome,
often vague community standards. “That really pissed me off,” Chris admits. “I
should have expected it because it is somewhat graphic sex, but I believe the
people who pulled it didn’t like the message. It wasn’t about the sex. I got a
lot of hate mail.”
Want to know
more about PrEP or ask questions to experts and advocates? Check out the PrEP Facts:
Rethinking HIV Prevention and Sex page on Facebook.
Mark S. King is
the creator of My Fabulous Disease,
where this first appeared.
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