Stealth breeding: bareback without consent

Abstract

‘Stealth breeding’ describes a stealth form of condomless sex between men (known as ‘bareback’). While ‘stealthing’ as a practice of non-consensual condom removal affects both men and women, ‘stealth breeding’ is explored here in the context of sex between men. Despite a growing corpus on bareback – as a practice and increasingly popular genre in gay pornography – scholarship on ‘stealth breeding’ remains scant. This article addresses this by theorising the term in various contexts, namely fantasy, accounts of crimes, and gay pornography. Crucially, I argue against viewing the practice as necessarily connected with the transmission of HIV – known as ‘gift-giving’ – so as to not limit the potentialities and motivations of ‘stealthing’, as is supported by online commentary and important in light of HIV preventative technologies now available. Through textual analysis of online discourse, the article pursues a qualitative, holistic understanding of the stealthing phenomenon from the perspective of those men in favour and opposed to it, pointing to the structures of power and abuse that underpin the term.

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