Raging Stallion’s Move to Bareback Sex Marks a Huge Shift in Today’s Gay Porn
The gay porn studio Raging Stallion recently confirmed to our friends at gay porn gossip site Str8UpGayPorn (link NSFW) that it will soon release a feature entitled Raw Power, the studio’s first-ever production to feature bareback sex since the studio was founded in 1998. The Raging Stallion bareback feature will be released in May, and it marks the studio’s official joining of the ever-growing trend toward condomless films.
Raging Stallion is part of the Falcon Studios Group conglomerate, which also owns Club Inferno, Falcon, Hot House and NakedSword. Thus, Raging Stallion’s switch to condomless productions might mean the conglomerate’s other holdings could follow suit, but Raging Stallion will continue to produce scenes with condoms in addition to its bareback shoots.
In his most recent tally of condomless and condom-only gay porn studios, Str8UpGayPorn editor Zachary Sire counted 34 bareback studios to just four condom-only studios — a one-to-17 ratio. GayHoopla, GayRoom, PrideStudios and Titan are the four condom-only studios left in mainstream porn.
Barely a decade ago, bareback studios were in the minority and porn moguls like Michael Lucas of Lucas Entertainment strongly opposed bareback videos on the basis of safety. Now it seems the fantasy of sex without barriers has become the dominant marketplace reality, thanks largely to anti-retroviral treatments that suppress HIV viral loads and pre-exposure prophylactics (PreP), both of which make bareback sex nearly incapable of transmitting HIV.
Raging Stallion, based in California, was one of many gay porn studios in the state that would’ve been affected by Proposition 60, a proposed 2016 ballot measure banning the production of condomless porn statewide.
Prop. 60 would’ve required porn actors to wear condoms when performing sex acts on camera and for adult film producers to pay for vaccinations and testing for sexually transmitted infections STIs). Critics of the proposition said that the measure didn’t take HIV-preventing medications like PrEP into account, that it would violate porn studios’ right to free speech and compel the state’s $6 billion dollar porn industry to move elsewhere.
In the end, Proposition 60 failed, 54% to 46%. Last we heard, Prop. 60 supporters and porn studios were supposed to discuss precautions to reduce porn performer exposure to STIs in porn shoots at the start of 2017.
