Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking

by Tim Dean

Barebacking—when gay men deliberately abandon condoms and embrace unprotected sex—has incited a great deal of shock, outrage, anger, and even disgust, but very little contemplation. Purposely flying in the face of decades of safe-sex campaigning and HIV/AIDS awareness initiatives, barebacking is unquestionably radical behavior, behavior that most people would rather condemn than understand. Thus the time is ripe for Unlimited Intimacy , Tim Dean’s riveting investigation into barebacking and the distinctive subculture that has grown around it. Audacious and undeniably provocative, Dean’s profoundly reflective account is neither a manifesto nor an apology; instead, it is a searching analysis that tests the very limits of the study of sex in the twenty-first century. Dean’s extensive research into the subculture provides a tour of the scene’s bars, sex clubs, and Web sites; offers an explicit but sophisticated analysis of its pornography; and documents his own personal experiences in the culture. But ultimately, it is HIV that animates the controversy around barebacking, and Unlimited Intimacy explores how barebackers think about transmitting the virus—especially the idea that deliberately sharing it establishes a new network of kinship among the infected. According to Dean, intimacy makes us vulnerable, exposes us to emotional risk, and forces us to drop our psychological barriers. As a committed experiment in intimacy without limits—one that makes those metaphors of intimacy quite literal—barebacking thus says a great deal about how intimacy works. Written with a fierce intelligence and uncompromising nerve, Unlimited Intimacy will prove to be a milestone in our understanding of sexual behavior.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Sexuality, Theory, LGBT, Philosophy, History

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tim Dean joined the University Buffalo faculty in 2002, after several years teaching at University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and University of Washington (Seattle). A former British civil servant, he was educated at University of East Anglia (BA in American Studies), Brandeis University (junior year abroad), and Johns Hopkins University (MA and PhD).
He wrote an undergraduate dissertation on Gary Snyder and a doctoral dissertation on Hart Crane. He also has been a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.

His research and teaching interests include Anglophone modernism, poetry and poetics, queer theory, gender theory, aesthetic theory, and psychoanalytic theory.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading “Unlimited Intimacy” was an experience of wild oscillation between agreement and rejection, between head-nodding, check marking, eye-rolling and the urge to throw the book across the room.
I want to stress that I think the ambivalence I feel now trying to channel judgment is precisely the marker of what an important intervention this book performs on a topic that we all talk about quietly, laughingly amongst ourselves but which rarely gets a treatment that is anything other than binary position-taking. I am not sure how effectively Dean avoids binary position-taking—he seems to be an advocate where he claims no advocacy—but I do think that he’s asking questions and recounting stories that go so much deeper than most work on the topic and open up a dialogue that many want to have, even if they are reticent.

Certainly, Dean’s attempt to depathologize (31) the practice of unsafe sex among a subset of the gay male population that seems either indifferent to or actively seeking out H.I.V. transmission is a tremendously productive movement. However, though Dean makes the admirable move of attempting to depathologize bareback subculture, in many ways his examples make it almost impossible not to see its participants as themselves pathological. At the level that you’re taking 73 loads of ejaculate, freezing it into a popsicle, tagging each “layer” according to donor, and then inserting it into yourself on camera, Dean's example begins to look like the expression of a pathology in method (as opposed to the act, which I think is what he is actually depathologizing here). The sheer amount of documentation that occurs in the scene of the "Devil Dick" (141-142) seems more a case of pathological OCD (Obsessive Cum-pulsive Disorder --- sorry I couldn’t resist the pun!) subject taking his obsessive pathology to sex, rather than barebacking as pathological phenomenon. However, in Dean’s treatment, there is nothing pathological about such behavior, such methods.

A major theme in the book is the “unusually democratic” nature of the bareback community, which Dean elaborates through description of TIM videos that include a melting-pot congress of body types and races (and apparently, classes, as his conclusion tries to demonstrate), even if we might in take issues with the presumptions of “type” that also adhere to the subculture. Similarly, Dean’s exploration of bug chasing culture was particularly useful, especially in its articulation of the pathogenic community as a “particular kind of fidelity” (60). Throughout the book, Dean makes the brave attempt to articulate how the bareback subculture sees itself as an intimate institution, not only because of what each member does with his body and the bodies of the group with whom he circulates, but because of the “lifelong commitments” sutured in a subculture of seroconversion, a new way of thinking about those attachments, even if we might disagree with them in theory and in practice.

My problems with “Unlimited Intimacy” were few, but rather serious. The notion that “risk” for these men, elaborated by Dean as the site of a life-sustaining and life-affirming transgression, is what one might call calculated risk. Yes, they risk, and even desire, seroconversion as the motor force of their pursuit of ever greater jouissance. However, these men do not have to worry (apparently) about the condition of being and growing ill: they have health care, they can afford retrovirals, etc. As such, their pursuit of pleasure is absolutely contingent on the fact that they only suffer in calculable ways. I also read a similar (blindness to) privilege in Dean’s assertion of the bareback project's transgressive challenge: you bareback because you just can’t stand all those bourgeois norms. “As homosexuality moved from the social margins to the mainstream," writes Dean, "some queers invented bareback subculture to help keep their sex outside the pale of bourgeois respectability” (85). Well, it would seem that sex is the only thing that’s being maintained on non-bourgeois terms. We’ve still got a barebacking narrator who has a membership to Gold’s Gym, who flies cross country with appreciable frequency, and those he documents, some of whom fly every weekend across (most of ) the country to attend bareback fuck sessions, seem to enjoy a comfortable life that permits such sexual leisure and indifference to seroconversion that sits uncomfortably alongside their celebration of an “ethos of hypermasculinity and erotic transgressiveness that tends to be imagined in terms of working-class sexuality, with its military paraphernalia, skinhead haircuts, tattoos, and muscular physiques designed to suggest a life of manual labor." This seems to me a more dangerous form—though to each their own—of the privileged kid who does a summer abroad in a Third World country so that they can really “find themselves” outside of American middle to upper class privilege. Yes, you can pump water and drink bhang lassi with all your new “friends” because you’re so over privilege’s stultifying norms, but you did go over there with a full battery of vaccinations and, at the end of the day, you can still go home and enjoy organic food, use sustainable tissues, and take a hot shower out of a demineralizing faucet. I’m not judging bareback culture’s belief in its capacity to break down bourgeois norms, I’m just saying that it fetishizes that transgression as a motor of erotic pleasure at some moments while embracing it unproblematically in others.

To conclude quickly, I'll just suggest that for those interested in pursuing the topic further, it might be helpful to read David Halperin’s "What Do Gay Men Want?: An essay on sex, risk and subjectivity," published in 2008 and given, strangely it seems, no consideration whatsoever in Dean’s book. (This may have been a publication date tragedy, and not intentional elision of Halperin’s quite good work on the topic, given that Unlimited Intimacy came out in 2009.) Halperin too takes up the project of depathologizing the subculture of barebacking, moving productively through pscyhoanlaytic models of desire and risk, while avoiding some of the presumptions (and also some of the fun) that encourages the movements of "Unlimited Intimacy."

[Nikola Theodore Lindenberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I realize the author's intention and recognize his efforts, and while I concur that it is incredibly important to delve deeper into the understanding of gay male sexuality and the uncovering of diverse sexual subcultures, barebacking as a practice cannot evade criticism and questioning solely on the grounds of it being culturally significant.

The author consistently does the following:

- conflates the concept of INTIMACY with the practice of BAREBACKING. Thus in his words: absence of condom during intercourse renders the activity more intimate. Need I further reflect on how banal and reductive this is?

- proposes that CONSENT, if given, is enough for parties to practice bareback sex without any future threat, legal or otherwise, should the actions lead to one of the parties contracting HIV. Criticizes criminalization of deliberate HIV transmission (!?), conflating it with one staying "in the closet."

- fails to separate REAL-LIFE ACTIONS from EROTIC FANTASY. For what we know, every gay man in the world may find the images or the idea of sex without condom arousing. That does not mean that doing so is somehow commendable. And if condoning barebacking is not the motive of this author, what is? Simply to state that bareback sex as an idea appeals to people? One does not need to write a book to make such a statement.

AND SO ON...

Even though they are few and far between, any potentially compelling arguments are bound to be overlooked because the entire premise of barebacking being just one more way to express one's sexuality, establish kinship, and belong to a group that subverts heteronormativity (a proposition I personally find laughable) and assimilation of gay people is dubious (moot at best). The moment one's actions affect another person's health and wellbeing, regardless of whether or not the person in question consented to it, an act of violence is being done.

It strikes me as incredibly asinine, to overlook the very real and rather egregious consequences of being HIV-positive. It is a hard pill to swallow, the proposition that practices that can and DO lead to more people becoming HIV-positive are somehow to be regarded as anything more than a drive to destroy self and others. To overlook the ways in which being HIV-positive STILL damages one's quality of life and YES, remains a virtual death sentence even for people living in highly developed countries.

One does not OWE a barebacker respect for the way he lives his life. One does not owe the barebacking culture support or understanding in any way. Additionally, rallying against condomless sex does not represent an appeal to heteronormativity and assimilation. In the text, the author mentions someone having equated barebacking with internalized homophobia, and I am at odds how someone who is able to draw weak arguments out of thin air left and right somehow fails to derive meaning and make a meaningful connection when it comes to the aforementioned statement.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Unlimited Sexuality (2009), Tim Dean analyzes barebacking culture from a non-judgmental, non-advocacy angle in order to understand what motivates barebacking and ultimately to argue against identification politics and for a culture of contact instead of networking.

Dean begins by rejecting simplistic explanation that barebackers or internally homophobic because this explanation is victim-blaming, and he rejects the argument that it is unethical because the culture has not been thoroughly explored (3). Barebacking, as Dean explains it, is both an activity that needs to be understood and an identity that some take on in order to "consider themselves outlaws" in an antihormonormative sense (9).

Dean charges that there is a problem with identification politics, "the politics grounded in recognition, namely, the politics of the ideal image" (21) in part because we are always nagged by failing to live up to the ideal (23). He proposes instead an "impersonal ethics in which one cares about others even when one cannot see anything of oneself in them." The term impersonal is used because one views "the other as more than another person," but rather as alterity (25).

Chapter One explores how barebacking subculture eroticizes HIV with the effects of establishing a new type of kinship, and perhaps even more, biosociality, relating with others through biotechnological understandings (94-95). Chapter Two explores barebacking porn, arguing that it is not motivating (solely) by financial reasons, as many would argue. He argues that porn's enticement lies in its ability to make the — a loss of control — visible (106) and that porn is motivated to by an "incitement to see" (110), "the principle of maximum visibility," to the point that it attempts to "see" the interiority, the most private, part of the body (111).

Chapter Three takes a depathologizing approach to fetishism, arguing that virtually everything can be erotic (149). Rather than see racial fetishism in film as dehumanizing, Dean sees it as impersonalizing (160). This means that rather than stereotyping ("taking the part for the whole"), "fetishism works with parts that, strictly speaking, do not form part of a larger whole" (165).

Chapter Four argues for an ethics of contact rather than networking, drawing on the work of Jane Jacobs and Samuel Delaney. He argues that we all have something to learn from cruising because of its "remarkably hospitable disposition toward strangers," "a distinctive ethic of openness to alterity" (176). He argues that we need public contact with strangers, which ensures safety (182) and we need public spaces where strangers can interact (184). He argues against networking, which does not cross class boundaries "and thus is more private" (187). He also critiques online hookup sites for making sexual experiences private and having everything controlled in advance (196). He argues for an ethic of contact that finds pleasure in meeting the other, not in an instrumental way (207), but in an impersonal way: "in risking the self by opening it to alterity," in being vulnerable to the other (210).

[Broodingferret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a provocative work. Though a self-admitted member the gay bareback “subculture”, Dean manages to expound upon the potential motivations of gay men who habitually eschew the use of condoms while neither condoning nor condemning said behavior. Dean attacks his topic psychoanalytically, which, despite being plagued by the non-falsifiable “just so” cognitive maneuvers that are typical of such an approach, very cleanly places the topic of gay bareback sex into a scholastic space of non-judgment, a necessity for one attempting to achieve honest insights into such an emotionally charged topic. Also, unlike many who psychoanalyze, Dean is very good about using appropriate qualifiers such as “perhaps”, “could possibly”, and “influence”, rather than “is”, “are”, and “cause”, and that alone earns this work a full star.

Dean’s arguments for the motivations that drive barebacking are intriguing, though occasionally contradictory, and do a decent job of de-pathologizing an admittedly risky sex act for the reader. He also makes a well-reasoned argument against identity politics as undemocratic and isolating, using Delany’s contact/networking distinction to good effect. He wraps up the book by arguing that networking is the more democratic, and therefore desirable, of the previously stated dichotomy and that gay bareback culture embraces an ethos of networking more so than contact, thus implying a fairly homogenous moral core to gay bareback culture. I find this last bit unconvincing, not least because I disagree that a shared set of behaviors automatically equates to a “culture”. I also didn’t like that fact that Dean threw off his largely successful non-partisan position, which he maintained throughout the rest of the book, by basically implying that bareback sex is some kind of grand and morally justifiable practice in democracy.

Still, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking is an insightful and stimulating read, especially if one has trouble understanding why someone would practice such dangerous behaviors. This book doesn’t provide precise or verifiable answers, but it certainly provides hearty food for thought.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean's book is very interesting and very thorough in its discussion of barebacking subculture. The introduction and the first two chapters of this volume are especially strong and engaging, and I can certainly say that I have a different perspective about this book's topic (gay subcultures that privilege unprotected sex) now that I've read this volume. The discussion and defense of cruising in chapter four is also interesting, given its ties to the examination of the concepts of risk and safety that we find in the earlier chapters. The discussion of race, desire, and pornography in the third chapter is also very interesting, but felt to me like it perhaps belonged in a different book. Overall, though, this is a crucial read for anyone with an interest in queer studies. It provides a really good model for how we might discuss the contemporary sexual subcultures, and it provides insight into the ways in which health and safety have been developed as concepts and practices in contemporary America.

[Devin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very queer theory lingo-heavy. That was my major in college but I took a few years off from reading it. But a dive back into it through this back had me rubbing my temples at times.

This is a very controversial book and I totally understand why. As a former HIV testing counselor, this book challenged me, and as a queer/transgender fag who loves the gritty queer underground history, this book enticed me. I'd love to see a new edition written for today [2023], in the time of PrEP, U=U, and the further privatization of queer spaces, the downfall of public cruising, and the near total switch to online cruising [which i wouldn't even call cruising, honestly].

A very solid read. But I'm burned out on reading the word "epistemological".

[Noah090500 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally so amazing!!! Let’s talk about “gift giving,” queer fascination with breeding and impregnating, urban sexuality and the stranger, and Pig Play!

[Audacia Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlimited Intimacy made me seriously rethink a lot of the things I've believed to be true about safer sex and intimacy.

I admit that I'm pretty judgmental about people who choose to engage in bareback sex (and this judgment is not just extended to gay men, but to all people who fuck without condoms). Though I'm not exactly convinced that it is "ok" (whatever that means) to eschew condoms and bang with the aim of receiving or transmitting HIV, I have come to understand barebacking behavior - and more importantly, barebacking desire - in an entirely different way. A lot of passages in the book made me uncomfortable, made me angry, and ultimately made me think about barebacking in a much more expansive way.

I was also really fascinated by the author's own admission, in the introduction, that he himself is a barebacker. Though the bulk of the book isn't based on his participant observation, it is really fascinating that he is not just a part of the subculture he's writing about, but admits it (it is, after all, a time honored academic tradition to write about a sexual subculture that you're a part of without copping to it). That's the thing that initially got me really excited about this book - here's this brilliant man, a professor, admitting to "bad" behavior. Fascinating. I wonder what that's been like for him in the academy after this book was published.

The middle two chapters about sexuality and representation - aka the porn chapters - were less engaging to me. Dean refers heavily to Linda Williams' work on pornography and I don't feel like he brought that much new thought to her ideas, except that he related them to the homosexual context.

Even though I found myself skimming two of the four chapters, the stuff that I read closely was interesting and challenging enough that the book is still worth 4 stars.

[Benjamin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The text takes an altogether far too narrow theoretical focus, and my experience reading it was mainly filled with lamenting that Dean elides, imho, much more interesting questions of sexual culture, practice, and intimacy in exchange for, again imho, far more superficial reflections. Not only does he profoundly fail to suspend, as he promises, an appraising concern of the practices he's considering - it is absolutely clear that he was never interested in condemning them - but the stress he makes at the beginning of the text that we should not approach these concerns with a preconceived judgement renders most of the text pretty poorly shielded rhetoric. It is not that I condemn these practices or think they *should* be condemned, it's just that I dislike Dean's continual feigning of detached analysis (perhaps I should have remained suspicious that this was at all possible) within the introduction which is very quickly shown to be little more than a rhetorical gesture.

I do think that this text is original, and that it does an interesting job in some respects - but the vast majority of the theoretical work is obscured by Dean's continued posturing. A worthwhile read as a kind of personal essay, or series of individual reflections, but a poor work of theory.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars - the subculture of barebacking is fascinating, and Dean does a great job of presenting it from a biased, but nonjudgmental, perspective. I also found the use of a "breeding" metaphor particularly generative in relation to intentionally passing on the bug, both for my own understanding of the culture and for a way to establish a non-reproductive form of reproduction.

Perhaps because of my own subject position, however, this felt too much like ethnography, which has its limits as a form of cultural studies. Also, as my class discussed, this book over-generalizes about race and the interesting idea of "impersonal ethics" unfortunately always seems to fall back on the personal.

[Chris Bolhuis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll start with my feelings on The Gift. It was utterly ‘alright’. The only problem Is in the documentary’s aesthetics, really. I thought that the editing, camera work, and visual choices didn’t square with the emotional weight of the topic. I mean, its a devastating watch and even some silence would have helped because I believe the purpose and the effect no matter your attitude, of watching the Documentary is didactic. This is supposed to be not a fear campaign (They group of older gay men with the younger black man talk about the ineffectiveness of previous campaigns making general negative comments about the virus), but to rather a chance to explore the tragic destruction caused by the virus in light of the culture which it helped to breed (Pun intended).

And what Dean captures well are the intimate ties (Conceptions;fantasies) to/of life and especially death in its place as a kinship structure (Page 6). Immediately, and what would be controversial to many classical anthropologists I think, even traditional structuralists, is the idea that this sub culture creates not just a form of kinship, but of consanguinity. Dean however recognizes this is a reaction around death and doesn’t make light of crises. But it is also about life, how to maintain life under the threat of death (Sex in its most functional definition is a life making activity, and under its actual use I think we’ve (Society) come to uncover its place as a life (Fulfilling) maintaining activity as well).

However none of the categories are a bough to detail this relationshi. Dean pronounces overdetermination through these processes for example Risk as a masculine procedure and during the sexual act (Through ‘poking, humiliation, quantity of sex, infection exposure (Ph.52), through the reversal of gay identity as an inversion of traditional manliness ‘The….understanding of male homosexuality as female inversion….has been expunged from bareback subculture”(Pg.50) and a desire to ‘conquer’ the virus and become master of one’s own erotic destiny(530) which is sustained by a logic of sacrifice that I would like to connect to the work of George bataille who also explores equalities of excess especially the connection to war.)

But risk is also a feature of modern society which has fundamentally opposed the idea of sexual pleasure and health in turn making subcultures which find their expression in choosing the one over the other. (60-62). However, this also opens the opportunity for Dean’s kinship argument because the subculture, in opposition to the main culture develops a logic of gift exchange to maintain its social relations (In terms of disseminating the virus) (74-78) which acts not only on the fantasy grounds of indefnieatly expending life through this reciprocal commitment (A beautiful side about Ginsberg having sex with Walt Whitman ( Page88), but also seeks to buttress fear of death since ‘you dont have to worry about getting it’. Pages 90-96 are very interesting for their historical parallel to the ’gayby’ booms visibility vs the invisibility of barebacking culture which has an element of material visibility, namely the fact that it is a form of actual ‘blood sharing’ involved in the act of infection and fluid sharing.

I agree with Dean’s argument about the barebacking porn scene evolving out of already old practices, and even may agree with him as a form of thinking (Reminding me of Deleuze’s book on cinema; Dean treats deiiferent sexual acts as kinds of signs from which we can read the meaning both in their acts and how they’re filmed - The pull out (Page 107), the visibility of sex and ‘sexual truth’ (107) Even fetching and the ‘money-shot can be read as expressions of particular social relations). We might say not all pornography is cinematic, but all cinema is pornographic. Though I think that this has definitely changed as pornography has become thought still mainly secret, a powerful institutional force and become monopolized as well as of our awareness of sexual addiction.

I agree with the ideas of the 3rd chapter, that feithizzation is a creative principle and it increasingly becomes so as our contemporary sexual relation to pornography is much more reflexive, I’m also not sure about the idea that straight porn copies gay porn (He says so too, 171). Maybe in the case of anal sex more than others. I say less about chapter 4 because Delaney is cited so heavily and because I’ve reached a lot of word count. But the idea that crushing can evolve its own ethics and way of life is valid, and it also is most definitely corrupted into “The accelerating privatization of public life” (192). This section of the study needs the most update, especially since I think the gay community culture has become so much more generalized the trans community now stands at the margins for DL related complications. Especially in terms of online pornorpahgy production/‘blegh’ I hate to say it but the porn community

[Julene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well actually, I skimmed Tim Dean's "Unlimited Intimacy."

Here is a quote, "Bug chasers replace one story about the queer future with another. In place of the stock narrative about inevitable sickness and death, they have invented a story about kinship and life—a different version of the queer future to which HIV transmission nevertheless remains central."

HIV treatment has transformed AIDS and it is not longer a death sentence, so this book is somewhat outdated, it was published in 2009, and even then things were in rapid change with the death rate dropping; in another three years it would be proven that with an undetectable viral load the virus was not transmittable (U=U). It was first proven in 2012, but it took longer to run more studies and get the word out; still many don't know that U=U. And even with this there is still no cure for AIDS, and even with PReP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) it means a dependance on drugs.

This book gives a look into the pornography industry and condom usage, the psychological aspects of barebacking or bug chasing, cruising with discussion of city versus small towns, and fetishism. The book is an interesting theoretical exploration writen in academic mode, published by the University of Chicago Press.

[Nguyên Lê · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. I feel like the book was rather verbose. The author dives deep into the subculture of gay people who prefer condomless sex as a way to feel intimacy or connection, but it was unnecessarily long and the dynamic among men who were engaged in such practice. I tried to look at the researcher's lens but the methodology was not clear either. I suppose he was collecting narratives, documentation and media regarding such practice among gay men and then the social stigma surrounding it such as HIV. There were different beliefs at the time such as AIDS denialism and people who were diagnosed positive showed a different point of view. I think the author document way too many pornographic materials so I just felt bored reading it.
I do feel relatable as a gay person and I do crave for connection, but it does not have to be this way. I'm glad there are lots of pre-exposure treatment to prevent lots of STIs. A really niche digest on a topic not many of us will talk about.

[Marsilla Dewi-Baruch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel so silly to buy this book from Amazon and risking confiscation by Malaysian Customs, only to find the content is too raunchy even for a person of LGBTQ background. The book’s reluctance to address the deepening AIDS crisis among gay men is regrettable, which probably can bring so much senses to its gay audience that bareback sex is FAR FROM SAFE. In most parts of the world, death caused by AIDS contracted from gay sex is a perpetual sentence, even the pillory is inherited by the next of kin, friends and family members.

Honestly, this subculture is not wanted and should not be indulged. It is deluded to think that contracting HIV forms a strong camaraderie among gay community. This belief is the archetype of mental illness!

[Marcus Parks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would have been way better if it focused on interviews and gathering qualitative data rather than relying on an outdated theory of psychology to interpret behavior. And often times the writing is pretentiously written to provide a sense of academic gatekeeping to keep out the "uneducated."

Yet, with all this, I found my views on barebacking have shifted a little. Talking about this particular subculture and how community exists here is oddly inspiring. It made me reflect on my own fears and stigma.

[Charlie Chartrain · Rating 2 out of 5]

For people looking for a shorter comment than the three pages-long currently existing, here are our thoughts:
I respect the work made by the author to introduce people to the subculture of barebacking in a way that isn't judgmental. However, I don't need to hear about the author's sexual performances during the entire book. More, his arguments trying to erase the racist aspects of fetishes and the fetishisazion of HIV-positive people in this subculture is annoying to say the least.
The introduction is good though.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I began reading this book thinking that it would help me think about sexual risk in a gay male context as I write my PIV critical philosophy of sexuality article. Instead I came away with the impression that the author is a pervert and I truly understood why Andrea Dworkin is so critical of pornography. Much of the content was nasty and disturbing. Those constantly seeking out the kind of public sex with strangers that the author seems so fond of have problems.

[Stephen Pflugfelder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the early chapters to be quite interesting. However, about halfway through I lost interest and put it down for quite a while. I just picked it up to revisit it, and wonder how I got so far. The language is overly conflated and heady. The author uses 10 words for what he could've said in 3.

[abdulrahman]

Starting my list of ”books out of my comfort zone”.
It's fascinating.

[Romualds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very little substance and appallingly bad writing style. The author had neither a clear set of messages nor the ability to formulate his point.

[Rodrigo Cañete · Rating 5 out of 5]

This theory turned into flesh. It changed me and gave me hope.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the hardest books i've ever read, but terribly informative and a great read

[Mya Matteo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has some really interesting ideas here especially around risk and pleasure and masculinity, but I felt it lacking when it came to talking about the concerns of Black folks and women.

[Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

at times a bit too anthropological for my liking but def some of the best formal analysis of porn ive ever read

[Alastair Fyfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean does an ethnographic analysis, without excessive pathology, of bareback culture. His work is presented in a non-biased, non-judgmental manner, empowering the deconstruction of walls around barebacking. His work is very thought provoking, pragmatic and open-ended. There are four chapters, I found chapter one and four to be the most insightful.

Themes that i found interesting in chapter one, included: societies feminization of homosexual( platonic to sexual), the psychoanalytical elements of risks ( risk of being sexual in the gay community), barebacking a continuation of the sexual liberation( begging in the early 1950's), apartheid of poz vs neg, " Gifter"( eliminating the fear of being contaminated; healthy versus sick ), kinship ( belonging), and fetish of masculinity ( male tendencies).

I really enjoyed how this book was written in a style of understanding how gay culture, sub culture barebacking, is as significant as heterosexual culture, impregnation. Dean does an excellent job of not comparing barebacking to rights of possible impregnation, letting it be its own entity. His ability to get into the nitty-gritty through accounts of evidence based research, personal experience and third person narratives provides " unlimited intimacy" with a strong ethos of informativeness. Deans ability to take about bb culture as a style of expression without making it politicized is well demonstrated.

I really enjoyed intro/chapter 1 & chapter 4. I skimmed through chapters 2 & 3. I was exposed to a subculture that has a lot of stigma and fear associated with it. I recall when i first was coming out, and identified with my fear of HIV. I experienced paranoid and kept my guard up in hopes of not acquiring HIV. I only saw the death sentence. The ill exposure. I enjoyed dean's analysis of how any sexual activity involves risks. The difference is acute infection.Its a risk of identifying as gay. And i understand how individuals who chose to become HIV + due to to eliminate that risk; double negative of empowerment of sexual liberation while at an exposure to death. The death instinct only broadens that gap of risk. In a culture that validates health, we forget that being diagnosed and treated is still significance of health, elimination of risk has been subsidized.


A great read, broadening my horizons.

[saizine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough and interesting ethnographic study of the (sub)culture of barebacking that manages (in just over 200 pages) to discuss a multitude of elements, including the convergence and divergence of desire and behaviour, negotiating risk / risk acceptability (which is of particular interest to me in any health context, modern or historical), the construction of subcultures, the creation of metaphors of horizontal/vertical fidelity or kinship, non-reproductive reproduction. Dean also makes a unique argument regarding fidelity to a collective rather than necessarily fidelity to an individual as well as an ethic of contact v. networking and the nature of strangers in urban environments. These arguments/explorations feel particularly apt in an age of PrEP and HIV management, and also prompted me to think more expansively about serostatus, which I admit I haven’t thought about in a scholarly context before. There are lapses and oversights—for example, issues surrounding consent were at most alluded to, and considerations of race were incomplete, but nevertheless: what I found most engaging about Dean’s argument was not only how interesting and dynamic it was, but also how it managed to challenge and problematize almost every assumption that would arise with the subject matter. As usual, there are no answers, as such, but Unlimited Intimacy is certainly worth reading for anyone with an interest in cultural studies, discussions of sexual subcultures, and rhetorics of health, risk management, and autonomy.

[Michael Thomas Angelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading this book with interest as I reflect on my own experiences within the subculture of barebacking. The tedious "condom every time" message that my generation grew up with has resulted in a backlash. It is an unrealistic expectation to sssume that using a condom upon every sexual encounter is all the safety one needs to stave off ill heatlh. I recall when barebacking began making an appearance as a renegade, guerilla practice.
The first times I eschewed condoms felt secretly thrilling as if I was getting away with something naughty. Now, entire communities are immersed wtihin the practice, thus creating a subculture. Today, I wouldn't dream of making a conscious choice to use a condom. I have earned the right not to since seroconverting.

[Erdem Tasdelen]

I can't rate this book. I don't remember ever reading anything that challenged my conventions as much as this. It would be so easy to dismiss some of these ideas but he has argued them so well that I can't bring myself to come to immediate conclusions.

I have no theoretical objections to his conceptualization of bareback sex and HIV as forming unprecedented kinship networks but I just can't fathom how it is that people actually bring this into practice.

Oh and the chapter with long descriptions of bareback porn films is definitely not for the squeamish.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book to revisit in the wake of developments in LGBT sexual politics regarding PrEP and the figure of the "truvada whore." Dean's crucial claim that we examine and encounter barebacking in ethical terms challenges us to think beyond the enduring pathologizing frameworks that exist within and without of the LGBT community. Homonormative disavowals of "unlimited intimacy" and its possibilities seem all the more dangerous in the present moment as we must reflect seriously on what it is we mean and do when we have sex.

[Vi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the book is a useful and nonjudgmental look at barebacking subculture, there are several flaws. Dean overlooks issues of consent, underemphasizes the misogyny within the culture, and glosses over racism within the culture. However, his look at queer kinship within barebacking culture and the medicalization of sex practices make the book an interesting read despite these flaws.