“Is this about pleasure or psychosis?”

Last night I attended the ACT Community Forum: Sex Pigs at the 519. Sometimes my face went completely red. Other times I giggled like a little kid. All of the time though was spent engaged and curious. Just what turn this conversation would take next.

“Pig sex has NO connection.”

Sex pigs like to fuck. They also like to talk. Picking up on a trend in the community, ACT put this event together, creating a space, safe for dialogue. They simply provided an open floor while recognizing it’s not up to any of us to figure out the WHY, there is value in discussing the WHAT.

“You do the things you do because you ARE so emotionally engaged.”

One of the panelists – a self-defined sex pig -  can remember hearing the term SEX PIG for the first time at the Mineshaft in NYC for the crowning of Mr. Pig 1980. 30 years later there is a group of men over 30 embracing identity and defining a happening sexual movement in our culture. The diversity in opinion was staggering as was the judgmental slant revealed on all sides. People want to own/understand/define their slice of a series of margins.

“You CAN have a meaningful intimate pig relationship.”

Eloquently and passionately described by the panel of pigs, raunch covers smells, fluids and their exchange, engaging in a shared fetishism of things that come out of the body. Pig sex would include these things but also provide the action and opportunity for someone who wanted MORE (or less?).

“Why do we call it PIG SEX?”

What is more? A greater commitment to intensified energy shared and expended, literal and theoretical intimacy, role play, condom-less sex (inferred by the use of words like uninhibited, open minded and abandon etc.)

“Pig sex to me CAN be suck and fuck.”

Wrapping it up (tongue firmly planted in cheek), of course this rap session did raise questions and commentary on safety and sex addiction, kink, clean/dirty, stigma et al. One inevitably is left asking: is this sex piggery healthy?

Health is self-determined and based on varied circumstance and belief in connection to how you feel, what you see, what you know and what you have been told.

So, IS pig sex healthy?

You be the judge of that.

Every month, someone from our InterACTion panel will ask you what you think about issues that matter in our community – especially the topics we don’t usually talk about.  To kick things off, Harry asks you your opinion on:

“HIV, are we really over it? “

Infection rates for new HIV transmissions in Toronto show that there is a continued increase in the rates for gay men. Does anyone really care? I mean from an existential point of view I think most people ‘care’, but what about from the completely personal perspective? I mean where do we stand on the subject now?

When I was in my late teens and early twenties HIV was a life and death epidemic. You never knew when you hooked up with someone whether or not you were doing something that could ultimately kill you.

In my thirties there was a ray of hope with an introduction of medications that could reduce an individual’s replication of the virus. There was access to anonymous antibody testing that let you know whether you were positive or not. We had scientific evidence of what activities could place you at risk. We had access to harm reduction materials and for a while the rates of transmission among gay men dropped significantly. HIV was no longer a death sentence.

Now in my forties, we have a few more pills to work with, we still have harm reduction resources, anonymous testing can give results in 20 minutes and we have greater awareness of HIV and how to live with it. But there is still no cure, and gay men are becoming infected at similar rates to what they were over 20 years ago. So what does this say about gay men? Are we really over HIV?

InterACTion is about YOU – Leave YOUR thoughts – are we REALLY over HIV?  InterACT below!

Disclaimer: The comments expressed in InterACTion are those of the individual blogger and do not necessarily reflect the position of the AIDS Committee of Toronto.