bringmesugar

i have decided to delete this tumblr, not least due to the very real difficulty of being able to ensure that all the men pictured here are of legal age.

while i respect the right of anyone of any age to engage their sexuality as they please (without harming people), the very real truth of the matter is that underage boys (and girls) are often fodder for the predatory. for that reason we build a wall that cannot be crossed. without sounding too much like a parent, sometimes adults really do know what’s best, and sometimes people need to be protected from themselves.

also, the impulsive acts of being a teenager can have long-term consequences which by their nature cannot be foreseen.

unless one is reposting solely professionally produced material, one cannot be sure that those included have the legal capacity to consent to such display. and even then, as brent corrigan’s exploits have famously shown, one can’t really know.

in addition, the repeated posting—of which i am definitely guilty—of bareback porn feeds a market for more of the same, a market which does not care about the health of the actors involved. young men are pressured by finances, by circumstance, by the desire for fame to participate in bareback porn, placing their lives at significant risk. is there a place for ethically produced bareback porn? yes, of course. but the mechanics of getting there, and of making it the dominant paradigm, are challenging to say the least. furthermore, the widespread production of such porn—even powerhouse bel ami, which had a staunch no-barebacking stance for much of its life has ventured into unsafe acts—normalizes and trivializes the behaviour and helps, in many ways, to spread the acceptance of barebacking within the gay community.

this blog is contributing to harming young men in two ways: by publishing images and/or videos of those who may not be of legal age, and by eroticizing a fundamentally dangerous sex act. the ethics of porn are troublesome at best, and i think that the gay community in general really needs to re-examine how we use other people for our sexual gratification. obviously many if not most people who engage in porn do so willingly and consciously. but the way we use them up and throw them away is disgusting.

i never wished to cause such harm, and it is only in the last two weeks that i have seriously thought about it, and about my responsibilities as a homosexual man to other homosexual men

i don’t want this to be seen as lecturing, or as moral superiority. your choices are your choices, and mine are mine. my choice is to change how i interact with pornography and with other men.

i will not be deactivating this tumblr, because i want this statement to stay up. but i will be deleting all content.

thank you to everyone who followed me, sent me messages, and posted hot pictures.