Raw fantasies. An interpretative sociology of what bareback porn does and means to French gay male audiences

International audienceThis chapter uses John Gagnon and William Simon's sexual script theory in order to make sense of gay men's relation to barebacking fantasies. Bracketing moral panics, it proposes an interpretative sociology of how gay men who enjoy watching barebacking pornography account for the relation between their pornographic fantasies and their sexual realities. Barebacking pornography is a controversial entertainment that relies on an eroticized focus on condomless " raw " and " juicy " anal penetration. It emerged in the US in the late 1990s and mainstreamed over the decade of the 2000s in France, while HIV were remaining high among gay men. Based on the analysis of sixteen in-depth interviews, this chapter analyzes how the sexual subjectivities of HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men have been differently fragmented by moral panics regarding the carnal appeal of barebacking fantasies