This work examines the surprisingly negative reactions among gay men to the introduction of pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP. PrEP refers to a medical regimen where HIV negative people take a drug designed to treat HIV to prevent the transmission of HIV. PrEP has proven to be at least as effective as condoms in preventing HIV transmission (if not more so), but those who take PrEP and engage in more condomless sex (commonly referred to as barebacking) are still viewed by some as dangerous and immoral. Although some scholars have claimed that the negative reactions to PrEP comprise a sex panic (a type of moral panic), I argue that sex panics are those that occur among a general population and this panic is limited to gay men. Drawing on Cathy Cohen’s concept of indigenous panics (2009), I argue that the negative reactions to PrEP among gay men is an intracommunity panic, but not a sex panic among the general population. Given the centrality of the public sphere to moral panics, I support this claim with a qualitative content analysis of 76 mainstream news articles and 294 queer news articles that focus on PrEP or barebacking. I also conducted interviews with 43 gay men regarding their experiences with and attitudes towards PrEP and its users. I found that there was not a general sex panic due to the relative dearth of mainstream articles on PrEP along with its framing as a medical tool rather than a sexual one and the framing of PrEP controversy as an intracommunity issue relevant only to gay men. Queer media produced a similarly medical framing of PrEP which helped limit the extent of the panic. However, moral shocks that set off the panic came from and were targeted against gay men, and queer news media produced a plethora of articles repeating these claims, concerns over increased barebacking, and framings of bareback sex as inherently problematic. Interview data revealed some gay men who embraced the bareback pleasures made possible by PrEP, but others reified the demonization of barebacking, even while claiming they did not intend to do so or glossing over their own barebacking. I argue that the main ways in which this panic was perpetuated are more subtle than other panics in the literature and that this may make the panic harder to resist. I conclude by arguing that the US is on the verge of a widespread sex panic over PrEP and barebacking which could be particularly dangerous given the current vitriolic anti-queer climate.