This article contains some frank and (frankly) very disturbing information that some of my straight friends who read my blogs might not care to know about, so be warned.
That said, I think this is a must read for anyone reading this blog, anyone who is friends with gay men (especially younger, single ones).
Here are a few excerpts:
During the 15 years since America Online men-4-men chat rooms introduced mass-market online cruising (earlier Internet cruising technologies, like IRC chat rooms, were mostly for techies), some aspects of our lives have become more visible than ever. We are ubiquitous in mainstream culture; we are out to our families, friends, and employers; we’re able to hold hands in public, in some places, without having to worry that we might get beaten up; and some states and cities now permit gay marriage or civil unions (more will inevitably follow now that California has joined Massachusetts). As this wave of enculturation advanced, AIDS treatments made the ravages of that disease less visible and dispelled the sense of crisis that strengthened our connection to each other in the 1980s. These factors, along with straight gentrification of gay neighborhoods and the growth of the long-tail economy, hastened the decline of many urban gay enclaves, and the demise of many bars, businesses, and social groups that gave structure to gay life.
“Post-gay” social life grew mixed, and the physical drive that defines us as gay -- the drive to have sex with each other -- increasingly found vent online. This aspect of our lives became more private, and even secret, than ever. In 1993, 2.3% of gay men found their first male sexual partner online. In 2003 the number was 61.2%. (These figures come from the United Kingdom, and there’s been no parallel study in the United States, but sociologists believe the findings here would be similar.)
“The implications of that trend are enormous,” says Jeffrey Klausner of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “It means that gay men who were once socialized in brick-and-mortar establishments, surrounded by other people, are now being socialized online.” Gay men still go out as well, but our nightlife habits are very different than they were 12 years ago. Jeffrey Parsons, professor of psychology at New York’s Hunter College, says his unpublished research confirms the common sense that “when guys go to bars, they’re going to be with their friends, not to meet new people.”
and later . . .
The seemingly endless stream of available men on Manhunt is, according to marketing director Henricks, “addictive, like a slot machine. You keep hitting next, to see another screen of profiles, thinking you’re gonna get lucky sevens.” This drive, according to Alan Downs, a psychologist and author of The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World, lies at the core of the appeal of online cruising: “Variable payout schedule, which is used in slot machine designs, is the most addictive form of psychological conditioning, because you never know when you’ll get paid. It could be every 10 times you play, or every hundred.” In the same way, Downs adds, “every time you log on, you never know what you’ll find. That’s why it expands to fill a person’s time. Last night was a bust, but who knows who will be online this morning or tonight.”
and a little later
As a normative way of socializing for gay men, online cruising is a disaster. We need to recognize its effects -- including its tendency to isolate us, encourage objectification, and diminish our sense of life’s nonsexual possibilities -- as disasters. We need to recognize that too many of us, too much of the time, are cruising online because it is easier and feels safer than thinking about the love we are missing and the power we do not have. Too many of us, too much of the time, are cruising online because it’s easier and feels safer than mustering the courage, patience, discipline, and imagination required to help ourselves and each other become the men that, in our strongest moments, we want to be.
There are tons of great points in the essay. The picture is kind of bleak, and those who already have issues with gay behavior may point to what they see as outrageous and sexual public displays at gay pride festivals and then claim that while these may be disappearing, many more shocking and secretive practices are happening in the shadows.
But it is time for anyone who is involved with the online gay "community", if it can be called that, to understand what it's doing to us, and what impact our Internet culture is having on our whole society.
Part of the solution Michael Joseph Gross, the article's author, alludes to here is the necessity of defining normal social behavior and expectations for gay and lesbian people. This is something I've written about at length before on this blog.
Because gays and lesbians have not been given access to our cultural/societal methods for working through both sexual and relational ideas, and especially by the church, we've been given up to whatever moral compass (or lack thereof) we care to follow as individuals. This is why Gross can speak of sex in our community as being "the gay handshake".
Many of my friends will know the profound struggles I personally have had with trying to interface with this culture and find some type of moral standards I can live with, when this discussion isn't even on the table in the organization I look to for guidance: the Episcopal Church (or even mainline liberal Protestant thinking generally).
Now, I'm not talking about a whole list of rules here, saying one specific thing is okay and another isn't. That's dogma - and, at least to my religious way of thinking, it doesn't ultimately work.
What does work is creating an ethical framework for moving through these issues - and certainly same-sex blessings of relationships is one important step in that direction. If my faith tradition goes down that road, and I know they will in the long run, I think that will be a profoundly good thing for those of us who are gays and lesbians who really are seeking God very seriously. At the same time, do those of us theological progressives (or moderates) who care about our witness as Anglicans to the wider world really think this is worth splitting the church over?
It cuts both ways, and we have to remember that.
But when I encounter the gay community online, not just in sleazy sex sites, my own heart hurts when I know that only a very few younger gay men (say under 40), even those who come from strong religious backgrounds, identify themselves as Christians. Among those who do, only a very few of them take their faith seriously.
For those of us who do, myself included, it is an impossibly lonely place - and in our worst moments, hopelessly so - made even more sad when we see that almost all of our brothers are in a different place from us.
A place where they are abandoned by the church - and to the hell that we have created for ourselves in trying to cope with it.
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