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08 Aug 2008 03:56 pm

Internet Sex And The Gay Male Psyche

Michael Joseph Gross has a really intelligent essay in the new Out. It will earn him ire, but the profound impact that the web is having on gay life and gay culture is undeniable and well worth talking about. I have lived it myself, got a lot out of it, but agree with Michael that, in the end, the social isolation and human objectification it rewards can have some pretty grim consequences for one's self-esteem as a gay man. Read the whole thing. Money quote:

[P]erpetually settling for Mr. Right Now becomes a failure of hope. When you came out, you did it because you wanted something. Part of what you wanted was sex, but part of what you hoped for was the possibility of being loved as your true self. And when, as often happens while cruising online, we diminish the hopes that drew us out of the closet, we reduce sexy to a purely physical act.

When we do these things we lie to ourselves -- and worse, we tell the same lies that our enemies tell about us. The fundamentalist canard about loving the sinner but hating the sin draws a nonsensical distinction between person and act. Cruising online, by encouraging us to separate sex from the rest of our lives, does exactly the same thing. These are falsehoods about human nature and about the place of love in our lives, and they undermine the belief that sex can be anything more than a pastime.

Larry Kramer had a point, didn't he?

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