Manhunt gay crusing
This article ends up silencing many gay men's experiences, because it starts with the assumption that everyone has the same problems as the author himself had with online cruising, and ends with the assumption that everyone's looking for the same things that he is. I visited them often (calling myself their gay Kimmy Gibbler) because they were always having someone over for a movie, to drink, to eat, or just to talk. One of my old college roommates and his boyfriend, who lived out in a small town in the mountains, about 7 hours from the nearest major city, met many men in the area on Gay.com and invited them over to hang out. He ended up visiting another man he met in another cruisey chatroom, and had a great time staying at his place in Sicily. He's still in contact with a man from Quebec who he met in a bear's chatroom several years ago and visited in person. I know that my boyfriend's done pretty much the same thing in the past. Right," but in that process I've gotten to know many people beyond the numbers and stats they put up online. I never approached the online world as a way to meet "Mr. I've had a few relationships come from those encounters, some good friendships, and quite a few wonderful, short-term connections and conversations with people I would have never otherwise met. I've used internet personals, chatrooms, and cruising sites to do pretty much all of my dating and socializing with queer men when I'm in the US. In fact, I think that's where my central problem with this article lies. As much as I'd love to see that myth die out, the one where we're all going to find that special someone, that we all want a life-long, monogamous partner and everything we do related to sex and sexuality is to further our quests to that ultimate goal, it seems it's just too ingrained in our culture's discussions of sexuality to simply go away. Not to mention the implication that the reason gay men cruise is because they can't find the man of their life right away. What in the world does that even mean? Instead of cruising, we should be reading books and advancing in our careers? And we're all cruising so much that we can't do anything else? 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. 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. 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. I'm not going to pretend like there aren't more than a few men for whom that's true, but I don't think that's it's reaching the epidemic proportions that the author implies.Īs a normative way of socializing for gay men, online cruising is a disaster. They can't stop because they're addicted.
![manhunt gay crusing manhunt gay crusing](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iSVg5qgfOaQ/mqdefault.jpg)
In the end, all the men there are looking for a life-long partner, but they're unlikely to find him.
![manhunt gay crusing manhunt gay crusing](https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/11080972_100421-wpvi-hospital-shooting-annie-6-video-vid.jpg)
It's worse than other cruising options because it hyperobjectifies male bodies, and, by extension, makes gay men much lonelier.
![manhunt gay crusing manhunt gay crusing](https://thebaycities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/WEST-SHORE-FISHING-MUSEUM-BRIDGE-DEDICATION-scaled.jpg)
![manhunt gay crusing manhunt gay crusing](https://melmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sniffies.png)
The basic idea behind Gross's article is that many men sign up for Manhunt, so much so that it's pretty much become the center of gay male cruising culture. I'm not trying to diminish this one person's experiences, but his account of Manhunt and his indictment of online cruising culture is far from complete. Um, where was the survey, the study, the anything that proved that it isn't working for "most" people who cruise online? "Most" is a pretty specific term, implying more than 50%, and, last time I checked, he doesn't account for more than 50% of gay men who cruise online. I don't think we knew what we were getting into. When we logged on, I don't think most of us realized we were creating new secret lives. The author, Michael Joseph Gross, discusses some of the problems related to community building with Manhunt in the way, but his accounts of gay male culture, and, more specifically, the type of people who cruise online for sex, seems to come from mainly himself and a few sex-negative psychologists he found. I just read that Out magazine article that's going around about Manhunt, and I'm trying to think of something to say about it other than the too-easy observation that a certain sort of urban (and let's just be open about it: white) gay man always seems to think that his and the gay men around him define the gay male experience.