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Loading ...Besen: A click away from love
Is ManHunt, the wildly popular online cruising site with the slogan “get on, get off,” a blessing or a curse for gay men?
The Out commentary points to the benefits of the site, but posits that it also has, “a tendency to isolate us, encourage objectification, and diminish our sense of life’s nonsexual possibilities.”
“For a long time it has been considered normal to be on the net,” Hollywood physician Gary Cohan said in the article. “We need to start thinking, that’s not normal.”
In his most powerful passage, Goss laments that cruising on ManHunt has come with a steep social cost. “I don’t like to think about the number of books I could have read, languages I could have learned, and friends I could have stayed in better touch with if I had not wasted so much time cruising online these past 12 years.”
Why are gay men spending so much time online? Why are the profiles so explicit? Do sites like ManHunt, as the author claims, “exaggerate our propensity to objectify each other?”
I don’t necessarily think so and believe that gay online culture is a result of the law of supply and demand. There are simply too few potential partners suitable for relationships. To make up for this husband deficit, we are thrust into fierce competition – which is reflected by the level of skin shown in many of our online ads.
Here is the hard truth – if you are looking for a life partner the numbers are not in your favor. If you take the total number of gay men in your city, subtract the number you are not sexually compatible with, minus the ones who have deal breaking habits, minus the guys who you have nothing in common with, minus the pathological closet cases who play straight while playing around online, minus the ones who just plain annoy you – the universe of potential mates is remarkably limited.
This harsh reality is true for gay men in large cities and especially for rural gay men who can’t find a hunk in Podunk.
What we are talking about is sexual Darwinism and it affects straight people too. Heterosexuals also trudge through the snow for a night of speed dating, have online profiles and spend lonely evenings in bars looking for Mr. or Ms. Right. Like us, when they have uninspiring one night stands they remind themselves that there are more fish in the sea. When they cast their nets, however, they do so in the ocean, while we are fishing in a pond. The exponentially higher number of potential mates, combined with the fact that straight people can flirt anywhere without fear of getting bashed, creates an entirely different dating experience.
ManHunt – much like the earlier gay bar cruising scene – reflects the understanding that we must show off what we’ve got because there are limited opportunities. We don’t want someone we are interested in to never get to experience our great personality because someone distracted him with a naughty picture – so we show a little more than we might like in order to compete in this cutthroat marketplace.
Until we learn to clone gay people or magically convert heterosexuals – as the religious right imagines we can – we will have a sexualized culture as we try to get the upper hand, so we won’t have to settle for our hand.
Such hyper-competition can best be seen at large Pride celebrations, where normally staid gay men bear all because for a few hours the dating pool increases by several hundred thousand. This behavior mirrors the way many small town women act (think skimpy clothes and perfume wafting through the air) when a Navy ship docks, increasing their odds of finding a husband.
Goss concludes in Out that online hookups can be harmful because “decoupling sex from emotion is a fool’s errand.” But, I’m not sure that such decoupling is going on most of the time.
Online meeting is a utilitarian audition where the actor usually doesn’t get a callback. It isn’t because he didn’t read his lines well – he just might not be right for the part. What sites like ManHunt do, is give busy gay professionals the opportunity to kiss enough frogs before they hopefully find a prince – which is no guarantee.
As the article points out, this process can be tiresome, frustrating, even addictive, as gay men feel as if they are one click away from love.
And, the truth is, they are – or it could be one million taps on the mouse to find a spouse. There is no sugar coating that in a small community of limited partners, if you want a man you have to hunt – hence the success of ManHunt. All one can do is keep his head up and never forget that the next online fling might lead to a diamond ring.
I don’t really get that the co-owner of Man Hunt is backing McCain. One has to be somewhat delusional to own a site that has men with traffic cones up their behinds – and still call himself a conservative. (a slight exaggeration, but I’m trying to make a point)
I suggest the co-owner backing McCain go to the Republican convention in Minneapolis – wear a ManHunt T-Shirt – and see what kind of reception he gets.
Well, with those closet cases, he might just make an extra million dollars.
Two things here:
With these days, more and more ways of meeting other gay men for husband hunting are as varied as one’s immagination exist than just bars and internet, such as social events, various clubs centered around say gardening, outings, biking, hiking, films, churches, cars, mens’ retreats and much more, Manhunt etc are not the only game available for finding a potential mate, so I will not believe the only way for the modern gay man to find a suitable potential mate is via a “million mouse clicks” unless one is both gay and rural. Joining a common hobby, interest or passtime group with other gay men is good way to see in person if a particular man catches one’s eye if one like seeing how he comports himself in public with other men and with other people in general before introducing one’s self.
and next:
“Let’s not try to emulate Ozzie and Harriet, gentlemen”.
Might work for Dave and other like-minded men, but won’t work for other men like myself especially if the responsibility -laden but joyfilled task of raising kids is involved. While I’d encourage my future husband to enjoy his work, his space, his time, his own hobbies, some time with his friends and birth family, but especially when raising his own kids and mine, as his husband, I would like him to at least let me know if he plans to spend a certain evening or afternoon with his family or friends (which of course is OK)so that I can make plans to do something with the kids while he is not there and just let the kids know that their other Dad is OK, he is with family and friends and he’ll be home in a few hours.
I don’t intend to follow my husband around and to keep track of all he does, I need to be able to assume and to trust that he is a caring, responsible, intelligent and mature man with his family’s and husband’s best interest at heart and that he will be home for dinner unless he tells me that he has an invitation from family and friends for that evening out, but unless there is an emergency, for my family’s sake and mine, he will be home in time to hug and kiss his very own family goodnight and will be spending his nights in bed with me his husband.
If this all proves to be not what he wants, and he wants his freedom to go from man to man as in a sexual sense and we have kids, and his heart is no longer with us then I will have to call a family meeting and maybe a family couselor and just sit back and let the kids ask him questions as to what his future with us is and just what his intentions are and whether he feels he was meant for the family way of life, if he not, we may have to wish him well and even if it hurts us badly, just continue without him as one parent-family.
Treating other men as mere play-toys for our amusement, just to throw them away as if they were empty candy wrappers and leave them wondering if that is the best gay life and gay men have to offer is not the kind of values I want to teach my kids and is not idea I want them to have that most gay men are not capable of doing better.
Ijust read the news of Manhunt owners support of McCain. That is just what we all need. Did you happen to read the Sunday newspapers where our brillant President wants to toss out endangered species as a way to ease our need for oil and anything else we can use to destroy Earth? By clicking on Manhunt you are giving money to try to elect 4 more years of Republican raping of our world at the death of innocent animals. I dont know that we humans have done anything to deserve what we have, at least in America. What do you think?
I found my husband online a decade ago. Thank heavens I don’t have to do *that* routine any more! I found it time-consuming, disappointing, sometimes demeaning – and, worst of all, boring.
Awesome article! Although, personally I am boybotting manhunt because the founder is funding John McCain: http://www.365gay.com/blog/081408-manhunt-founders-donate-cash-to-mccain/ I’m totally cool with gays that have conservative politics… except when they support people pushing anti-gay agendas.