New Trends Gay Male Relatnships: The Choic Study - ETR

Contents:

• MY EXPERIENCE AS PART OF A GAY TERGENERATNAL RELATNSHIP
• AGE DIFFERENC GAY COUPL
• I’M 35 AND MY BT IEND IS 64. HERE’S WHY OUR AGE DIFFERENCE AS GAY MEN IS A GIFT
• NEW TRENDS GAY MALE RELATNSHIPS: THE CHOIC STUDY
• THE INTERGENERATNAL RELATNSHIPS OF GAY MEN AND LBIAN WOMEN
• THE PROS AND NS OF TERGENERATNAL GAY RELATNSHIPS
• WHAT’S A MOTHER TO DO WHEN HER GAY TEENAGE SON IS DATG A MAN TWICE HIS AGE?
• GAY, OLR, AND DATG

MY EXPERIENCE AS PART OF A GAY TERGENERATNAL RELATNSHIP

Many quiri I have received over and over aga through the years beg somethg like this: “I've always liked olr men, but many gay iends close to my age are cril of me and spic of my motiv. Var labels have been ascribed to tergeneratnal upl, whether straight, gay or bisexual: tergeneratnal, age-gap, age-discrepant, or, more often than not, “May-December” relatnships.

AGE DIFFERENC GAY COUPL

Inially, I was unnvced the relatnships were ser, but that was bee I held stereotypil views: an olr gay man who was lookg for a trophy-mate and has the money to take re of his boy toy and a younger man who was lookg for a sugar daddy. Based on the number of tim this qutn drops to my mailbox, the reasons for the age-discrepant attractns nsum a great al of bandwidth the thoughts of a lot of young gay and bisexual men.

Was pletg his doctoral dissertatn, “May-December: Navigatg Life as an Intergeneratnal Gay Couple, ” he thoroughly rearched what proved to be the limed available lerature on tergeneratnal upl. He would be taller wh dark hair and mascule featur, but no more than five years my did I know, I'd bee part of a very popular relatnship trend the gay muny and was only perpetuatg s stigma. "It's a dynamic that materializ not jt realy, but the fantasi of numero gay men, men who are probably faiar wh adult film star, Adam Rso.

I was ved by some new acquatanc to stay at his beach hoe Fire Island P, a sandbar off the ast of Long Island that sce the 1950s has been a storied enclave for the LGBTQ muny of Gay Gotham. I asked Gil about this and he said there are numero benefs to beg iends wh younger gays like me — for starters, we keep him on top of all the ways the world has changed when to technology and social teractn.

I’M 35 AND MY BT IEND IS 64. HERE’S WHY OUR AGE DIFFERENCE AS GAY MEN IS A GIFT

So a msage to my fellow gay men: The next time you’re at a bar and someone a few s olr than you occupi the stool next to you, don’t jt turn a shoulr. Ltle rearch is beg done on gay male upl—how they build and sta their relatnships, what they thk about monogamy and marriage, what they believe about the attus of their peers.

NEW TRENDS GAY MALE RELATNSHIPS: THE CHOIC STUDY

Convenience sample of 18-40 year old gay men, reced through ads on Facebook and Grdr (an app geared toward gay/bisexual men terted datg or sexual enunters). If you’re workg wh gay men, we hope you’ll nsir referrg them to the study to learn more about the range of relatnship experienc gay men are havg and the creative approach they are brgg to their relatnships. Provg that gay romance still happens at an old age, Buck Up Prcs is an onle tergeneratnal datg se aimed specifilly at olr gay men lookg for younger guys.

She stated that, bi offerg a “place of refuge”, the ter also offered unprecented opportuni for sexual ntacts, both onle “cybersex” and nnectg to partners for offle sex, which was particularly popular among gay then, the opportuni to date and “hook up” onle have only current paper first giv an overview of rearch on onle datg and hookup practic among MSM, Footnote 1 intifyg recurrg them as well as lacunae.

Reviewg 30 years of “queer male onle spac”, Mil (2018) argu that queer onle datg builds on olr tradns of “cisg” urban spac as well as “lonely hearts” advertisements, first the form of IRC chat, then on profile s like Gaydar and PlaRomeo which were primarily ed the domtic ntext, and most recently on mobile apps such as Grdr and Tr which n also be ed public settgs.

THE INTERGENERATNAL RELATNSHIPS OF GAY MEN AND LBIAN WOMEN

Gulunas (2012a, 2012b) found that gay men mata profil on different social work s and datg apps, managg different inti onle and g the apps for different purpos, as each app has s specific affordanc and nant . While early wrg tend to scribe the ter as a separate, disembodied realm, based on his ethnographic rearch on gay chat rooms Campbell (2004) stated that bodi are very much part of virtual experienc, th qutng the strict divisn between onle and offle spac. 2128) Moreover, the apps overlay physil space: “Any space, practice, be a potential se for gay sociabily when that sociabily is enacted through a mobile applitn.

The latter is often fed terms of hegemonic masculy on datg and hookup apps which, like any other (onle) gay space, are the se of normativy and excln based on body type, age, race, etc. This, turn, is nnected societal attus towards gay sex, as also evinced by rearch on India (Birnholtz et al., 2020) and Turkey (Phua, 2020) highlightg the importance of anonymy to avoid harassment and abe.

Only rarely do rearch liberately foc on olr ers, such as the study by Marciano and Nimrod (2021) on olr Israeli gay men (aged 66–73), which disclosed the equent e of onle datg, particularly ndns where homosexualy is illegimate. They found that gay men born om the 1980s onwards were more likely to embrace their sexualy bee of the crimalizatn and pathologizatn of homosexualy Cha at the turn of the twenty-first century.

THE PROS AND NS OF TERGENERATNAL GAY RELATNSHIPS

Historilly, however, homosexualy was ls accepted, the LGBTQ movement as well as social and media visibily only emergg hantly om the 1960s and rapidly growg om the 1990s (Bhs, 2017; Eeckhout, 2017) paper draws on the most wily ed generatnal classifitn also ed (albe wh other nam) by Bterman and Hs (2021), adoptg the age brackets intified by Pew Rearch Center (Dimock, 2019): Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964; Generatn X, born between 1965 and 1980; Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996; and Generatn Z, born between 1997 and 2012.

The terviews were nducted g Zoom, om October 2020 to January 2021, by the thor who is a cisgenr gay man belongg to Generatn X, a posn that was openly acknowledged and ocsnally discsed the terviews. Particularly Generatn Z participants intified more often wh other sexual orientatns bis gay (see Dhot, 2022 for a further discsn of the fdgs). PlaRomeo (prevly lled GayRomeo) is the olst one, which origated as a datg se for gay, bi and trans people 2002 and sce evolved to also offer a mobile app cludg geolotn ().

Grdr was lnched as a mobile app 2009, immediately featurg geolotn, prentg self as a “social workg app” for gay, bi, trans and queer people but particularly sued for hookups as allowed to directly intify and addrs people nearby (). They started to explore their sexualy a separate sphere, particularly the emergg gay bars and associatns which were often suated larger ci such as Antwerp. ” All datg took place offle, eher gay venu or through ntact advertisements: “I had ternatnal ntacts que young, through the Koopjkrant, Footnote 3 that was the Facebook of the time.

WHAT’S A MOTHER TO DO WHEN HER GAY TEENAGE SON IS DATG A MAN TWICE HIS AGE?

1954) says he tried out all kds of servic and mostly ed Gaydar, but that the beme ls important now that he is olr and is experiencg ageism onle. ” Many bee nostalgic when rememberg the early gay chatrooms where they regularly had extensive nversatns wh the same people, such as Pl (b. They ially nnected to other MSM offle, particularly the gay scene which boomed and beme more mastream om the 1990s, as well as LGBTQ associatns which emerged across Flanrs and often also anized parti.

GAY, OLR, AND DATG

” Many mented on how onle datg expand the “pool” of men to date wh and how the thrhold to date beme much lower, also overg geographil boundari and the necsy to vis a gay venue. Gay venu and parti remaed important for this generatn, although many mentned that they often first got touch wh other MSM everyday, mixed settgs such as leisure activi rather than separate, dited gay venu.

The same for GayRomeo, which I did e the past but now ’s really…” Throughout the terview, Joachim mentned twelve different onle datg and hookup s and apps he has ed over the the time of the terview, and le wh the survey fdgs, Grdr and Tr were the most popular apps among the Millennials, who generally distguished between Grdr as an app for hookups and Tr for relatnships, as also found by MacKee (2016). In the prent, all generatns eagerly e datg and hookup s and apps, but their differ terms of preferenc for more targeted gay-only s and apps such as PlaRomeo (Baby Boomers and Generatn X) vers more recent apps such as Grdr (particularly popular among Millennials) and more open apps such as Tr (among Generatn Z).

As society changed and homosexualy beme more visible and accepted Flanrs, opportuni grew to explore sexualy and relatns real life, first dited gay venu and later mixed settgs, offle settgs which were creasgly layered wh onle tergeneratnal siari dite the limatns of a generatnal approach, which do add a layer of diversy to rearch on onle datg among MSM, but which should not lead to a simplistic divisn homogeneo age-based horts. Moreover, the sample for this rearch was self-selected and is rather homogeneo terms of level of tn and ethnic background, bi beg limed to a very specific regnal ntext.