Gay Men and Monogamy: Do Work?

Contents:

• THAT VIRAL STUDY CLAIMG MOST YOUNG GAY MEN WANT MONOGAMY SHOULDN’T BE TSTED
• GAY MEN AND MONOGAMY: DO WORK?
• NEW TRENDS GAY MALE RELATNSHIPS: THE CHOIC STUDY

THAT VIRAL STUDY CLAIMG MOST YOUNG GAY MEN WANT MONOGAMY SHOULDN’T BE TSTED

) so surely at least one of you know of at least 1 Zoom room for gay pnp. That Viral Study Claimg Most Young Gay Men Want Monogamy Shouldn’t Be Tsted. Last week, several LGBTQ-foced publitns reported on a study that claims an overwhelmg majory of younger gay men sire monogamy their relatnships, wh some 86 percent of upl surveyed claimg to be monogamo and 90 percent of sgle men “seekg monogamy.

Many the gay muny have raised an eyebrow at the fdgs, given that they ntrast sharply wh personal experience and anecdotal knowledge a sexual culture where open relatnships and nonmonogamy of one sort or another are que mon.

As turns out, the doubts are jtified: The study, tled “Choic: Perspectiv of Younger Gay Men on Monogamy, Non-monogamy, and Marriage, ” is riddled wh methodologil problems to such an extent that ’s sentially worthls— 2016 and now. And when discsg gay relatnships, what is at stake is not only a qutn of scientific accuracy but of the accurate munitn of muny norms and valu both externally and among ourselv.

GAY MEN AND MONOGAMY: DO WORK?

While the potential problems wh this unprofsnal approach are too numero to discs here, one of the most troublg aspects of the study is the fact that the thors claim to have disvered a marked and surprisg shift attus toward monogamy among gay men, even though is totally unclear whether their rponnts were reprentative of the gay male populatn at large. Th, while their claims about the clatn of younger gay men toward monogamy hge largely on their headle statistic that 90 percent of sgl the study exprsed a sire for a monogamo relatnship, this figure was rived by tentnally excludg a whole segment of sgl who appear, based on their app choice, likely to be ls vted monogamy.

Ined, seems jt as likely that the rults may reveal a prevalence of nflicted attus toward monogamy among younger gays as they do a strong clatn toward . Study sign asi, what’s really troublg here is the polil signifince of the thors’ terpretg the fdgs as revealg a novel or prevly obscure shift gay male attus toward love and sex. First, they claim that “younger gay men have the optn of adoptg to the norms of the heterosexual majory and beg tegrated to the mastream” and send, that g out younger has meant that gay men are no longer relyg on an unrground culture of anonymo sex, nor are they experiencg “prolonged perds of sexual adolcence.

In sence, the thors have nstcted a flimsy argument for the evable triumph of assiatn to tradnal relatnship valu as a product of improved civil rights for gay people, the drag of objectivy offered by cg numbers. Beyond jt addg noise to the larger set of fdgs om better studi on monogamy trends among gay men, the study lends self, whether tentnally or not, to supportg an agenda of rpectabily polics—and the same go for the sloppy reportg on .

NEW TRENDS GAY MALE RELATNSHIPS: THE CHOIC STUDY

In the age of marriage equaly, gay men’s relatnships to monogamy and relatnship mols may ed be evolvg, and that’s worth studyg. People satisfyg monogamo relatnships don't have reason to be I speak to gay men who are satisfyg monogamo relatnships, they're never angered. The guys are ually *, a gay man I terviewed, supports this notn; he thks open-relatnship shamg is a matter of projectn.

The angry gay men are homonormative my experience, the gay men vehemently opposed to open/poly life tend to be the same men who thk bisexualy is a steppg stone to gay and that beg transgenr is a mental illns; men who don't see the value the word "queer" and don't believe gays should be supportg the Black Liv Matter movement. However, as one gay man I terviewed, Noah, said, "I also thk that (whe) gay men's attus on polyamory are shaped very heavily by our succsful assiatn to mastream culture.