Part 2 Online Gay Social Networking Sites: Effects and Marginalization

Online Gay Social Networking Sites: Effects and Marginalization

Alongside with the development of these sites is also the growth for the market for the homosexuals, numerous online gay social networking sites have sprawled like mushrooms. Phil Anderson, founded Guys4men in 2001 which is now Planetromeo, he developed the site as an alternative for gays since there were only few online social networking sites for gays during that time and were very expensive to join (Rios, 2007).

Typically, when a person joins a social networking site, whether for a heterosexual or for homosexual site, the initial step will be filling out a form with his/her real name, gender or for other
sites – gender of preference, age, address, race or ethnicity, birthday, other sites includes school or university they attended and the course they took up, or is currently enrolled in, location where they were born and other personal information. Then he/she will always sign a user agreement of the terms and conditions of the site. After the initial step, the user will now fill out the form for his/her profile with his picture/s, interests on music, hobbies movies, books, and a description of himself/herself. This profile would be his/her “identification” and would be shown to the public, or he/she may somehow choose to have it shown privately and accessible only by the members of
his network, or his/ her “friends”.

The contents of the profile set the difference between the heterosexual sites and the homosexual sites. Majority of the heterosexual sites tend to be more conservative in nature whereas homosexual sites tend to be more aggressive in presenting themselves to the public. The latter, having contents like user’s role in bed and his/her preferred partner’s role in bed. In Guys4men and Manjam.com for example, physical statistics such as waistline, chest line, height and weight matters, although the user may have the option not to answer the field.

The profile pictures of the users of the online gay social sites also tend to be more revealing than the wholesome nature of the heterosexual networking sites. Some users confidently show off their whole body despite of the pornographic prohibition clause stated in the agreement.

Another difference is the statement of gender; homosexual social networking sites tend to be very specific on the gender preference of their members. Aside from the generic male and female, there are additional fields like, bisexual, gay, lesbian, transsexual or transgender, transvestite. New terms like hag/tag, downe, purple, and undecided among others were also introduced.Part 1 of this