Hook-Up Apps & Mental Health

He learned the truth at just 19, that love ain’t meant for beautiful queens. 1991 was the year of his first sexual experience with a man. It could almost be a contemporary gay porn fantasy; the other, a straight-acting, rugby-playing, heterosexually-celebrated friend’s older brother. But this was no fantasy; he was raped. Having been plied with gin, the only thing besides being fucked he clearly remembered was that somehow, being gay, he was meant to want this, and the friend’s brother was defiantly entitled to want this, safe in the knowledge no one would ever know his secret.

There is a shadow of so much hurt, anger and shame from growing up in a time in which gay sexuality was defined by being fucked, and thus weak, perverse, criminal. I abhor this legacy where for too many people their first and early male sexual experiences only reiterated and reconfirmed such hurt and shame.

But now, in a post-referendum, corporate Pride- waving, Leo-dancing era, those times of shame, hate and self-loathing are surely behind us; when as equivalent loving citizens, we can all get married, there is no longer the necessitous bare backing into a corner of just fucking and being fucked?

But as any venture into Grindrland shows, the sexualisation and objectification of ourselves and others endures. As the sexual marketplace moves online, the hiding places for sexuality, for shame, for our selves proliferates. Is there not a huge irony in the fact that our contemporary out and proud equality the gay scene/community has moved onto a virtual platform where desire hides behind demands, and people behind Photoshop?

At a recent sexual health conference, Grindr was described as the modern day gay scene, but for me, it lacks the immediacy, the intimacy, the raw fear and excitement of being real and present on the scene, with all its encompassing smells, touches, glances, reality. Within Grindr culture sexuality allies itself alongside pornography, not only in its selfish demand for ejaculation, but being solely visual, its sensory deprivation of our full senses. On the gay scene, you have to face the immediate gamble of approaching someone, or accept the social etiquette inherent in being approached. You can’t so cowardly ignore them or block them. You can’t pretend to be someone else, another face, another body. You have to be your self in all its reality, and be wanted or not wanted.

DEMAND CULTURE

On the gay scene, you get to assess the wares and the wears in person. You get to sample the product, taste the person, and be tasted. In Grindrland people don’t have the patience for subtlety, for flirtation, for reservation, for sensitivity. If you aren’t ready to shoot into a taxi, then you are a time waster. If you do jump into a taxi and don’t get the ‘promised’ fuck, then there is outraged pissed-offness, how dare they? Men, especially gay men, still exist in a culture of sexual entitlement, a demand culture where their wants dictate the scene, diminishing the other to an object, and too many times, after the deed is done, an abject objection. As men, we are raised that our sexual needs demand priority for ourselves; sex is always available as people are mere receptacles, things. As gay men, we were raised within a culture of sexual disgust, marginalisation, self-hatred. This combination of sexual codes is lethal.

Oftentimes with gay clients I ask the guy’s name(s) from their sexual encounters, to underpin how dehumanising their anonymous sexual experiences are or have become. Casual sex and anonymous sex can be hugely liberating, enjoyable, but never at a cost of ignoring another’s humanity. Fundamental within the ethics of the BDSM community is a recognition that before another can be a slave, or sub, or gimp, they are a person, a set of desires, to be recognised, negotiated and respected. I could never stomach straight men’s objectification of women, crowing about the things they would do and how much the women would want it. But these men have sisters, wives, daughters, mothers, I would think. And now I look at the diminishing sense of family as gay sexual culture is imported online, and anguish at the lack of brotherhood in Grindrland.

So many young men in coming out speak of looking for love and relationships, and I worry for those with little sexual experience – not only for their bodies, but for their selves. In a brutal world, we first become brutalised before ultimately brutalising.

What sexual education we have had, taught us nothing about sexual etiquette, about respecting and honouring the people, the desires at the core of sexual encounters, about being present to ourselves and others in the experience, about consent being a continual presence and not a text messaged presumption. Sex can either be mindless or mindful. In a mindless state I can do mindless things with potential physical risks to myself and others, and a corresponding precarious emotional price. Next time you’re hooking up online, remember there is a person disappeared behind the faceless torso, the blank profile, the sexy face; and know there is something deeply personal within you, afraid, hiding but searching for something else too. In a visually obsessed sexual culture, try not to lose sight of this.

Ray is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist specialising in individual and relationship counselling. Call him on 086 828 0033

“ So many young queer men speak of looking for love and relationships, and I worry for those with little sexual experience – not only for their bodies, but for their selves.