Introduction

This chapter will examine the way in which the Internet initially helped young same-sex-attracted men make sense of their sexual subjectivity, but also how it ended up helping to undermine some of the Buddhist-and gender-derived ideas about homosexuality discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.

Of the 25 participants 9 met their first sexual partner via the Internet, and four of these participants travelled from their home to see a boyfriend who lived in another province or district after meeting online, usually during their school holidays. In contrast to many of the feminine-oriented young men who had their first sexual affairs in the real world, with ‘real’ phu chaai, none of the first-time partners encountered via the Internet was described by the participants as phu chaai. This is indicative of how important the Internet is in the post-gender-based homosexuality era, especially because in the real world, because of their heteronormative demeanour, masculine-identified gay men are much harder to identify as potential mates or boyfriends than feminine-identified kathoey or gay queens. Therefore, the Internet is of particular importance as a mechanism for finding dates or potential boyfriends for same-sex-attracted men who do not wish to dress, act or behave in an effeminate manner.

Anonymity, Freedom and Time Lapses: The Benefits of Cyber-Dating

According to Ross (2005, 343), the Internet is a sphere where ‘simulation of sex and sexual barter occur with minimal control and regulation’. Ross notes that gender, sexual and other categories that are used online can change at any time and are neither fixed nor can be controlled the same way they are in offline society. Ross observes that the Internet allows people to establish a ‘surrogate body’ to experiment with and to be experimented on, for example, by presenting oneself in a chat room as younger, taller or thinner than one really is, or even by representing oneself by means of a picture of someone else.

The British sociologist Anthony Giddens (1992, 46) has described how the modern notion of romantic love and intimacy is dependent on ‘the process of creation of a mutual narrative biography’ between two lovers.