This project is about how the internet is currently being used by gay men to transform their erotic desires into the cyberspace of personal websites and chat rooms.The Internet is increasingly determining how gay men socially construct their sexual selves as it becomes positioned into the flow of their everyday lives.
This project specifically examines how gay men use the personal website gaydar to realize their sexual and social needs.Gaydar is currently the most widely used personal website in Australia. The socio-cultural influence of personal websites is growing increasingly important.
The project will provide further insights into the social and cultural situations that precipitate the use of gaydar as a sexual aid for gay men and to explore how offline social cues of attraction are positioned within gaydar cyberspace. The project is a virtual ethnography that synthesizes offline sexual scripting with online cybersexual theory of embodiment. This will assist in the design of gay men\'s online sexual experiences and reveal how their offline sexual lives symbiotically shape their online activities.
Conflict of Interest: None disclosed
Financial Support/Funding: Doctoral Candidature
Sydney, Australia, April 2007
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