GAY WEBSITES: A PUBLIC SPHERE FOR MARGINAL PEOPLE

Abstract

This article presents the behavior of accessing the internet among gays as “marginal people”. The internet is a sphere in which there is no bias or physical violence; it is different from the real world, where gays are excluded from the social structure, including workplaces and educational institutions. The researcher interviewed and carried out participatory observations of the sample group in gay websites and webboards that they accessed the most often. The study results showed that there was a variety of websites responding to their needs. The websites that they visited the most frequently could be categorized into three groups :

1. Websites about friend or girlfriend/boyfriend finding and sex selling or buying ;

2. Websites focused on webboards for general topics ; and

3. Websites focused on webboards presenting novels, life experiences, and sexual experiences.

In these three websites, the gays were able to show their own identity explicitly or to create a new identity. They are like a virtual community allowing people of the same interest, who might not have known each other before, to share opinions, talk, and exchange information to one another. As for the gays who worried about the bias from the physical sphere, they could also take part in this public sphere to build a diversity of relationships.