TNG reader and occasional contributor Joey Bahamas submitted this post.

The private picture seems to be a God-send for many gay men. If you get the reference then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, the private picture option allows a person to hide pictures of their choice on their internet profiles. With limited places to meet, vicious gay clusters in places where we actually can meet, and the general human aversion to approaching the people we find attractive, many gay men find cyber-dating to be the best place to make love (or a hook-up) happen. Now, whether you agree with the premise of internet dating or not is beside the point. From Adam4adam to BGCLive, thousands of gay men either prefer the internet as their primary medium for meeting other men, or see it as an invaluable supplement. Despite this, in our communities, internet dating still holds such a stigma that many profiles remain faceless while leaving no shortage of dicks and asses to go around.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with internet dating; I’ve been party to it myself. My first forays into love were all web-based, and if it wasn’t for the internet I would’ve thought I was the only teenage boy in the Bahamas that was experiencing my particular inclinations. Now I’m single again and trying to regain my dating rhythm. It’s still a little uncomfortable for me to plot how to get the number of the cute boy on the other side of the room. I’m getting there, but in the meantime I thought reactivating one of my own profiles would speed things along. It would be easy. I’d flirt, maybe chill with a few folks and get back into the swing of being single. Then, as I began to rework my profile, I found myself deciding to hide my face pics. And I wasn’t the only one that made this conscious decision Many other profiles were without faces, but had picture of things I would never dream showing.

What is about our community that makes showing our unseen assets easier than showing people who we are online? Is the easy explanation that internet “dating” sites are actually internet “hook-up” sites, and the people on them are more interested in length and width than they are with looks? Is it a simple issue of supply and demand?  Or is there a level of shame in our communities associated with having an internet profile, for whatever purpose? Is it that we’re afraid people will think we can’t get a date the “normal” way? Are we at risk of sacrificing our credibility as activists, leaders, or simply normal people in the search for internet love? As gay men living in the homoverse, do we loose face when we show our faces online?

Given our limited options and the accessibility the internet provides, it seems a logical place for men to meet. However, as open-minded and forward thinking as we collectively claim to be, something about our internet identities being discovered bothersome of us.  Sure there are a number of faceless profiles out there that belong to men who’d never admit to being gay. But we have to admit that for many of us the problem isn’t admitting we’re gay, it’s admitting that we’ve turned to the internet to find whatever it is we’re looking for. Why is that?