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.
OPINION: Ray O’Neill The Grindr Effect
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?