Self love is a uniting characteristic of peaceful, happy people, but it’s also one that is sorely lacking in many corners of the LGBTQ community. So many of our brothers and sisters are told from an early age that they aren’t good enough and never will be, and even though we seek out friends, lovers and acquaintances that insist otherwise, the damage often sticks around in our psychic crevices.
Reclaiming love for yourself can be a powerful step towards happiness, but it doesn’t happen over night and it can take on many forms.
For some, removing the cycle of sexual conquest can help get there. We’d never suggest this is the only course to take, or that it’s the right one for everyone, but taking a temporary break from lust can certainly help clear the mind.
Here’s what guys are saying about the process on Whisper:
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Mike
-and then one day my 40-something self realized that I hadn’t had nearly enough casual encounters… shit!
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Doh! Suckered into one of these Whisper threads again
Black Pegasus
Just when I thought this would be a decent topic to discuss it turns out to be just another f*cking Whisper app advertisement.
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
Any whispers by ex-gays? This is close – maybe next week.
ErikO
If these people actually exist it’s their choice to be celibate for years.
crowebobby
I’m gay and celibate . . . and the fact I’ll turn 80 in 6 months has absolutely nothing to do with it.
crowebobby
@Mike: So true. Shallow as it seems/is, I still regret chances to get laid that I passed up as far back as 65 years ago. A couple of them really hurt.
ChrisK
@crowebobby: I hear you. Funny how you only hear this self imposed celibacy from a certain crowd.
Usually religious.
Age range always between 18 and 30. The “I know everything there is to know” age.
ChrisK
@Baba Booey Fafa Fooey: Yes. Two sides of the same coin. That would be fun too.
ChrisK
@ErikO: I imagine you have allot in common with them. Not by choice mind you.
David Bolton
“I’m celibate and SOOOOOO intriguing.”
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
@ChrisK: Yep exactly. This article didn’t come out and claim these people to be “ex-gay” and neither did they, but you can read between the lines.
And, “are they onto something”? Sure, if you have an anti-gay agenda.
Mack
@crowebobby: I’m 69 and right there with you.
Rocinante
I have gone years without sex in the past, I don’t see the positive benefits. The only time it was somewhat purposeful was in my first year and a half of sobriety. A boyfriend seemed like a distraction, I know AA recommends that, not an AA guy. By the way, sober sex is way better than drunk sex.
I can assure you I kick myself over opportunities that I didn’t take. In college I was basically celibate, closeted and it was miserable. College would have been a lot more fun if I had had a love interest.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@Baba Booey Fafa Fooey: Ever the paranoidal gay hysteric. Calm down, dear.
Jack Meoff
Some people choose celibacy, others have celibacy thrust upon them.
SonOfKings
I’ve found it refreshing and motivating to take occasional breaks from sex (a few or several months at a time). As much as I enjoy sex, it can be physically and emotionally draining constantly pursuing this or that hot guy and holding the right pose or stance to be alluring. Some people’s sex lives are a “come as you are party,” but mine has generally been more of a high maintenance activity. I need to go on hiatus now and then just to recharge. I don’t think much about any lost opportunities during my time outs because, as a male model friend, once told me: “No matter how beautiful these boys are, their breath and azz still smell like isht!”
san39730
It’s nice to see that there are some gay men out there questioning the very pro-casual sex environment of the gay community. I’m not saying casual sex is bad but we clearly need to have a conversation within the community about the difference between love and lust.
adamnfool
Who talks or writes like this? I don’t think this is real. Like googles dream computer wrote this.
I’m creeped out more about the phrasing and word choices than even the content. I would backup slowly if someone thought I cared that much about their orgasm count with another human. Just because it’s called YouTube didn’t actually make most yous that interesting. You like not having sex, then go to not fucking town. Just do what you want and move forward to more interesting things.
But really the issue I see is that ….straight people call it waiting for someone that’s sufficiently cool that you enjoy being around… Not “celibacy”. That’s ridiculous. So it’s either Grindr every night or celibacy?
What’s that noise? Oh it’s my false fucking dichotomy alarm.
The one about not having sex because AIDS exists is just downright scary.
Learn probability, make reasonable choices, remember to live and be happy.
adamnfool
Also… what the fuck is whisper?
truckproductions
I chose celebacy in my mid twenties for a few years. it was incredible. it’s strange how quickly you lose the interest and put that energy elsewhere. I was so productive. But it did get lonely after a year or so. but when I went back, suddenly the desperation for sex was gone. I could enjoy going out without hunting or needing to be hunted. my friendships got better as I learned who could connect and who was just a wing man.
Danny279
Good for all of these guys for charting their own course and not letting others dictate to them. And good for them for rejecting the hookup culture, which separates sex from love and which does not lead one to a good place in the long run.
MediaGuy
The whole AIDS thing has always been in the way of my sex life. How many times have I said no thanks when I just wanted to chow down.I’ve turned down probably half of the opportunities to hook-up because I couldn’t assess the risk. And for those times that I do have a BF and we get tested together and that whole tiresome routine, then go at it bareback, it’s great but the guy usually feels assaulted after 6mo – a year because it’s too much. Then he leaves because his ass hurts 24/7 and then I have to start all over again. Ugh. Exhausting.
adamnfool
Look… I’m so not in the hook-up culture… but there seems to be a lot of misinformation here about HIV and how it’s spread.
Condoms/other types of sex besides anal/LTRs all seem like reasonable choices besides celibacy. Whole hog building an identity on celibacy because AIDS exists in the world seems like a knee jerk response based on fear.
Don’t let the world make you so afraid that you stop normal human routines.
Don’t stop going outside, because fear of skin cancer.
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: Go back to Lip Stick Alley, “dear”. Stop stealing from datalounge – you’re not funny. I’m sure I’ve blocked you there.
kernowcraig
I’ll happily celebrate celibacy…. when i’m dead lol
Masc Pride
I don’t think celibacy is odd at all. It takes incredible discipline. So many gay men fool themselves into thinking promiscuity is an expression of gay pride. It isn’t. Taking care of yourself and your health is the most powerful expression of self-love. It’s pride in action, not just talk.
BriBri
Whatever fluffs your skirt.
He BGB
Celibacy means no masterbation, too. No sex. Nothing.
Chris
Some guys I know feel that they have to have sex whenever someone asks. I keep telling them that saying “yes” to sex is as much a choice as saying “no.” Either way, it’s your choice.
Kris
It’s been 8 years for me … and counting …
Ogre Magi
probably most of them are christians, that nasty religion always fucks gay men up
ChrisK
@Kris: No judgement but I’m just curious why?
dean089
@Mike: LOL! Yeah, and the offers have become few and far between.
dean089
Traditionally “celibacy” means no sex at all, including Rosie Palm and her sisters. Each of these guys mentions dating and hooking up, nothing about swearing off masturbation — not unlike Vegans who wear leather shoes or silk.
Billysees
@san39730:
” we clearly need to have a conversation within the community about the difference between love and lust. ”
@Masc Pride:
” Taking care of yourself and your health is the most powerful expression of self-love. It’s pride in action, not just talk. ”
Those comments make sense.
@crowebobby:
” I’m gay and celibate . . . and the fact I’ll turn 80 in 6 months has absolutely nothing to do with it. ”
Cute…and funny too.
ChrisK
@dean089: I imagine back in the victorian age it would. I agree that would be true celibacy. Jacking off is still sex though. No different except no ones there with you.
dwes09
@Masc Pride: So many gay men fool themselves into thinking promiscuity is an expression of gay pride. It isn’t. Taking care of yourself and your health is the most powerful expression of self-love. It’s pride in action, not just talk.
At 65 I have hardlty ever men a gay man who “fooled themselves into thinking promiscuity is an expression of gay pride”. Pretty much everyone in the world (except right wingers apparently) understands it is simply an option people have that they can load with the value judgement they choose. As for taking care of yourself and your health, please explain using empiricism rather than magical thinking how that is inconsistent with safer sex, be it sport sex or otherwise.
The right is eager (happy) to have gay sex defined as dirty and unhealthy, even in the minds of gay people. that does not make them correct. Pride in action is NOT buying into myths and idiocy regarding who we are and the nature of our sexual contacts! Pride in action is not the blind acceptance of an anti-sexual fundamentalist attitude about sexual contact.
dwes09
@Billysees: Everyone needs to have a conversation about the difference between love and sex. That does not mean that sex to assuage lust is bad, demeaning, unhealthy or negative in any sense. We have well over 250,000 years as the species Homo sapiens sapiens engaging in lust-based sex. We likely have less than 10,000 years of disparaging lust in favor of a culturally formed elevation of sex within pair bonds as better.
Given an understanding of anatomy and how STIs are spread, what exactly is unhealthy about having sport sex? Most people with brains recognize the cultural base of ideas valuing chastity (mostly for women where virgins were important trade goods between families and clans). Having sex outside of a committed relationship is in no way an expression of low self esteem except in very specific situations (sex addiction exists, but is rare). And “pride in action” is best expressed as the struggle to understand and slough off the negative attitudes imposed on us from christian/heterosexual society. Attitudes so many here (you included) seem to have completely internalized.
dwes09
I will never understand why Queerty thinks comments on Whisper are worthy of consideration or analysis. There is no reason to assume that the people posting them are speaking their own truths.
Some of the comments here seem to be from straight folks hoping to further the notion that gay sex is “harmful”. We all know that many Christians assume LGBT people are “god-ordained to celibacy. We need to deride that notion, not give it any value.
Danny279
@dwes09: You are pretty bizarre and your 3 comments are incredibly stupid. You seem to equate gay sex with promiscuity and rejection of promiscuity as “anti-sex.” You come to the table weighed down by assumptions and biases. It’s sad. I personally have met gay men from the Baby Boomer and GenX generation who tried to sell hookup sex as some sort of gay pride bonding ritual. It was laughable but, yes, people do make that claim. Of course, these same men faced their older years alone and they had difficulty even getting hookups. Their “market value” had plummeted with age, and there was no love in the cold world they had created for themselves.
The social science is very clear that sex with multiple partners is strongly correlated with poor mental and physical health and “homonegative” attitudes. Separating sex and love is a dead end, an endless repetition of a meaningless act with people who don’t know or care about you. How sad if that is how you lived your life, but don’t inflict it on anyone else.
TroisBoi
This was a really good laugh!! Where do they come up with these pieces? ROFLMAO!!!