Ireland’s Sunday Tribune‘s has caused quite a stir after posign as a 15-year old boy on Gaydar. Two intrepid reporters – Una Mullally and Mick McCaffrey – decided to go undercover after news spread that a 15-year old boy had been using the popular website to score tricks. In the provocatively entitled article, “Open Season on Irish Teens”, the daring duo describe creating the fictitious online identity and receiving over 40 replies within a day, a number they seem to think indicates an evil epidemic. Some homo-journos, meanwhile, insist they’re the evil ones.
Mullally and McCraffrey write:
Many sent crude and explicit emails and two men arranged to meet the fictional teenager for sex after an account was set up on the gay social networking website Gaydar last Thursday.
Within minutes men were contacting the fictitious scholboy, ‘Davey’, for sex.
One walks away from the article feeling as if all of Irish homos are kiddie-seeking pervos, a tone the fagalas over at Gay UK worry will perpetuate negative stereotypes. They write:
The undercover operation by The Sunday Tribune may have uncovered some unsavoury characters, but the overall implication is that Gaydar is a hot bed of kiddy fiddlers and gay men can’t be trusted near as playground.
While they trumpet the fact that ‘Davey’ received 40 messages from obviously careless and downright stupid men, they neglect to mention that a 35-yr-old might equally receive as many messages if his profile featured a picture of his enormous penis.
This style of reporting does nothing but demonise gay men and fuel homophobia. This hateful climate merely creates a society where teenagers feel unable to broach their sexuality with their parents, peers or teachers…so wind up on gay dating sites trying to make friends.
If journalists and politicians stopped oppressing teenage sex, they claim, then gay teenagers wouldn’t have to resort to online chats and clandestine meetings.
This is a topic known all too well on this side of the ocean. News organizations and lawmakers alike discussed intergenerational relationships after Mark Foley’s resignation last year. Of course you remember Foley came under fire after exchanging naughty IMs with underage congressional pages. While no concrete conclusions were reached, the debate again raised the question of whether or not we as a culture are ready to acknowledge gay teenage sexuality. As the kids at Gay UK point out:
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Gay teenagers have sexual urges, just like their straight counterparts, yet somehow this is seen as unpalatable and too complex to deal with, so it’s ignored by everyone…
What are your respective takes, readers?
nystudman
The real point is that sexual predators will use any site possible to find underage sex partners — gay, str8 or otherwise. no reflection on the site any more than Craigslist, Friendster, Myspace, etc.etc.
Ryan
I think you really hit the mark with the blog:
1. There are negative stereotypes of homosexuality, making it very difficult to talk about.
2. Since straight people don’t necessarily have a firm understanding of homosexuality, they view it as “complicated” when it’s not. We like penises, big deal!
3. Teenagers, like anyone else, have sexual urges – yet, few want to think about that, especially when the word “gay” is thrown in.
4. Because of all the aforementioned reasons, almost nothing is going to come to fruition in regards to solving the problem. The only way to get people to start thinking about these issues and how we can help gay teenagers grow up to be wonderfully adjusted gay adults is to increase awareness. Often times, that comes in some sort of big event that happens in society, but seeing as how the media ignores those kinds of things when it comes to the GLBT community (i.e. what mainstream press was there on Anthony Anthos?), nothing is going to change any time soon.
GayCowboyBob
Nuh-uh. No way are you going to rationalize this.
There is a good reason that age of consent laws are in place, that even if a young person is sexually inclined, as a society we recognize that they may not be emotionally mature enough for the consequences. Gay or straight, young people need to be uniformly protected from adults who would take advantage of that.
What’s wrong with this article is that Gaydar seems negligently oblivious to postings by underage individuals. That should not be happening. Gaydar is an adult oriented site and really no place for a 15 year-old. There are a number of sites for adolescent GLBT youth where the can understand themselves and get to know others in a protected environment. Gaydar should be doing self-policing with their administrators as well as by fellow members.
And then for the homo-journalist to rationalize those who wrote to the fictional Davey as “careless and downright stupid men” without acknowledging the complete inappropriateness and wrongfulness of what they did is disturbing. How are we supposed to get past the stereotype of “kiddie fiddlers” when homo-journalists themselves express that the explicit messages were inconsequential as long as no one found out about them?
Predators may take advantage of any online arena but the administrators of a site have a duty to negate that possibility if possible. I commend the reporters for reporting on Gaydar’s negligence. They may have been heavy-handed, but we only add fuel to the fire when we try to rationalize such behavior. A 15 year-old should NEVER be receiving explicit messages from of-age individuals.
Can you wonder why the mainstream press is skeptical about the commitment of the gay community to this standard with internet sites not policing themselves in the first place and for homo-journalist rationalizing the issue after the fact?
el polacko
i can only judge by my own experience. puberty hit at age 13 and, two years later, i was ‘out’ and having encounters with ‘older’ men perhaps because i didn’t know any other homos my own age but definitely because i thought ‘older’ guys were hot. i met some great guys and had lots of great sex and couldn’t have been happier and have zero regrets. this was all back in the age of the dinosaur when young people were entirely kept in the dark about most things and especially sex. all this boo-hoo-ing these days about poor helpless 15-year old ‘victims’ is abusurd. the average 15-year old today is far more knowledgable and sophisticated about sexuality than the college and post-college age guys i was dating back then. … and an online hook-up can actually be an opportunity to get to know a little about someone before hopping in the sack with them, as opposed to the old-fashioned method of hanging around possibly unsavory cruising spots. maybe it’s about time society grew up a little regarding the horny young men among us. an ‘older guy’ can be a creep or he can also be a great mentor .. life’s a crapshoot.. let young men play too. they can decide what works best for them without a bunch of nannies getting their panties in a bunch about it.
Paul Raposo
Funny, but no one mentioned how many teens contacted the fifteen year old. Did any teens try to contact him, or were they all adults?
Timothy
I think this story gets skewed by the different approach to “age of consent” between the UK and the US. There the legal age is 16.
We see 15 and think “three years too young”. If we translate that to 17 (one year under for us), it’s not quite as shocking.
In any case, I hope that some of the responses were to advise the kid on where to find social service for gay youth… though I doubt the sensationalist jouralists would have bothered printing those comments.
Brandon
First….If you want to “blame” anyone for such unholy behavior, blame Mom & Dad.
I am am adult i know that i am responsible for my own actions, and i don’t blame EVERYONE ELSE because i act like a moron. I know trying to “get” any 15 Yld is wrong…and i couldn’t live with myself if i knew i screwed up some kids life.
But i remember being 15 too, and Mr Comment # 4 is totally right on the money!
If you need a cause in your life, try to stop our kids from dying in some war or something.
werdna
Timothy-I think you make a good point about people’s conceptions of how young 15 seems, but in fact (though many people do not seem to realize this–cf. Mark Foley scandal) the age of consent in many US states is 16. Also the age of consent in Ireland (which is not part of the UK!) is 17. There’s a chart here: http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm although it doesn’t tell you much about the exceptions that exist in many states (proximity of age, marriage, type of sex). The wikipedia entry (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America) isn’t complete but gives some idea of how complicated and varied the age of consents laws in the US are.
To GayCowboyBob’s comment about Gaydar’s negligence, it should be noted that Gaydar’s Membership Terms and Conditions explicitly state:
“You must be 18 years or over to register as a Member. If We discover or have any reason to suspect that You are not over 18 years of age, then We reserve Our right to suspend or terminate Your Membership to this Site immediately and without notice.”
So the reporters were, in fact violating the terms of service (or pretending to, since they weren’t really 15).
The article is vague about how “Davey’s” age was indicated in the Gaydar listing. They write “All of the men were told that Davey was 15 years-of-age,” but do not indicate how or when the men were told this. Ages are clearly displayed in Gaydar listings based on the birthdate you must enter when you register for the service. Since you are required to be at least 18, the displayed age must have been at least 18. Perhaps the reporters added the information about “Davey” being 15 in the personal description section, or perhaps they did not reveal this until after they’d been contacted by interested men. Not being clear about this seems at best sloppy journalism, at worst deliberate deception.
The authors also wrote “…the Sunday Tribune did not suggest sex to any of the men,” which is simply ridiculous. Gaydar is not a place to meet platonic friends, it’s a cruising site, for pete’s sake. Men go there to find other men to have sex with. Posting an ad there is in itself a clear indication that you’d like to have sex.
Frankly it seems clear that the purpose of the Sunday Tribune piece is simply to stir up scandal (look, here we are talking about it). It’s just full of salacious details (“The man masturbated while talking to Davey”) and provacative words like “depravity” and “predator.” We’ve seen similar pieces for years in US print and television media. It’s been a cliche for years that some struggling tv stations will run a heavily promoted, alarmist story during sweeps week about men having sex in public bathrooms, parks or bookstores. Now the stories often include the shocking news that men use the internet to find sex partners! Jim Burroway wrote several posts about a Tuscon station that managed to combine both of these angles: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2007/02/13/222
gayadder
GAYDAR has all the facilities and manpower to sift though mails and messages received by their members. Aparently, gaydar has “KEY WORDS” tracker to sift and intercept messages and has a power to immediately stop “bad” messages or profiles. Just read GAYDAR terms and Conditions….
However,
gaydar seems to be more interesting in “protecting their business pad” from invaders like our REBEL web-site!
They were very very quick to shut down a £45 per month commercial profile saying that “we are a direct competition to you and money will be refunded!!!
Reference: £45 per month is a charge payable by all “commercial” members including escorts, escort agencies, hotels?, etc etc
We are not trying to promote ourselves here but nearly emphasise that GAYDAR has all the facilities in place to be as safe as possible, though recent indications point to the fact that they have directed more man-power protecting their business rather than protecting people using their Services!
Gaydar – YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT!
http://www.gayadder.com Team!
Terrance
I really believe there is greater need for gay teen age boys having a place to meet where there is provided not only education in safe sex, but perhaps lists of other boys also seeking near their own age gay boys to have as friends and sex. The adults need to throw away the their old taboos and start realizing its an all new world in which teens mostly know more about sex than than a lot of adult do. I don’t want some old creep bothering me and I don’t plan on having sex with a pre teen, but another boy similar to myself. How difficult is that to understand?