We are a community defined by our sexual practices and preferences. Whether we call ourselves homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer, we characterize ourselves largely in terms of who we like to have sex with and what we like to do sexually. If sex is central to who we are as a community, when can sex become a problem? How much sex is too much?

When sex is a problem or whether it ever is depends on whom one asks. At one extreme, Sexaholics Anonymous identifies “resorting to images or memories during sex,” masturbating or having sex with any one other than your spouse, relieving anxiety through sex or having had multiple relationships as signs that one may be a sexual addict or sexaholic. Using their framework as a guideline, fantasy, pornography, masturbation and sexual relationships that aren’t traditional marriages are signs of serious sexual dysfunction. It looks as though Sexaholics Anonymous would paint a very large proportion of the gay community as at least in danger of becoming sexaholics. And, depending on what exactly they mean by “spouse,” we might all be sexaholics in their view. If we aren’t willing to adopt this as the model of when sex is a problem, what do we have left? The DSM-IV, the medical standard for the diagnoses of mental health conditions, contains no category for sexual addiction.

Doug Braun-Harvey, MA, CGP, director of the San Diego-based Sexual Dependency Institute, believes that viewing some sexual behavior as addictive, like alcoholism and drug addiction, is too simplistic. “It’s far too complicated and far too complex an issue to say that it’s an addiction,” he said. However, Braun-Harvey says that sometimes viewing problems with sexual behavior as addictions can be helpful to people who are struggling with their behavior, as it leads them to find help. While he doesn’t accept the addiction model for sexual behavior, Braun-Harvey concedes that there isn’t yet an ideal explanation available for what’s going on when people have problems with their sexual behavior.

“The experts in the field can’t agree,” Braun-Harvey noted. “I think that’s the most important thing to say. This is a field that still has significant contention and controversy about how people think about these things.”

Even if we don’t have a perfect picture of when someone has a problem with compulsive sexual behavior, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people in our community who have problems with their sexual behavior — or who at least feel that they have a problem. Braun-Harvey divides those people who seek help for compulsive sex into three different groups.

First, according to Braun-Harvey, there are people who engage in sexual behavior where at least one of the participants doesn’t consent or isn’t legally able to give consent. This group includes people who engage in sexual behaviors running the gamut from sexual coercion, to exposing themselves to people who would really rather not be given a show, to having sex with minors. In this category, there’s little question that the behavior is a problem. This is the kind of behavior that has definite legal repercussions. There’s little question that being in this group causes serious problems and has severe consequences.

The second sort of person who seeks help for sexual compulsion is someone who feels ashamed of his or her sexual tastes or orientation. Some of these are men who have unusual sexual tastes or turn-ons. Others are men who just think, for whatever reason, that their sexual tastes are out of the ordinary. The unifying characteristic of men in this group is the shame that they feel surrounding their sexuality. “With gay men, I think you’re dealing with how do you correct the shame we’ve been taught to have as gay men,” said Braun-Harvey. “You can’t do that if you’re behaving sexually in ways that embarrass you or make you feel ashamed of yourself or become such a horrible secret. Gay men have worked so hard to come out of the closet and then they come out of the closet [but] everything they’re doing sexually they’re ashamed of, they can’t talk to their friends about.”

While men in this group might well identify themselves as sexual compulsives or as having problems with their sex lives, their problems aren’t necessarily that they have a problem controlling their sexual behavior as much as that they haven’t totally come to terms with their sexuality. They’ve moved from one sort of closet into another.

In the third group are men who have lost some level of control over their sexual behavior. These are men for whom sex has taken over their lives, demanding their time, resources, energies and money. In some cases their sexual lives have endangered their jobs, their relationships and their health and safety. When men in this group seek help for their compulsive behaviors, it’s the time spent and the danger to their relationships that most often lead them to counseling. According to Braun-Harvey, in spite of the health risks associated with multiple and often unsafe encounters, this tends not to be a major motivator for seeking help.

What impact does the Internet have on compulsive, out of control or simply problematic sexual behavior? Obviously it provides a method to meet people, both through chatting on general interest sites and through Internet providers. There are AOL chatrooms for every locale and interest. And if there isn’t a chatroom for a particular interest or place, members can always create their own. In addition, even non-members can chat with other people through AOL’s Internet messenger, MSN’s messenger service, ICQ, Internet Relay Chat and any number of other outlets. With programs like Netmeeting and Yahoo chat ICUII, you can even see the person you are chatting with in action and send him images through digital cameras.

Besides these general interest programs, websites and services, there are an ever-growing number of gay-specific and gay-oriented websites and chatrooms that allow for virtually meeting with, chatting with, “camming” with or viewing the profiles of men in the same city, on the other side of the world or anywhere in between. Gay.com lists profiles for people in almost any city in the United States and most of the rest of the world, supplementing profiles with chatrooms for cities from rural towns in the Midwest and Plains states to all the major cities of the world, and almost every imaginable scene and combination of interests. And Gay.com is just one of the largest outlets for chatting and meeting through the Internet. Other sites include Gaydar.co.uk and Glimpse.com. All of these sites present opportunities for men searching for relationships, simple contact over the Internet such as chatting or cybersex, or talking or typing one another through a sexual encounter. Of course, they can also be used to find more-or-less anonymous sex partners.

In addition, there are numerous sites geared specifically to meeting other men for real-time sexual contacts. Sites like Sex4HotMen.com and Adam4Adam.com both cater almost exclusively to men looking for relatively anonymous sexual encounters. That isn’t to say that they cannot also be used for those looking for someone to date or even a long-term-relationship, but in many ways their focus is on more fleeting encounters.

Even if there is a definite slant towards anonymous sex on many gay-oriented sites, is that any particular reason to be concerned about Internet sexual activity or online sex? After all, there have always been numerous venues in which gay men could meet sexual partners in whom they have no interest other than sex. We’ve long had adult bookstores, bathhouses, nude beaches and primarily gay areas of parks, any of which can be used by a man if he wants to find partners for anonymous sex. And of course, shocking though it may seem, there are at least some men who go out to bars, dance clubs, circuit parties, cafés and even the gym in order to find someone to have sex with.

But the Internet is different.

Braun-Harvey identified some of these differences. The first is the almost complete freedom from shame. When you chat with someone on the Internet or reply to their profile, you aren’t face to face with them. Even if they reject you or aren’t interested or have something truly nasty to say in response, you can simply ignore it. The pain of rejection coming from the computer screen is nothing like the pain that comes from being rejected or even ridiculed in person — in a bar, at the gym or in any other venue. Many sites even have the option of blocking certain other users from seeing your profile or contacting you through the site. So the Internet facilitates pain-free cruising, a chance to check another man out — assuming he’s telling you the truth and using his own pictures — without the fear of being repelled.

“You don’t have to deal with the immediate facial expression of how somebody feels about you because they see your face or your body,” said Braun-Harvey. “You don’t have to deal with how they feel about your personality because they don’t hear your voice, they don’t watch how you move around. All this is removed — many of the social things that create shame in the first two minutes of interaction with someone. So for gay men it’s like Nirvana.”

In some ways the Internet and the availability of sites to contact other people is a good thing. Since one of the problems that Braun-Harvey has identified in the way that some gay men deal with their sexuality is their tendency to go into a closet of shame, the Internet removes this problem. Even if someone is afraid to admit what he likes sexually to his closest friends or even his partner for fear of ridicule, he can do it online with no such worries.

One thing that the Internet allows for is an intensified availability of anonymous sex without many of the barriers that have existed in the past. By removing the shame that might have been involved before the Internet, it increases the opportunity to hook up, partly through increasing the chances that you will meet someone who is interested in doing the same things sexually. At least since the demise of the hanky code, it hasn’t been apparent what someone else enjoys sexually just by seeing him across the bar.

The Internet also removes the difficulty of finding out what someone else is into sexually without awkward questions to another person’s face. Through a chat medium or responses to posted profiles, it becomes perfectly clear where everyone’s sexual interests lie, without having to broach the subject in a public or semi-public space.

Internet hookups also facilitate finding partners with whom to “party and play” or PNP. Just as you can’t always tell whether someone looking at you from over his laptop at Starbuck’s, Urban Grind or Peet’s is interested in sex or looking for a relationship, you can’t always tell whether he likes to get high when he’s having sex. But almost all gay profile sites allow members to indicate whether and how often they smoke, drink and use drugs. And men who are interested in PNP are everywhere on the web.Although PNP means different things to different people, one of the most prevalent drugs being used is methamphetamine, crystal meth or tina.

In Braun-Harvey’s experience, connections through the Internet don’t act as gateways to PNP. Men don’t go online and end up using crystal meth in a sexual encounter for the first time, at least not generally. But what the Internet does allow is a great increase in access to people to have sex with while getting high. If someone has already had a sexual experience on crystal meth and enjoyed it, the ubiquity of men online who are willing to meet up for a drug-fueled encounter allows for many more repeat performances with different partners. While it might be hard to find a partner for PNP in a bar, there’s no such problem on the Internet.

One obvious fact about being chemically altered, whether with alcohol or drugs, is that drunk and high people don’t make well thought-out decisions. Even when personal safety and health are at issue, drug use clouds decision-making. And methamphetamine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, not only clouds judgment but also increases sex drive. In this way, it differs from opiates and alcohol, both of which can impede sexual function and drive in the short term. PNP behavoir increases libido, decreases rational decision-making and, in addition, methamphetamine use is also associated with more aggressive sex, increasing the likelihood for trauma and injury. All of this increases the risks for transmission of HIV and STDs, leading to some linkages between online sexual activity and the recent upswing in syphilis, for instance.

According to Jim Zians, MA, a research associate at UCSD, “People have the right to have sex how they want, but there’s the public health point of view, where there’s health risks. The issue is the data shows that … in certain kinds of settings and situations, if you have anonymous partners often it’s linked with drug use.” And drug use is related to unsafe sex, although Zians is careful to add that there is also data suggesting that other men who aren’t always safe do engage in safer sex when their encounters are anonymous.

In regards to the anonymity of the Internet, Braun-Harvey notes, “Research shows, the more anonymous the encounter, the more likely sexual decision-making is impaired.” The anonymity and lack of shame in an Internet chat allow for men to make sexual offers that might be more awkward in person, offers that put them — and others — at risk.

For instance, “Tony,” a partnered chatter from San Diego who reports his HIV status as negative, nonetheless expresses a willingness to have unprotected anal sex with other men as long as they’re “hot” and negative. And “Mike” another regular chatter on Gay.com, doesn’t usually have unsafe sex, but also sometimes bottoms without protection for men he meets on the Internet, as long as they look healthy and say they are negative. When talking about a recent Internet hook-up with a visiting couple and asked if he usually barebacked, he replied, “I don’t usually take loads, but they were hot.” And he assumed they were healthy, that he hadn’t really put himself at risk by this encounter.

The Internet intensifies these sorts of assumptions that research has shown lead to increased STD and HIV infection rates. In San Francisco, for example, new HIV infections had fallen from 8,000 a year in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to 500 a year in 1997. But by 2000, new infections were increasing again to nearer 900 a year, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. When the San Francisco Aids Foundation undertook research to discover why safer-sex education programs were failing and why infection rates were beginning to increase again in 1997, they found that men often made erroneous assumptions about the HIV status of anonymous sex partners, usually assuming that the partner had the same status. When men had unsafe sex with one another, they assumed that their partner would only bareback with them if they were also positive or also negative.

Anyone who has spent much time chatting on the Internet or has met anyone from a chatroom for sex knows how easy it is for people to lie when they are seated at their computers. If someone is willing to use another man’s picture or alter his stats when chatting, it’s just as easy to lie about HIV and STD status or to report being negative when you aren’t sure about your status. And since relative anonymity already leads to assumptions and bad decision-making, this added assurance increases the chances that men will play unsafely with others whose status they don’t really know. For those who are already in relationships, they can be putting not only themselves but also their partners at risk for HIV and STDs.

There can also be political implications to multiple Internet hookups. With continued HIV infections and new strains of STDs on the increase, PNP and anonymous, unsafe encounters put the gay community at risk of looking irresponsible, even as the focus of AIDS treatment and research moves to other populations. This is heightened in a political environment with a presidential administration that appears to be less than friendly toward the gay and lesbian community. Note the recent CDC decisions to withhold funding from HIV-education programs that are deemed too explicit with references to gay sex , and at least one influential Supreme Court justice who believes that gay sex, incest and bestiality are equivalent. As Zians expressed, there’s a danger that the public health community will lose interest in the health of gay men if we appear irresponsible, even as the rates of HIV infection begin to increase in other populations.

Even if online sex starts and remains in the virtual world, it can be rife with other dangers. In a study in the March 2000 Journal of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, researchers estimated that at least 200,000 were “sexual compulsives,” addicted to chatrooms, porn and other sexual outlets in cyberspace. These were people who spent more than 11 hours weekly in chatrooms and viewing sexually oriented material on the web, as well as exhibiting other characteristics relating to online life. Some of these characteristics are outlined in a questionnaire developed by Rob Weiss, MA, and available from the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity (NCSAC).

According to the NCSAC, signs of cybersex compulsion include: increasing amounts of time spent looking for material on the Internet or spent chatting, being involved with more than one person sexually over the Internet, being online late at night or while at work, and being secretive about the amount of time spent online and not thinking of online entanglements as potential violations of other relationships, even when they begin to replace time spent on primary relationships.

In an Internet chatroom — because of the total anonymity and the ability to be whomever you want to be — research estimates that up to a third of the “women” chatting with straight men are actually men, demonstrating just how much self-creation is possible on the Internet. The sexual world that opens up can look much better than anything in the real world. Any fantasy can be explored, even if acting it out would be illegal or dangerous or even just a little out of the ordinary in the real world. And there are always hundreds and thousands of men online, available for cybersex hookups that can be ended whenever one of the participants tires or is sexually satisfied. Cybersex hookups don’t have to involve relationship building or talking before or after sex or all the effort that has to be put into a relationship.

For all these reasons, cybersex can be more appealing and seem more sexually fulfilling than real-world contacts and the difficult business of relationships. For instance, “Julio,” who chats throughout the day and every night, says he spends time in Internet chatrooms mostly because his boyfriend doesn’t enjoy some of the sexual activities that he is into. Rather than working that out with his boyfriend, he looks for Internet connections. “I don’t hook up much, but I really like to top and my boyfriend isn’t into it, so I come here all the time,” he said, explaining that he doesn’t want to leave his boyfriend or have a relationship outside his primary one, though he isn’t being sexually fulfilled. So he fills in for his relationship with hours of chatting every day.

Even though men like Julio aren’t putting themselves or their partners at physical risk through their online activity, they are putting their relationships at risk. Whether men who meet online ever meet in the real world or not, their Internet activity takes time away from their real world relationships. Time spent chatting on the Internet is always going to be time that could have been spent deepening relationships, finding partners in the real world or even working.

As Al Cooper, Ph.D., sex therapist, researcher and author in the Silicon Valley, wrote in the September, 1996, Contemporary Sexuality, constant surfing “draws some people away from the intimacy and connection that sexuality can offer. Instead, through the Internet, they obtain an anonymous sexual experience that they find empty but which they compulsively repeat.… It’s something they can access anytime. There’s a perception of anonymity. And they can do it at work as well as home.”

It’s there all the time, it’s easy to access, it’s free of shame and rejection and there’s an immediate and constant source of sexual release. Even if the release isn’t ultimately fulfilling, it can be repeated with no great effort. With all of this going for it, it isn’t hard to see what is appealing about cybersex or how someone who isn’t having an easy time finding what he wants sexually can be consumed by it.

There’s at least one more way in which online sexual activity differs from other venues in which to search for and find sexual partners: the size of the population, both for real time hookups and for cybersex encounters. At any one time on an average day there are between 150 and 200 men logged in on Gay.com in San Diego alone, with another 500 two hours away in Los Angeles. On an average day there are 500 men logged in on Adam4Adam.com in San Diego. This increases the available population of possible sex partners greatly over anything one could find in a more traditional cruising ground.

Suddenly, the Internet makes available many more men than one could ever see in one place at one time — except at a circuit party or other large-venue event — almost all of whom are looking for sex. This makes sex extremely easy. But, not surprisingly, it also can make the pursuit of sex all consuming.

By removing shame and the effort involved in going out and looking for sex, the Internet can also place some men in the position of a kid in a candy shop. They are looking for sex and there is sex being offered on all sides, available everywhere. And, unlike more traditional venues for finding other men, you can be online when you’re at work, when you’re at home, first thing in the morning and last thing before you go to bed.

“The issue about online sexual activity is availability,” according to Braun-Harvey. What the Internet has done is allowed for a much greater availability of sexual outlets than we have seen at any time in the past. It is for this reason that the Internet can easily lead some people into trouble, into the third category of people who do have a serious problem with their sexual behavior and their online activity. Because the sex offered through Internet hook-ups is so available and so easy to access, it becomes extremely easy to become immersed in it. Because the Internet also offers the possibility of the ultimate in safe sex — virtual or cybersex — it is possible to spend hours searching out virtual partners who are almost always available and willing. In his practice, Braun-Harvey has seen men who lose their partners, lose their jobs and, in many ways, lose the kind of life they had been living because of their online activity.

None of this is meant to paint the Internet and online sexual activity as either evil or a godsend. The fact is that there are many people who get themselves into trouble with Internet sexual behavior, but this doesn’t mean that there is something inherently wrong with chatting or meeting people for sexual encounters. In just the same way, the fact that some people can easily handle online life and keep it in control doesn’t mean that online sexual activity, whether it leads to real time encounters or not, is for everyone. Some people have problems with online life, some don’t.

Sometimes the Internet and availability of chatrooms can even be healthy, allowing for the removal of shame and the discovery of sexuality that Braun-Harvey mentioned.

Cooper writes, “Good communication is built into the hard structure of e-mail and chat room exchanges. The medium forces people to take turns and not interrupt each other.” In other words, Internet exchanges both help people learn better how to communicate and can help them explore their sexuality in a safe environment. “But they need to make sure that what seems wonderful online exists in real life. A person who seems ideal on the Internet may be overbearing in real life. It’s important to check that out.” There’s always the danger that the virtual world will outshine the real world; when faced with this fact, it’s easy to retreat to the virtual one.

After only a decade, we haven’t had sufficient time as a community or as individuals to see just what sort of impact the Internet will ultimately have on gay life, but in the meantime Internet sexual activity is here and we each have to figure out just what role, if any, it can safely play in our lives.