ABSTRACT
This chapter links two “spaces” rarely considered in tandem: the geophysical meeting places of gay-identified Thai men in contemporary Bangkok and the websites they visit.3 Featuring similar and often overlapping populations, these spaces reveal that sexual identities are not cohesive, timeless categories, nor are they deployed uniformly, even within a small group. Instead, online/offline intersections challenge dominant conceptions of sexuality-based identities, providing novel configurations of their boundaries and intersections. Examination of the websites frequented by Thai men who patron the bars in Bangkok’s well-known gay area exposes both the convergence of online and offline communities and the layered complexities contained in and delimited by the category “gay.” The sites these men visit, the types of interactions they experience, and the way they portray themselves online illustrate a divergence from dominant discourses concerning an emerging universal gay identity and conventional understandings of online community formation. Thus, these men demonstrate that internet participation does not conform to a particular global trend. Instead, their digital creolization strategies intersect with their knowledges and experiences of western-derived, primarily English-language people, practices, and beliefs.
