2006 Fisher and Barak 2000 Garofalo et al. This anonymity of the Internet facilitates a sense of privacy around one's same-sex sexual desires, affording one to achieve sexual contact with other men without having to reveal one's own personal identity ( Braine et al. 2011 Brown, Maycock, and Burns 2005 Maratea 2011 Ross 2005 Ross, Tikkanen, and Mansson 2000 Tikkanen and Ross 2003). People can search for sexually-similar others and possibly acculturate into these sexual subcultures ( Maratea 2011 Ross et al. As Peterson (2000) and Tikkanen and Ross (2000) identified, the Internet was useful for men during their coming out process, and Ross (2005) argued that lurking online can allow individuals ‘. to watch the interactions, learn some of the language, and gain an understanding of what being gay is about. the internet is equivalent to a one-way window into a gay bar’. Gay men's use of male-for-male chat rooms has provided them opportunities to gain sexual autonomy through their exploration of sexual practices and their participation in chatting with other similar men online about potentially erotic acts ( Sanders 2008).