Men's concerns with sex and health in personal advertisements

In this paper, we examine 2400 personal advertisements in the USA collected from the Internet, focusing on health concerns and looking for differences by race and sexuality. Our results show that overall, the gay men represented in this sample were more concerned with health than the heterosexual men. One notable racial difference was that gay Latinos were less concerned about health, particularly among those who were explicitly looking for sexual encounters. In the light of this finding, we suggest further investigation into the extent to which Latino machismo affects health concerns. We also find that advertisers who sought to engage in sexual activities and who were explicit about sex were more likely to mention health in their personals. We suggest further research to explore the links between health concerns in personal advertisements and sexual behaviour.