* = Any

The positioning works as follows: First marital status, then
religion (if any given), then race, then sex. Usually what you get
is three, such as:

GWM - Gay White Male
SHM - Single Hispanic male

An M or a W are used to indicate marital status. In this case they
are always in the first position:

MHM - Married Hispanic Male
WWM - Widowed White Male

Religious affiliation is fairly rare, but when you do see it, it
usually comes just before or after racial type, such as:

SCWM - Single Christian White Male
SWJM - Single White Jewish Male

For whatever reason, Judaism and Christianity are the only
religions commonly abbreviated at this time; if you're of another
religion, we suggest not trying to abbreviate, as you'll probably
just confuse people.

Sometimes you'll just see "SM" for Single Male.

This means the person doesn't want to indicate race. You
may also see something like "S*M". This is just another
way of saying race is irrelevant to the person.

Other abbreviations you might see include:

ISO = In Search Of
FTA = Fun, Travel, and Adventure
POZ = HIV+
Soulmate = Someone I can be completely intimate with who will
be with me forever and ever, my perfect mate, my
special lover and friend for life.

So, a typical thing you would see:

GWM ISO G*M for FTA
(Gay White Male In Search Of Fun/Travel/Adventure with Gay Male of
any race.)

Finally, all of these are often concatenated with age and/or
location. Such as:

AMSTERDAM SWM, 42, ISO GWM, 25-40
(Single White Male, 42 years old, living in Amsterdam and In
Search Of a Gay White Male, age 25 to 40.)

Not everyone uses these abbreviations, but a lot of people do,
because they make it easy for people to spot you and know if
you're at least in the ballpark of what they're looking for. You
may see variations on these abbreviations that you don't
recognize, but usually you can figure it out from the context once
you get the trick of it.

 Now lets get into the game.

T. Frank Thomasse