The Politics of Global Gay Dating Websites (original) (raw)

American Anthropology Association

Abstract

These days, queer social networking/dating/hook-up websites and mobile apps, such as gay.com, gaydar, manhunt, gay romeo, manjam, and mobile apps like grindr, and scruff, are wildly popular. In fact, phone app Grindr, whose tag line is find gay, bi, curious guys near you, recently reported that a record-setting 37.5 million messages were sent in the 24 hours of September 30, 2012. Men use these sites to meet other men for chatting, friendship, and most often for sexual and romantic encounters. Users create profiles, and, through these profiles, can see, search, and interact with one another, with the eventual purpose of moving online encounters offline. Each time users log on, they are introduced to masses of images, texts, ideas, practices, and subjectivities epitomizing queer sexualized and identitarian meanings within . These sites, according to Fletcher and Light, are cultural artefacts, defined by a range of social and political discourses and structures that frame sets of inherent queer discourses, imaginaries, and collective representations, to which users conform when constructing

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