‘Am I Too Straight for the Gay People, Am I Too Gay for the Straight People?’: A Qualitative Analysis of How Young Bisexual Women Navigate Self-presentation on Dating Apps

Abstract

Many young people with marginalized sexual identities still experience discrimination and discomfort when searching for relationships on digital networks. Young bisexual women who are searching for/confirming their identities consistently face ‘binegativity’, typified by marginalization, hypersexualization, and erasure, despite some positive affordances of online connecting. Based on a small-scale qualitative study with young women aged 18–24, this article considers the ways in which young bisexual women construct and navigate their online dating profiles. Drawing on Goffman’s ideas of self-presentation and an examination of how visual clues are supported by verbal statements, this article argues that bisexual young women’s engagement with dating apps requires identity modulation and produces ambivalent affective formations. Their experiences of digital networked spaces are simultaneously shaped by a search for identity, agency, pleasures as well as frustrations and hateful messaging.