Dating Apps and Shifting Sexual Subjectivities of Men Seeking Men Online

Abstract

Leading theories of the recent history of sexuality have pointed to trends toward detraditionalization and precarity in intimate relations, but also to democratization and innovation. This study grounded in 79 qualitative interviews with men seeking men online considers their experiences in light of these theories. The rise of dating apps has generated sexual fields that have shaped the sexual subjectivities of the current era in multiple ways. The narratives of study participants show much more than the hook-up culture that dating apps are best known for. They speak to experiences of superficiality, unmet expectations, and sometimes bruising intersections with hierarchies defined by age, race, body type, gender expression, and serostatus. Yet at the same time, they show a strong aspiration to sociability, social network building, and reach for a language of affiliation beyond the kin and friendship terms of the larger society. Generational comparisons indicate the shifting sexual subjectivities that dating apps have shaped by constituting virtual sexual fields.