Race, Place, and Relationship Formation in the Digital Age

Abstract

Despite the increased use of dating technology for finding and forming romantic relationships, location remains relevant for relationship formation. While current research on relationship formation attends to the ratio of marriageable men to women, marital attitudes, and gendered racial exclusion, this research does not always consider a nuanced look at how location can also constrain opportunities to make short- or long-term romantic connections. Drawing on interviews with 111 Asian, White, Black, and Latina heterosexual college-educated women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-three, I find that regardless of race/ethnicity, women observe that some places provide limited opportunities to meet men and that the mismatch between their dating norms, beliefs, and/or expectations for relationships and the location where they reside make their search more difficult. Women of color additionally note that some locations provide fewer opportunities for same-race and/or interracial dating than others. I also find that women of color are more likely to employ strategies to address their locational barriers than White women. Therefore, I argue that not only does location continue to matter for forming romantic connections in the digital age, but that location and race also intersect to create unique locational barriers for women of color. This intersection, consequently, demonstrates that the opportunities for relationship formation remain stratified despite the rise of dating technology.

The persistence of gendered dating

“…Women of color have the added burden of navigating gendered racism and limited dating pools (Adeyinka-Skold, 2020a, 2020b. They experience sexual racism, as they are fetishized based on controlling images of their sexuality which often revolve around hypersexualization by white men (Adeyinka-Skold, 2020a;Currington et al, 2021).…”