ESSAY The Grindrization of Identity

KRISHEN SAMUEL RINDR, , Gaydar, , Jack’d— seen as a “negative space” identity. This identity would have cer- for any gay man who’s been “out there” for tain hallmarks: refusal to accept a gay orientation openly, lying any part of the last two decades, these websites to close friends and family, internal struggles, deceptive prac- or applications have become a familiar sight. tices to keep everyone in the dark, surreptitious encounters, and For many men they occupy a substantial frac- so forth. In the past, this may have emerged as seeking out sex- tion of the day’s stream of experience, and for ual encounters in discreet and anonymous ways: outdoor cruis- Gmany others they form an integral part of their personal identity ing, for example, with its hidden and anonymous encounters. or sense of self. The defining feature of this negative space was the need to re- But long before the arrival of the Internet, the social media, main invisible: to indulge sexually but not identify as gay; to the hookup apps, there were GLBT people who lived, like every- straddle two worlds without losing any crucial benefits in either one else, in what is now referred to as “real life.” I would argue of them. that historically gay identity has always been characterized by a In the modern era of technology, this negative space is clan- fundamental duality. The first identity is a response to the cul- destine both in the real world and now in the cyber world. The tural prohibition or negation of homosexuality throughout his- Internet allows even higher levels of anonymity than venues of tory. This has been manifested as a lack of rights, a lack of the past. The classic strategy on , Scruff, et al. is to display visibility, a lack of social acceptance, a prohibition on the trap- a photo of one’s torso without a head and its all-revealing face. pings of gay identity: sex acts prohibited, legal unions barred or (A related strategy would be to display a fake face photo.) Such blocked, blood donations refused, and so on, ad nauseam. a user is also likely to offer very few clues that would give away A second identity arose, partly in response to this repression, his actual identity. that stressed the value of overt visibility, of being not just quietly Considering the impact of the Internet on this negative iden- self-accepting but publicly out to one’s family and friends and tity, we need to keep in mind the nature of cyber reality, which anyone else who would listen. This is the is able to do two opposing things simultane- ideal that would come to dominate cultural ously. It offers the possibility of total representations of GLBT identity for decades The interplay between the anonymity on one extreme, or the potential to come. In the late 1960s and ’70s, this con- Internet and gay culture for incredible visibility, even a kind of fame, cept manifested itself as protest marches, the has occurred due to the on the other. Between these two extremes, Stonewall riots, the first pride parades, gen- duality inherent in both: the user’s relative anonymity or visibility can der non-conformity in public venues, and var- secrecy versus openness, be fashioned as a (semi-)fictitious creation ious kiss-ins, love-ins, and so on. either way: it can act as a projection of a total Gay Liberation was all about bringing anonymity versus identity. falsehood or an altered version of the reality gayness into the light of day and dragging of an individual’s life. Prior to the great tech- people out of the closet. But the closet never went away, and the nological advances of the last few decades, there was no tech- result was a bifurcated system in which some people were “out” nological platform that could provide this chameleon-like ability and others “in the closet”—wholly or in part, or perhaps in the to inhabit different identities at will. (Stage costumes were prob- process of “coming out.” This dynamic of “in” or “out” created ably the closest equivalent.) You don’t like your profile picture? a kind of existential dualism that still operates as a guiding prin- Use a more attractive one or Photoshop your features just a tad. ciple of GLBT identity formation. Or, if you’d prefer, remain the ultimate mystery: a presence be- So, what precisely do the Internet and this age of cyber dom- hind a screen with no visible characteristics—the alluring (and ination mean for these two polarized identities and the emerging annoying) blank profile. middle-ground identity? If we were to think of an example of To move back to the “negative space” for GLBT identity, it each type of identity outlined above, and a GLBT individual who is in the nature of the Internet to enable the closeted to operate epitomized each, we could come a little closer to imagining the in full stealth mode. The unprecedented success of a mobile cultural impact of the Internet. geosocial networking application such as Grindr, created by Joel Painting in broad strokes, an identity mired in a sense of pro- Simkhai in 2009, is testament to the fact that cyberspace has be- hibition could potentially be a description of a closeted gay man. come the new haven for closeted gay men. The app was designed The feeling of not wanting to inhabit or exhibit a gay sexual using geolocation technology to pinpoint other men using Grindr identity—and all the efforts of hiding that go with it—could be in one’s immediate vicinity, whose pictures and profiles appear in real time on your smartphone. This is the modern equivalent Krishen Samuel is a writer and speech pathologist based in Johan- of cruising a park or restroom hoping to happen upon another nesburg, . He can be reached at [email protected]. like-minded individual seeking similar sexual release.

14 The Gay & Lesbian Review / WORLDWIDE