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'Doing Love' Online: Performative Gender and the Urban Everyday By ‘Doing Love’ Online: Performative Gender and the Urban Everyday by Jacqueline Schoemaker Holmes B.A. Carleton University, 2001 M.A. York University, 2003 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Sociology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April, 2010 ©Jacqueline Schoemaker Holmes, 2010 Abstract While much has been said about the role of online dating in transforming the nature of intimate relationships and love in Canada and beyond (Bauman, 2003; Ben-Ze‘ev, 2004; Brym and Lenton, 2001) there has been no systematic study of the pursuit of hetero-romantic love online as a practice of both the everyday and of gendered selfing. In January 2007, I began an eight-month investigation into the everyday practices of urban professionals online dating in Vancouver, Canada to study what role new media play in producing particular kinds of gendered selves through the pursuit of love online. By engaging with critical readings of feminist theories to explore the ways love has evolved as a theoretical concept and an enduring, increasingly technologically-mediated social practice, I forward the concept of ‗doing love‘ as a contemporary way individuals perform gender online. I argue that the pursuit of hetero-romantic love, that is, ‗doing love‘ online, is a contemporary gendered selfing project that is both individualized and routinized as part of a larger gendered discursive field that seeks to position heterosexuality, as tied to hetero-romantic love, as natural, necessary, and inevitable. Gendered selfing, through the pursuit of hetero- romantic love, requires coherence and approval by others and is in this sense policed. I demonstrate how this policing is apparent in the online dating practices of my participants which include filtering, fat phobia and fat authenticity, the management of inappropriate aphrodisia, and contingent constructions of properly made ‗homes‘ as the outcome or triumph of heterosexual online dating pursuits. Gender emerges in this study as a by-product of the regulatory force of constitutive hetero-romantic love pursuits that necessitate appropriately gendered bodies and being deemed suitable for heterosexual coupling. By exploring love as a performative and orienting force that is uniquely articulated through the performance of gender online, this study enriches understandings of gendered practices of selfing, as realized through engagement with new media. It thus illustrates the enduring and persistent nature of gender as an organizing, and at times oppressive, force in our everyday lives. ii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...vi Chapter One. ‗Doing‘ Love Online: Performative Gender and the Urban Everyday ................. 1 Chapter Two. Literature Review ............................................................................................ 10 2.1. ‗Doing Love‘ as a Technologically-Mediated Project of the Self ................................. 10 2.2. Online Dating – The Story So Far .................................................................................. 11 2.3. Debates in the Online Dating Literature ........................................................................ 13 2.4. Role of the Self and the Everyday in Online Dating Scenarios ..................................... 16 2.5. Gaps in the Online Dating Literature ............................................................................. 19 2.6. Cyberselfing ................................................................................................................... 21 2.7. ‗Doing Love‘ as an Aspect of Cyberselfing ................................................................... 23 2.8. Feminist Theories of Love ............................................................................................. 25 2.9. The Evolution of Feminist Love Theorizing .................................................................. 28 2.10. Rethinking Love ......................................................................................................... 35 2.11. Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 38 Chapter Three. Methodology .................................................................................................... 40 3.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 40 3.2. Why Ethnography? ......................................................................................................... 40 3.3. Research ......................................................................................................................... 44 3.4. Ethnographic Field ‗Site‘ ............................................................................................... 46 3.5. Participants ..................................................................................................................... 50 3.6. Researcher Positionality and Ethics ............................................................................... 55 3.7. More on My Positionality .............................................................................................. 59 3.8. Implicating the Researcher in Research about ‗Intimate‘ Topics .................................. 61 3.9. Embodying the Thin ‗Ideal‘ ........................................................................................... 64 Chapter Four. Online Dating As Practices of Everyday Life ................................................. 66 4.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 66 4.2. Let Me Take You on an Online Date ............................................................................. 71 4.3. A ‗Typical‘ Online Date ................................................................................................. 72 4.3.1. Task #1: Creating a Profile ..................................................................................... 72 4.3.2. Task #2: Initial Contact ........................................................................................... 75 4.3.3. Task #3: Selecting/Filtering .................................................................................... 78 4.3.4. Task #4: First Date .................................................................................................. 81 iii 4.4. Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 87 Chapter Five. The Struggle for Authenticity in Online Dating Practices .................................. 89 5.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 89 5.2. Framing the Self ............................................................................................................. 90 5.3. Projects of the Self ......................................................................................................... 93 5.4. Categorizing the ‗Other‘................................................................................................. 94 5.5. Filtering Fragmented Selves........................................................................................... 99 5.6. Contingent Authenticities ............................................................................................. 107 Chapter Six. Managing ‗Excess‘ Online ................................................................................ 110 6.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 110 6.2. Daniel‘s Story ............................................................................................................... 112 6.3. Multiple Excesses as Inappropriate ‗Aphrodisia‘ ........................................................ 114 6.4. Abject Pleasures and the Quest for Appropriately Gendered Selves ........................... 117 6.5. Gendered Stereotypes: Reformatted to Fit Your Screen .............................................. 119 6.6. Reversal of Fortune: How Women Re-Gender Online Dating .................................... 123 Chapter Seven. Homing In on ‗Happy Endings‘ .................................................................... 126 7.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 126 7.2. More than Multi-dating: The Evolution of a Harem .................................................... 128 7.3. Escaping Slut: Nicola‘s Struggle Through Desire ....................................................... 133 7.4. Stigmatized Sexuality ................................................................................................... 138 7.5. Domestic Desire as Anathema ....................................................................................
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