The Politics of Dating Apps

THE POLITICS OF DATING APPS ___-1 ___0 ___+1 12742_000.indd 1 2020-08-28 18:26:44 The Information Society Series Laura DeNardis and Michael Zimmer, Series Editors Interfaces on Trial 2.0, Jonathan Band and Masanobu Katoh Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability, Laura DeNardis, editor The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey, editors The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright, Hector Postigo Technologies of Choice? ICTs, Development, and the Capabilities Approach, Dorothea Kleine Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, Patrick Burkart After Access: The Mobile Internet and Inclusion in the Developing World, Jonathan Donner The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media, Ryan Milner The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, Jessica Lingel Cyberbullying Policies of Social Media Companies: Toward Digital Dignity, Tijana Milosevic Authors, Users, and Pirates: Copyright Law and Subjectivity, James Meese Weaving the Dark Web, Robert W. Gehl Hacker States, Luca Follis and Adam Fish The Politics of Dating Apps: Gender, Sexuality, and Emergent Publics in Urban China, Lik Sam Chan -1___ 0___ +1___ 12742_000.indd 2 2020-08-28 18:26:44 THE POLITICS OF DATING APPS GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND EMERGENT PUBLICS IN URBAN CHINA LIK SAM CHAN ___-1 THE MIT PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND ___0 ___+1 12742_000.indd 3 2020-08-28 18:26:44 © 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC- BY- NC- ND license. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. This book was set in ITC Stone and Avenir by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Chan, Lik Sam, author. Title: The politics of dating apps : gender, sexuality, and emergent publics in urban China / Lik Sam Chan. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Series: The information society series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “How dating apps are empowering women and sexual minorities in China, even as they reveal and reproduce systematic sexism and heteronormativity”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020022996 | ISBN 9780262542340 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Online dating—China. | Mobile apps— Social aspects—China. | Sex—China. | Femininity— China. | Sexual minorities—China. Classification: LCC HQ801.82 .C48 2021 | DDC 306.730285—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022996 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 -1___ 0___ +1___ 12742_000.indd 4 2020-08-28 18:26:44 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii NOTES ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION xi 1 INTRODUCTION: DATING APPS HAVE POLITICS, TOO 1 2 ARE DATING APPS A FEMINIST TOOL? A TECHNOFEMINIST ANALYSIS 29 3 CUTE IS THE NEW MANLY: PERFORMANCE OF CHINESE MASCULINITIES 53 4 CYCLES OF UNINSTALLING AND REINSTALLING: CONTRADICTORY AFFECTS IN GAY APP USE 75 5 BUILDING A CIRCLE FOR QUEER WOMEN: AFFORDANCE OF COMMUNAL CONNECTIVITY 97 6 CONCLUSION: EMERGENCE OF NETWORKED SEXUAL PUBLICS 119 APPENDIX: METHODOLOGICAL REFLECTION 131 NOTES 147 REFERENCES 155 INDEX 181 ___-1 ___0 ___+1 12742_000.indd 5 2020-08-28 18:26:45 -1___ 0___ +1___ 12742_000.indd 6 2020-08-28 18:26:45 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My interest in dating apps started when I was an active user in the early 2010s. Back then, using dating apps was considered taboo. My friends often expressed serious concern (“Aren’t you scared of being murdered?”) or pity (“Oh, dear, you don’t need to use that to look for a partner”) and sometimes even ridiculed me (“You must be randy all the time!”). Almost a decade has now passed, and the situation has not really improved. Thus, researching and writing this book have perhaps been my way of justifying the social legitimacy of dating apps and users like myself. I first conceived of this book in 2015 as my doctoral dissertation project when I was studying at the University of Southern California (USC). My dissertation advisor, Larry Gross, offered me the most generous and unconditional support from the very early stages of the project. I am extremely grateful to have learned from the wonderful faculty members at USC, including Mike Annany, Manual Castells, Christina Dunbar- Hester, Ange- Marie Hancock Alfaro, Katie Hasson, Yu Hong, Margaret McLaughlin, Patricia Riley, and Karen Tongson, who provided insights and challenged my thoughts in relation to this research. Outside USC, I also want to thank Cassidy Elija, John Erni, Jessa Lingel, Yuxin Pei, Aswin Punathambekar, and Cara Wallis, who on various occasions and in differ- ent capacities have given me invaluable advice on researching, writing, and publishing. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891646/9780262363389_f000000.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to the following institutes for their research funding support, without which I would not have been able to conduct the fieldwork for this book in China: the Annenberg School for Communica- tion and Journalism, the Graduate School, and the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California; the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; and the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat- sen University. I owe special thanks to Yunxi Pei from Sun Yat- sen University and the staff of both Tongcheng 同城 (Gay and Lesbian Campus Association in China) and Qinyouhui 亲友会 (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays of China) in Guangzhou, who helped me recruit research informants. Xuan Chen, a graduate student I met at Sun Yat- sen University, also volunteered to assist with my fieldwork. Writing and revising are long and sometimes lonely processes. Half of this book was written as my doctoral dissertation. I must thank the dissertation writing group members at USC— Cat Duffy, Michelle Forelle, James Lee, Nathalie Maréchal, Raffi Sarkissian, and Sarah Myers West—for their company on my writing journey. My other friends at USC, including David Jeong, Minwoo Jung, Melina Sherman, and Andrea Wenzel, also listened to my thoughts and provided feedback on earlier drafts of some chapters of this book. I want to thank Kei Imafuku for his patience in listening to my repeated venting and nascent ideas. I am blessed to have my parents and my brother, who have always been supportive of my academic endeavors, regardless of which continent they have taken me to. Credit goes to Andrew Schrock, the anonymous reviewers of this book, and Gita Manaktala and her team at the MIT Press. I am grateful for their encouragement and extremely constructive feedback at various stages of my writing. Finally, I owe my sincere gratitude to all my informants, who were generous in sharing their stories with me and promoting my research to their friends and acquaintances. Each of them has a unique story, which I regret that I cannot fully cover in this book. An earlier version of chapter 2 appears as “Liberating or Disciplining? A Technofeminist Analysis of the Use of Dating Apps among Women in Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891646/9780262363389_f000000.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX Urban China” in Communication, Culture & Critique, 11(2) (2018), published by Oxford University Press. Chapters 3 and 6 include some parts of my article “Multiple Uses and Anti- Purposefulness on Momo, a Chinese Dating/Social App,” Information, Communication & Society, 23(10) (2020), published by Taylor and Francis. I thank these publishers for their permis- sion to reprint the articles. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891646/9780262363389_f000000.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891646/9780262363389_f000000.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 NOTES ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION As this book is about the Chinese dating app culture, I include dozens of local terms. For every term, in its first appearance in each chapter, I offer its Chinese characters, hanyu pinyin form 汉语拼音, and English translation. I translated all of the Chinese interview extracts into English. I also translated the other Chinese reference materials, such as news articles and dating app profiles, into English. Chinese put their family names before their given names. I follow this conventional order when I refer to historical and public figures. When I cite a Chinese academic, I use the Western order: given name followed by family name. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891647/9780262363389_f000100.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/books/book/chapter-pdf/1891647/9780262363389_f000100.pdf by guest on 10 March 2021 1 INTRODUCTION: DATING APPS HAVE POLITICS, TOO Two months ago, I saw two of my female friends swiping with their fin- gers on their phones and uploading their selfies. I thought it was very interesting because on apps like QQ and WeChat many people do not use their real photos. I am not interested in people who do not post real photos because you cannot tell what they look like or how old they are. But on this app, the photos look real, and people mention their hobbies and interests. My female friends told me that their friend had found a boyfriend through this app. Well, I thought, it is fun to upload photos, so I downloaded the app. This was Nancy recalling why she first downloaded Tantan— a major dating app in China— onto her mobile phone.1 When we first met in October 2016, mobile dating apps have already become a global phenomenon.

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