Queering App-Propriate Behaviours: the Affective Politics of Gay Social-Sexual Applications in Toronto, Canada by Adam W. J

Home , Blued (app), Brian Kinney, Gaydar (website), Gay anthem, Grindr, Peach (social network)

Queering App-propriate Behaviours: The Affective Politics of Gay Social-Sexual Applications in Toronto, Canada

Adam W. J. Davies

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, in the University of Toronto

Queering App-propriate Behaviours: The Affective Politics of Gay Socio-Sexual Applications in Toronto, Canada Doctor of Philosophy, 2021 Adam W. J. Davies Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto

Abstract

In conversation with affect theory, queer theory, and relevant social scientific literature, this thesis investigates the affective and feeling politics of gay socio-sexual applications (GSSAs).

Specifically, this thesis investigates how GBQ men’s understandings of emotional connections— a term used in GSSAs, such as Grindr, to advertise the potentialities of such applications—are involved in the socio-sexual politics and constitution of normative gay men’s sexual subjectivities online and how online outreach workers and social service workers are implicated in and involved with such politics. Applying a feminist poststructural affect theory lens, this thesis uses Jackson and Mazzei’s (2011) process of “plugging-in” with different poststructural theories, such as Michel Foucault’s (1991) governmentality, Julia Kristeva’s (1982) abjection, and Sara Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2010a, 2010b) affective economies and promises of happiness to analyze what I term “fractions” of data. In the first data chapter, I apply Foucault’s theorization of governmentality to argue that subjects learn to navigate GSSAs through discourses of emotional regulation and restraint, while analyzing the politics of “emotional risk.”

In the second data chapter, I apply Kristeva’s (1982) theorization of abjection to argue that the abjection of others and the abjection of the “self” take place within GSSAs through the rejection of emotional dependency upon others, romantic love, as well as the aspiration for neoliberal norms of individuality. In my third data chapter, I apply Sara Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2010a,

2010b) work on the promises of happiness and affective economies to argue that GSSAs promote

ii certain affective economies of confidence and self-assuredness whereby subjects are encouraged to perform neoliberal subjectivities through promises of self-pleasure. In particular, I note how

GSSAs, such as Grindr, hold differing “promises” for individuals that keep subjects bound to them and using them, even if they might seek to disconnect from such applications. Within each data chapter, I write a Deleuzian “intermezzo” section in reflection on my experiences in what I term “thinking/feeling/writing” within the affective assemblages of my research project. I close with a very un-final not-conclusion that articulates some further thoughts for online outreach as well as my own becomings within my research.

iii Acknowledgements

Thank you to all the men who shared their stories using applications with me—I do hope this thesis has honoured your narratives. From my interviews, I learned more myself about working within and against gay men’s cultures, histories, and knowledges, and the ways in which you each navigate the norms and structures that you are positioned within. Through this thesis and my interviews, I have learned and reflected upon new ways of being and becoming gay. To my supervisor, Dr. Heather Sykes, thank you for all you have taught me and your kindness with me on my academic journey. As a student who has experienced my own institutional barriers in higher education, you have been continually kind and supportive of me and I do not believe I would be a working academic today if it were not for you and your mentorship. Thank you for your teachings and for showing me that you can be a queer theorist who still believes in love. I promise you that I will be “clingy” in my continual connection with you after my graduate career. I appreciate your willingness to mentor a student in queer theory and how you encouraged me to pursue a research project I was passionate about, even if it was not about the formal school system. Thank you for supporting me in telling this story. To my committee members, Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, Dr. Rinaldo Walcott, Dr. Lance McCready, and Dr. Damien Riggs, I highly value your participation in my very personal academic journey and your support in my thesis. Tanya, your courses always taught me to challenge normalcy and the taken-for-granted in society and how culture can teach us about included/excluded subjects. You’ve been a guiding light in my academic career, a true friend, and someone who has introduced me to cultural studies and critical disability studies after coming from a background in teacher education and developmental psychology in my master’s. I am so appreciative to you in ways that words cannot even begin to describe. Rinaldo, I value your thoughtful reads of my work and how you push my critical thinking further to challenge my own whiteness and how it plays out in my work. Lance, thank you for your attention to questions of methods and methodology and for all the learning I gained in your courses on queer of colour critique and black masculinities. Damien, thank you for your thoughtful insights and contributions. Thank you all for your kindness, support, and input.

iv Thank you to my mom, Karyn, and my dad, Brent, for their emotional and financial support throughout my graduate journey. I really could not make it through my master’s and doctorate without your help and I value how you always had a safe home for me to return to in Guelph. Even though you do not always “understand” what I study, you would listen to me talking about Grindr, queer theory, and gay masculinities endlessly. Thank you to my sister, Emily, who always would ask questions about my research and provide various forms of emotional support throughout my long graduate education. Also, to all my OISE friends, especially Sohyun Kate Lee, Shawna Carroll, j. wallace skelton, Kate Reid, Michael Wallner, and Noah Kenneally, my graduate experience was so aided through your love. I must thank Dr. Kimberly Maich, an academic mentor of mine who has supported me since the beginning of my academic career as a teacher education candidate, and who has always been kind and offered thoughts and feedback on navigating academia, regardless of where my interests and career took me. As well, I would like to thank Dr. Lauren Bialystok, who kindly provided me with mentorship and guidance in the beginning of my career as a graduate student and with whom I had many conversations around ethics, identity, femmephobia. Your work has shown me ways to “be myself.” Thank you. Also, to Dr. Tara Goldstein who met with a teacher education and master’s student who wished to continue his education and follow his dream of completing a PhD, and even supported my application to doctoral studies—I will never forget and will be always thankful for the way you generously supported a student who had only taken one course with you, and how one of my first publications came from your course. To my new academic family at the University of Guelph, where I have begun my career as a young academic and tenure-track faculty, I appreciate everyone in my new department in Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, particularly my friendships with Dr. Tricia van Rhijn Dr. Robin Milhausen, and Dr. Ruthie Neustifter. Thank you so much for all you have done for me in my first year as an Assistant Professor. You have been a rock during this incredible and busy year. As well, Dr. Toni Serafini at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo— you are an academic gem and a kind soul. Meeting you has given me so much hope for academia. Thank you to Dr. David J. Brennan for your mentorship and taking on a qualitative researcher interested in queer theory for your mixed-methods project and introducing me to the world of gay men’s sexual health. And, Dr. Ashley Rhea Hoskin—meeting another queer femme who has shown me a world of vulnerability, femininity, and rich scholarship has been a blessing.

v Lastly, this is for my brave participants who shared their stories with me and all the men who feel “hope” for something more on Grindr. Your vulnerability with a stranger is the crux of this thesis and I hope you feel honoured in how I have re-presented your brave stories.

vi Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iv Table of Contents ...... vii List of Appendices ...... x Chapter One: Introduction ...... 1 Introducing the Thesis: Feeling My Way ...... 1 Why this Research? ...... 5 The Research Problem ...... 9 Research Questions ...... 13 Significance ...... 15 Thesis Overview ...... 17 “Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places”: An Introduction ...... 18 The Culture of Gay Loneliness ...... 25 Romantic Love and Intimacy ...... 32 Researcher Positionality ...... 36 Chapter Two: Theoretical Frameworks ...... 45 Gay Men and Gay Socio-Sexual Apps (GSSAs) ...... 46 Emotion Work and “Feeling Rules” on Grindr ...... 49 Neoliberalism and Gay Masculinities Online ...... 50 Governmentality ...... 54 Queering the Gay Self ...... 57 “Critically Queer”: Gay Masculinities and the Repudiation of the Feminine ...... 60 Gay Identity or Queer Subjectivity? ...... 65 Disidentification ...... 67 Limitations of Queer Theoretical Frameworks ...... 69 Affect Theory ...... 70 Promises, Promises, Promises ...... 75 Queer Feelings—Feeling Queer ...... 78 Abjection ...... 80 Gay Shame ...... 83 Queer of Colour Critique ...... 85 Assemblage Theory ...... 87 Frictional Analyses ...... 88 Posthumanism ...... 88 Chapter Three: Methods and Methodology ...... 91 Immanent Ontology ...... 93 Assemblage Theory ...... 96 Data That Glows ...... 99 Surfing Binaries: Virtual and Real Life Data Worlds ...... 102 Autoethnography and Virtual Ethnography: Surfing Between “Virtual” and “Real” Life .... 104 Scavenger Methodology ...... 109 Methods...... 111 Field Notes ...... 114 Participants ...... 115

vii Analysis...... 120 Mapping ...... 122 Plugging-In ...... 124 Chapter Four: Foucault’s Governmentality and Gay Intimacies Online ...... 127 Framing the Remainder of the Chapter ...... 132 Grindr and Hope ...... 133 “Interested but not Clingy” ...... 133 “Reading Between the Lines” and the “Unwritten Cues” ...... 142 “Hey, Looking?”: Governmentally Orienting Towards Hook-Ups ...... 143 “You Fall Into This Trap” ...... 145 “Trapped in a Cycle” ...... 146 “Song and Dance” ...... 147 State Intervention ...... 149 Risk and Vulnerability ...... 153 The Networked Subject ...... 161 Conclusion ...... 163 Intermezzo ...... 165 Chapter Five: Kristeva’s Abjection, Emotional Vulnerability, and Gay Subjectivity: “I Don’t do Relationships. Sorry.” ...... 169 Introduction ...... 171 Abjection and Gay Subjectivity ...... 176 “Whether You are Monogamous or Anything, You are Still a Faggot to Them” ...... 178 “I Felt Very Dismissed for What I Wanted” ...... 183 Self-Abjection: “But Now I Don’t get Attached and that has Shifted” ...... 187 Childhood Experiences: “I Think That Gay Men, From a Very Young Age, are Kind of Taught That Emotions and Sex Don’t go Hand in Hand” ...... 190 The Metal Pig ...... 202 Conclusion ...... 205 Intermezzo ...... 206 Chapter Six: Affective Economies and the Promises of Grindr ...... 210 Introduction ...... 212 The Promise of Happiness ...... 214 The Promises of Grindr, Promises of Belonging: “I Find it Easier to Socialize With Other Gay Men” ...... 218 Kashi: “There are Times Where I Want to Be There on Grindr and There are Times I Just Don’t Want to be There” ...... 226 Mark: “Maybe I’ll Change His Mind . . .” ...... 227 Haro: “We Had a Really Good Time, Good Connection, Good Sex that Night, and He Did Call Me” ...... 231 Frank and Isaiah: The “Goal” of Hooking-Up and the “Instagays” ...... 233 Conclusion: Unhappy Queers and Disrupting Homonormativity ...... 241 Intermezzo ...... 243 Chapter Seven: Becoming in the Middle of it All: The Not-Conclusion ...... 247 Implications of Findings ...... 251 Limits of this Study ...... 255 Extending the Project ...... 257

viii References ...... 259

ix List of Appendices

Appendix A Study Poster...... 294 Appendix B Letter of Informed Consent—App Users ...... 295 Appendix C Letter of Informed Consent—Outreach Workers ...... 298 Appendix D Letter of Informed Consent—Educators ...... 300 Appendix E Queering App-propriate Behaviours Interview Guide ...... 302

Chapter One: Introduction

To me, Grindr is almost like looking for love in all the wrong places. It’s like, yes there are people who are looking for romantic relationships on Grindr. . . . So you can find those sorts of, like, longer terms connections, and people do. I mean, I personally know people that are married and they met on apps. And those sorts of stories are more and more common now as we move forward. So, I definitely do think that it is possible, but I do think this contributes to the unhappiness . . . people are on there and they’re looking for that, and they get the opposite of it. —Mark (28, cisgender, gay, Indo-Caribbean)

Introducing the Thesis: Feeling My Way Finding potential romantic partners through online phone applications has been a formative component of my adult life as a gay man. Still, when navigating dating and romantic encounters, I have often been left feeling anxious, uncertain, and that I have “too many feelings” or that I might “get my hopes up” too far in advance. This feeling of being “too much” or irrational haunted my early adult years as I began moving through the gay digital and dating world, feeling my way towards my end goal of a long-term romantic relationship. My own experiences, which I will begin to describe in this thesis, became a framing device for a personal interest and curiosity: why did it seem as though many gay men struggled so much to find a long-term partner? My own attachment to my desire to find a long-term partner led to the idea that this will bring personal happiness and a sense of community and belonging. Berlant (2011) writes how “all attachment is optimistic, if we describe optimism as the force that moves you out of yourself and into the world in order to bring closer the satisfying something” (pp. 1–2). Indeed, upon first beginning to date and meet other men, my attachments to this ideal norm of long-term romantic intimacy were very optimistic. Despite the many disappointments that dating provided, I still remained hopeful that someday I would meet someone who would bring this “satisfying something,” or this feeling I desired. My own desire for happiness—specifically, a form of gay happiness—drove my interactions as I sought out acceptance, belonging, community, and romance from other men online. Quickly, though, I realized that my romantic desires were in some ways quite queer in these gay digital spaces, as it was more common to receive an unprovoked explicit photo than an offer of a romantic date. Not only that, but upon having years of experience engaging with other men online, I started to

1 2 conceptualize my own romantic feelings and desires as a problem and the intimacy that I craved as a flaw within myself. I wanted to know if others felt this way, why it was so hard to find that romantic partner I wanted, and if it meant that I was flawed because I struggled to find him. This thesis is a research project about the feelings of gay men who use gay socio-sexual applications (GSSAs), with Grindr being the most famous one, and how these feelings are involved in the constitution of normative gay sexual subjectivities online. In conversation with affect theory, queer theory, and relevant social scientific research, this research is based upon both my own personal experiences using GSSAs to meet other men and my work within gay, bisexual, and queer men’s communities in Toronto. Specifically, this thesis is an intervention into the sexual politics of Western gay men’s communities and an interruption to the masculinism that pervades much of queer theory and gay men’s sexual politics, which denigrates romantic intimacy through femmephobic1 logics and forwards the distinct separation of love and romantic intimacy within white2 gay men’s sexualities. As such, my own experiences using these apps are embedded within the fabrics of this research project as my subjectivity is not neatly distinguished from the research at hand. Reflecting upon my experiences, I became curious about feelings, not as inner states (or not just as inner states), but as manifestations of connections and intimacies that are related to socio-cultural norms. GSSAs are commonly used to engage in anonymous hook-ups, or one-time sexual exchanges, where partners use the apps to chat about their sexual desires, exchange photos, and then meet for a sexual encounter (Corriero & Tong, 2016; Gudelunas, 2012; Woo, 2013). For men whose desires are oriented toward long-term romantic relationships, Grindr can be a hostile space where their desire for longer-term connections and romantic intimacy are commonly met with ostracization and dismissal (Woo,

1 Throughout this thesis, I theorize how femmephobia, or socio-cultural logics that devalue and denigrate relations of femininity through the policing, regulation, and reinforcement of rigid gendered hierarchies and binaries (Hoskin, 2018, 2019b) is embedded within gay men’s sexual politics, particularly through hook-up apps, such as Grindr, whereby men are encouraged to regulate their intimate, emotional, and romantic connections with men they have sex with. This is discussed in further depth throughout the thesis in relationship to how emotional dependency in terms of becoming intimate with another (through emotional intimacy and vulnerability) is feminized. I purposefully centre vulnerability methodologically in my project, which I discuss in the methods and methodology chapter and further address these issues in my second data chapter on abjection. 2 I specifically note white gay men’s communities here as I conceptualize the Cartesian divide and separation between affect and sexuality as a phenomenon produced through White western liberal sexuality politics, as well as homonormativity. I deal with this in my thesis in my description of gay masculinities and also in the stark differences between white gay male queer theory and lenses such as queer of colour critique that focuses on what Brockenbrough (2013) terms “embodied knowledges of survival and resistance” (p. 432).

2015; Zervoulis et al., 2020). Although Grindr has been increasingly normalized and embedded within the rhetoric of mainstream gay communities as an everyday app (Shield, 2019; Woo, 2013), anonymous hook-ups hold a history within Western gay men’s communities (Chauncey, 1994), particularly as they pertain to the masculinization and eroticization of anonymous sexual hook-ups amongst men and the denigration of emotional commitment and romantic intimacy (Edwards, 1994, 2005; Levine & Kimmel, 1998). Considering this history and the increased prevalence of Grindr, alongside my own experiences using Grindr and other GSSAs, as well as working in and being involved with the gay social services field in Toronto, I decided to engage in a qualitative project exploring the experiences of gay men who seek emotional connections online and how their intimate feelings and emotions using GSSAs are involved in their experiences of hooking-up online. This thesis is an investigation into the politics of loneliness, emotional connection (or disconnection), and feelings within gay men’s online sexual cultures. In the following sections in this introduction, I engage with the background of discourses of loneliness amongst gay men and how such discourses pertain to GSSA usage. To begin, I will outline how I arrived at my research problem and the structure of my thesis. Entering my PhD, I knew that I was interested in learning more about queer theory, but my original intentions were to study a topic directly within the field of education, as I had just finished my master’s degree in teacher education. Feeling disillusioned with the largely developmental psychology paradigm of my master’s degree, I wanted to study something more personal. Being exposed to queer theories was exciting for me and I began to deconstruct many normative ideas I held ingrained in me for a long time. Still, as I engaged with these theories, I wondered where the place was for romantic love and intimacy in queer theoretical paradigms, or if everything to do with love was inherently normative and therefore problematic. Meanwhile, as an individual in my early twenties upon entering graduate school, I had just come out a few years prior and begun dating. To say that my early dating experiences were different than my expectations would be an understatement. Before reading about theories challenging normalcy, such as queer theory and disability studies, my idea of what I wanted from my life was very normative, almost an exact replication of heteronormative versions of romantic intimacy that are seen in romantic comedies. Growing up, my favourite movie was You’ve Got Mail (conveniently enough, also a movie about

4 people communicating through the internet), and I was honestly expecting to be able to start connecting with other men when I came out, get to know someone, and develop a long-term romantic intimacy. Now, acknowledging that regardless of sexual orientation, dating does not always function as planned, I realized that gay dating, in particular, was very different than my expectations. Grindr—a gay socio-sexual phone application—quickly became a fixture of my early adult life as I heard about it from friends and downloaded it shortly after beginning to date and meet other guys. The questions I am addressing in my dissertation are questions that I have been developing since coming out and beginning my own journey trying to make “connections” with other men and using GSSAs, such as Grindr. I weave my own narrative throughout my thesis to bring in my own story and journey to guide the reader in how I came to ask these questions in my thesis. My experiences led me to my interest in this topic. Shortly after beginning course work in my PhD, I realized that my interest for my dissertation was not actually in the formal school system, but in something more deeply personal and affective. As such, I followed my own feelings and intuitions and started reading and learning more about gay men’s online sexual cultures and intimacies. This became the focus of my dissertation. In the early years of my PhD, I became interested in anti-humanist (Fox & Alldred, 2013) and post-humanist theories (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2019) and how these theories were being applied to research on gay, bisexual, and queer men’s engagements with technology. These theories and their radical challenge to liberal humanism excited me and provided thought provoking theoretical fodder for my brain in terms of de-centering the liberal human subject and thinking about the assemblages produced between humans and technology. However, upon engaging more deeply and meaningfully with these theories, I still felt that something was missing in terms of the specific aims of my own research project. While, theoretically, I was pushed in my own thinking through these theories, I realized that what I was interested in for my research was more deeply human than anti or post-human. I did not wish to completely erase the human subject since, for my own interests, my own experiences and the experiences of those who use these apps are important. My own feelings of loneliness, desire, longing, and the painful heartache that I had gone through, particularly upon first coming out, fostered my interest in this research. While many queer thinkers might wish to completely erase the inner psyche (Halperin, 2012) my project works within and against this notion, as my goal is not to completely erase the

5 interior feelings and experiences of my participants, but notice the structures and norms that their feelings and experiences are constituted within.

Why this Research? This research comes from a deeply personal and affective realm. It is informed by the curiosity sparked throughout my own experiences using GSSAs and my considerations of the various discourses I navigate as an app user. Throughout my years using Grindr, I have noticed the increased normalization of hook-up culture. Additionally, I’ve noted that I frequently withdraw myself from Grindr by uninstalling the application, only to be hooked back into installing it again. Personally, Grindr held a promise for me. There was a specific outcome for me: meeting a long-term partner. However, upon discussing this with my friends, I soon came to understand that Grindr did not hold the same promise for each person. Additionally, I have come to realize that my understanding of Grindr’s promise—a long-term romantic relationship—might be contributing to my own unhappiness with Grindr as well as the unhappiness in mainstream gay circles, widely speaking. Still, for my friends who sought out happiness on Grindr through hook-ups, unhappiness and disappointment mostly followed. The promise and image of happiness they had imagined in Grindr had failed them. Whether through their own failure to ascertain hook-ups through Grindr, or the failure of their hook-ups to provide the expected happiness, disappointment was a common conversation amongst my friend group, and unhappiness a common feeling. What does unhappiness do? As Lovelock (2019) articulates, liberal gay sexuality politics promise self-authenticity, individual fulfilment, pride, and self-love as normative conditions of gay identity. How might unhappiness disrupt these normative conditions? Happiness is usually something that is sought after and considerable desirable while we are encouraged to avoid negative feelings. Ahmed (2010b) proposes that when happiness is considered to be in crisis, disappointment follows; what we expected to make us happy “becomes more powerful through being perceived as in crisis” (p. 7). The crisis of happiness amongst gay and queer men is echoed through research literature on the “loneliness” of gay men. Why are we so unhappy? What are we looking for? My own disenchantment with queer men’s communities, and even identifying as gay, comes through the failures of such forms of community. I was told that Grindr would provide many new and exciting opportunities for me

6 but I continued to feel let down and alienated through its use. When I talked to my friends about my experiences on Grindr, I was told to be more “confident” and that by conveying myself in this fashion, I might be able to attract more men. Attempting to portray myself and cool and collected, I started using shorter sentences, key phrases, and not entering into conversations where I became emotionally vulnerable. Quickly, my conversations shifted to asking for photos and three-word sentences; I asked less and less of the other individuals I was talking to and my interactions almost became robotic. I was not feeling empowered through these exchanges, nor was I necessarily receiving the emotional connections I craved. Becoming curious about other gay men’s experiences with Grindr, I wondered if this was the norm. Based on personal conversations with friends, it seemed as though we were all interacting in this manner, hoping that our interactions with others would bring some sex, a person to chat with, or maybe, even, a long-term relationship. Whatever it was that we desired, Grindr was supposed to bring it for us . . . as long as we played by the app’s rules. In my experience, the first-time opening Grindr did not go as anticipated. Body image pressures and an emphasis on “masculine” and muscularized bodies are central to gay socio- sexual spaces, with Grindr being well-known for its forms of online discrimination and body shaming. After opening the app, I experienced my first of many Grindr rejections. Having a thin frame and not embodying the gay gym build highly favoured on Grindr, I had an individual tell me to go to the gym, otherwise I would not attract potential partners online. After continuing to enter Grindr I experienced mixed feedback from other users, some seemingly liking my thin body as it meant I fit the “twink” archetype, while others telling me I was not masculine enough for their tastes. I wrote a poem to share some of my early experiences with Grindr and some struggles in gay communities and cultures, particularly early in my life. I use this poem to declare my own positionality while conducting this research, to share my personal feelings upon entering Grindr, and informing the reader how I became interested in questions of gay men’s online socio-sexual cultures. I opened the phone app To find others like me Instead I was told “I used to look like you, but I was unwanted” “Go to the gym more” I just wanted a friend My heart is my head

I tried to pretend I didn’t care But I reached out my hand And was told it clung too much “You need to get yourself fixed” Said the man My heart is my head “I want to make love to you,” he said “Only if you love me,” I said As we laid throughout the hours “Don’t touch me,” he said upon waking up “I never loved you” he told me I tried to stop crying My heart is my head They told me I cared too much That I internalize everything “Take this and you’ll get better” But I wouldn’t and it didn’t My heart is my head “You should have said no” He told me, with a cold look in his eye “You should have looked after yourself” He uttered, as he wrote in his notebook “Only you can look after you” the counsellor warned As tears fell from my eye My heart is my head I asked him to stop “There’s something wrong with you,” he said “Gay men have sex. It’s what we fought for,” he informed me “You must have some shame. I see your anxiety” I just wanted some company My heart is my head When we talk of mental health Do we think of how we care for one another? Or is it simply a pill and goodbye We cannot speak of the health of a mind Without looking at the kindness in one’s soul The next time someone asks about mental health We need to ask instead: “How is your heart?” —Adam Davies

Often my openness about my feelings with others left me with the sensation that I was a problem on Grindr. Unsure if I belonged on the application, or if I was possibly out of place in gay men’s communities in general, I wondered if I was making mistakes or not following some prearranged script. As I continued using Grindr over the years, I experienced many

8 disappointments and let downs. I was informed that I was looking for a relationship “too hard,” that I needed to just “have fun,” be more “confident,” and that dating is starting to become passé. Was it easier for people who hooked-up to find love? Do people who are predominantly on Grindr looking for dates and romance struggle more than those who are more hook-up oriented? Did my desire for love and intimacy actually push away potential possibilities? As I spoke with my friends about Grindr and became involved with the AIDS Service Organization (ASO) field in Toronto, I soon realized that, as normalized as these apps were, they were also presented as a problem. Social service workers were beginning to be hired who specialize in GSSAs—mostly from mental health and sexual health perspectives—as many men used these apps, particularly Grindr, yet still reported high levels of dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their experiences online. These apps were presented as a component of the loneliness which many gay men seemed to be experiencing. Workers were being hired to answer questions about these online spaces, mental health and navigating rejection, as well as to provide strategies for maneuvering online spaces. Wondering about the discursive productions of these strategies, I became curious how this kind of outreach work might be further reinforcing normative notions of gay sexual subjectivities and what being sexually liberated might mean for those who use Grindr. How might these notions of liberation hold gendered meanings in terms of what a liberated sexual subject who uses Grindr looks like? Were gay men being encouraged to emotionally regulate their discontents with hook-up culture, with anonymous sex? Were some gay men who seemed to be more romantic, or conforming to more heteronormative values, being “othered” in the process? In my earlier research experiences as a graduate student, I began working on quantitative research studies on gay men’s sexual health—an experience I gained after being exposed to predominately quantitative research approaches during my master’s program, which specialized in developmental psychology. Although I had exposure to positivist and post-positivist research methods, I had yet to begin thinking about them in the context of gay men’s sexual health research and had been exposed to poststructural critiques of them in my doctoral classes. Within quantitative research on gay men’s sexualities, sexuality is explicitly conceptualized through mind/body divides where the function of sexual health research is to ensure the furthering of individual sexual pleasure. In particular, while working in the field and becoming more involved in the Toronto gay community largely speaking, I noticed how commonly gay men were

9 universalized to focus specifically upon the needs of privileged white gay men and their sexual pleasure and how this can replicate social hierarchies within gay men’s communities. Sexual health campaigns can further such inequities by focusing on white, muscular, masculinized bodies in their advertisements and ideas of individual sexual pleasure. I became curious if this was how many gay men conceptualized their respective sexual interactions with each other and how mind/body divides might be playing into research on gay men’s sexualities. As I continued gaining experience in positivist and post-positivist research, my own embodied reactions to this paradigm emerged as I found myself not able to conceptualize research through such an epistemology and ontology. I was not interested in “solving” a problem per se or coming to a certain “truth,” but more beginning to create and imagine something new, or something otherwise. As St. Pierre, Jackson, and Mazzei (2016) articulate, “How do we refuse a dogmatic image of thought—the ordinary and unexceptional, the given, the normal, the foundational—and imagine a different image of thought?” (p. 102). While gaining experience in quantitative research approaches, I found my inability to think logically, procedurally, and “rationally” replicated some of the challenges I experienced in my own personal life. Finding that I was unable to conceptualize statistical analyses and work in large spreadsheets, my mind would “jump” all over. Eventually becoming diagnosed with ADHD in later graduate schooling, my inability to compartmentalize and work within a positivist procedural fashion almost left me feeling that I was a “failure” of a researcher—a similar sentiment I had felt at times in my master’s when trying to work within research paradigms and epistemologies that did not resonate with me. Instead, for my doctoral research, I wished to research in an affective and embodied fashion and focus on moving outside of normative ways of thinking/feeling/writing and towards conceptualizing gay men’s experiences with apps and their own sexualities as both affective and embodied. The Research Problem The history of gay men’s communities in Western cultures and the focus on sex and cruising over romantic love is important for contextualizing the research problem in my thesis. Not that sex, itself, is a problem, but more that, for gay men, there is often much conversation around sex and not as much conversation about love, romance, and intimacy. To return to my initial thoughts about queer theory, upon reading gay male theorists, such as Michael Warner and Lee Edelman, I saw how the focus on sex itself often left me wondering where these individuals

10 gained a sense of intimacy and love, or, if love itself was too normative of a construct to be considered in white gay male theorizing.3 In my study, I focus on the idea of “connection” in my interviews with participants instead of explicitly on romantic love because I wanted to ensure that I did not reinforce a heteronormative hierarchy that places romantic love as the most ideal form of intimacy or connection. However, as will be described, Grindr advertises itself as fostering “connections” for individuals, which led me to wonder about the types of connections that individuals might be gaining through their engagements with online hook-up cultures, or if they were gaining any connections at all through their Grindr and GSSA usage. I originally intended to interview only young adults (ages 18–29), but as I outline in my methodology chapter, I realized that there are important differences in Grindr usage between those who are young adults and have used Grindr since they have come out (or beforehand) and those who might have used different technologies, such as websites and chatrooms, and then switched to using GSSAs and Grindr in their later adult years. These older participants interestingly focused more on their gay friendships that they fostered through joining community leagues and groups while the younger adult participants I interviewed noted more of a disconnect from mainstream gay communities and a reliance on Grindr usage. Another tension in my research is my usage of the identity “gay” and the fact that many who use GSSAs and Grindr do not identify with this term for many different reasons, including the whiteness of Western gay communities, ingrained misogyny and transphobia, or otherwise potentially primarily identifying as heterosexual while still having sex with other men. There are also many men who use Grindr who are bisexual, queer identifying, and/or two-spirit. I chose purposefully to primarily use the identity “gay” in my research because I see my study as an

3 It is important to clarify here how white gay male theorizing on love tends to view love as inherently heteronormative and sex as anti-relational (Edelman, 2004; Warner, 1993, 2000). Queer writings that focus on sex as anti-relational and relationality in sexuality as inherently heteronormative is conceptualized by many queer of colour scholars, most notably Muñoz (2009), as white gay male theorizing. BIPOC feminist writers, such as Sandoval (2000), Anzaldua (1987), hooks (2000), and Simpson (2013)—to name a few—conceptualize love as a transformative ethic. hooks’ (2000) work on love, in particular, notes the gendered nature of writings on love, with many men writing self-help books on love for women to encourage them to be less “desperate” and to work on their self-confidence. hooks (2000) notes how “disappointment and a pervasive feeling of brokenheartedness led me to begin thinking more about love in our culture. My longing to find love did not make me lose my sense of reason or perspective; it gave me incentive to think more, talk about love, and to study popular and more serious writings on the subject” (p. xx). This contrast in theorizing on love between BIPOC writers, feminists of colour, and white gay male theorizing is necessary in my critique of white gay male theorizing that dismisses romantic love.

11 intervention into mainstream gay sexual politics and cultures and in conversation with sexual politics that have proliferated through the signifier, “gay.” As such, I use this term while acknowledging its continual exclusions and silences, which I write about in my methodology chapter and when I identify my own social location. As well, many gay men feel caught in a bind between competing discourses of gay normalization and heteronormative intimacy. These competing discourses represent how mainstream gay cultures focus highly on anonymous sex without long-term intimacy and cruising culture with little cultural production being produced from gay men’s communities on romantic love or the intersections of romantic love and gay sexualities. Many of my participants discussed this erasure, which I tease out in each of my data chapters. For many participants, this bind manifested as a sense of isolation in mainstream gay sexual cultures in that many considered the desire for intimacy as heteronormative. At the same time, due to their non-heterosexuality, many participants felt that they would never find belonging and a long-term partner in a solely heterosexual environment. This double bind is also present in what has been described as the “loneliness epidemic” (Hobbes, 2017) amongst gay men, which I elaborate on further in this chapter. Thinking about the tensions between these competing discourses, much of what my participants were mentioning pertained to failing normative expectations of gay sexual subjectivities and the shame and self-abjection which might take place upon feeling outside of the expectations of a “normal gay subject.” From my own personal experiences, I often felt outside of the normative sexual economies for gay men and that I was not performing my “gayness” appropriately by desiring a long-term romantic relationship and that my own lack of interest in hook-up culture and radical forms of sex parties meant that I was somehow isolating or alienating myself from other gay men. Living in the Church and Toronto Gay Village, access to gay spaces was plentiful but I still did not feel a sense of belonging. Even as I scrolled through Grindr while sitting at home, looking at the photos online, feelings of insufficiency, lack, and deficiency commonly filled me as I saw the photos of muscular, gym fit, and athletic men on my Grindr grid. While many research projects are justifiably moving away from a focus on lack, loss, and deficits out of a fear of pathologizing marginalized communities (Tuck, 2009), in my research I wish to validate and acknowledge the experiences of men who feel isolation and loneliness within current gay sexual cultures. Of course, gay men are working against these lack discourses

12 and are thriving in many ways, despite psychiatric and psychological discourses that have historically pathologized gay men and their respective sexualities and considered them “gender inverts,” and abnormal (Dean, 2009; Eribon, 2004; Foucault, 1990). However, I wanted to make space for men who identify as gay but still feel excluded by the current sexual politics of gay men’s communities and who might feel a sense of lack and longing. As such, my focus became more on psychoanalytic and affect theories that acknowledge the inner psyche while also conceptualizing the political and cultural productions of feelings (Ahmed, 2004a, 2010a, 2010b; Butler, 1997a; Kristeva, 1982). Through semi-structured interviews, I asked participants who used GSSAs in downtown Toronto about their experiences with these apps, what brought them online, and how they conceptualize “connecting” with others through GSSAs (i.e. what the term “connection” means to them in the context of GSSAs). Several of my participants returned for a second interview with me and, in the meantime, completed a diary where they wrote about specific experiences online in-between our interviews. I also interviewed social service workers (employees at AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) and social workers) who specifically work with gay men. Part of this interest came from my own experiences working within and volunteering with ASOs and also being exposed to the field through my network of personal connections. It seemed to me that GSSAs, and Grindr in particular, became known in the field as a “problem” that needed specific attention in the ASO field. Conversations around Grindr and gay men’s mental health were emerging as a topic of choice and many different ASOs were running workshops and ongoing programming that specifically aimed to create space for men to discuss their experiences online, isolation and loneliness they might experience when trying to connect with other men, and online rejection. These conversations and interviews with social service workers focused on their specific programming catered to gay men’s mental health and engagement with GSSAs, but also frequently turned to personal experiences using apps. Interestingly, each interview with a social service employee included a predominant amount of their anecdotal experience and how their own curiosities and frustrations about using the app to find guys was what brought many of these employees to their respective jobs. In addition, I interviewed queer educators in the formal school system (grades 9–12 teachers) about the presence of GSSAs in their work with queer students in schools and around LGBTQ activism. Unsurprisingly, after speaking with many of these teachers, I realized that these apps were often left unmentioned in formal school curricula

13 and LGBTQ-based work in schools, even though many underage students do use these apps and lie about their age. While these interviews are important and can inform future work, I decided to leave them out of my analysis for my thesis, as the topics of conversation became quite different than the ones with app users and social service workers and the confines of the school setting provides differing restrictions in terms of the potential to discuss apps. As such, within my interviews I focused on the affective and emotional responses users had to their experiences on GSSAs and, specifically, the negative feelings and emotions produced through their interactions with other app users online. I was curious about specific norms and scripts that users felt they had to adhere to in terms of interpersonal communication and connections with other app users and how individuals negotiated their own respective subjectivities in relationship with norms online. This was often seen through clashes in individuals’ sense of themselves versus expectations for app users online in how some participants described wanting to use these apps to find longer-term intimacies, or being uncomfortable with hook-up culture, but feeling pressured to engage with quick anonymous sex because they thought this was it “meant to be gay.” Therefore, in order to investigate my questions regarding gay men’s emotional intimacies and connections online, I asked the following research questions:

Research Questions 1. What are the politics of negative feelings, such as shame, loneliness, and abjection, in GSSAs? 2. How are feelings and the affective productions of users of GSSAs involved in the production of normative gay sexual subjectivities online? 3. What understandings of “connection” do GSSA users hold of using apps to “connect” with others? How might such understandings relate to normalized forms of emotional management and regulation which could take place between app users? Through these research questions, I wished to investigate how gay men negotiate different discursive meanings for the “connection” and the ways in which they might emotionally manage their interactions with one another. In my interviews, I wished to cultivate a

14 space for queer feelings,4 or feelings and affective states that are outside of the norm, such as shame, loneliness, abjection, and allow room for men to express these emotions. In total, this thesis focuses on how gay men negotiate GSSAs and how their emotional states and the politics of emotional intimacies play out in their experiences connecting with other app users online. Investigating these issues provides a further lens to analyze how gay men negotiate their own subjectivities while navigating GSSAs, particularly Grindr. Drawing from psychoanalytic frameworks, such as Kristeva (1982), I provide the lens to conceptualize how subjects are both subjugated and assert agency within structures to become intelligible. Through these lenses, I work to understand both the domination and resistances that take place under gay signification. Moreover, by drawing on affect theorists such as Sara Ahmed (2004a, 2010a, 2010b), I theorize the circulation of affect and the politics of emotions and feelings that took place during my interviews with participants. My focus on feelings and affect is intended to investigate how feelings are actually central to gay men’s experiences in GSSAs, and how feelings and emotions are involved in the constitution of online norms for gay men. For myself as a researcher, bringing my own experiences of abjection and isolation in gay men’s communities into my research was a complicated task, as I had to work to try to decenter the whiteness from my own experiences. As such, I had to continually be self-reflexive when interviewing and analyze my data through a critical anti-racist lens to think beyond my own lived experiences and note the gaps and silences in what resonated for me. Theoretically, my work draws from queer theory and affect theory, specifically feminist affect studies, to note the cultural and political importance of emotions (Ahmed, 2004a, 2010a, 2010b, 2016). I engage with this scholarship in my methodology and methods chapter, but I consider my theoretical framework itself as an assemblage: a mixture of heterogenous and sometimes contradicting theories that come together to produce new ideas and ways of thinking. Methodologically, my project works within feminist and queer poststructural approaches, specifically with my emphasis on a methodology of vulnerable connections whereby I embed myself within my research and seek to form new relations and connections with my participants.

4 I use queer here purposefully to denote how romantic love and intimacy amongst gay men can be queer or odd feelings that are “out of place” as Ahmed (2006) might articulate. This indicates the large cultural orientation in gay men’s communities towards seeing sex as explicitly anti-relational and unromantic in nature.

Significance Using queer theory in its focus on love, intimacies, connection, and affective productions, this research expands upon prior research on online intimacies and affordances (or potentials and possibilities) in GSSAs (e.g., Race, 2015) while still diverging from much of the prior research that has been done on Grindr and GSSAs. Many previous works that use queer theoretical frameworks to analyze sexual gay men’s engagements with technologies tend to analyze the potentials of such apps for “radical” forms of sex (Numer et al., 2018), or conceptualize Grindr as a form of assemblage that can challenge the prominence of the liberal human in theorizing (Thomas, 2016). My work, in contrast, focuses on emotions and feelings—not as separate or neatly distinguishable from affect, which I explain in my theoretical frameworks section—but as holding political and cultural meanings in terms of which subjects “belong.” Similar to Raymond Williams’ (1977) theorization of “structures of feeling,” this thesis is more interested in the specific forms of feelings that are normalized within GSSAs and how these feelings can operate to forward forms of exclusion. For example, within my own experience, I often felt anxious while using Grindr and was commonly told by my friends that I lacked “confidence” in my interactions with other men. Confidence and its equation with sexiness and happiness are everyday taken-for-granted feelings in gay men’s communities and sexual cultures. The idea being that, by being more confident and self-assured, you might attract more men. My own feminist affective approach to this conceptualization problematizes how these normalized feelings operate online and how, collectively, those who do not conform to seemingly agreed upon affective states are othered and outcasted. Involved in this is the idea that those who are solely seeking romantic intimacies or who appear “desperate” lack confidence in the online sexual economies of GSSAs. As of my knowledge, prior research has yet to investigate this specific phenomenon. Current research on Grindr has started to explore structures of homonormativity online, including that of Brown (2020), Aunspach (2020), Ahlm (2017), and Roach (2015, 2019). These works, particularly that of Roach (2015, 2019) are anti-humanist and consider how Grindr, while a hotbed of neoliberal norms for individualism and commodification, might disrupt the biopolitical sexological classification of sexual identity and provide an avenue to disrupt normative sexual identification. Roach (2019) articulates how

precisely because of such absurd enticements and inarticulate gobbledygook, geosocial MSM (men-seeking-men) apps might be understood as “circuit breakers” creating a discursive nonsense that brushes against both the neoliberal commodification of communication and the reified, sexological classifications of sexual identity. (p. 551)

While Roach (2015, 2019) feels that Grindr might disrupt neoliberal rationalities, particularly in how users interact with each other through a form of nonsensical gibberish, this form of communication is still highly commodified, with the end goal remaining: to ascertain a hook-up. Therefore, the form of nonsensical communication in which users engage in on Grindr actually is similar to the forms of non-verbal cues seen in cruising cultures and falls in line with the traditional notion of gay identification and sexual scripts with which gay men have historically engaged with in many ways. In my research, paying attention to the affective productions of the users of these socio- sexual apps is a way of both working within and against identity categories as I note how, indeed, users are disoriented through their Grindr usage and potentially dissuaded from normative and liberal narratives of gay belonging. However, through their disorientation with Grindr, they are still looking for something else—something further—which can provide happiness. This is where Ahmed’s (2010a, 2010b) work on the promise of happiness is methodologically important for my project, as I conceptualize how users originally arrived at Grindr through its promise: a promise of belonging, acceptance, and community. Embedded in this promise are different notions for users, as I will engage with in my third data chapter. Some users see gay belonging as performative of a normative version of gay sexuality, or engaging with hook-up culture, having frequent sexual encounters, and being able to share such experiences with gay friends. Others, such as in my own narrative, conceptualize the promise of belonging that a romantic relationship might provide and being able to share a life with a partner (or partners) and find acceptance amongst gay peers. In total, my project contributes to a lineage of queer, feminist, and affect theory writings on the politics of emotions and brings these conversations into the realm of GSSAs. By bringing these conversations into GSSAs, my project offers a different lens than prior research and takes feelings as central for understanding the constitution of gay subjectivities on GSSAs. By centralizing feelings and emotions as pivotal to theorizing the sexual subjectivities within GSSAs, my project theorizes how feelings are actually central to the creation of included and excluded gay subjects, particularly as it pertains to GSSAs.

Thesis Overview This thesis contains seven chapters in total. The remainder of this introduction chapter tells the story of gay loneliness and how many come to utilize GSSAs and the specific place of Grindr in their lives as gay men. This background work of setting the stage for my thesis will provide further contextualization for my research questions and my own experiences with GSSAs, which I incorporate throughout my thesis. Moreover, this provides the context for my research problem. Chapter Two engages with the theoretical frameworks for my thesis, which are queer theory and feminist affect theory, widely speaking. Within my writings, I incorporate queer of color critique, and specifically more psychoanalytic writing, to de-center whiteness and conceptualize the experiences of subject formation of my racialized participants. I also explain key concepts and theories in this chapter and their relevance to my work. Chapter Three is my methods and methodology chapter where I engage with my feminist affect methodology, specifically mentioning Sara Ahmed’s (2010a, 2010b) writings on the “feminist gut” and how this informed my analysis, Jackson and Mazzei’s (2013) work on plugging-in and “thinking with theory,” and Åhall’s (2018) feminist affect methodological framework. Chapters Four, Five, and Six re-present and re-interpret data from my research project. Chapter Four: Foucault’s Governmentality and Gay Intimacies Online applies Foucault’s (1991) theory of governmentality and Hochschild’s (1979) theorization of “feeling rules” and “emotion work” to discuss the practices of emotional management that my participants described while using GSSAs. Specifically, through applying these theorizes, I analyze how participants use risk management through their emotional interactions with other users to protect themselves from being emotionally vulnerable. I plug these theories into the narratives of app users, Haro, Michael, Frank, Kashi, Charlie, and Dominic using GSSAs and social service workers, Derrick, Mark, and Damien. Through the management of conduct and emotional interactions with other users, I theorize the normative patterns for feeling online and the specific forms of self- governance that participants described. Chapter Five: Kristeva’s Abjection, Emotional Vulnerability, and Gay Subjectivity applies Julia Kristeva’s (1982) theory of abjection to conceptualize my participants’ processes of

18 exclusion and subject formation that take place on GSSAs. Through analyzing the affective politics of exclusion within GSSAs and how these relate to norms for intimacies, I specifically argue that romantic intimacy and relationality, particularly through sex, is repudiated. By plugging in Kristeva’s abjection with the narratives of apps users, Anthony, Michael, Steve, Haro, and Christopher, I theorize how their own subject formation is constituted through processes of abjection. Chapter Six: Affective Economies and the Promises of Grindr applies Sara Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2010a, 2010b) work on affective economies and the promises of happiness to theorize the specific promises that GSSAs promise for users and the affective economies that privilege hook-ups over longer-term romantic intimacies. By plugging-in Ahmed’s writing into the narratives from app users, Anthony, Steve, Charlie, Haro, Frank, and Isaiah., and social service worker, Mark, I argue how the affective economies of Grindr privilege notions of individualism, confidence, as these forms of self-governance are considered means to ascertain happiness. Chapter Seven is my conclusion chapter in which I summarize the findings and implications of my research and the limitations. I specifically note the implications of my research for future work in queer theory and online outreach and motion towards a pedagogical direction for outreach. Moreover, I write how these findings illustrate the importance of placing gay men’s sexual politics in conversation with feminist theories and how gay men might be able to work in coalition with feminist sexual politics and writings in the future.

“Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places”: An Introduction Loneliness is historically a common state of being and cultural archetype for gay men, with much gay cultural writing and production surrounding the state of loneliness both within and outside of gay men’s communities. From the usage of gay socio-sexual applications (GSSAs) to film and literature, such as Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman (2007), or A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964), issues of intimacy, sexuality, and desire are not new for gay men. Many late-twentieth and early twenty-first century gay television shows, such as Queer as Folk (Cowen & Lipman, 2000), a show about gay men who live in the urban gay village in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Looking (Lannan, 2014), a HBO show about the sexual and romantic intimacies of young gay men in San Francisco, hint at the many trials and

19 tribulations gay men experience trying to find longer-term romantic partners while manoeuvring gay hook-up cultures,. Many gay men navigate through their lives by compartmentalizing their sexual and emotional selves, as they may even think that finding a loving partner might not be a possibility for them. Despite the liberal gay rights movement throughout the late twentieth century, the sexual and intimate politics of mainstream gay men’s communities have only increased the amount of debate regarding gay men’s sexualities. Furthermore, with the invention of GSSAs, such as Grindr, there is contention regarding whether Grindr reinforces notions that gay men are incapable of engaging in a long-term romantic relationship or romantic intimacy, or if it could be seen as sexually liberating through the ease at which sex is available (Aitken, 2017; Aunspach, 2015; Goldenberg, 2019). Gay men are often caught within contradictory discourses regarding sexuality and intimacy. In reaction to this bind, a binary is produced that reinforces gay men’s understandings of their respective sexualities as completely unemotional and detached from romantic intimacy (Slavin, 2009). Larry Kramer’s (1978) novel, Faggots, is an example of a controversial commentary on gay men’s anonymous sex culture. This is seen through the story of the main character, Fred Lemish, in his search for love in pre-HIV/AIDS gay New York. Kramer’s commentary on the sexual engagements of gay men included critiques of the frequency of anonymous sex occurring amongst gay men, his fears of sexual health outbreaks, and his skepticism towards gay men being able to form intimate romantic relationships over a long-term basis. In particular, Kramer’s criticism of the 1970s New York gay community comes from his feelings towards the men who comprised the community’s presumed inability to commit to any one individual in a romantic relationship (see Clein, 2017, p. 7). These feelings are not just individual, but orient Kramer and those who have critiqued gay men’s sexual cultures, towards notions of belonging and non-belonging (see Edwards,1994 for a critique of gay men’s sexual politics). Writing this thesis, I have wrestled within and against my own identification with mainstream gay cultures. For many gay men, an ambivalent attachment to gay identification is common, despite the mainstream “Pride” and liberal belonging narratives, as we navigate striving to belong in a community which is commonly filled with much in-group discrimination, unachievable beauty standards, and forms of cruelty towards one another. Judith Butler (1990) asks, in the context of feminism that calls for “unity,” if normative notions of subjectivity (particularly under the signifier “women”) forward forms of exclusion.

Presenting this question, she asks, “does ‘unity’ set up an exclusionary norm of solidarity at the level of identity that rules out the possibility of a set of actions which disrupt the very borders of identity concepts, or which seek to accomplish precisely that disruption as an explicit political aim?” (p. 21). Taking Butler’s question and applying it to gay identification, how might the idea of a singular gay identity be forwarding exclusion? (Davies et al., 2019). Navigating feelings of ambivalence and negativity towards gay cultures and communities, many gay men hesitantly take on their “gay” identity under the hope that they might find some acceptance, belonging, and, possibly, love. The search for romantic love and long-term companionships is a powerful norm that orients many cultural and literary productions, yet is still a largely unexplored phenomenon amongst gay men and often even considered heteronormative (Halperin, 2019). Discourses of romantic love can evoke notions of “ownership” and possession (Riggs, 2006), but does this mean that gay men should not love one another? Where is the space for love in gay men’s communities and politics? Particularly through queer theory’s critique of heteronormative monogamy and notions of long-term domesticity, we often discuss gay men and sex, but there is not as much of a conversation around gay love, connection, intimacy, and the impact that these constructs hold on gay desires. Still, discourses of love and long-term romantic relationships within Western gay men’s communities hold a history of being placed between liberal right-based homonormative depictions of same-sex families and love and cruising cultures that favour anonymous sexual encounters over longer-term connections. Many theorists have written that gay men might be acting as adults in ways based on childhood trauma and experiences of exclusion from mainstream society (Downs, 2012; Eribon, 2004). In other words, through exclusion from heteronormative society, gay men may be making up for their inability to perfectly incorporate themselves into heteronormative fantasies through material wealth. Queer theorist David Halperin (2012) writes that “sexual deprivation is fundamental and crucial to the subjective experiences of gay men, not because we are all pathetic, sex-starved rejects who never succeed in finding acceptable partners, but because adult satisfaction cannot quite make up for a previous history of unfulfillment” (p. 228). The connection between loss and gay subjectivity is common amongst psychological and therapeutic writings on gay men who theorize how early childhood and adolescent experiences of gender policing, trauma, and societal exclusion force gay men to relegate components of themselves to their unconscious. That is, gay men learn to banish painful

21 memories and conceal parts of themselves in order to avoid stigmatization and recurring trauma (Downs, 2012; Odets, 2019). In Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives, clinical psychologist Walk Odets (2019) recollects experiences with gay clients. He writes about the cultural shame and stigmatization many gay men experience due to being outside of heteronormative expectations for masculinity, and the pressures that many gay men experiences within gay communities. Employing the often used liberal metaphor of “the closet” (i.e., the notion that one can “come out” and announce their gay sexual identity and become liberated and free), Odets (2019) describes a new kind of closet that gay men enter upon coming out into gay communities: For many gay men, today’s community agenda is not support, but abandonment. It appears to offer not a new life out of the closet, but life in a new closet, an emotional closet that is, like the gay closet of lore, a destructive space in which to live. (p. 58)

This new “gay closet” that one enters upon coming out is a space of loss and abandonment where men experience each other as insufficient in their continual quest for more. In my own personal experiences witnessing and experiencing this closet, the neoliberal quest for continual self-improvement and betterment, more capital and gain, fancier possessions, the newest “gay” clothing line, and the nicest, most modern condo, applies particularly to gay urban life. Although I argue that it reaches beyond just the urban gay scene. Living in downtown Toronto for the majority of my twenties, it was easy to get caught up in the demands of such a life: a life where it is important to go to the gym seven days a week, ensure one had the best clothes for nights out, and that looking “fit, fun, and fabulous” was always on the agenda. Eventually realizing this was out of reach for me, I stopped running after the unachievable but started taking note of my surroundings. These men who post the “perfect” Instagram photos in their speedos on the beach, have the most toned bodies, go to all the expensive downtown parties, and have more sex than anyone else are commonly termed “A Gays” or “Instagays.” Amongst gay men in downtown Toronto, these individuals have tens to hundreds of thousands of followers on social media from around the world, pose in photos at nightclubs on weekends where they are showing off their sculpted bodies, and seem to truly have it all. However, I wondered, do they even feel satisfied? Is what they have enough and does it provide them with whatever they are seeking? Belonging, acceptance, community?

Despite the continued normalization of same-sex love and gay marriage (Duggan, 2003; Ng, 2013), there are continual discontents reported amongst gay men regarding their satisfaction with their romantic lives (McKie et al., 2017). Regardless of how normalized (monogamous) same-sex relationships might be within mainstream media, gay men still seem to struggle with making community and finding connections with one another (Davidson et al., 2017). It is particularly difficult for those who are racialized (Rosenberg, 2017) and who do not meet dominant aesthetic norms for muscular builds (Conte, 2018; Foster-Gimbel & Eneln, 2016). Through my own experiences struggling with dating in gay communities, as well as hearing complaints from gay friends, I became curious if perhaps gay men just did not want romantic relationships. Did the focus on anonymous hook-ups through popular GSSAs,5 such as Grindr and Scruff, mean that many were not seeking romantic relationships? Was it that we were not seeking romance? Or was it that many gay men might always be seeking something that is slightly out of reach? To illustrate this, I turn to a passage from North Morgan’s (2018) book, Into? The term “Into?” is a reference to the commonly used term in gay digital spaces—namely Grindr—for men to ask others what kind of sexual acts they are seeking out and what they desire. Undoubtably, the preferred form of communication on Grindr is short phrases that are quick and to the point (Miller, 2018). The main character of Into?—Konrad Platt—is a British gay man who has just moved to Hollywood to escape the experience of his recent relationship break-up in England. Konrad embodies most of the stereotypes of the “Instagays”: white, very muscular, masculine presenting, and upper middle class. Throughout the novel, Konrad aspires for men and relationships that seem out of his reach, finding the pursuit and the chase of individuals even more exciting than the actual relationships themselves. For example, while browsing Grindr, Konrad encounters a man who he conceptualizes as out of his reach, but yet, still pursues him further: Yes, this masc musc bro is six two and yes, he’s studying at the moment and working part-time as a model and yes, he’s got all the muscles that you want him to have, but primarily the reason why I want it so bad is that his blurb on Grindr is that he refuses to accept messages from anyone who has a visible face on their profile picture because those people are out and shameless and clearly nonmasc enough. This means that he has

5 I use the term “gay socio-sexual applications” (GSSAs) because these phone applications are both social and sexual in purpose and usage. The literature on such applications, including Grindr and Scruff, employs a variety of terms, including “geo-social networking app” (Goedel & Duncan, 2015) and “gay male social networking applications” (Tziallas, 2015), to name a few.

gigantic issues about his sexuality, is self-hating to the nth degree, and his internalized homophobia might just be surpassing mine. (Morgan, 2018, p. 167)

Reading Morgan’s book further evoked questions for me about my own experiences with Grindr and gay men’s hook-up and dating cultures. Reading gay literature, such as Into?, made me consider how if, like Konrad, many gay men desire what they feel might be missing in themselves by being gay (masculinity), how might this be impacting our ability to connect with one another? Through my own experiences with Grindr, which I will describe shortly, I was further interested in not only men’s experiences within gay online culture, but the discourses that they navigate and how romance and intimacy, as relational constructs, are navigated and worked within and against by gay men. Am I enough? What is enough and how do I measure up? Am I what you are looking for? Do you scroll past me without hesitation? I saw you online last night. What me? I haven’t been on in weeks. Already looking for someone new? What were you doing on there? It’s never enough.6 Many public health discourses portray gay men as hyper-sexual subjects who only engage in risky and anonymous sexual behaviours. This focus has led several queer theorists to critique such notions and the norms entrenched in public health discourses (Dean, 2009; Halperin, 2008, 2012; Race, 2003). Still, the question remains regarding intimacy and human connection: if gay men are having all this sex, why are we reporting such loneliness? Many common media articles that are catered to gay men are filled with reports of gay men articulating their loneliness, lamenting their single status, and the apparent difficulties which gay men experience trying to find romantic partners. There exist many different theorizations as to why this might be the case. In particular, the increased popularity of GSSAs commonly used for hook-ups and anonymous sexual exchanges, is frequently blamed for why gay men find

6 This is another poem by me. I include some poetry by me throughout the thesis and touch on this in my methodology section.

24 relationships and dating challenging in modern times (Blair, 2019). There are many think pieces and advice-focused articles providing tips for gay men to “successfully” find a romantic partner amidst the seemingly difficult socio-cultural conditions of gay dating. Clinical psychologist, Joe Kort (2013), offers advice for gay men to successfully “snatch” a partner in 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love. Additionally, Toronto-based gay writer, Steven Bereznai (2006), writes advice for single gay men (to stay single) in Gay and Single—Forever? 10 Things Every Gay Looking for Love (And Not Finding It) Needs to Know. Loneliness is constructed as a cultural condition associated with gay subjectivity yet also a problem which requires remedying, particularly in this technological age of gay online socio-sexual cultures. From the earliest beginnings of the internet, gay men have been frequent users of chat rooms and other online spaces to meet each other for sex, romance, and platonic friendship (Shaw, 1997; Weinrich, 1997). Many challenges come up for men who want to develop romantic relationships and intimacies through online mediums because their interactions are mediated through text and on platforms with prearranged rules and norms (Miller, 2018). These norms orient users towards some forms of intimacies over others; for instance, hooking up or no- strings-attached sexual encounters may be encouraged over longer-term romantic relationships (Van De Wiele & Tong, 2014). While not all current research on GSSAs concurs on this point, many researchers have concluded that, for instance, Grindr, the most popular app, is predominantly a “meat-market” used for hook-ups (Bonner-Thompson, 2017; Brubaker et al., 2016; Woo, 2013). With this focus on anonymous sexual encounters, gay men who use the internet and GSSAs to find romantic relationships and longer-term intimacies may experience disenchantment and frustration (McKie et al., 2017). Media articles comment on gay men’s struggles finding emotional bonds with other men, with this “gay fear of intimacy” being theorized to be associated with childhood bullying, trauma, and internalized homophobia (Frederick, 1995; Szymanski & Hilton, 2013). Within The Good Men’s Project, a blog dedicated to publishing commentaries on men and masculinities, an article regarding “The Fear of Intimacy” amongst gay men articulates that “while gay men desire and create meaningful, loving relationships, their traumatic experiences growing up in a heteronormative culture—like homophobia and rejection—lead some to refuse conventions in heterosexual relationships (monogamy, marriage, children, etc.)” (para. 3). The article, written by the editorial team of The

Good Man Project, further references research on sexual minority stress. This is a research framework used to describe the experiences of sexual minorities experiencing stigmatization (Meyer, 1995). The writers ask, “what messages are given to gay men in magazines, billboards, social websites like Gay.com, and other advertisements? Being attractive and free sexual beings is well regarded, overshadowing messages of long-term monogamous relationships, family, and interdependence” (para. 9). Written in 2011, the article references Gay.com, a popular gay hook- up website, instead of Grindr, but offers a similar criticism of the seeming superficiality of gay cyberspaces, and the focus on short term hook-ups instead of long-term relationships and intimacies. Is the increase in loneliness a function of the increasingly digitalized sexual economy, or can loneliness be considered a cultural production of gay subjectivities? If so, what does that mean on a psychosocial level for gay men who are experiencing challenges finding romantic partners?

The Culture of Gay Loneliness Receiving a Facebook Messenger notification on the morning of March 2, 2017, I noticed a preview of a message from my friend—another local Toronto gay activist and academic— stating, “Adam, you got to read this! It’s what we talk about all the time!” Clicking on the link, a Huffington Post banner appeared at the top of my laptop with a photo of two white young gay men dancing together. The individual on the left was looking downwards at the one on the right, who is looking away towards other dancers. The two young men are in a dark room with other male couples dancing together; the lighting fades out towards the back of the room. On top of the image is the word “Together” in large white block letters and under the image is the word “Alone” in the same large white block letters. As I stared at these men and the phrase, “Together Alone,” I started to imagine myself as one of these men. Replying to my friend, I let him know that I would instantly begin reading the article. I started to see other gay Facebook friends “sharing” the article on their Facebook pages, stating that they felt similar sentiments. Together alone. The affective currents of Facebook lit up that day as all the gay men I was connected with shared this article, declaring its resonance with their lived experiences. For a group of people who all seemed so lonely, we were at least all lonely together. The article, “The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness,” by Huffington Post reporter Michael Hobbes, received viral status upon its publication on March 2, 2017. Describing the “epidemic of

26 loneliness” amongst gay men in North America, Hobbes (2017) begins by recounting an exchange with his friend, Jeremy, a gay man who had recently become hospitalized due to a drug overdose. Hobbes compares Jeremy’s current state to his life three years prior, as a gay man who was just beginning to become interested in CrossFit and showed no signs of drug usage. Bringing in Jared, Malcolm, and Christian, other gay friends of Hobbes who struggle with drug usage, depression, and reported loneliness, Hobbes continues to delineate the “divergence” between his straight and gay friends. Hobbes’ (2017) straight friends were disappearing into “relationships, kids, and the suburbs,” while his gay friends struggle with “isolation and anxiety, hard drugs, and risky sex.” These deficit-based images of gay men as high drug users, lonely men, and psychologically damaged are not new. The response to Hobbes’ article by many gay reporters and cultural commentators illustrates the frustration many gay men hold towards negative depictions and the associations of gay men with negative affect and loneliness. Interviewing John Pachankis, a Yale stress researcher, Hobbes (2017) states how after years of emotional avoidance, many gay men “literally don’t know what they’re feeling,” he [Pachankis] says. Their partner says “I love you” and they reply “Well, I love pancakes.” They break it off with the guy they’re seeing because he leaves a toothbrush at their house. Or, like a lot of the guys I talked to, they have unprotected sex with someone they’ve never met because they don’t know how to listen to their own trepidation. (para. 31)

Hobbes theorizes the forms of emotional numbness by which gay men use to detach from their emotions by describing the “emotional avoidance” that “many gay men” might be engaging in. The research on this emotional detachment and numbing connects it to constructions of hegemonic masculinities, which become internalized by gay men as they aspire to disengage from their feelings (Elder et al., 2015; Sánchez et al., 2009). Hobbes (2017) continues to reference Pachankis as he elaborates on the impacts of this form of emotional detachment on gay men’s sense of self: Emotional detachment of this kind is pervasive . . . and many of the men he works with go years without recognizing that the things they’re striving for—having a perfect body, doing more and better work than their colleagues, curating the ideal weeknight Grindr hookup—are reinforcing their own fear of rejection. (para. 32)

The aspiration for perfection as described by Hobbes and Pachankis re-articulates a common trope amongst gay men: that the search for perfection will bring rewards and compensate for feelings of failure (Bergling, 2013). Associations between emotional restraint,

27 hegemonic masculinity, and muscularity are common in research surrounding gay men (Alvarez, 2010; Bergling, 2006), with Duncan (2010) drawing links between identifying as gay, self- control and rationality, and feelings of “failing” standards of hegemonic masculinity due to one’s non-heterosexuality. Ultimately, these discourses encourage neoliberal notions of continual self- improvement and responsibility. These discourses work to apply further blame on individual gay men for poor mental health, loneliness, and overall life dissatisfaction, rather that noting socio- cultural conditions. As noted by Slate writer Ben Miller (2017), these discourses of “gay loneliness,” when individualized, omit how aspirations for inclusion within institutions, such as gay marriage, the nuclear family, and compulsory monogamy, often silence other forms of intimacies outside domestic coupledom and the mainstream homonormative gay rights agenda. These alternative forms of intimacy offer equally valid forms of emotional fulfillment and radical political sentiments. As Miller (2017) writes: Maybe, I would suggest, the root of their unhappiness wasn’t evil sex radicals or unreconstructed sissies but the impossible situation contemporary gays find ourselves in: the promise of acceptance and tolerance if we force ourselves into relationship models that often chafe; the way that rights of access to straight institutions like military service and marriage have divided us from our queer and trans sisters and siblings; the gentrification of our community spaces out of major urban centers; and the ingrained misogyny that leads to a drive towards hypermasculinity and thinness. (para. 3)

This “promise” of acceptance and happiness which, according to Miller, gay men chase after by chasing after “relationship models that often chafe,” resonates with Ahmed’s (2010b) description of the promise of happiness. Ahmed explains that “happiness is associated with some life choices and not others, how happiness is imagined as being what follows being a certain kind of being” (p. 2). Such promises are important to consider in how they orient subjects towards certain life aspirations. Within my own life, the promise of a romantic relationship and finding acceptance in another person oriented my own usage, and expectations of Grindr upon downloading the application. Experiences of loneliness, despair, unrequited love and isolation, particularly in romantic relationships, are not new experiences of gay men, with a cultural history of gay male media productions exemplifying these emotions. For example, these emotions are demonstrated in the widely acclaimed 2017 film, Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino, based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman. This film features the love story of young Elio, an Italian teenage boy whose father is a university professor, and Oliver, a mid-twenties researcher who is staying with Elio and his family for the summer. As the love story between Elio and

Oliver increases in intensity, the film closes with a scene of Elio crying by the fireplace as he mourns the loss of his love, Oliver, who ended up leaving after their summer together and married a woman afterwards. The melancholia that Elio experiences through the loss of his love is a common trope in gay male media; one man attaches himself to a love that will never be fully reciprocated. This common trope can be read by making connections to the ties between heterosexuality and masculinity—i.e. understanding that the existence of men loving one another stands against the tenets of heteromasculinity by allowing the survival of deep and tender love between men that challenges both hegemonic masculinity and heterosexuality. In 2014, British pop singer, Sam Smith, released their hit album, In the Lonely Hour. This album features songs describing his experiences of attempting to form romantic relationships, dating as a young gay man in their early twenties,7 and the common heartbreak and abandonment they felt in their romantic connections and intimacies. The single, “Stay With Me,”—the most successful single from the album and described as a common “gay anthem”—rose to success as a song which Rolling Stone commentator, John Paul Brammer (2014), wrote that “any gay man can relate to.” Describing a one-night stand in which Smith wishes that their sexual partner for the night is a longer-term romantic partner, Smith asks the partner to “stay with me” even though they are “no good at a one-night stand.” Other songs featured on In the Lonely Hour include “I Know I’m Not the Only One,” where Smith sings about holding knowledge that their romantic lover is seeing other men and being unfaithful, and “Lay Me Down,” a single from the album where Smith yearns for a lover to lay beside them as they feel empty without their lover’s presence. Gay commentators and academics have written mixed responses to Sam Smith and their music (Lovelock, 2019), with criticisms that Smith depicts romantic intimacy as similar for queer relationships as heteronormative relationships, with little mentioning of sexual desire as a means to disrupt heteronormativity (Dhaenens, 2016). While many commentators, such as Brammer (2014), have stated their ability to relate to Smith’s lyrics, others, such as Harry Lewis (2017), writing for The Huffington Post, have derided Smith’s representations of gay culture and his image as the “eternal sad gay boy” in “perpetual isolation and loneliness” (para. 5). However, a queer reading focused on the affective productions of Smith’s work might focus on what these emotional states which Smith describes do. How might the negative feelings, emotions, and

7 Smith now identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns exclusively.

29 affective productions of gay men actually destabilize notions of collectivity and identity? Recently, on Valentine’s Day (February 14), 2020, Smith released a new single entitled, “To Die For,” where they describe the yearning and desperation for a romantic partner and loved one “to die for” and spend the remainder of their life with. For Smith, as well as other gay and queer individuals, this is not an uncommon desire. Amidst this “loneliness epidemic,” many turn to GSSAs with the hope and desire for such a longer-term romantic relationship. Grindr, the most popular GSSA, articulates on its “About Us” page their main purpose as “a modern LGBTQ lifestyle” in creating “innovative paths with a meaningful impact for our community.”

“Today, Grindr proudly represents a modern LGBTQ lifestyle that’s expanding into new platforms. From social issues to original content, we’re continuing to blaze innovative paths with a meaningful impact for our community. At Grindr, we’ve created a safe space where you can discover, navigate, and get zero feet away from the queer world around you. Keep connecting” (Grindr, 2020, para. 4). This provision of community, connection, and belonging that GSSAs advertise works to promote a form of relationality that promises identity-based belonging and community, as well as the acceptance and happiness sought after during this “loneliness epidemic.” Ahmed (2010b) describes how when happiness is seemingly in crisis—a “happiness crisis”—people are oriented towards objects that are expected to bring them happiness to a higher degree (p. 7). By being

30 oriented towards socio-sexual applications to provide connection and, ultimately, a romantic relationship, certain subjects experience more frustrations and “othering” than others. Through analyzing how subjects learn to navigate GSSAs, the norms within such applications, and the cultural politics of intimacy and affect online, new understandings can be gleaned regarding the current state of “gay loneliness” and the negative affective productions of gay men who use these apps. Grindr provides promises of “community” and “connection” for gay, bisexual, queer, and trans people, marketing itself as a lifestyle and community brand (Grindr.com). Upon its release in 2009, Grindr was explicitly marketed towards men who have sex with men. This socio-sexual application for meeting other men and finding potential romantic partners, quickly became a commonplace gay male cultural icon and brand, particularly with its highly sexual approach and grid main-screen interface (Licoppe et al., 2016; Woo, 2013). As the first GSSA, Grindr emerged into popularity due to it being a smartphone application. The app is easily accessible to users from phones and its “grid” main-screen, where users are sorted into a “grid” and arranged based on proximity and geographic location. As a geo-locative device, Grindr operates based on proximity, and allows the user to see who is nearby by showing the exact distance between themselves and other users (usually in meters or kilometers). References to the infamous “skull” logo of Grindr became everyday for gay men as Grindr has extended its influence from being a social networking application into a cultural icon. Common terminology employed on Grindr, such as “into” and “looking?”—used to decipher an individual’s availability for a hook-up and what they are interested in sexually—has evolved into common vernacular by gay men (Birnholtz et al., 2014; Jaspal, 2017). Grindr and other similar GSSAs promise community and connection, with Grindr encouraging users to “Keep connecting” on their website. Despite their promises of connection, there are many forms of disconnection which occur on these applications, with users describing experiences of loneliness and isolation while using GSSAs, or what Goldenberg (2019) describes as “disconnected connectedness.” Goldenberg (2019) explains the “digital paradox” of gay online dating in relationship expressed by queer clients within his professional practice as a psychiatrist: Not so long ago, most of the gay men and queer people in my practice used apps and the Internet as a way to assuage loneliness, efficiently meeting not only other gay men, but gay men with specific shared, or complementary, interests. Most often, these interests were sexual. This use, however, turned, for many, from novelty to normative, from

voluntary to compulsive and addictive, from fun to desperate. As if reflecting a change in tide, more and more men wondered how so much sex, so much physical intimacy, could result in so much loneliness. Is this anything new? (p. 365)

Goldenberg (2019) wonders if the widespread popularity of GSSAs has increased the “epidemic of gay loneliness.” Hobbes (2017) describes this epidemic as “voluntary to compulsive and addictive, from fun to desperate.” According to Goldenberg (2019), despite reporting “so much sex, so much physical intimacy,” there is still “so much loneliness” amongst gay men. Despite the privileging of anonymous, short-term sexual hook-ups on GSSAs (Licoppe et al., 2016; Yeo & Fung, 2018), there are individuals who utilize Grindr primarily to seek potential partners and long-term relationships (Gudelunas, 2012), though those looking for those connections tend to be a minority on such applications (Van De Wiele & Tong, 2014). Regardless of the reason for application usage, finding connections and different forms of intimacies—whether for platonic friendship, shorter term continuous sexual partners, romantic partners, or anonymous hook-ups—is part of the promise of Grindr usage. Writing on the cultural productions from gay hook-up cultures and pornography, New York City-based psychotherapist, Don Shewey (2018), in his book entitled, The Paradox of Porn: Notes on Gay Male Sexual Culture, describes the “paradox” of gay pornography. Shewey describes how gay pornography offers a sense of connection, intimacy, and pleasure, particularly for those who might not be out of the closet, or who live in rural areas. At the same time, this form of media does not model how to have proper conversations with other men, discuss intimacy, consent, or get to know other men on a more personal level. Therefore, while pornography can offer notions of sexual pleasure and a momentary release from isolation, it does not offer a means to facilitate a longer conversation or how to potentially get to know a partner for a romantic relationship. Shewey (2018) also mentions GSSAs and hook-up apps in his book and discusses how such apps also impact gay men: Here’s the shallow side of Gay Hookup Culture in a nutshell—guys wanting to connect, sexualizing all emotions, expecting everybody to perform like porn stars, and nobody getting what they really want. Or worse, they wind up feeling more damaged, more lonely, more caught in a no-win situation. (p. 147)

This paradox between liberation and loneliness is present in my research as participants described looking to gay pornography for cues on how to interact with other men. As will be detailed in my second data chapter, one research participant Christopher, noted how he seeks to

32 embody a “metal pig” when engaging with other users on Grindr as a metaphor for his interactions and lack of emotional connection and affection for other users. Reflecting on my own lived experiences throughout my doctoral studies, I wondered if my own emotional vulnerability with others and my efforts to connect (which often might have seemed “needy” and that I was moving “too fast” towards a relationship), were partially what positioned me as a “problem,” or at least made me feel that I was a problem on Grindr. These feelings and the desires involved in them—the desire for connection, a romantic relationship, intimacy—are not just individual psychological states. However, my deeply personal feelings and experiences within gay men’s communities and using Grindr and similar GSSAs, are what orient me towards my research questions and personal curiosities in studying gay men’s online sexual cultures. I will now turn to describing my own positionality as well as some personal experiences that have led me to my question.

Romantic Love and Intimacy Romantic love and intimacy, while broad constructs, are important for understanding the work of this thesis. Intimacy is a broad term that can refer to the intimate relations, familial structures, and relational patterns of individuals, with a specific focus on romantic love and the rules for kinship (O’Brien & Stein, 2018). Filice et al. (2020) define intimacy in their study of gay men’s negotiations of the development of intimate relations on social networking apps as “a socially-negotiated and subjectively perceived quality of relationships as well as the practices within relationships that generate and maintain that quality” (p. 4). While intimacy involves familial dynamics, Filice et al. (2020) distinguish constructs of intimacy from the nuclear family unit—a distinction noted by these authors as recent since not all familial structures hold connotations of intimacy and not all intimate relationships are within the nuclear family unit— with intimacy in interpersonal relations that hold varying degrees of closeness and proximity to one another in terms of mutuality. This is echoed by Jamieson (2011, cited in Filice et al., 2020, p. 4), who defines intimacy as the quality of close connection between people and the process of building this quality. Although there may be no universal definition, intimate relationships are a type of personal relationships that are subjectively experienced and may also be socially recognized as close. The quality of “closeness” that is indicated by intimacy can be emotional and cognitive, with subjective experiences including a feeling of mutual love, being “of like mind” and special to each other. (p. 4)

Importantly, for the purposes of the current study, the “quality of “closeness” is notable in how close individuals allow one another to be in proximity of one another emotionally and cognitively and the level of intensity of the bonds that develop between subjects. In this sense, intimacy can overlap with romantic love in how intimacy involves an appropriate amount of closeness and distance to develop, with too much distance between individuals preventing the development of intimacy and too much closeness potentially scaring away one member of the intimate pattern. Through this, notions of intimacy are highly connected to psychoanalytic theorizations of “attachment” or attachment theories, which are connected to one’s childhood relation between themselves and a primary caregiver (typically theorized as a mother figure) (Ainsworth, 1969; Bowlby, 1958; Johnson, 2013). The relevance of these theories for this thesis will be explained below. As well, the commonplace equivalence between intimacy and connections is necessary to conceptualize in how GSSAs, particularly Grindr, promote “connection” under the assumption that connection means more intimacy and relations with other gay men (Goldenberg, 2019; Race, 2015). Theorists, such as Anthony Giddens (1992) and Zygmunt Bauman (2003), have investigated patterns of intimacy development and romantic love and how such developments are affected by structures, such as late capitalism, neoliberalism, and the postmodern era. Giddens (1992) notes how in the postmodern era and with the emergence of discourses of sexual liberation and feminism, the self has become a self-reflexive project. He also notes how romantic love is “essentially feminised love” (pp. 44–45). Importantly, Giddens notes the fragility of romantic relationships in late modernity as he theorizes how a “pure relationship” is one that features a mutual satisfaction between romantic partners, shared exploration, mutual trust, and self-reflection (see also Tucker, 1998). This is important in how Giddens believes that modern love has become more democratic and freer from prior patriarchal constructions of romantic love that might have held notions of dependency and control (Giddens, 1992; Tucker, 1998). Notable in Giddens analysis is the feminization of “traditional” romantic love and how romantic love based on emotional dependency is seen as negative. The feminisation of emotional dependency is important for my own analysis in how those who are seen as not complying by the rules of modern love by allowing intimate freedom for their romantic partners or by demanding too much closeness, particularly through dominant constructions of masculinities, are seen as failing the

34 demand for emotional regulation and fluidity in late modern notions of love and relationships (Bauman, 2003; Davies, 2017, 2019; Licoppe, 2020). Prominent sociological theorist, Zygmunt Bauman (2003), describes the condition of romantic relationships and love in his writings on Liquid Love, drawing from his worn on liquid modernity. Within liquid modernity, individuals live in a constant state of modernization and individualization, where their own inner ability to define themselves against group norms and to focus on their individual self-pleasures is at a greater state than ever (Bauman, 2000). In these times of continual modernization, which Bauman writes as the early twentieth-century, individuals can continue to re-define and re-shape themselves and their very subjectivities according to the market as they live in continual fear of exclusion, isolation, and constant insecurity (Benzer & Reed, 2019). These constant anxieties and fears feed into a culture of liquid love where relationships are continually temporary as partners enter and leave at their own whim without the commitment or security that defined relationships before late modernity (Bauman, 2003). In this sense, individuals can attach and detach without consideration for the other parties involved in the romantic relationship and expected to continually self-regulate and protect their emotions and feelings in order to be able to move from one romantic relationship to the next. Bauman (2003) specifically conceptualizes how modern technology is involved in the liquidification of love. Focusing on online dating and websites for meeting potential romantic partners, Bauman states how the internet cultivates a culture of “termination on demand” whereby users can block other individuals without consequence or ramifications. For this reason, online dating can create a cultural environment of anxiety where users are constantly uncertain of their connections with others and budding romantic relationships are filled with the doubt of being replaced. While Giddens’s (1992) and Bauman’s (2003) works focused predominately on heterosexual dynamics, their theorizations are important for understanding gay men’s online dating and hooking-up through how late modernity and individualism has infiltrated the romantic formation processes of all individuals. Before describing gay men’s online and hook-up cultures, it is necessary to describe both psychoanalytic theorizations of attachment and how these theories are relevant for gay men. Psychoanalyst, John Bowlby (1958) intervened in prior individualistic psychoanalytic theorizing, such as that of Sigmund Freud, to theorize the importance of young infants’ early relationships with their primary caregiver—depicted at the time always as the mother figure—in terms of their

35 later levels of emotional security and trust for other figures in the various relationships in their lives. Bowlby’s work provided a specific intervention into child rearing approaches in the first- half of the twentieth century that privileged emotional depravation by encouraging young infants to develop emotional self-regulation through neglect (Johnson, 2013). Expanding upon Bowlby’s work, later theorists, such as Mary Ainsworth (1969), created three attachment styles that are imprinted during early years interactions between the primary caregiver and infant: anxious- avoidant, secure, and anxious-pre-occupied. These three attachment styles have become popularized in late twentieth and early twenty-first century writings on love and intimacy (Brogaard, 2015; Johnson, 2013; Levine & Heller, 2012) to describe the typical dynamics that emerge both in the early stages of dating and long-term romantic relationships. While this thesis does not take a psychological perspective or analyze the different attachment styles of participants, the importance of attachment theory within modern romantic love is necessary to conceptualize, particularly as it pertains to the “anxious-pre-occupied style,” an attachment style where an individual requires much reassurance, is considered overly “attached” to their potential romantic partner, and fantasizes about romance and intimacy (Levine & Heller, 2012). Under neoliberal individualist discourses, romantic relationships are commonly regarded as the joining of two “complete” and “secure” individuals who do not require too much reassurance and are able to regulate and contain their affections and romantic feelings for one another at an appropriate pace. Levine and Heller (2012) specifically note how attachment and emotional dependency are pathologized in modern intimacies as the individual who is considered overly dependent or who attaches quicker than the other partner(s) is seen as needy and unconfident. In particular, writing on modern romantic love and intimacy has described how self-advice columns and books attempt to encourage women to regulate their desire for emotional validation and deep connection in order to appear “confident” (e.g., Gill & Orgad, 2015). I see how these discourses apply to gay men, particularly through the focus on “Pride” and individual self-confidence through queer liberal discourses, which I explicate in my theoretical frameworks section. Psychoanalytic theories on romantic attachment are useful in their foundations in childhood experiences of intimacy. Throughout this thesis, I conceptualize romantic love, particularly in terms of a long-term romantic relationship, as an object that individuals might use Grindr and other GSSAs to strive towards. While there are various reasons for why individuals

36 might use an app for a myriad of connections that are sought out, the participants in this study predominately described using these apps under the hopes that it would lead to a longer-term romantic relationship as the ultimate end goal. In the first two data chapters, I engage with how emotional attachment—broadly defined as the closeness and proximity of emotional intimacy between two people—is regulated through GSSAs and even potentially seen as a disruption to an individual’s sense of self and autonomy. In my data chapter employing Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality, I take emotional attachment and intimacy as something to be regulated through the interpersonal interactions of subjects online. In this sense, I conceptualize how the subjects in my study imagined emotional attachment and investment as holding potentially harmful ramifications. In my data chapter employing Kristeva’s (1982) writings on abjection, I theorize how emotional attachment and investment in other app users leads to rejection and an individual’s feelings of their sense of self being threatened. In my last chapter employing Ahmed’s writings on affective economies and the “promise” of happiness, I write how romantic relationships are considered an object to be desired by some subjects online, and what happens when the promises of such an object fail. Ultimately, what is necessary to understanding is how my usage of emotional attachment and investment are not differentiated in this thesis. While there are many psychological and psychoanalytical writings that differentiate between these terms and their diverse histories, such as the writings of Mary Ainsworth (1969), I do not differentiate these terms to follow along with my participants’ colloquial usage of these terms. As I will explain in the following chapters, it is also necessary to understand how within GSSAs, emotional attachment and investment is commonly discouraged so that individuals can move quickly from one potential partner to the next while protecting their own levels of emotional vulnerability and intimacy with others (Licoppe, 2020).

Researcher Positionality Growing up, I always knew I would eventually identify as a gay man. I waited for the day when I could openly identify my sexual orientation without hesitation, as well as hopefully find a partner who would love me and whom I would love in return. I dreamt of finding a boyfriend and entering a world where I would be happily in a long-term relationship, potentially get married, and live my perceived “ideal” life. These heteronormative fantasies infiltrated my childhood dreams; I hoped I would become a handsome man and find myself in a romantic

37 dream. Growing up in suburban southwestern Ontario just outside of Toronto, my life was centred within suburban domestic norms. I wanted to find a partner who would marry me, find a nice home on a lovely court similar to the one where I grew up, cultivate a nice backyard, look after my home, and eventually have children. I thought these were reasonable expectations to have. Coming out at age nineteen while living in Waterloo, Ontario, I entered the gay community at a time when the popularity of GSSAs, particularly Grindr, was quickly growing. As Grindr had been around for several years upon the time of my coming out, it had gained a significant following amongst other gay men. I quickly learned that especially in smaller cities, using these apps was an easy way to see who else around you was interested in men sexually and romantically. Interested in starting to meet other guys to go on dates, I downloaded the application and became introduced to its infamous “grid” screen. Upon entering the local gay dating scene through Grindr, I quickly noticed trends that I did not anticipate. Individuals seemed much more interested in casual sex (particularly anonymous exchanges) than dating; “ghosting” or disappearing through reading and not responding became more and more frequent and my own anxiety levels began to increase. Moving from being a relatively confident and self-assured individual to higher rates of anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt, my encounters with Grindr featured much disappointment, heartbreak, and unease as I attempted to maneuver the sexual and dating norms of online hook-up cultures. As I continued dating, fears of abandonment haunted my own romantic relationships. Technology became a central feature in both how I found romantic partners, and my fears within relationships as well. My own anxiety levels led me to being framed frequently as a “demanding” or “needy” partner in terms of the amount of affirmation and communication I would ask for. Was it that I was “too much?” Many of my friends would reiterate to me that if I couldn’t “love myself,” no one would love me; a sentiment the drag queen RuPaul famously articulates at the end of every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Eventually, I started to question my own “rationality,” wondering if I was being too sentimental about love and romance. Within my romantic relationships, I felt that I was carrying much of the emotional labour and was often in the “feminized” subject position, hystericized for my own emotions. Once introduced to queer theory, I began to conceptualize the heteronormativity embedded within much of what I had been imagining and dreaming of since childhood, as well

38 as how heteronormative structures regulate norms for romantic intimacy and sexuality. Still, much of the theory I was reading did not seem to take into consideration “feelings” or emotions, or the fact that sexuality is emotional. In particular, much of gay men’s sexual cultures have been formulated around notions of anonymous sexual exchanges without consideration for sexual ethics, relationality, or emotions. Much of the queer theory I was reading, particularly that of white gay men, seemed to only consider sexual pleasure or jouissance, which appeared to be a very individual affair. Reflecting on this, I wondered if everything I had believed about my own sexuality and what I desired from life was actually inherently problematic. Bringing romance, intimacy, or feelings into the conversation of sexuality brought many of my gay friends” backs up as well, with many informing me how holding any emotional connotations to sex beyond individual pleasure means reinforcing heteronormative ideas regarding sexuality. Frustratingly, I found myself feeling as though I was a problem for getting emotionally attached to others through my sexuality and that my feelings were too much for my partners. Moreover, my lack of interest in over-engaging with gay hook-up cultures made me feel as though I was on the fringes of mainstream gay cultures. Often, individuals on Grindr and similar applications would tell me that I should not be on these apps if I did not want to hook-up, and that these applications are not for those who want long-term relationships. Not only did I feel like a “sissy” outside of gay communities and cultures due to my own effeminate self- expression, but within gay communities I commonly felt as though I was a “failure” or a “failed” gay due to my inability to “control” my feelings and romantic attachments during sexual interactions. Eventually, I began noticing a rising number of queer individuals identifying with traditional traits of femininity that are typically devalued and denigrating; identifying as “femme.” “Femme” spoke to me as a man who has historically been devalued for enacting tropes of traditional femininity within my own embodied expression, as well as the manner I convey myself affectively. Feeling as though my gender expression marked me as a “failure,” I saw myself within mimicry, as a failed representation and a stereotype gone wrong. In a sense, I saw femininity—particularly my affective femininity, including softness and sensitivity—as a core component of myself and my self-expression (Davies, 2020). Using GSSAs for individual affirmation and connecting with other individuals is not an uncommon experience amongst gay men. Ultimately, my own experiences with seeking

39 connections and intimacies with these apps is what drove my interest in this project. Due to the omnipresence of Grindr in the lives of many gay men, as well as its normalization as an everyday component of our daily schedule (one of my participants noted how he wakes up, checks Instagram, Facebook, and Grindr as a daily “breakfast” of apps), I became curious about the types of connections guys were creating via Grindr. Additionally, I was interested in the sociocultural implications of the kinds of connections privileged online. How were some forms of intimacies and connections seen as more desirable or involved in gendered hierarchies that exist in GSSAs?

A Note on Identificatory Terminology Within this thesis, participants are identified using the respective identificatory information provided at the beginning of each interview (ethno-racial identity, gender identity, disability, sexuality, age, etc.). This was a tension within my research in terms of ensuring that I do not reproduce the same violent “biocentric classificatory terms” that Jamaican philosopher, Sylvia Wynter (2003, p. 294) describes, which rely on Westernized modernist knowledges that reproduce the binaries that Western metaphysics rely upon and the binary between the western bourgeois Man as the dominant idea of the human and his foils, all the liminal beings like the African human, the negro, the native, the subaltern, the stateless, the immigrant without documents, and the Third-World woman, excluded from the possibility of cultural and historical development. (Karavanta, 2015, p. 157)

Thinking with these identificatory and classificatory terms in my project became a way to avoid reinforcing a flat ontology where my participants’ respective identities were silenced while also not wishing to reinforce the bio-centric notion of humanism that Sylvia Wynter describes. Wynter (2003) notes how the biocentric classificatory organizing structures of modern identities continue to marginalize the “Black Other of sub-Saharan Africans (and their Diaspora descendants)” (p. 267). Such structures of racial hierarchies reinforce the dominance of the bourgeois “Man” who represents the idealized human subject of the modern Enlightenment and modernist episteme: With this population group’s systemic stigmatization, social inferiorization, and dynamically produced material deprivation thereby serving both to “verify” the overrepresentation of Man as if it were the human, and to legitimate the subordination of the world and well-being of the latter to those of the former. (Wynter, 2003, p. 267)

In Grindr and other GSSAs interfaces, the applications ask users to list various descriptive terms for themselves, as well as quantify themselves by placing their weight, height, and “stats” about themselves. Sociologist Brandon Robinson (2016) calls this the “quantifiable body discourse” on Grindr whereby users rely on scientific, quantitative measurements to describe other users and assess the attractiveness and desirability and discipline their own bodies to ascertain hegemonic norms. Through how subjects perform their embodied selves online, certain identificatory terms are fixed to their subjectivity and constituted (which Grindr terms “tribes”).8 Titchkosky (2003) notes how identity is intertwined with embodiment in “how the body shapes identity, how identity shapes the body, and how both have something to teach us about culture and its values” (p. 28). While I chose to ask participants’ their own identities and to collect these data, the tensions of working within and against the very biocentric terms that Grindr produces through its reliance on classificatory terms (and how users can “filter” through different users based on such terms) remained a tension in my work. However, in listing the identity information provided to me during interviews for each participant, I hope to challenge much social science research on gay men that uses the term “gay” in a universalizing manner that resorts back to centering white gay men at the center. Still, I acknowledge how listing this identity information can, as Shields (2019) notes drawing from Fanon (1952) in his ethnographic work of immigrants’ experiences on Grindr in Copenhagen, ‘fix’ identities to the bodies of subjects and holds essentialist connotations. Still, by listing the identities of each of my participants, I seek to bring forward each participants’ subjectivity and de-center a universalizing social scientific gaze that resorts to whiteness instantaneously. However, this process is imperfect, and these tensions are necessary to note.

8 Greater detail on the “tribes” function on Grindr is given later in the thesis. Most participants did not formally identify themselves with a “tribe” when giving identity information at the beginning of their interview but would casually refer to themselves and others during interviews by the tribe they most likely belong to (i.e. “bear,” “twink,” “jock,” etc.).

Chapter Two: Theoretical Frameworks

The following section describes the main theoretical frameworks I draw from for my research. My project, broadly speaking, draws from the fields of queer theory, affect theory, and critical masculinities studies. Each of these frameworks are defined in the following sections along with their various similarities and divergences. I avoid neatly separating each of these frameworks because the specific schools of thought I draw from, such as psychoanalytic and queer theory, interact with and assemble one another. As will become clear, much of my project is focused on the ways in which subjects identify and disidentify affectively with gay communities through gay socio-sexual applications (GSSA). The work investigates the cultural politics of emotions and feelings, specifically as they operate through my participants’ use of the “Grindr” application. Psychoanalytic frameworks for understanding subject formation have been critiqued for being too individualistic (Hepburn, 2003), patriarchal (De Beauvoir, 1949), and in service of the capitalist state (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004/1972). For this reason, I employ queer, poststructural, and feminist psychoanalytic frameworks (Butler, 1990, 1993, 1997a, 1997b; Kristeva, 1982) to avoid such individualistic tendencies. I focus specifically on how subjects navigate discourses that constitute them within GSSAs. Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality, Kristeva’s (1982) writing on abjection and Ahmed’s (2004a, 2010a) notion of affective economies were also useful in my conceptualization of normative gay sexual subjectivities within GSSAs. Each theorization provides a different lens to theorize subjectivities. As lenses through which to look at the regulation of subjects’ emotional and affective connections and intimacies, affect and intimacy become critical for understanding normative gay sexual subjectivities in GSSAs. Through the regulation of intimate connections, which I theorize through Foucault’s (1991) writing on governmentality, individuals are able to present themselves as rational subjects who regulate and monitor their emotional connections and intimacies with others in online dating and hook-up cultures. The normative gay subject becomes one who protects himself from emotional harms and risks by refraining from emotionally attaching to sexual partners. Kristeva’s (1982) writing on abjection and Eribon’s (2004) writing on the centrality of insults to normative gay subjectivities offers a way to consider how normative notions of gay subjectivities are formed through their exclusion from dominant structures of heterosexuality. Through gay men’s

45 46 abjection from heteromasculinity and dominant heteronormative institutions, many men are placed between competing heteronormative notions of monogamy, marriage, and domesticity, and norms within gay communities for emotional compartmentalization, hyper-masculinity, and hook-up cultures. Abjection becomes central to the formation of the gay self through the subject’s failure to become included within either of these discursive formations, making exclusion a defining feature of gay subjectivities. In the sixth chapter, I discuss Ahmed’s (2004b) notion of affective economies and the “promise” of happiness (Ahmed, 2010a, 2010b) to theorize how gay men’s usage of technology, specifically apps, is commonly an orientation towards a promise—whether a hook-up, belonging, or romance—and that it is this promise that binds users to apps. I strive, throughout this chapter, to highlight the relevance of each theory for this project, as well as to explain how they assist with understanding the constitution of gay subjectivities within GSSAs. It is important to note that I consider this a theoretical assemblage of sorts, a coming together of different theories in all their divergences. While I use all these theories throughout my thesis, I rely on some to a heavier degree than others but, yet, all have shaped and informed my thinking. Along the way, I have inserted pieces of data to illustrate my usage of these theories and how they have informed my own thinking with my data.

Gay Men and Gay Socio-Sexual Apps (GSSAs) Gay men’s dating and hook-up cultures are commonly described as a “game” (Marshall, 2018; Tziallas, 2015). Users must choose the right profile photo, self-regulate how they convey themselves, and mediate their interactions through different communicative scripts depending on the type of intimacy or relationship desired (Licoppe, 2020). The commodification of love, or participation in what Laurie Essig (2019) terms “Love Inc.,” through dating apps, is not a new trend. With this being said, Essig (2019) notes, Grindr—the most popular gay socio-sexual app—does not base its promotion off promises for love and romance. Unlike more heterosexual marketed apps, Grindr bases its marketing off the idea that it provides “connection” for queer people (in its original formation, it was solely catered to gay, bisexual, and queer men). “Connection” within Grindr often denotes a more casual form of connection instead of a long- term relationship. Grindr does not advertise itself as only promising romantic love, although users can indicate “long-term relationships” as one of many “looking for” options provided.

However, despite its promises for connection, users report much dissatisfaction and ambivalence with Grindr (Conner, 2019; Goldberg, 2020; Miller, 2015b; Woo, 2013). Much of the research literature on Grindr indicates how this reported frustration arises from the highly sexualized environment of Grindr that features high levels of sexual self- objectification, described as forms of self-surveillance, monitoring, and regulation of one’s embodied appearance and persona through comparisons with other users (Filice et al., 2019; Tziallas, 2015). This environment orients users towards predominately seeking anonymous casual sexual encounters over longer-term romantic relationships (Licoppe, 2020; Zervoullis et al., 2019). For example, Woo (2015) notes that users’ frustrations with Grindr might have to do with the failure of the app to deliver on its promise of connection, and that such a failure might be due to the “mismatched needs” of users (p. 64). In their study of how gay dating app usage impacted individual sense of belonging and well-being within gay communities in the UK, Zervoullis et al. (2019) found that those who used gay dating apps to find casual sex felt a higher level of belonging and acceptance in gay communities, widely speaking. This was contrasted with those who used dating apps to find long-term romantic partners; these individuals felt disconnected to gay culture and held lower senses of community, well-being, and belonging. This finding is repeated in other research literature on gay men’s cultures and communities (e.g. Tigert, 2019), as well as in Aitken’s (2017) ethnographic study of gay men who use Grindr in Ottawa, Canada. Results of Aitken’s study indicated that romantic intimacy and the search for romantic relationships is pathologized and devalued by many Grindr users through discourses that present those who seek romance through Grindr as “failing” the dominant socio-sexual orientation of the app. Ultimately, what this research illustrates is that the intent and purpose for Grindr usage (i.e. what one seeks from their usage of Grindr) can impact one’s sense of belonging in gay communities, both physically and virtually. Within messaging platforms and applications—whether Grindr, similar GSSAs, or texting platforms such as iMessage or Facebook Messenger—users can manipulate their textual communication with others in order to subliminally communicate certain affective and intimate messages. For example, the usage of emojis, or “the set of picture characters that people use to punctuate their online correspondence” (Seargeant, 2019, p. 3), are common tools deployed on online messaging and socio-sexual platforms to indicate emotional states, and ways of expressing one’s self that might not be clear via texting. In 2017, Grindr released “Gaymojis,” or

48 a line of emojis specifically designed with gay men’s cultures in mind. “Gaymojis” utilize sexualized phrases and images frequently deployed in gay men’s communities. These include: “Into?” or asking what an individual’s sexual preferences are, arrows pointing up and down to indicate what one’s preferred sexual position is for anal sex, or eggplants and peaches, indicating one’s penis or butt, respectively. Moses’s (2018) research into emoji usage on Grindr illustrates how, for many gay men, the usage of emojis conveys the type of intimacy sought out by an individual. As such, deployment of highly sexualized emojis are a tool for users to express sexual interest in another user and to turn the conversation into a more highly sexualized manner. Similarly, texting frequency, content, and response rate are all indicators that individuals use to gauge another level of romantic and/or sexual interest, the type of intimacy sought out, and the level of emotional connection developing (Hall, 2016, 2017; Hall & Baym, 2012; Mannell, 2017, 2019; Stempfhuber & Liegl, 2016). These everyday relational “affordances,” or the relational possibilities and potential uses of a digital technology (Race, 2015; Shaw & Sender, 2016), are noted in the research on social networking applications (Bucher & Helmond, 2017; David & Cambre, 2016). Some of this research specifically focuses on relational affordances through Grindr (Aunspach, 2020; Licoppe, 2020; Licoppe et al., 2016; Race, 2015). A user can decide what they are seeking to then advertise their respective platform through the various relational affordances and possibilities an application might offer (i.e. romantic relationships, casual sex, friendships, etc.). However, as noted by some recent literature (Aitken, 2017; Hobbs et al., 2017), the socio-sexual cultures surrounding Grindr privileges anonymous sexual encounters and shorter, transactional sexualized connections. Within modern dating dynamics, particularly in dating dynamics, there has become a style of emotional attachment where users are expected to connect and disconnect from potential romantic partners with ease (Licoppe, 2020). Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (2000, 2003) theorizes how we are living in a “liquid society” in late modernity, particularly one of “liquid love.” Within his theory, he distinguishes between “connections” and “relationships.” Connections indicate quicker, one-time interactions while romantic relationships, themselves, become “liquified” so that individuals can enter and leave them with few consequences by attaching and detaching quickly to individuals (discussed and cited in Licoppe, 2020). According to Licoppe (2020), the sexual and linguistic norms on Grindr encourage utilitarian forms of interpersonal communication, as emotionally deeper communication could promote the

49 opportunity for longer-term intimacies to emerge. It was these longer-term intimacies that most participants in Licoppe’s (2020) research did not wish to seek out through Grindr. For example, as Hall and Baym’s (2012) research notes, high frequencies of texting and response rates between individuals can cultivate feelings of “entrapment” whereby feelings of obligation emerge due to previously established communication patterns. These can create higher levels of emotional dependency and less autonomy within relational dynamics. Within the gendered dynamics of romantic relationships, emotional independence and compartmentalization between romantic and sexual connections is privileged and considered highly masculinized amongst gay men (Martino, 2006; Tillapaugh, 2013). As a result, conceptualizing one’s sexuality as an intimate and emotional experiences can be feminized amongst gay men’s communities, particularly if one’s sexuality includes emotional intimacy and discussing feelings (Elder et al., 2015). It is necessary to understand how users of GSSAs, such as Grindr, are encouraged to engage in emotional regulation so as to avoid “catching feelings” or getting emotionally attached to sexual partners and individuals who they chat with online.

Emotion Work and “Feeling Rules” on Grindr Arlie Hochschild’s (1979) theorization of “feeling rules” and “emotion work” are useful to draw on in conceptualizing how individuals on Grindr regulate their emotional connections with other users and conform with the affective norms online. Hochschild (1979) defines “feeling rules,” as the socio-cultural norms for emotions and specific “rules” which are given for how to feel in a given situation. These “feeling rules” are contrasted from “emotion work,” which is the individual work that subjects have to engage with in order to change how they feel towards a socially expected and accepted manner (Hochschild, 1979). Hochschild provides a useful example of differing forms of “feeling rules” in unique social contexts with the example of the “old fashioned bride” and the “flower child.” For the “old fashioned bride,” on her wedding day, working on her feelings involves conforming her emotional state to the gendered social norm that for a woman, her wedding is the “happiest day ever.” In order to conform her emotions to such a feeling rule, the bride described by Hochschild has to push through all the stress and anxiety she encounters on her wedding day. She does this with the goal of reaching a place where she convinces herself she is the happiest she has ever been. In comparison, the “flower child” is involved in the “free love” scene, where she has sexual relationships with

50 friends who are all in the same social group and falls in love with one man, in particular. Despite desiring to be the only sexual partner of the man she loves, she feels jealous knowing that her friend is having a sexual relationship with him. Still, she knows that the “feeling rule” for their social group is to not feel or express jealousy or any “claim” over one individual. Therefore, she has to “work” on her emotional state so that she does not express any jealousy over the man she loves. Through Hochschild’s theories, it is clear how norms for feelings vary contextually, and therefore individuals must work on their own emotional states in order to align themselves with social norms. Hochschild’s theories provide a further lens alongside Foucault’s (2008) governmentality to understand how Grindr users might “work” on their emotions to prevent themselves from becoming overly emotionally attached to one particular user in accordance with the “feeling rules” of Grindr. As noted, Grindr offers a plethora of potential users to connect with, which can make it seem like there are endless possibilities for connection (Licoppe, 2020; Woo, 2013). Through this vast quantity of available users, becoming attached to one user in particular might seem against the norm of “limitless possibilities” or the “liquid” culture of Grindr (Licoppe, 2020), and could present a risk of being emotionally hurt through rejection. I bring Hochschild in conversation with Foucault9 to analyze how emotional regulation on Grindr takes place in accordance with the “feeling rules” online. Now, I turn to a description of connections between neoliberalism and gay masculinities as it pertains to the usage of GSSAs.

Neoliberalism and Gay Masculinities Online Scholars in masculinities studies have investigated how the productions of masculinities for gay men involves navigating the relationships and connections between gendered hierarchies and same-sex attraction (Connell, 1992, 1995; Edwards, 1994, 2005; Martino, 2006). Connell (1995) describes how gay masculinities are subjugated and deemed subordinate within gendered hierarchies in Western societies. Yet, gay men still, according to Connell, exist in an ambiguous state in relationship to their masculinity, particularly with the recent emphasis on masculinity as a form of capital and pride amongst gay men. Modern scholars of gay masculinities are beginning to challenge the notion that all gay men are equally subjugated and experience

9 I acknowledge the disciplinary distinction between Foucault as a French poststructural philosopher and Hochschild’s work, as an American sociologist. However, I find both their theoretical orientations helpful in conceptualizing how Grindr users might regulate their interactions with other users through norms.

51 structures of hegemonic masculinity in the same fashion (Almaguer, 2011; Edwards, 1994, 2005; Jowett, 2010; Nardi, 2000). Emerging research indicates how gay men might actually reinforce elements of hegemonic masculinity while also reproducing neoliberalism through the commodification and marketization of gay masculinities (Kong, 2019a, 2019b; O’Brien, 2017; Rumens & Ozturk, 2019; Speice, 2019; Yep & Elia, 2012). For example, in Speice’s (2019) research regarding gay men’s gender and sexuality identity management strategies in the workplace, the author describes how the gay men interviewed in his study commonly attempt to de-emphasize their “gayness” in order to approximate heteronormative ideals for masculinity. This focus on heteronormative masculinities as the ideal standard for gay men is emphasized in other research which describes how gay men attempt to distance themselves from their sexuality identity. This has been shown to serve a variety of purposes, such as achieving higher success in the workplace (Rumens & Ozturk, 2019), or sexualizing and commodifying the self in order to gain socio- cultural status within gay communities (Ahlm, 2017; Bonner-Thompson, 2017). The deployment of different performances of masculinities by gay men in order to gain gay cultural and social status is often strategic. Whether it is within gay cultural spaces, such as socio-sexual applications, or within the workplace, these tactics are deployed through neoliberal logics of self- promotion and individual success in order to gain social and/or economic status (Kong, 2019b; Searle, 2015). Notably, these logics demand regulating the invisibility of one’s queerness which, in Speice’s (2019) study, entailed gay men becoming an “Okay Gay” or a “regular” gay guy whose masculinity does not put his sexuality in question. When considering productions of gay masculinities, it is important to note the gendered dimensions of affect and emotion, or how emotional intimacies and connections become gendered. This is relevant for how gay men navigate socio-sexual spaces, as interpersonal communication is often negotiated through gendered scripts that reinforce binaries and normative notions of interpersonal communication. These discourses generally construct women as more romantic, nurturing, affectionate, and expressive with their emotions while men might negotiate discourses that position them as reserved, compartmentalized, and emotionally distant (Cancian, 1986; Comunello et al., 2017). Even “self-help” dating books aimed at women often encourage women to disavow their “neediness” and emotional insecurities in order to appear more confident and self-assured (Gill & Orgad, 2015, 2017). As such, emotional insecurity and

52 needs become gendered and seen as feminizing. These gendered discourses influence how gay men interact with one another online and the types of intimacies which men desire, commonly placing gay men’s sexual scripts through a “sex first” and “emotional intimacy” later fashion (Enguix & Narváez, 2018; Kong, 2019a, 2019b; McKie et al., 2019). Users who do not regulate their emotional connection and attachment to other users online or to their hook-ups that they meet through Grindr are placed outside of the norms demanded by neoliberal productions of gay masculinities (Aitken, 2017; Kong, 2019b). Such productions of masculinities encourage app users to conduct their interactions with other users without deeper emotional intimacy (Aitken, 2017; Bonner-Thompson, 2017). As described by Edwards (2005), these norms might result from normative constructions of gay masculinities during the Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s, which focused on the gay “clone” archetype: the clone donned a stereotypically masculine appearance and practiced a stereotypically masculine sexuality that was divorced from emotional commitment and intimacy, a form of sexual expression so minimal that even conversation could destroy it. This was, of course, precisely its appeal, the emotionally risk-free, pared-down, and butt-naked excitement: pure, exposed and throbbing—the cock stripped bare. (p. 57, emphasis added)

These forms of socio-sexual norms continue within modern gay hook-up cultures and socio-sexual applications. The privileging of emotional regulation is done in order to increase the excitement of the encounter and to discourage emotional commitment or intimacy, as these goals are considered desexualizing. Licoppe et al.’s (2016) research on Grindr usage as an “interactional achievement” illustrates how Grindr users consume one another as “prey,” considering the consumption of other users as an accomplishment for individual sexual pleasure. Licoppe et al. (2016) describe specifically how “the dominant use of Grindr involves an orientation towards the production of encounters as soon as possible, leading to fast sexual gratification and without any relational follow-up” (p. 2548). In Licoppe’s (2020) later work, he draws from Gagnon and Simon’s (1973) work on “sexual scripts” to specifically denote the normative sexual scripts that Grindr users engage with. He states: (a) the sexual encounter involves unknown strangers, who are attractive in part because they are strangers; (b) these potential partners are apprehended through a set of objectified attributes and characteristics (pictures, profiles, sexual preferences, etc.); (c) the sexual encounter is expected to be short-lived, with no repeat, and thus [does] not develop into a relationship or lead to personal entanglements (of course this may happen,

but it is a rather rare and unexpected occurrence which then develops into something else altogether). Such a script carves an ideal type for a very particular case of social encounter, in which participants display an ostensive lack of interest in the development of any form of relationship. It is this which precisely makes it possible to view such encounters as “purely” sexual “connections,” as opposed to more “social” relationship- oriented, attachment-building encounters. (p. 74)

Critical masculinities scholars, such as Connell (1995) and Messerschmidt (2018), explore men’s emotional self-management practices by investigating and drawing attention to the relationship between hegemonic masculinities and notions of “cartesian restraint.” The Cartesian divide between mind and body, as infamously theorized by philosopher Rene Descartes (De Boise, 2016), informs many common understandings of masculinity today. These scholars discuss how the divide manifests through the demand that men restrain their emotional responses within their social worlds and regulate their emotional expression and behaviours (Connell, 1995; Messerschmidt, 2018). The Cartesian divide locates human willpower, existence, and being in the mind by discarding the body and viewing the body as simply the “container” of the mind (Paechter, 2006). However, the dualisms and binaries which Cartesian thought encourage are not equal. The binaries are hierarchical, as Paechter (2006) illustrates, with one half denoting existence and the other half equaling nothingness. These divides and hierarchies hold gendered and racial implications, with whiteness and masculinity being associated with rationality and emotional self-control, and racialization (specifically blackness) and femininity being associated with emotionality, a lack of regulation, and hysteria (Ussher, 2006; Wynter, 2003). This gendered binary between men as rational agents and women as irrational or hysteric posits stems from 19th century medicine and the gendered conception of women as incapable of regulating their feelings and biologically and/or psychologically more predisposed to mental distress (Ussher, 2006). Such gendered divides are reproduced in same-sex relations amongst men. In this relational context, emotional expression and displays of emotions that are deemed feminized (i.e. sentimentality, sadness, romanticism) threaten one’s sense of masculinity and provide an opportunity for emasculating epithets, such as “sissy” (Elder et al., 2015). It is important to conceptualize how gay men might reinforce these gendered binaries and conceptions, particularly when it comes to interpersonal interactions and emotional expression, instead of challenging them. As described by De Boise (2016):

It became not enough to “have” a male body to be considered masculine and it was through the exercise of so-called Cartesian restraint that divisions between men were enforced. The construction of a normative, “ideal,” unemotional male body (singular) was therefore achieved at the expense of “savage,” “animalistic” and “feminised” male bodies. (pp. 50–51)

Thus, subjects who are deemed “too emotional” (commonly racialized and feminized bodies who might be responding to instances of structural racism and/or misogyny—(see Davies, 2017; Lorde, 1984/2012; Traister, 2018), are considered failing to perform the demands of Cartesian rationalism and are subordinated within gendered and racialized hierarchies. Bordo (1986) describes the “masculinization of thought” beginning in the seventeenth century when the modern notions of rationality and the emergence of empiricism began as a way to devalue femininity by associating men and masculinity with objectivity, detachment, and emotional distance. Through the privileging of Cartesian rationalism in Western society by dominant knowledges and epistemological frameworks, and its gendered understandings, hierarchies of humanness emerge whereby women are associated with emotionality and hysteria (Ussher, 2006) and racialized men with hyper sexuality and savagery (Hill Collins, 1990), while white men are defined and constructed as the ideal subject, one defined by cold rationality and emotional distance (Connell, 1995; Lloyd, 1979, 2002). This is necessary to conceptualize how users of GSSAs navigate their interpersonal interactions with other users through a gendered lens which potentially equates distance and coldness with masculinity and emotional attachment and romanticism with femininity. These “feelings” have socio-cultural implications.

Governmentality Michel Foucault (1991) describes governmentality as a form of self-governance that takes the population as its target and the creation of the modern autonomous sovereign self- governing subject as its goal (see also Lemke, 2001). Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality conceptualizes that subjects learn to internalize certain codes of conduct seemingly “freely” by monitoring and regulating themselves, therefore establishing a relationship between the constitution of subjectivity and power. The self-governing subject is created and placed in an inextricable relationship to power where they must learn to govern themselves through an “ensemble of practices,” which Foucault describes as the “art” and means of how individuals learn to self-regulate and govern themselves. As a result, any subjects who

55 are not considered “self-governing” and “autonomous,” or those who engage in “risky” behaviours, become subject to state-intervention and pathologization. (Foucault, 1982, 1991; see also, Dean, 2009; McKie et al., 2019; Race, 2009). For subjects to “governmentally” surveil themselves, they must self-monitor and self-govern their behaviours and presentation to others and themselves. The normalization of internal forms of self-regulation and self-discipline are key to governmentality. By assessing the self through discourses of self-esteem and self-respect, individuals are expected to govern their behaviours in accordance with neoliberal norms for individuality and autonomy. Though subjects may feel that they “freely” choose to act, this choice actually conforms to greater neoliberal norms for subjectivity (Lorenzini, 2018; Rose, 1998). Read (2009) explicates that “as a form of governmentality, neoliberalism would seem paradoxically to govern without governing; that is, in order to function its subjects must have a great deal of freedom to act—to choose between competing strategies” (p. 29). Importantly, this indicates how choice logics are critical to governmentality, as individuals must feel they are making their decisions autonomously while actually choosing to act through the internalization of societal norms. For example, it has been noted how public health officials commonly target the sexualities of gay men by denoting their sexual practices as deviant and in need of intervention, particularly for those men who “bareback” or engage in condomless sex (Adam, 2005; Dean, 2009). Subjects who freely choose to wear a condom during sex, for example, may be acting on the influence of neoliberal capitalist notions of personal responsibility and individual choice which places responsibility on the individual to make the appropriate decisions to manage their own individual “risk.” Within the neoliberal capitalist state, notions of individual responsibility and personal control influence individuals’ decisions, meaning that individuals who make choices that are deemed “risky” are subject to state intervention (Foucault, 2008). According to Foucault (2008), assessing risk involves both the monitoring of others and the monitoring of the self through social norms. The monitoring and surveillance of individuals through social conduct and norms takes place interpersonally on socio-sexual applications through the marketization of the self in a manner similar to what Foucault terms “homo economicus” (Foucault, 2008). Homo economicus is an “entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings” (p. 226). Foucault (2008) describes the figure of homo economicus as the central piece

56 in understanding the transition from liberalism to neoliberalism, as it responds to changes in its environment with ease as it is malleable to the needs of the marketplace and environment (Dilts, 2011; Foucault, 2008). Foucault (2008) articulates that homo economicus responds systematically to modifications in the variables of the environment, appears precisely as someone manageable, someone who responds systematically to systematic modifications artificially introduced into the environment. Homo economicus is someone who is eminently governable. (p. 226)

Referencing the work of American economist Gary Becker, Foucault (2008) theorizes “homo economicus” as the modern liberal rational subject. This subject utilizes “choice” logics in their decisions through continual cost and benefits analyses, which cultivates feelings of individual rational choice and control in behaviours that amplify individual economic gain and reduce vulnerability by eliminating possibilities of risk in a psychological, social, or economic sense. Through this process of risk reduction, the autonomy of the individual to make decisions in their own best interests is emphasized. Although the individual makes decisions that align them with the greater forces of economy and the market, it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to ensure that they predict which course of action will be most beneficial for them and in most alignment with market and economy. If the subject is unable to align themselves with the market and reap the benefits of such a decision, it is considered their fault and individual failure (Zuckert, 1995). Applying this theory of governmentality to my study of Grindr users, I propose that individuals connect and disconnect with other users quickly and make decisions regarding their connections that suit their current best interests. This can be seen through how emotional vulnerability is considered risky, a notion I will explore below. As exemplified by Haro, one of my participants: Yeah, you know, I think with Grindr there’s always one person that’s always into the other person more. Of course, there’s always guys on there who you think are very attractive, and that guy may seem to be interested, so you keep on going back to him, saying, “hey, how’s it going?” and so on. But, I think, personally, I’ve learned to read between the lines, and if a guy isn’t interested, even though I am really interested in him, then I quickly close down the conversation, and I go on, right? So I haven’t really been attached that way on Grindr because I’m learning to read those cues, those unwritten rules. If a guy doesn’t respond to you for a while that’s an answer. Don’t keep on going back. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese, cisgender gay man)

Longer-term conversations and connections can be quickly severed with little consequence if the connection is no longer serving the users. As such, users must internalize the regulation of their feelings and emotional attachment to other users to avoid being emotionally hurt. Negotiating discourses of self-protection and self-confidence governmentally involves what Lemke (2001) terms the “strategic games” of governmentality. A strategic game is defined by Lemke (2001) as “a ubiquitous feature of human interaction insofar as it signifies structuring the possible field of action of others” (p. 53). For Lemke, drawing from Foucault (1991), such strategic games are imbued with power relations as power is productive and creates a myriad of potential means of action for the individual. Users must manage risk within GSSAs through navigating discourses of emotional vulnerability and self-protection. Online socio-sexual spaces, such as Grindr, hold potential emotional risks and harms for subjects through the possibility of rejection or a lack of reciprocity in emotional or romantic attachment. This demands that users keep their options open by ensuring that they do not invest too much energy and/or time in one potential hook-up or romantic partner too quickly and that they regulate the amount they allow themselves to become vulnerable online.

Queering the Gay Self Queer and poststructural theoretical frameworks aim to decentre the “I” and essentialist notion of identity from within the subject (Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1990; Jagose, 1996). Such theories are useful for conceptualizing how subjects come to know and understand themselves as well as for describing processes of claiming identities (such as “gay” or the specific “tribes”10 and subcultures on Grindr). These frameworks also seek to explain the disciplinary mechanisms that take place through identification (i.e. subjectivation). Critical to this point is queer theory’s understanding of homosexual identification as a construction constituted through Western discourse instead of an inner essential self (Foucault, 1990). Foucault’s (1990) critique of gay liberation is particularly useful for my project to highlight how gay liberationist ideology and liberal notions of political progress reify a white masculinist “liberated” gay man at its political centre (see Edwards, 1994, 2005).

10 Grindr uses the term, “tribe,” to indicate a sub-group for individuals on the app to identify, listing common identificatory terms in gay men’s communities, such as “twink,” “bear,” “otter.”

Central to a queer theoretical framework is a deconstruction of binaries, such as heterosexual/homosexual (or gay or queer) and the destabilization of identity categories (Foucault, 1990; Halperin, 1995). Queer theorist David Halperin (1995) describes such a destabilization by explaining that “Homosexual” like “woman,” is not a name that refers to a “natural kind” of thing; it’s a discursive, and homophobic, construction that has come to be misrecognized as an object. . . . “The homosexual,” then, is not the name of a natural kind, but a projection, a conceptual and semiotic dumping ground for all sorts of mutually incompatible, logically contradictory notions. These contradictory notions not only serve to define the binary opposite of homosexuality by (and as) a default; they also put into play a series of double binds that are uniquely oppressive to those who fall under the description of “homosexual.” (p. 45)

Instead of conceptualizing gay or queer identification as an identity within the self, my project notes the continual exclusions that come with identification, particularly gay identity and, as Halperin (1995) notes, the instability within identity categories. To queer gay identity means to consider what else gayness could be beyond same-sex desire and how equating gayness with same-sex desire reifies normative notions of “how to be gay” (Halperin, 2012). Browne and Nash (2010) write that “queer is a term that can and should be redeployed and fucked with and used in resistant and transgressive ways” (cited in Greensmith & Davies, 2017, p. 317). Preferring instead to theorize the self, or subjectivity, as fluid, contingent, and shifting with no core humanist self, queer theory involves such a redeployment, and fucking with, of essentialist notions of identity. To illustrate this in the context of gender identity, Butler (1988) writes that gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. (p. 519)

Thus, for Butler (1988), any notion of an essential “abiding gendered self,” is an illusion, with there being no stable and consistent identity or essential self with agency that chooses to identify a certain way. Identities are implicated in matrices of power as they can be conceptualized as regulatory and productive of norms (Foucault, 1988). As my project weaves in and out of humanism to challenge identity categories, such as gay and the exclusions which such

59 identities entail, it is important to note that I draw on queer theory’s problematization of liberal humanism to challenge the concept of an internal essence within the subject. As much as my project is interested in the experiences of men who use socio-sexual applications, I problematize any universal notion of a “gay subject” and their “experiences.” As Scott (1991) articulates, such an endeavour “take[s] as self-evident the identities of those whose experience is being documented and thus naturalizes their difference[s]” by “locat[ing] difference outside its discursive construction[s] and reifying agency as an inherent trait of individuals, thus decontextualizing it” (p. 777). It is important for me to conceptualize how the participants’ experiences are constituted through discursive frames to avoid any universal notion of “gayness” that can hold gendered, racialized, and ableist notions. By de-centering a liberal human subject, my project conceptualizes agency, human action, and experience as discursively constituted, thereby providing an analysis of my participants as those who are subjectivated within socio-sexual applications. Discourse can be defined, according to Foucault (1969, 1977) as processes of knowledge formation through social practices that dictate what is thinkable and sayable, which informs relations of power and knowledge and the constitution of subjectivities (Foucault, 1980). Foucault (1980) noted how power and knowledge are intricately connected and cannot be disconnected. Power and knowledge regimes are involved in the production of subjectivity, or the discursively constituted, fluid, and shifting “self” in how subjects learn to enact social practices, ways of being, and forms of thought, which create included and excluded subjects, or normal and abnormal individuals (Foucault, 1977, 1990). This thinking requires that sexual identity be thought of as “a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Butler, 1988, p. 520). Thus, the “I” that chooses to identify a certain way is entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness. The historical possibilities materialized through various corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions that are alternately embodied and disguised under duress. (p. 522)

Conceptualizing gender identity as performative, Butler’s (1990) analysis provides a means to understand how gender comes to be presented as real and internal to the subject. With this being said, “the ‘coherence’ and ‘continuity’ of ‘the person’ are not logical or analytic features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” (p.

23). Similarly, as Foucault (1982, 1990) argues, sexual identity is a product of power/knowledge nexuses whereby sexual identity is not internal to the subject, but rather constructed through medical discourses which transformed same-sex desire into an internal essence, an identity, or, a psychological interiority. Foucault (1990) articulates how homosexuality was transformed in the 19th century from “the practice of sodomy into a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul” (p. 43). Problematizing the link between homosexual desire and identity is critical for my project. By analyzing GSSAs, such as Grindr, my project assists in theorizing the failures of gay liberal identity politics to conceptualize the continual exclusions which occur through the creation of an identity label based on male same-sex desire. As explained by Edwards (2005), the link between gay identity and same-sex desire becomes a means to reinforce gendered hierarchies within gay men’s communities. Gay men are encouraged to governmentally regulate their emotional intimacies and connections with those they have sex with to comply with normative discourses of emotional regulation (i.e. you can have sex with many partners but must not emotionally connect with them) (Jacobs, 2020). Many gay men might associate same-sex desire with an aspiration to enact hegemonic constructs for masculinity, which in turn, requires a repudiation of the feminine and all that is associated within femininity (i.e. romanticism, emotional intimacy, long-term commitment). In particular, this has implications for how gay men’s sexualities are constructed, which will be explored in the following section on affect theory.

“Critically Queer”: Gay Masculinities and the Repudiation of the Feminine In “Critically Queer,” Butler (1993) expands upon her prior argument regarding gender identity to note how the subject comes into being through the citational and iterative practices that precede it. That is, the subject itself is constituted though performative iterations, which call it into being but make full subject formation impossible: I can only say “I” to the extent that I have first been addressed, and that address has mobilized my place in speech; paradoxically, the discursive condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject: recognition is not conferred on a subject, but forms that subject. Further, the impossibility of a full recognition, that is, of ever fully inhabiting the name by which one’s social identity is inaugurated and mobilized, implies the instability and incompleteness of subject- formation. The “I” is thus a citation of the place of the “I” in speech, where that place has a certain priority and anonymity with respect to the life it animates: it is the historically

revisable possibility of a name that precedes and exceeds me, but without which I cannot speak. (p. 18)

My project considers gay identification a process of instability and incompleteness. The subject always works within and against the norms of identity categories as well as takes on an identity that preceded it and produces its very existence. This is relevant in terms of understanding how gay subjects enact established gendered norms, contest and produce gendered hierarchies, and negotiate gay identification. This is particularly true when subjects are existing within online spaces. Much of how gay subjectivity and identification is constituted in relationship with abjection and repudiation of femininity (Davies, 2020; Martino, 2006). This abjection of femininity involves negotiating one’s position as a gay subject, or being seen as a “failed man,” while also positioning one’s self within gendered hierarchies within gay men’s communities. These hierarchies are commonly associated with one’s “tribe,” dictating how one can become intelligible online. Processes of signification for gay subjects online involve achieving recognizability by iterating pre-existing norms within the “discursive condition[s] of social recognition.” This discursive condition involves intelligibility or how the “subject acts his/her [sic] place in the discourses through which she/he [sic] has been rendered” (Youdell, 2006, p. 522). For example, the term “twink” is a common subculture within gay men’s communities used to describe an effeminate, slim, and fashionable young gay men. These discourses precede the subject, at which point an individual must enact and stylize (or conform) themselves through a twink aesthetic in order to be considered intelligible as a “twink” subject. As such, subjects who participate in GSSAs enact cultural practices and ways of being gay. These practices are performatively constituted and depend upon gendered and racialized hierarchies within constructs of gay masculinities (Edwards, 2005; Kendall & Martino, 2006; Nardi, 2000). Processes of becoming viable subjects online involve engaging with performative norms and mastering associated practices. Queer theoretical frameworks for subject formation, such as Butler’s (1997a) theorization of subjectification, describe how processes of submission and mastery to norms involved in achieving recognizability as a subject take place “simultaneously, and this paradoxical simultaneity constitutes the ambivalence of subjection . . . the lived simultaneity of submission as mastery, and mastery as submission, is the condition of possibility for the emergence of the subject” (pp. 116–117). Such processes, in the Butlerian sense, are

62 crucial for subjects using GSSA’s as they simultaneously navigate mastering and submitting themselves to identificatory norms to achieve an intelligible online subjectivity. Consider this example from Mark, who explicated the process of posting “the perfect” Instagram or Grindr photo: And it’s, like, somebody posts their Grindr picture or their Instagram picture or whatever, right? It’s them, it’s the perfect picture, but we don’t see the other 50 pictures that they took and then deleted, right? And you know this whole thing, I’m sure this whole thing . . . if I take a bunch of pictures, I don’t necessarily put the first one up that I did. It’s like, “oh, I want this one, but I look better in that one,” right? Whatever the case may be. A lot of it is just about unrealistic expectations about [the] body, and just, like, things that people feel like they have to live up to. (Mark, 28, Afro-Carribbean, cisgender gay man )

Mark’s explication here illustrates how he learned to “master” his self-presentation while submitting to the norms required of him (dominant beauty norms, fifty different photos in different poses) in order to find one that allowed him to enact his online subjectivity as required. Bronwyn Davies (2006), commenting on Butler’s analysis of subjectification, writes, the individual subject is not possible without this simultaneous submission and mastery. The formation of the subject thus depends on powers external to itself. The subject might resist and agonise over those very powers that dominate and subject it, and at the same time, it also depends on them. (p. 426)

Within processes of achieving intelligibility online, subjects engage with performative norms that dictate their negotiation of gendered and sexual subjectivities. For example, in order to become recognized in belonging in a specific “tribe” listed within Grindr, subjects must stylize their profile photos to match the gendered and racialized norms of each tribe. Steve explained his own experience being classified as a “twink,” or a young, feminine, flamboyant and slim gay man. Steve described how this became a “defining” component of his identity: I mean, I think when I was younger and single. . . . I think I would often feel [pressure]. especially because I feel like there was a narrative that was kind of spelled out, like, “you’re young, you’re very cute, you’re very twinky, and like, that is your identity.” Like, there was no interest in anything else. No one cared that you were a dean’s list honours student. No one cared if you had all of these other things, and no one, frankly, I don’t think anyone cared. No one was asking you questions that didn’t have to do with you being a bottom twink. Um, so I think in those days definitely I felt alone because there was the idea that the humanity of you is not valid. (Steve, 28, white, cisgender gay man)

Those who identify as twinks might perform in such a way to reiterate norms commonly associated with the twink tribe, such as position their body in a more feminized fashion or

63 orienting themselves towards white femininity to be seen as young, effeminate, and slender (Clay, 2018). Bodily orientations are important within Grindr as individuals orient their own towards identificatory norms in order to gain intelligibility (Ahmed, 2006). Ultimately, queer theory assists with exploring how individuals navigate such identificatory groups and constitute themselves as subjects (Ahmed, 2006; Foucault, 1988). For gay subjects online, their orientation towards a specific tribe can reproduce hierarchies of gay masculinities, which are associated with the repudiation of femininity (Martino, 2006; Ravenhill & de Visser, 2017; Rodriguez et al., 2016). Within the gendered hierarchies in gay men’s socio-sexual apps, the abjection and repudiation of femininity is necessary to maintain one’s status as an intelligible subject (Davies, 2020; Garcia-Gómez, 2020). Butler (1993) explains how, under a dualistic gendered system, emasculation is associated with men’s fear of castration through identification with femininity: “The “threat” that compels the assumption of masculine and feminine attributes is, for the former, a descent into feminine castration and abjection” (p. 103). This threat of emasculation and castration that haunts gay subjects, as Hale and Ojeda (2018) articulate, reproduces “the dominance of heteronormative forms of masculinity in white gay male cultures . . . that forecloses the possibility of liberating masculinities from their restrictive normative conception, making opposition to femininity an essential component of belonging” (p. 312). It is the associations between normative notions of gay subjectivities online and the repudiation of femininity which is central to my project in its investigation of how gendered and racialized norms place white gay masculinities at the top of online hierarchies. Consider this quote from Steve presented in my second data chapter on abjection: I mean, I think gay men compartmentalize in that I think gay men, we very much gravitate towards . . . for all that we can make the critique of toxic masculinity, the ideal gay male is the toxic male, in a lot of ways. At least as an image. Um, and with that goes hand in hand the idea of rejecting one’s emotions and being emotionally tied. I think we also, to some degree, grew up with the idolization of men who were never going to be emotional back to us. I think most, or I think a lot of young gay men want to be like a straight boy who you may have pined after. His affect is never going to match yours. (Steve, 28, white, cisgender gay man)

In “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1991) notes that the image of the young effeminate boy can represent childhood experiences of bullying and gender- based discrimination for some gay men. This can then lead him to becoming the “haunting

64 abject” of many adult gay male communities, who seek to conceptualize gender and sexuality as completely distinct by focusing on gay sexuality as an orientation to masculine object choice and same-sex desire. As a result, this would leave the effeminate boy once more in the position of the haunting abject—this time the haunting abject of gay thought itself. . . . In this case the eclipse of the effeminate boy from adult gay discourse would represent more than a damaging theoretical gap; it would represent a node of annihilating homophobic, gynephobic, and pedophobic hatred internalized and made central to gay-affirmative analysis. The effeminate boy would come to function as the open secret of many politicized adult gay men. (pp. 20–21)

For many gay men, the threat of emasculation and feminization presents itself as a reason to mask any significations of femininity, while simultaneously abjecting and othering those within gay communities who embody effeminacy (Bergling, 2001; Miller & Behm-Morawitz, 2016). Didier Eribon (2004), in Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, explores how insults are central to the formation of gay subjectivities. It is indicated that insult becomes an embodied experience that forever affects how gay men carry themselves within the world: They are traumatic events experienced more or less violently at the moment they happen, but that stay in memory and in the body (for fear, awkwardness, and shame are bodily attitudes produced by a hostile exterior world). One of the consequences of insult is to shape the relation one has to others and to the world and thereby to shape the personality, the subjectivity, the very being of the individual in question. (p. 15)

For Eribon (2004), the memory of insults from childhood remain in the embodied and corporeal memory of gay men, as they shape “the very being of the individual in question.” Moreover, referencing the theories of Goffman (1959, 1986),11 Eribon (2004) elaborates on how insults lead to self-concealment and different presentations of the self for gay people, which, in particular, result in “dissociated personalities” and “dissociated lives” (p. 4). Such forms of self- concealment can lead to “hostile and repressive attitudes towards other homosexuals” (p. xxx) and contribute to a dissident attitude towards other gay men, and negative disposition. This negative disposition results in the formulation of a homosexual identity that appears natural but is formed through the abjection of all that is not heterosexual. The negative disposition of gay men towards a stable idea of gay identification might be a means of undoing the binary between

11 I acknowledge the whiteness and Euro-centricity of theorists, such as Eribon and Goffman, who did not address race in their writings. I bring an attention to this to note how whiteness permeates much of this writing and how there are tensions in my utilization of their works. Particularly, I see how this could be problematic in promoting a narrative that all gay men must “come out” that feeds into notions of sexual identity needing to be “visible” and Western liberal coming out narratives.

65 homosexuality and heterosexuality, opening other ways of living (Eribon, 2004, p. 78). For my project, this line of thinking is helpful, conceptually, to understand the negative feelings subjects feel towards themselves based on their experiences within Grindr and similar apps as a disruption to liberal notions of gay identity itself. These negative feelings illustrate the limits and loss of gay identity and its failures as an “Other” to heterosexuality. I wish to see these negative feelings and the abjection associated with gay subjectivity as productive and potentially disruptive, while still affirmative, which will be explored in my section on affect theory. Within the following sections, I will illustrate how I theorize affect, feelings, and emotions which are all interconnected but slightly different words in etiology.

Gay Identity or Queer Subjectivity? Social media and socio-sexual applications are ripe with identificatory potentials for gay, bisexual, and queer men. However, it is important to trouble the normativities involved in such processes of subjectification and the possibilities that can arise when subjects fail to meet such expectations or conform to given norms. This involves queering gay identification beyond being defined based on same-sex object choice and how defining gay identity based on same-sex object choice reifies normative hierarchies of gay masculinities (Edwards, 2005). Moving away from theorizing gay identity as solely based on same-sex desire is critical for my project in order to investigate how this link reinforces exclusions for men who feel they do not belong within mainstream gay cultures and communities. In How to Be Gay, queer theorist David Halperin (2012) theorizes the difference between a gay identity and queer subjectivity: a distinction that assists in investigating how queerness can be defined beyond sexual identity. Halperin seeks to differentiate these terms by explaining how gay identity formations have historically been formulated at the expense of a focus on culture and the “doing” of gayness, or an understanding of the historical cultural productions of gay men. That is, through the Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s and the specific focus on masculinism and sexual object choice (men) as defining gay men’s identity, “gay” became an essentialized identity that privileged same-sex desire and liberal identity models over an understanding of continual practices and cultural productions (Edwards, 2005; Halperin, 2008, 2012). Halperin (2012) asks what it would mean to approach gay identity from the perspective of social practices and cultural identifications rather than from the perspective of gay sexuality itself. What can such an approach tell us

about the sentimental, affective, or aesthetic dimensions of gay identity, including gay sexuality, that an exclusive focus on gay sexuality cannot? (pp. 5–6)

Such sentimental, affective, and aesthetic dimensions of gay identity demand a theorization of gay identification as a process of continual questioning and challenging the link between sexual object choice and identification. This questioning process demands a consideration of the cultural practices of gay culture as sentimental, affective, and/or aesthetic and also how these affective and cultural productions are intertwined with gay sexuality itself. Gay men’s sexualities are affective, emotional, sentimental, and aesthetic cultural productions which can be creatively deployed to create new forms of relationalities (Foucault, 1997; Halperin, 2012). This is a consideration of a “doing” of gayness that disrupts sexual identity as an internal facet of the self, or inner essence. For Halperin (2008, 2012), approaching gay identity through social practices and cultural identifications means moving away from seeing “gay” as merely an identificatory term for male same-sex desire and psychological discourses of identity that demand an interiority and inner essence. Instead, he turns his focus towards the socio-cultural aesthetics and productions of gay men’s communities. Turning the study of gay men’s subjectivities away from psychological and liberal humanist notions of the self requires what Halperin (2008) terms a “non-disciplinary model of gay subjectivity” that is “not a subjectivity of risk, an object of social hygiene, or a target of therapeutic intervention” (p. 109). For my work, I conceptualize gay subjectivity as fractured, decentered, as one in tension. I turn to Halperin (2012) to explore gay subjectivity as one of tension and incongruence: At the core of gay experience, there is not only identification but disidentification. Almost as soon as I learn how to be gay, or perhaps even before, I also learn how not to be gay. I say to myself, “Well, I may be gay, but at least I’m not like THAT!” (p. 6)

According to Halperin (2012), traditionally, part of the “gay experience” involves learning how “not to be gay.” In other words, how one distinguishes themselves from other gay men, as well as the hierarchies within gay men’s communities which promote gender normativity over distinctive cultural practices. For Halperin (2012), his interests in gay subjectivity focus on “gay men’s characteristic relation to mainstream culture” and “what it [that relation] might reveal about certain structures of feeling distinctive to gay men” (p. 7). Understanding such “structures of feeling” is critical for my project in order to conceptualize how feelings are central

67 to the constitution of gay subjectivities, particularly within socio-sexual online spaces. In this project, I use the work of Halperin (2008, 2012), Eribon (2004), Butler (1988, 1993, 1997a), Foucault (1988, 1990), along with other queer theorists to queer notions of a gay identity. These identities are based upon same-sex object choice, the connections between same-sex object choice and dominant constructs for gay masculinities, and how such constructs relate to which subjects feel “at home” and “out of place” within GSSA’s, particularly Grindr. I will now move to exploring Muñoz’s (1999) theory of disidentification and how it is used in my work, particularly for racialized app users.

Disidentification White, Western, and Eurocentric thought and history informs much queer and poststructural theorizing, particularly the works of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. My work seeks to decentre this emphasis by turning to theory from queer people of colour and Black queer theory, particularly when discussing the experiences of my racialized participants. I begin here by describing Jose Esteban Muñoz’s (1999) theory of disidentification and how it is employed in my work. Drawing from psychoanalytic writings on subject formation, identification, and performance studies, Muñoz (1999) writes about the cultural productions of queers of colour and minoritized subjects who work within and against the dominant white liberal cultural milieu. David Eng (2010) later terms this milieu, “queer liberalism.” Muñoz (1999) begins by describing Cuban/Puerto-Rican comedian and performer Marga Gomez’s first childhood encounter with lesbians in the media. Muñoz articulates her disidentification with lesbian culture, which occurred when she and her mother watched three lesbians on the talk show Open End with David Susskind. In this experience, she felt called to the lesbians in the show and witnessed herself be beckoned into the subject position while her mother remained unaware as they watched the talk show. While identifying with the lesbians in the show, Gomez felt herself visually concealing her identification through a facial pout in order to ensure her mother could not read her affinity with the individuals in the show. Muñoz describes this mechanism which queers of colour must enact in order to navigate between their respective sexual and ethno-racial communities. Muñoz (1999) defines this disidentification as “the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to

68 negotiate a phobic majoritarian public sphere that continually elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (p. 4). Noting the particular hybrid experience of identification for queer and trans people of colour, Muñoz (1999) writes how the identities of queers of colour “are formed in response to the cultural logics of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and misogyny—cultural logics that I will suggest work to undergird state power” (p. 5). Thus, for Muñoz (and much QOC critique), the nation-state is considered a particular source of subjugation for queers of colour by providing the cultural logics for splintered and hybridized identities through queer liberalism. Distinguishing disidentification from assimilation and opposition, Muñoz (1999) articulates that it “is the third mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology” (p. 11). Muñoz writes that disidentification is a “strategy that tries to transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change while at the same time valuing the importance of local or everyday struggles of resistance” (pp. 11–12). In my work, I use disidentification to make sense of how subjects relate to mainstream gay men’s communities through GSSA’s. GSSA’s, such as Grindr, are embedded within the cultural and identity frameworks of gay men’s communities, which rely on the logics of queer liberalism. In Ahlm’s (2017) analysis of “respectable promiscuity” on Grindr, the app is shown to rely on logics of queer liberalism which produce the respectable gay citizen. This subject conceptualizes Grindr as a privatized sphere of affordances and unlimited possibilities for sexual freedom within the confines of one’s own home (through anonymous hook-ups in the bedroom). Grindr (and queer liberalism) re-articulate the post-race logics of queer liberalism whereby race is seen as inconsequential and whiteness is centred as the focus by being unmarked. Moreover, as Ahlm (2017) describes, for racialized men, the politics of visibility in gay men’s communities often result in racial stereotyping. For example, Asian men as submissive and subservient (Nguyen, 2014) and Black men as hyper-masculinized and dominant (Johnson, 2016). This was commonly noted in my interviews with men of colour, who would describe the ethno-racial stereotypes expected upon them through racial fetishization: They think Asians are always these submissive bottoms, right? Because that’s how we’re portrayed, right? We’re portrayed as being submissive, as being docile, as being, you

know, feminine, right? So then you’re seen, you’re automatically pulled into being the submissive bottom. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese, gay cisgender man)

In a separate interview, Anthony noted similar fetishization: As someone who is black, I do find there is a high degree of fetishization for being black and for having certain endowments, and I don’t really know who is to blame for that . . . I would say porn, but if you are stupid enough to get all your lessons from porn, what are you doing for yourself?. . . Black men have to being hyper masculine. These stereotypes everyone follows but they don’t say it out loud. People are like, “If I have sex with this black guy, it’ll be good” There was a pressure at various points to out perform and really it had a negative impact on me in some ways because there’s been instances where I got those messages and I met up with those guys and we hooked up and if I don’t hear back from them, I feel like I didn’t live up to the expectations of a black guy they were looking for. It’s exhausting. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay, cisgender)

This is particularly apparent within Grindr where social interactions are mediated through text communication and online discrimination might be more socially permissive. Muñoz’s (1999) theory of disidentification allows me to frame how racialized subjects in my study may both identify with the whiteness of mainstream homonormative queer communities (or even aspire for inclusion within it), while disidentifying with such communities due to the inherent racism within white liberal gay politics. Well, I think for men of colour, an investment in body image I think is a way that they are trying to circumvent some of the impacts of racism because it feels like an access card for a lot of them. It lets them participate in a particular way. So I think that’s them dealing with it, so to speak. I think gay racism is challenging because I don’t want to fuck the same people I have to educate. Like, those are two separate experiences. Um, and so as a person of colour I think it’s part of, part of my personal work actually to, and again, I wholeheartedly mean it, I work to have sex with fewer white guys, to be honest, and, like, every now and then I use the filters on my Grindr and I’ll check all of the boxes except for white. I’ll just be like, “I’m going to do this for a few days.” It feels, it feels cluttered. It’s hard to do otherwise. Cause we have to, like, work on how our desire’s been wired as a result of socialization as well. (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian., cisgender, queer)

These excerpts introduce an understanding of the discourses of inclusion/exclusion that racialized subjects encounter in mainstream gay communities and GSSAs.

Limitations of Queer Theoretical Frameworks Before explaining additional frameworks, I will explore some of the limitations of queer theory. I work within/against queer theory by acknowledging various important critiques of

70 queer theoretical frameworks (Beresford, 2014, 2016; Glick, 2000; Hammers, 2015). Queer theory often reifies a white masculinist gay male subject as the centre of its theoretical focus and is often critiqued for having masculinist and heteropatriarchal underpinnings (Beresford, 2014; Butler, 1994; Feldman, 2009; Halberstam, 2005, 2008; Hammers, 2015; Johnson & Henderson, 2005; Martin, 1996; Weed & Schor, 1997; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 1996). Within GSSAs, seemingly detached behaviours (Whittier & Melendez, 2004), and white and heteromasculine bodies are heavily privileged (Bonner-Thompson, 2017; Miller & Behm-Morawitz, 2015). Therefore, my work will employ theoretical frameworks that work against the privileging of such positionalities in queer theory and within GSSAs.

Jeffreys (2002) writes that queer theory is “a powerful gay male culture” that “celebrated masculine privilege” and “enshrined a cult of masculinity” (pp. 41–42). Queer theorists have critiqued white queer male theorists (Halberstam, 2005), particularly antirelational threads,12 with theorist José Muñoz articulating how “the antirelational in queer studies was the gay white man’s last stand” (quoted in Huffer, 2013, p. 17). Importantly, much of queer theory evolved from the work of women of color theorizing, such as Audre Lorde (1984/2012), Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), and the Combahee River Collective (1983). This is necessary to note in how the genealogy of white gay men’s theorizing is different than that of queer of color critique and women of color theorizing. While acknowledging the critiques and limitations of queer theory, I draw upon it in my work owing to its capacity to conceptualize how subject formation occurs within GSSAs.

Affect Theory The cultural politics of emotions as both intrapsychic and cultural productions are central to my project to understand how feelings and emotional states are central to the regulation and constitution of subjects on GSSAs. This project draws heavily from theoretical frameworks widely termed “affect theory.” These frameworks investigate the cultural politics of emotions (Ahmed, 2004a), how emotions move and circulate within digital spaces (Boler & Davis, 2018),

12 The anti-relational versus relational debate in queer theory is a theoretical conversation about the place for relationality in queer sexuality, primarily gay male sexualities, and if queer sexuality is a self-shattering individual experience, or if there is hope, relationality, and futurity in queer sexuality (Ruti, 2017). This will be expanded upon later in my thesis.

71 individual and bodily orientations to the world via emotions (Ahmed, 2006), and norms for regulating emotional states in differing socio-cultural situations (Hochschild, 1979). My analysis combines queer and affect theory to untangle the politics of emotions and feelings as they manifest in and through queer subjects and the commonplace associations between queerness and dissidence and the disruption of the symbolic structure, or the normative order of signification and language (Bersani, 1987; Edelman, 2004; Halperin, 2012). Drawing from queer and critical race theory and psychoanalytical frameworks (Butler, 1997a; Eng & Han, 2000; Kristeva, 1982; Muñoz, 1999), my work seeks to understand how feelings and emotions are involved in the constitution of subjectivities within socio-sexual applications. Specifically, I look at how feelings of failure and abjection can provide a lens through which to challenge the promises of a “good life” and happiness that are commonly instilled through notions of identity, community, and belonging (Ahmed, 2010a, 2010b; Halberstam, 2011). While strands of affect theory that draw from Deleuze and Guattari (1987) differentiate between affect, a pre-linguistic bodily intensity, emotion, and a cognitive and linguistic state (Massumi, 1995), this work does not perform such a differentiation. Inspired by feminist critiques of Deleuzian-inspired work, I endeavour to ensure that I do not re-inscribe emotion as a cognitive state within a liberal humanist subject (Ahmed, 2008; Boler & Davis, 2018). Stenner (2018) critiques the neat divide between affect and emotion in the “ affective turn” literature— such as the work of Massumi (1995, 2002) and Clough (2010)—to articulate how such a divide wrongly places emotions in the realm of conscious and individual signification (or out of the social and pre-linguistic realm) while affect is deemed active, pre-linguistic, pre-linguistic, and a challenge to liberal notions of rationality. Referencing Ahmed (2008), Springgay and Truman (2017) describe how this separation between affect and emotion means “emotion becomes aligned with a feminized subject” and that “aligning affect with autonomy, and emotion with the subject, re-colonizes the body” (p. 45). This distinction between affect and emotion masculinizes affect as active, transgressive, and disruptive while emotions and feelings remain considered passive, tameable, and necessary to regulate. Furthermore, according to Boler and Davis (2018), the commonplace differentiation between emotion and affect can leave a divide whereby emotions are deemed apolitical and within the realm of control of a liberal autonomous subject, while affect is political, intensive, and uncontrollable. For Stenner (2018), emotions are also a challenge to the liberal ideal of the self-regulated, sovereign, and controlled subject as emotions

72 involve pre-linguistic, subconscious states and automatic responses. To avoid centering a masculinized liberal autonomous subject with emotional cognition and control, I draw from Ahmed’s (2004b) notion of “affects as circulation” and Boler and Davis’s (2018) notion of affect as “emotions on the move.” Such notions are applied to theorize the ways in which both affect and emotion circulate between subjects, bind subjects together, and seem to “stick to” certain subjects, particularly through logics of heteropatriarchy and white settler colonialism. These theories bridge the individual felt emotions with the social and discursive to conceptualize how subjectivities are shaped through the social life of emotions. For the purposes of my project, this conceptualization allows me to consider the individual feelings described by participants as social productions that shape their individual subjectivities and the collectivities of GSSAs. Ahmed (2004a) theorizes that emotions are an effect and production of histories of contact between bodies and that it is this connection which draws the surfaces between bodies. This is important in conceptualizing how subjects draw boundaries between one another, even between themselves and phone apps, through their emotional states and the histories that inform them. For example, while many believe the “no fats, no fems, no Asians” and online discrimination to be especially exasperated through Grindr usage, there is a history in gay men’s communities and activism of discrimination, particularly through anti-black racism. The Body Politic, a well-known Gay Liberation publication in Toronto, was known for its discriminatory sexual advertisements, notably one looking for a “black house boy” (Churchill, 2003; Haritaworn et al., 2018). This history informs the logics that surround gay identification and the feelings of pride and joy invested in one’s sexual identity which bring certain bodies—white bodies—together to form a collective while erasing the histories of discrimination and erasure that have taken place. Ahmed (2004a) theorizes emotions as “sticky.” Turning away from the idea that affective states are located “in” bodies, Ahmed suggests that “words for feeling, and objects of feeling, circulate and generate effects” (p. 14); they “move, stick, and slide” (p. 14) to create the very subjects that “feel them.” She states: the association between objects and emotions is contingent (it involves contact), but . . . these associations are “sticky.” Emotions are shaped by contact with objects. The circulation of objects is not described as freedom, but in terms of sticking, blockages and constraints. (p. 18)

Ahmed’s (2004a) theorization of emotions as “sticking to” certain subjects (racialized and feminized subjects, in particular) and of the emotionality of texts helps me analyze how negative emotions “stick to” subjects who are deemed “out of place” (Ahmed, 2000, 2004a). Again, emotions are not just within subjects. Emotions involve an orientation towards some objects and away from others and what “sticks” tends to “bind” subjects together into social cohesives. For example, hope might bring subjects towards Grindr, such as the hope for connection, community, romantic love, or sex. Through this hope, subjects stick to Grindr and use it, despite potentially negative experiences, in order to find what they are hoping will bring them happiness (see Ahmed, 2010a, 2010b). For my project, this theorization is particularly relevant to how groups are created through their collective orientations towards objects of desire. Lauren Berlant (2012) defines desire as “a state of attachment to something or someone, and the cloud of possibility that is generated by the gap between an object’s specificity and the needs and promises projected onto it” (p. 6). Such objects are the desired outcomes which we collectively agree upon (i.e. “we want sex” or “we want a relationship” without neatly distinguishing the two), as collectives seemingly neatly agree that an object is desirable. These affective agreements often iterate histories of bodily contact that are shaped by sexism, racism, ableism, colonialism, and heterosexism. For example, Bond Stockton (2006) specifically theorizes how shame slides between the signs “black” and “queer.” She states: “we cannot grasp certain complicated cultural, historical entanglements between ‘black’ and ‘queer’ without, at the same time, interrogating shame—its beautiful, generative, sorrowful debasements that make bottom pleasures so dark and so strange” (p. 8). For Stockton (2006), the figure of the “beautiful bottom,” or a black man in the bottom position in anal intercourse, offers “an imaginative resource” as a “well-travelled crossroads for ‘black’ and ‘queer’” (p. 10). I will engage further in a discussion of shame as a queer emotional cultural motif in a later section but, for now, it is necessary to conceptualize how shame acts as a “sticky” point (Ahmed, 2004a), one implicated in the hierarchical organization of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and nationality. Many gay men experience childhoods of rejection and shame— particularly due to gender nonconformity—which are central to the constitution of their own sense of self. The continual and repetitive process of experiencing insult and shame, for some, begins to define gay subjectivity—particularly through the visibility of effeminacy—and some gay men experience societal stigmatization that comes to constitute their being (Eribon, 2004).

My combined analysis, which draws on both queer theory and affect theory, is interested in how certain feelings, such as romantic love, can be deemed queer as well as “out of place” within the highly masculinized and sexualized spaces of GSSAs. Halperin (2019) articulates how queer theorists have historically been hostile towards discourses of romantic love by critiquing the neat distinction between romance/love as heteronormative and traditional, with sex as transgressive and radical. My project problematizes this distinction by conceptualizing how feelings of love and intimacy can be embedded within one’s sexualities, and manifest as highly disruptive in anti-relational13 environments, such as GSSAs. How might feelings of care and intimacy be “queer” and disruptive within normative gay men’s online hook-up cultures? How do the relational orientations of subjects—towards hooking-up or long-term relationships— pertain to the promise that individuals invest in Grindr? Ahmed (2004a) articulates how emotions and feelings are bound up in “different kinds of orientations towards objects and others, which shape individual as well as collective bodies” (p. 15). Subjects’ orientations towards love and romance on Grindr and other gay apps shape the boundaries of included and excluded bodies online as the forms of intimacies towards which subjects aspire. These intimacies are, Ahmed (2010a) articulates, “a promise that directs us toward certain objects, which then circulate as social goods. Such objects accumulate positive affective value as they are passed around” (p. 29). For queer theorists, love has been articulated as a false promise or a melancholic attachment. It is an investment in institutions and discourses of the “normal,” too deeply embedded in standard narratives of romance, to be available for “queering.” Whereas sex, as queers know very well, is easy to stigmatize (or to celebrate) as kinky, transgressive, or perverse, love is typically represented as lying at the heart of normal life, thoroughly at home in conventional social structures such as marriage and the nuclear family. (Halperin, 2019, p. 396)

Halperin (2019) further articulates that love has been a problem for queers due to its normative investments in the nuclear family and domesticity. How do promises of happiness through love and intimacies turn subjects towards Grindr? Ahmed (2010a, 2010b) describes how happiness is thought of as an ends to a means, meaning that happiness is a goal to be oriented towards that puts subjects in proximity to objects that are expected to bring happiness. What happens when

13 Roach (2015, 2019a) argues that Grindr might actually be an anti-relational space where subjects engage in conversation that is an ethics of (non)relation. Roach (2019a) describes how Grindr is a community of anti- intersubjectivity where it might actually disrupt notions of humanist values.

75 such objects fail to bring us the happiness we desire? For many gay men, downloading Grindr is a process involved in the promise which this app provides. I will now turn to explaining what happens when such a promise fails. Ultimately, within my thesis, I combine different strands of affect theorizations. These include psychoanalytic theories that investigate the influence of subjects’ psychic attachments, queer and feminist theorizations of the cultural production of emotions (Ahmed, 2004a, 2010a, 2010b), and Deleuzian-inspired affect theories on pre-linguistic intensities to discuss the feeling assemblages that take place through GSSA users’ affective and embodied interactions online and within hook-up culture. Drawing from Jasbir Puar’s (2012, 2013) discussion of employing theories “frictionally,” I draw from both psychoanalytic and Deleuzian assemblage theories “frictionally,” acknowledging their different epistemological foundations, but still seeing their productive potentials when employed in tandem with each other. Within my dissertation, I note these feeling assemblages as moments when specific affect intensities are produced, both in a pre-linguistic “gut” fashion that is beyond language and signification, and through the descriptive and interpretive responses provided to me by participants of their own inner feelings and my psychoanalytic analyses of their psychic attachments. These feeling assemblages became important theoretically and analytically as I wrestled with my own “attachment” to both the psychoanalytic theorizations of attachments and how this relates to app users’ orientations online (their own relational norms, what they are looking for online). During interviews, affect was always present in a pre-linguistic fashion in my own gut reactions and my own field notes and reflective processes. I will expand upon this in my methods and methodology section in terms of how I used my own affective responses methodologically.

Promises, Promises, Promises For many individuals who download socio-sexual phone applications, there is a promise involved in such spaces, as subjects seek belonging and community and connections with other people who have similar identities (Van De Wiele & Tong, 2014). For those who enter such socio-sexual spaces and do not find what they were expecting—whether friendship, romantic relationships, or anonymous sex—feelings of disappointment and shame can emerge. The promise that Grindr (and other applications) can hold for users provides a lens into understanding promises of “the good life” (Ahmed, 2010a, 2010b) and individual orientations

76 towards socio-cultural norms (Ahmed, 2006). For some, the good life could look like heteronormative monogamy and the promise of a future of domesticity and family. However, this is not always what the good life looks like, especially for gay men who exist in increasingly gentrified, urbanized, and individualized settings (Hanhardt, 2013; Nash, 2013b). The good life, in fact, depends on socio-cultural orientations. This means that, for many, it could instead involve self-assured independence, casual sex on the weekends, a professional career, and integrated respectability (Ahlm, 2017): a point many queer theorists miss in their critiques of the nuclear family. In particular, as Rumens and Ozturk (2019) describe, gay masculinities are embedded within notions of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial identities that reinforce gender normativity and denigrate femininity in men, with the figure of the “fag” or “fag spectre” (Pascoe, 2007) representing a failure to ascertain the good life and normalcy. Within my project, I conceptualize how the “good life” is a fluid construct that reaches beyond the nuclear family and traditional notions of monogamy and marriage. For the subjects in my study, what brings them happiness might include love, romance, and intimacy, but it might also include what Gill and Orgad (2015) call “the confidence culture,” namely: casual hook-ups, self-assuredness, and self-confidence. Whatever the good life represents, it holds a promise for a better future. When that future fails to deliver what was expected, dissonance and negativity can arise (Ahmed, 2010a, 2010b; Halberstam, 2011). Particularly for many gay men, sex is expected to fulfil the promise of sexual pleasure; within the queer theoretical literature, gay men’s sexualities are commonly associated with notions of extreme pleasure (Bersani, 1987). But what happens when a desired object does not fulfil its presumed promises of happiness? Ahmed (2010b) writes that “the very promise that happiness is what you get for having the right associations might be how we are directed toward certain things” (p. 2). Thus, by having the “right associations”—whether those are heteronormative monogamy, or the right job, or the perfect body—we believe that we will achieve happiness. Happiness is placed in crisis when disappointment is experienced (Ahmed, 2010b, p. 7); that is, when the desired object does not bring happiness, or when we cannot reach the desired object to begin with, disappointment shatters the myth that we will be happy or provided with happiness. Affect theory and queer theory provide similar frameworks that are useful for conceptualizing the experience of disappointment when a desired object or goal fails to bring us

77 what we expect, and the internalization of shame that occurs through such failure (Berlant, 2007b, 2011; Butler, 1997a; Eng & Han, 2000; Halberstam, 2011). Notably, Lauren Berlant (2011) describes the cruel optimism involved in attaching our hopes to objects of desire: “All attachments are optimistic. When we talk about an object of desire, we are really talking about a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make to us and make possible for us” (p. 23). Our attachments can be romantic—as in attaching romantically to another subject or subjects—but they can also involve attaching to notions of identity, the promise of community and belonging, or attaching to an image, such as the image of masculinity and gym culture. Whatever our attachments may be, there is a promise involved and disappointment ensues when such attachments fail to deliver or when that delivery is not completed. Just as Ahmed (2004a, 2006, 2010a, 2010b) articulates how our orientation towards objects can provide an insight into what is socio-culturally valued, Berlant (2011) proposes that our “proximity” to the objects we desire refers to not just closeness to the object itself, but closeness to the promises it provides (of “the good life”). Berlant (2011) defines “cruel optimism” as “a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility whose realization is discovered either to be impossible, sheer fantasy, or too possible, and toxic” (p. 24). For Berlant, such forms of cruel optimism are not only disheartening, but dangerous, because our attachment to objects that represent promises will slowly deteriorate our well-being, hence her earlier theorization of “slow death” (Berlant, 2007b). Berlant (2007b) terms “slow death” as “the physical wearing out of a population and the deterioration of people in that population that is very nearly a defining condition of their experience and historical existence” (p. 754), which occurs “where life building and the attrition of human life are indistinguishable, and where it is hard to distinguish modes of incoherence, distractedness, and habituation from deliberate and deliberative activity, as they are all involved in the reproduction of predictable life” (p. 754). Thus, cruel optimism and slow death are involved in the constitution of everyday affects and emotions in that individuals attach to norms, institutions, and ways of living that hold promise but are simultaneously contrary to their flourishing. As noted, for many gay men, these attachments might be to the institution of compulsory monogamy and the promises of a long- term partner who will complete them and dissipate all feelings of loneliness; however, it is important to note that not all men are oriented this way or attached to these notions. For many, perhaps in response to feelings of never being able to fully complete the heteronormative

78 promise of domesticated romance and monogamy, hook-up culture might hold certain promises that seem alluring, such as promises of sexual pleasure, self-assuredness, independence, and confidence (Gill & Orgad, 2015; Race, 2015). Men who engage in hook-ups may experience even further feelings of alienation and disenchantment if hook-up culture fails to fulfil these promises. Included in the promises of hook-up culture may be similarly offered by masculinity and gym culture, promises of achieving status, perhaps finding a romantic partner through having a gym-toned body or receiving forms of attention never received before. Because these promises encourage men to aspire to a form of embodiment that is almost unattainable, they might never be fulfilled. Many gay men also believe that aspiring to conform with the individualistic norms involved in online hook-up cultures might provide them with forms of gay belonging and commonality they seek out through sharing similar experiences with other men (Woo, 2013, 2015). Ultimately, for my project, Berlant’s theorizations on the failures of promises and our unbridled attachment to them, provides a means to conceptualize how men remain attached to Grindr and its promises— whatever the promise might mean for an individual—despite experiencing harms when being online.14

Queer Feelings—Feeling Queer Feelings and emotions are critical components of belonging as “belonging is a mark of one’s own presence” (Ahmed, 2004a, p. 14). Subjects who do not belong or who challenge the “structures of feeling” (Williams, 1977) of a given culture, community, or nation, can suffer great repercussions. While queers have historically been imagined as a threat to the nation-state and to political liberalism, as described by Warner (1993), certain queers are now deemed respectable and included within the fabric of liberal nationalism and Western imaginaries (Dryden & Lenon, 2015; Puar, 2007; Sykes, 2016). Feelings of belonging are central to being “at place” in a given environment (Ahmed, 2000, 2004a). Through belonging, subjects cultivate a sense of “feelings-in-common” that bind them together (Ahmed, 2004a, 2004b). For many queer subjects, these include potential feelings of failure through the continual aspiration for inclusion

14 Despite this statement, I do note that not all users of Grindr experience it as a taxing and arduous experience. While many report feeling alienated and internalized shame through their usage of Grindr (Brubaker et al., 2016), there are users—typically white, masculinized, and financially well-off men—who experience positive experiences on Grindr and similar socio-sexual apps (McKie et al., 2015).

79 within certain imaginaries, whether that be within socio-sexual space of Grindr or the liberal nation-state. With this in mind, my analysis is further inspired by Halberstam’s (2011) theoretical insights on the productivity of failure. He states that failure “allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods” (p. 3). Embodying failure as a way of life involves refusing the neoliberal world order and continual demands for self- improvement. By making creative use of negative affective productions involved in failure, such as shame, disappointment, and resentment, current modes of the “good life”—whether that is long-term domesticity, self-assured individualism, gym-chiselled bodies, or inclusion within the nation-state—can be problematized (Halberstam, 2011). Halperin’s (2012) theorization of the difference between gay identity and queer subjectivity is useful for my project to conceptualize how negative feelings can operate to disrupt static identity categories and, in particular, liberal ideas of “Pride” that commonly favour masculinized, white gay men (Halberstam, 2005; Halperin & Traub, 2009). This analytical distinction does not require a negation of positive feelings, such as hope, but activates a curiosity about what these emotional states do (Ahmed, 2004a). Halperin (2012) writes of this difference in his analysis of the production of “gay” as an identity in liberal humanist frameworks of sexual object choice and “queer” as a feeling and socio-cultural expression: That distinctively gay way of being, moreover, appears to be rooted in a particular queer way of feeling. And that queer way of feeling—that queer subjectivity—expresses itself through a peculiar, dissident way of relating to cultural objects (movies, songs, clothes, books, works of art) and cultural forms in general (art and architecture, opera and musical theater, pop and disco, style and fashion, emotion and language). As a cultural practice, male homosexuality involves a characteristic way of receiving, reinterpreting, and reusing mainstream culture, of decoding and recoding the heterosexual or heteronormative meanings already encoded in that culture, so that they come to function as vehicles of gay or queer meaning. (p. 12)

The decoding and recoding Halperin describes involves the production of queer feelings, wherein subjects might feel that they are perpetually unable to achieve a desired object and full inclusion. This is important for my own project as I understand how the aspirations by gay men for dominant notions of masculinity, muscular bodies, or long-term romantic relationships, can be read as both “failing” heteronormative standards, but also queering normative institutions.

This queer way of feeling, or queer subjectivity, is critical for conceptualizing how men relate to Grindr, online dating, and sexual cultures through dissidence, as well as how negativity is, in itself, a cultural practice. Such notions operate through both heteronormativity and homonormativity, as structures of homonormativity reproduce heteronormative aspirations and goals within queer communities (Duggan, 2003). Because they are unable to achieve full inclusion into either wider heteronormative society or homonormative spaces, such as Grindr, subjects experience abjection. Anthony, one of my participants, described his resistance to heteronormative norms as a way of distinguishing himself from heteronormative expectations: Like, if you are gay, you have to fit this heteronormative lifestyle of having one person the rest of your life and having a dog, but like straight people aren’t doing that anymore. You can’t live your life based on what straight people are going to say. Like whether you have a partner or have a monogamous relationship, whether you are monogamous or anything, you are still a faggot to them. Because you think that is what you are supposed to be, that is what you are supposed to be. Stop worrying about what straight people think and just fuck around. You do you. It’s all just men in general because like men are shitty to women online and now you have men being men to other men. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

This repudiation from heteronormative expectations results in the abjection becoming a defining feature of individuals’, such as Anthony’s, subjectivity. I will now turn to explaining abjection theoretically in what follows.

Abjection Abjection refers to the phenomenon of being seen as outside society’s framework of normalcy and the intersubjective experience of self-shattering that takes place through such repudiation. Throughout my thesis, I employ Kristeva’s (1982) theory of abjection as an experience of self-rejection and a reaction to a perceived threat to self. In particular, Kristeva’s theorization of the intersubjective processes of abjection helps to conceptualize how individuals pre-linguistically eject something that poses a threat to its autonomy and sense of selfhood. For communications mediated through socio-sexual applications and text, communication becomes gendered as individuals use text communication to adjust emotional distance with potential partners. As De Boise (2016) articulates, traditional discourses on masculinity and Cartesian rationalism encourage emotional restraint and self-regulation in men. Psychoanalysis theorises this as a component of men’s repudiation of their mother and value for autonomy over

81 relationality (Benjamin, 1998). Through abjection, the threat to one’s self is exiled and the self can remain contained to preserve distinctions between self and Other. Therefore, for men who are deemed more emotional or “needy,” their repudiation occurs through the challenge which they pose to another’s sense of self and individual autonomy. Kristeva (1982) describes abjection as a liminal state where identity is disturbed and the symbolic order is shattered. In her framework, “it is thus not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but that which disturbs identity, system, and order. What does not respect borders, positions, and rules. The in- between, the ambiguous, the composite” (p. 4). Abjection involves the repudiation of the object which threatens one’s sense of self. Kristeva describes this by using the example of a reaction to drinking milk: “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it. But since the food is not an “other” for “me,” who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish myself. (p. 3)

The lack of distinction between subject and object, or “I” and “Other,” makes the subject attempt to expel the milk, although it has already consumed the milk, making it a part of itself. Kristeva further explains that the infant’s abjection of the milk is also an abjection of parental figures; that is, by rejecting the parental figures who provide the milk, the infant attempts to distinguish itself as an independent “I.” For Kristeva, individual responses to abjection are a re- enactment of a pre-lingual response to the breakdown of meaning between infant and mother. Due to societal dynamics that encourage men to foster self-sufficiency and independence (while encouraging women to value intimacy and interrelationality), men who actively seek out intimate relationships are constructed as “failed men” and feminized. The onus is often placed on women in heterosexual romantic relationships to be the more emotionally expressive and communicative partner (Duncombe & Marsden, 1993). As a result, romantic love is typically coded, and specifically gendered, as a feminizing feeling, particularly as heteronormative constructs for romantic love are seen as containing and taming the “natural” sexual virility of men (i.e. the misogynistic phrase that a heterosexual man is “whipped” or “tamed” by his female partner). Femininity is commonly associated with abjection (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019). This is because it is constructed as less-than-autonomous, dependent, failing standards for full- personhood, particularly for men, which constructs “this gendered body as a site of failed masculinity” (Kuhl & Martino, 2018, p. 32).

I take the time to discuss abjection because it is frequently associated with femininity. In the context of my study, I find this to be especially true of feminine-gendered men. As Barbara Creed (1986) writes, “all human societies have a conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about women that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, and abject” (p. 45). Constructions of femininity, particularly in queer communities, are commonly associated with notions of failure and abjection as well as normalizing regimes, sentimentality, and romanticism. For instance, Hoskin and Taylor (2019) write that “femme is an abject existence within a broader contemporary western patriarchal culture where feminine subjects more generally are positioned as abject ‘Others’” (p. 9). For Hoskin and Taylor, particular constructions of femininities challenge object/subject distinctions and draw attention to cultural logics that associate femininity with subordination and passivity. Similarly, Hoskin and Taylor (2019) describe how femininity dislodges and disassociates the normative through its associations with failure and abjection. Men who fail to contain and regulate their feelings according to patriarchal feeling rules are feminized (Connell, 1995). For men who are feminized and considered failed subjects due, in particular, to their failure to “contain” and “regulate” their feelings in a masculinizing manner, their abjection from other app users can function to interrupt dominant masculinized norms that privilege contained and emotionally regulated subjects. Conversely, men are encouraged to be more stoic and reserved with their emotions in response to women, who are considered “dependent” or “needy” (Connell, 1995; Kittay, 2019). This makes gender-equal relationships very difficult, as power dynamics often emerge on the basis of emotional demands and self- preservation (Benjamin, 1988; Bialystok, 2017). Such dynamics play out amongst gay men, particularly when emotional independence and fears of individual vulnerability are emphasized in gay romantic relationships (Cadwell, 2009; Elder et al., 2015; Sánchez et al., 2009). Kantian, or sovereign and liberal humanist notions of the masculine subject associate femininity with emotional relationality and masculinity with autonomy. When male subjects do not conform to these associations, they are often considered “failed men.” In my study I make use of Pascoe’s (2007) “spectre of the fag,” which refers to the performative ritualization and reinforcement of hierarchies of masculinities whereby subordinate masculinities, or masculinities deemed lesser than in gendered hierarchies—for both gay and straight men—are subjected to continual policing through verbal, physical, and symbolic

83 violence. Thus, men who are more emotionally vulnerable online are commonly feminized through their emotional interactions and levels of intimacy demanded from other app users and therefore experience abjection. I think that people who are perceived as getting attached too quickly, I think that they’re weirdly judged for it. I have definitely judged guys that become attached way too quickly, and been like, “you need to, like, slow down” (Steve, 28, white cisgender gay man)

Gay Shame Shame is a frequently employed affective motif within gay men’s writing and literature (Downs, 2012; Halperin & Traub, 2009; Todd, 2016). Whether by overcoming the feelings through pride (Todd, 2016), psychopathology (Downs, 2012), or acceptance (Halperin & Truab, 2009), shame and failure are commonplace as affective states for gay subjectivities (Cadwell, 2009; Halperin & Traub, 2009). For many queer people, shame arises from abjection, particularly for those who cannot or will not orient themselves towards heteronormative lifestyles and aspirations (Morrison, 2015). In their writing on gay shame, Halperin and Traub (2009) ask, What are the residual effects of shame on lesbian and gay subjectivity in the era of gay pride? What affirmative uses can be made of shame and related affects, now that not all queers are condemned to live in shame? (p. 4)

Shame, instead of being an affect to be covered over, can hold productive value in terms of disrupting normative politics and social ideals. For example, many gay men valorize “Pride” event bodies during the summer and seek to masculinize and muscularize their bodies. Viewing shame as productive would be a means of conceptualizing how bodies that don’t fit that white, masculine, muscular mold, can interrupt a politic that prioritizes, protects, and valorizes bodies based on racialized and gendered hierarchies. Drawing from Sedgwick’s (2003) work on queer performativity and shame, Halperin and Traub (2009) argue that queers must “rethink pride, identity, performativity, and queerness in relation to the volatile dynamics, both individual and collective, of shame” (p. 7). This re-thinking of pride, identity, performativity, and queerness involves thinking about how Pride events re-center liberal humanist politics that draw upon enlightenment-based logics of rationality and individual freedom. These generally privilege masculinist notions of Cartesian divides (Bordo, 1986). In my work, I am interested in how

84 subjects who are deemed “out of place” on Grindr can disrupt the normative politics of GSSAs, which focuses on compartmentalization between mind and body in one’s sexual subjectivity. Shame as an affective dimension, “sticks” to certain subjects more than others, and is involved in subject formation as an “intense and painful sensation that is bound up in how the self feels about itself” (Ahmed, 2004a, p. 103). Halberstam (2005) also reflects on the interconnections of white gay male masculinity and gay shame as a cultural motif. Drawing connections between childhoods of invalidation and productions of gay shame, Halberstam writes: The sexual and emotional scripts that queer life draws on, and that oppose the scripts of normativity, are indebted oddly to this early experience with shame, denial, and misrecognition. When we seek to reclaim gay shame and we oppose the normativity of a “gay pride” agenda, we embrace these awkward, undignified, and graceless childhoods, and we choose to make them part of our political future. (p. 221)

While bringing this connection between childhood, history, and shame to the forefront, Halberstam critiques depictions of gay shame invested in sexual liberation and freedom, articulating how such investments romanticize the history of the Gay Liberation movement and refuse to acknowledge the continual exclusions that occur in homonormative mainstream gay communities in the present. Moreover, proud narratives of Gay Liberation privilege whiteness and maleness; Halberstam explains that “the subject who emerges as the subject of gay shame is often a white and male self whose shame in part emerges from the experience of being denied access to privilege” (p. 223). Thus, the obfuscation of shame and the reclamation of normative white masculinity is central to the Gay Pride movement to ensure the subject emerges as a masculinized and white subject. As a result, the emergence of a liberated, proud subject entails shifting shame onto racial and feminized Others (Halberstam, 2005). Ultimately, for my project, theorizing how shame and negative feelings might disrupt the normative narratives of sexual liberation is important for critiquing homonormative notions that favour maleness and whiteness. This can be considered through an excerpt of data from Haro, one of my participants, which is discussed further in my third data chapter: And I think that we also don’t want to be seen as being broken, or being weak, right? Um, so then guys just don’t share that they’re feeling sad or whatever, or have mental illness. . . . So there is this perception of wanting to appear to be healthy and, and vibrant, and not sad and alone, right? Cause then, when you’re broken or when you’re feeling sad, then you might fear people might not want to connect with you, right? So, it goes back to wanting to feel connected, and be a part of a gay community, and if you

appear to be faulty, or broken, you may be exiled. It goes back to feeling that the worst thing is to be exiled. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese cisgender gay man)

The possibilities of negative affective productions to disrupt homonormative notions of queer inclusion and liberal identity politics can be considered in relationship with many of my participants’ disenchantments with their experiences on Grindr.

Queer of Colour Critique I deploy QOC critique throughout my thesis—particularly within the third data chapter— to analyze the experiences of my racialized participants as they navigate socio-sexual applications. QOC critique is an analytic tool focused on “responding to the circumstances of migration, neoliberal state and economic formations, and the development of racial knowledges and subjectivities about sexual and gender minorities” (Ferguson, 2018, p. 2). It is useful in particular for many of my participants who are both recent newcomers and racialized, as processes of migration and nationalism are imbued within the constitution of subjectivities under liberal capitalism. QOC critique interrupts the ambivalence that queer studies and queer theoretical frameworks often demonstrate towards the experiences and cultural productions of queers of colour (Ferguson, 2018), while drawing attention to queer theoretical frameworks that align liberalism, the nation-state with respectable white queers (Puar, 2007). Originally inspired by the lineage of women of colour feminism (Anzaldúa, 1987; Combahee River Collective, 1983; Crenshaw, 1989; Lorde, 1984/2012; Moraga, 1983), QOC critique “indexes an interdisciplinary corpus of scholarship on the dialectics between hegemony and resistance that shape the lives of queer people of color” (Brockenbrough, 2015, p. 29). A QOC critique focuses on the resistance of queers of colour and considers agency “through the determination of QOC subjects to strategically imagine subjectivities and forge realities that defy the logics and constraints of QOC marginalizations” (p. 31). Notable for my project is QOC critique’s focus on the body and its specific targeting of Cartesian rationalism and divides between mind and body. According to McCready (2013), the cultural productions of queers of colour that begin with the body, are a conscious effort of queer people of color to address the Cartesian split that invalidates embodied knowledge, alternative ways of knowing, and problematic categories of identity. These theories in the flesh embedded in cultural

productions serve to subvert identity categories and identity politics that essentialize race, class, gender and sexuality identities that render queer youth of color invisible. (p. 513)

Thus, QOC critique makes a conscious effort to conceptualize how the body can be a source of knowledge and self-understanding, thereby dismantling the rationalist notion that knowledge and selfhood arise from cognition alone. The feelings and emotions of queers of colour are central to QOC critique. They provide the capacity to conceptualize how the emotional responses of queers of colour to racist, colonialist, and heterosexists violence and structures leave such subjects constituted as “irrational” (Lorde, 1984/2012) and “less than human” (Wynter, 2003) under the logics of liberalism. Referencing Reddy regarding the intent of QOC critique, Roderick A. Ferguson (2004) writes, the decisive intervention of queer of color analysis is that racist practice generally articulates itself as gender and sexual regulation, and that gender and sexual differences variegate racial formation. This articulation, moreover, accounts for the social formations that compose liberal capitalism. (p. 3)

Thus, QOC critique brings forward an intersectional lens that considers class, race, gender, sexuality, and the impact of neoliberal capitalism and the liberal nation-state. QOC critique’s focus on the nation state assists to conceptualize how processes of migration are involved in the journeys of queers of colour across national boundaries, commonly leaving them in liminal or “borderland” positions (Anzalduá, 1987). Considering the liminal positionality of queer migrants through a QOC lens provides a perspective for conceptualizing how “identity categories are burdened by legacies that must be interrogated, do not map neatly across time and space, and become transformed through circulation within specific, unequally situated local, regional, national, and transnational circuits” (Luibhéid, 2008, p. 170). Through QOC critique, the (dis)identificatory processes with the liberal nation-state and mainstream white queer communities can be theorized as queers of colour navigate structures of whiteness, nationalism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and liberalism (Ferguson, 2004; Eng & Han, 2000; Muñoz, 1999, 2009). Walcott (2015) reminds us that the national “is never just singular” and “always leaks elsewhere” (pp. viii-viiii). This means that the impact of nationalism on gendered, racialized, and sexualized subjectivities varies across social locations, as nationalism and discourses of state citizenship reify essentialized ideas of gender and sexual identities and hierarchies of belonging (Walcott, 2015, pp. viii–viiii). This is useful for my project’s critique of

87 liberal humanist notions of identity categories, which re-center individual essences and gendered and racialized hierarchies.

Assemblage Theory Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) assemblage theory informs much of my study methodologically and theoretically. They write: the assemblage negotiates variables at this or that level of variation, according to this or that degree of deterritorialization, and determines which variables will enter into constant relations or obey obligatory rules and which will serve instead as a fluid matter for variation. (p. 100)

Such assemblages are continually in processes of making and unmaking, as an “assemblage may therefore be considered according to its composition, in terms of the various groupings of signs as components, and according to its functions, the various affects it has or relations of deterritorialization into which it may enter” (Goodchild, 1996, p. 7). Such assemblages are composed of heterogeneous parts that come together, as “assemblage” comes from the French term, agencement which denotes a heterogenous group of elements that come together (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Fox and Alldred (2017) note how assemblages are held together through the “capacities of assembled relations to affect or be affected” (p. 17). The production of affect is critical for conceptualizing how assemblages involve the productions of pre-linguistic intensities, which Brian Massumi famously defined, drawing from Spinoza, as “an ability to affect and be affected” (cited in Leys, 2011). Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of “becoming” are critical to their theorization of affect in how subjects are continually emerging, shifting, and changing through their embodied, affective responses to their environments (May, 2003). Instead of placing affect as solely within the subject, such notions of becoming consider the “in-between” of the interactions between subjects and their environments and how the affective productions that are beyond representational description constitute the emergence of new forms of life and subjectivities. In this sense, subjectivity is always shifting, emerging, changing, as subjects are formed through different assemblages that are beyond representation and words in their becomings. Deleuze and Guattari bring their notion of “becoming” in conversation with their theorization of “minoritarian.”

Frictional Analyses In my analyses, I often move between my interest in affect in terms of the psychic constitution of subjectivity, and identificatory norms and affect through the Deleuzian lens of embodied and pre-linguistic intensities. This means that theoretically, I often work with theories that are “frictional” (Puar, 2012, 2013), as they are seemingly incommensurable. Puar (2012, 2013) notes in her writing on the tensions between feminist deployment of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality theory and Deleuzian assemblage theory that shatters identity categories and humanist notions of the subject, how holding theories in “friction” or “frictionally” can be productive in working with theorizations that seem to be oppositional or incommensurable. In the context of debates over Deleuzian approaches, which emphasize non-representation, and humanist theorizations of intersectionality that focus on identity politics and reinforce a stable human subject, Puar (2012) notes how it is commonly assumed that “representation, and its recognized subjects, is the dominant, primary, or most efficacious platform of political intervention, while a Deleuzian nonrepresentational, non-subject-oriented politics is deemed impossible” (p. 50). Describing how these two approaches do not have to be oppositional, but can be “frictional,” I hold the tensions between psychic analytical approaches to affect, which focus more on the psychic constitution of subjectivity, and Deleuzian approaches to affect that emphasize pre-linguistic affective intensities.

Posthumanism I utilize post-human theories to conceptualize the formation of digital “assemblages” (Lupton, 2015) between human and non-human actors and the material influence of engagements with technology on corporeal embodiments of men online. In conversation with the “ontological turn” in queer theory, my project employs post-humanism as an ethical and political way of starting my research project in a different space than with the human. My research investigates the material-discursive space of GSSAs instead of placing the human as the sole beginning place of research. It is important for my research project to employ post-humanism, particularly within my autoethnography, as I wish to begin with analyzing the material spatialities of GSSAs while conceptualizing the experiences of men online as not belonging to them specifically as subjects as they participate in collective assemblages of relationships. Through envisioning GSSAs and technologies as agentic and productive within the constitution of subjectivities, my employment

89 of post-humanism envisions phones and technologies as possessing agency within the constitution of my participants’ subjectivities (Hayles, 2012). Therefore, I move beyond a Cartesian mind/body divide that favours epistemology over ontology. This is important for my own autoethnographic component where I consider the constitution of my own embodied subjectivity within entangled material-discursive practices within GSSAs (Barad, 2007). Post- humanism destabilizes my own subjectivity as well as those of my participants and challenges how these subjectivities are constituted in relation to non-human (specifically technological) others. Posthumanism destabilizes the primacy of the liberal autonomous rational subject (Hayles, 1999) and Cartesian divides between mind and body, while placing the body as a site of affective productions (Braidoitti, 2013; Hayles, 1999). With much literature on gay men’s sexualities grounded in notions of Cartesian divides, my project provides a feminist ethical intervention that considers the place of the body and the attachments of embodied sexualities as beginning sites for research (Butler & Braidotti, 1994). Within my research, gay men’s engagements with technology are considered embodied and affective, locating the body as the location of affective becoming, challenging the location of affect as strictly within the mind (McHendry et al., 2011, p. 395). Moreover, with GSSAs and similar applications promoting a politic of seemingly emotionally detached “hook-ups,” my research seeks to focus on the embodied and affective productions of such encounters and how affective productions are entangled within gay men’s embodied encounters online. Such posthuman subjectivities involve the intra-actions15 and entanglements (Barad, 2007) of humans and technology in post-humanism through an onto-epistemological stance. In this onto- epistemological stance, epistemology and ontology will not be inherently separated to make distinctions between human/non-human, object/subject, and mind/body through the “entangled practices of knowing and being” (Barad, 2007, p. 379). I can say, like, my hook-ups and men online since starting has kind of been like, it was the main reason I started dieting and trying to look a certain part. It was the reason I changed my appearance because I wanted the validation and I wanted people to talk to me. Like I didn’t have my ears pierced and going to the gym until I started hooking-up with guys. It has been a push in that direction and it in some ways it has shaped my self- esteem. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay, cisgender)

15 I employ Karen Barad’s (2007) terms “intra-actions” and “intra-relationality” to signal my epistemological stance in placing agency within non-human as agency can be conceptualized as a dynamism of forces between human and non-human matter (p. 141).

While I “plug-in” some post-human theorizations to my thesis, my project is not an explicitly post-humanist project. I plug these theories into my theorizing for their use in conceptualizing how technology is involved in producing subjectivity and entangled in the production of affect. Important theorists such as Donna Haraway (1985) began such conversations with her writing of the “Cyborg Manifesto” and recent writings (Lupton, 2015) on “digital cyborg assemblages” and the role of technology in mutually constituting the assemblage subjectivities of subjects. Moving away from a humanist theorization of identity and into a digital assemblage subjectivity, Haraway (1991) describes the “text, machine, body and metaphor” assemblage produced through everyday human interactions with technology “by evoking the pleasures and potential of using technologies to discipline the body” (cited in Lupton, 2013, p. 574). Such everyday usages of technology, such as intra-actions (Barad, 2007) with Grindr, can discipline the body, self, and affective norms. Still, important critical interventions into post-humanism (Attebery, 2016; Hoogeveen, 2016; Jackson, 2017; Jackson, 2013, 2015) also problematize the reification of the white male Enlightenment subject within post-human theorizations for “an understanding of how Indigenous epistemologies and interactive material natures are translated” epistemologically and ontologically (Hoogeveen, 2016, p. 361).

Chapter Three: Methods and Methodology

My research on gay men’s socio-sexual connections on GSSAs uses a queer and feminist affective methodological approach, rooted in a poststructural foundation (Ahmed, 2004a, 2010b; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Halberstam, 1998; Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Åhall, 2018). In my last chapter, I outlined queer and feminist theorizations of affect theory to analyze the role of both the psychic and the pre-linguistic in my theorizations of affect. In some senses, my work is inspired by previous Deleuzian work that uses affect theory and a poststructural lens (Carroll, 2019; Coleman & Ringrose, 2013; MacLure, 2010, 2103a, 2013b; Puar, 2012, 2013), although my work diverges in its specific interest in both pre-linguistic affective intensities and feelings within the psyche and their impact on notions of identification. In this chapter, I will explain how this pertains to my theorization of affective assemblages within my research. The research questions I chose do not seek to find or present a universalizable “truth” or an “essence” to my participants’ experiences. Rather, by choosing to use a poststructural approach, the questions focused on how “the production of meaning, and the ways in which knowledge and power combine to create accepted or taken-for-granted forms of knowledge and social practices” (Fawcett, 2008, p. 2). Specifically, my work focused on a queer and feminist affective methodology of vulnerable connections16 that was immanent and embodied as we created an “in-between space, a space of shared deterritorialization in which we constitute one another” (Mazzei & Jackson, 2012, p. 450). These deterritorializations emerged through this vulnerable methodology where my participants and I left our interviews different than we entered, as our subjectivities shifted in new directions after each encounter. Importantly, this vulnerable methodology challenged, as Koivunen et al. (2018) explicate, “liberal notions of the individual subject as autonomous, independent, and self-sufficient, and somehow not touched by the capacity to be vulnerable” (p. 5). Koivunen et al. (2018) describe how typically “vulnerable populations” are those who are considered dependent and feminized for failing to provide for themselves and perform neoliberal notions of self-sufficiency. Vulnerability is an emotional and affective state typically feminized and devalued for failing neoliberal notions for self-sufficiency and complete emotional regulation (Ecclestone &

16 I would like to thank my friend and colleague, Noah Kenneally, who helped me find the language for this approach that I was struggling to describe.

91 92

Goodley, 2016; Hoskin & Taylor, 2019; Kittay, 2015). While vulnerability, as a concept, is hard to define in research and can take many different theoretical orientations (Van den Hoonaard, 2020), my research considers both the psychic and social forms of vulnerability through relationality that can take place in research and how, by opening one’s self up to change within the research field, the researcher and participant can become entangled in one another’s becomings. Of course, such entanglements include both human and non-human material (including the very apps, themselves, which are intertwined in my research), meaning that vulnerability, as an affective state and methodological presumption, can emphasize connectivity and interdependency and affective connections, including how humans, themselves, are incredibly vulnerable to both each other and technology (Zembylas, 2016). My methodology of vulnerable connections purposefully challenged such neoliberal norms for self-sufficiency and emotional independence that, in particular, queer men are encouraged to engage in through entrepreneurial productions of queer masculinities (Edwards, 2005; Jacobs, 2020). Therefore, my focus on vulnerability and connections became a political act to challenge the focus on self- sufficiency and emotional independence amongst queer men. As noted in my theoretical frameworks chapter, I use vulnerability to challenge the “confidence culture” (Gill & Orgad, 2015) in online spaces and notions of self-empowerment and sexiness through strength, autonomy, and self-sufficiency by paying more attention to “bad feelings” that might arise for participants, such as shame or dependency, and noting how these feelings are typically feminized. In order to do this, I conceptualized myself as heavily interconnected within my research—hence an affective methodology of vulnerable connections—destabilizing binaries between myself and my participants and body and mind by opening myself up to change by “lingering on the edge of the not-yet” (St. Pierre, 2019, p. 3). This “not-yet” involves acknowledging “the affective dimensions of in situ research, insisting that in situ rhetorical critics analyze how people (including researchers and their co-participants in research) build affective bonds and collective subjectivities” (McHendry et al., 2014, p. 294). Much of the “not-yet” meant new forms of imagining queer relationalities and the ways in which we, as gay and queer men, might relate to one another.

Immanent Ontology Crucial to my methodology is conceptualizing my research through an immanent ontology. An immanent ontology, as explained by St. Pierre (2019), is a poststructural ontological position inspired by the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) that seeks to challenge notions of static being, stable identities, and the transcendental ontology of Plato. My immanent methodological approach destabilized binaries between researcher and participant, theory and data, and hierarchies that exist within such binarizations. In the sense, I was intertwined in my research as researcher/participant while completely opening myself up to my participants during our interviews. Still, within this methodology, it was important not to completely erase binaries and create a flat ontological condition which, as Braidotti (2019) articulates, “results in the very problematic move to reject the need for any theorization of subjectivity, thus undoing the possibility of a political project altogether” (p. 42). Since my interest was in the subjectivities of my participants (as well as my own), I could not completely eradicate all binaries and notions of subjectivity, which can erase all forms of difference and identity markers, universalizing subjectivity under a white, heterosexual, and able-bodied norm (Jackson, 2013). I will explain more about moving across binaries in the section in my methodology on “Surfing Binaries.” My conceptualization of this immanent ontology fits with my methodology of vulnerable connections in my refusal to separate epistemology or ontology, as “[t]he emphasis on immanence marks the rejection of transcendental universalism and mind-body dualism. All matter or substance being one and immanent to itself, it is intelligent and self-organizing” (Braidotti, 2019, p. 34). Still, as I will explain in what follows, I hesitantly thought with theorists, such as Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth St. Pierre in my immanent ontology and refused to create a completely flat ontological plain that universalizes all differences. My own queer and feminist affective methodology included the vulnerability of opening myself up for change within my interviews and conversations with my participants. By viewing GSSAs as a “plane of immanence” through immanent participation, I opened myself up to a state of becoming, or being affected by my own research in unforeseen ways while being embedded and interwoven within the research process. Through this plane of immanence, I opened to new relations and connections in my conversations with my participants as we navigated discussing our own experiences on apps together. While my interviews were semi-structured, they often veered off script in new directions as my participants and I made new connections between our

94 experiences. McHendry et al. (2014) discuss the importance of immanent participation in research to consider the researcher/critic and their embodiment in “a web of interpersonal relationships” (p. 294). I applied this approach to conceptualize the investigative possibilities of affective research with my participants. By ontologically conceptualizing my research as a “plane of immanence,” I followed McHendry et al. (2014) to conceptualize how I might embed myself within “a web of interpersonal relationships, affective claims on the critic, potential vulnerabilities, and political choices” (p. 294). In situ critics, as explained by McHendry et al. (2014), are embedded within their respective research fields, entangled in the mess of research, and do not neatly distinguish between theory and practice, or criticism and field. This was crucial for me to think with McHendry et al.’s (2014) work within the affective assemblages of my work “to theorize how those moments of being affected can begin to be presenced in and to shape our critical analyses” (p. 296). This is where my embodied reactions and gut responses shaped the very direction of my own research. In my own approach to conceptualizing myself as embedded within the affective assemblages of my research, I did not separate myself from my participants, or even my own history with the research site and the land of the site—as my research was predominately located in the Church and Wellesley Gay Village in downtown Toronto where I lived at the time of research—and all these components were involve in my own affective assemblages. My memories, histories, and personal vulnerabilities were heavily important for my methodology of vulnerable connections as I incorporated my own subjectivity into my research, opening up and sharing personal experiences with my participants.17 My reasons for using an explicitly feminist affective methodology are also political. Feminists are commonly constructed as “irrational,” “angry,” or “crazy” (Lorde, 1984/2012; Ussher, 2006) and, as Lorde (1984/2012) writes, a patriarchal society has forced women to distrust their inner feelings and sensations and “the power which rises from our [women’s]

17While I was aware that in some senses, I could relate to some of the experiences my participants were sharing, I strived to remain cognizant of how my own able-bodied, white settler cisgender femme identity played into my research and the specific emphases I brought to my research. For example, notably missing in my interviews were conversations regarding the land that the Church and Wellesley Gay Village is on—the land of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples—and the interconnections between Western liberal queer politics and settler colonialism (Morgensen, 2011). I describe this limitation of my research in the conclusion of my thesis and provide a more in-depth analysis of how this work on GSSAs can be expanded to include settler colonial analyses since I did not take an explicitly anti-colonial or decolonial lens to this research.

95 deepest and nonrational knowledge” (p. 53). Lorde terms this power “the erotic” and notes how women “have been warned against it all our lives by the male world” as “the erotic is not only a question of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing” (pp. 53–54). Feeling and doing is a part of my queer and feminist affect methodology as I conceptualize the power in feelings and emotions that have usually been deemed “irrational” while also conceptualizing how the feminization of such emotions can be a source of empowerment. McCann (2018) theorizes how femme assemblages “opens up a space for understanding belonging as connectivity and affect rather than focusing on visibility and representation” (p. 287). Such a focus on vulnerability and relationality in my own affective assemblages took into consideration how the traditional feminization and pathologization of interdependency and vulnerability between men can be a spot of femme recuperation. McCann (2018) draws from Dahl (2017), who mentions how femme research “is an open—as in vulnerable—position of research, insofar as in touching the subject of vulnerability, the vulnerable subject of femme politics, my starting point is that it touches me” (p. 41). While my research does not explicitly center on femme identification, I bring my own femme subjectivity18 into my research through my identification as femme and my focus on openness and vulnerability within the affective assemblages of my research methodology. Therefore, the affective assemblages produced through my interviews with my participants were inherently open, vulnerable, and intersubjective as a political stance that sought to destabilize the masculinist and rationalist notions of Enlightenment-based liberal humanism. This is how I “worked the ruins” (Lather, 2012) of liberal humanism and navigated within and against humanist approaches. Within my methodology of vulnerable connections, it was important to bring forward how vulnerability, as an affect, “sticks” to some bodies that are typically deemed “vulnerable” through white femininity, while other bodies, such as racialized bodies, are noted as bodies of “danger” (Ahmed, 2016). Therefore, vulnerability is not a universally equivalent condition, and

18 I wish to acknowledge the history of queer femme communities, particularly the history of femme identity developing from feminine lesbian communities (Nestle, 1992). Much femme scholarship has challenged the associations between constructs of femininity and passivity and immanent relationality (Rose & Camillieri, 2002). Importantly, I seek to identify how I choose to identify with the femme community and the affective focus on relationality and vulnerability, although not all femmes might identify with such relational and affective politics inherently. Moreover, there has been a recent increase in prominence of gay men identifying as femme to reclaim their femininity within a gay sexual community and politic that privileges hegemonic masculinities (Davies, 2020).

96 this was necessary to think with for my vulnerable methodological approach. Koivunen et al. (2018) note that “an ontological understanding of vulnerability, while true in the sense that all life is perishable, is often mobilised to discredit and undermine the validity of movements focusing on the culturally and politically produced vulnerability of specific groups” (p. 2). Therefore, while vulnerability might mobilize relationality and an openness to change, my approach takes seriously the critical work that challenges that universalization of ontology and notions that “all” humans experience the same ontological condition of vulnerability (Butler et al., 2016; Jackson, 2013; Koivunen et al., 2018). Bost et al. (2019) explicate how theorizations of Black masculinities and vulnerability must take into account both discourses of state surveillance, colonial histories of slavery, and “the interior lives of Black masculine subjects and grapple with intimate, invisible, and quiet forms of violence” to theorize everyday forms of violence and trauma. Similarly, Palmer (2017) notes “the fundamental opacity and unthinkability of Black feeling within the onto- epistemological framework that structures civil society and the modern field of representation” (p. 32). Within my own affective methodological approach, inspired by Deleuzian theorizations of non-linearity and non-hierarchy, it was important to avoid reifying vulnerability as an equivalent experience between all subjects, or even a state that could be equally afforded to all individuals. Palmer (2017) furthers this by articulating how there is “an overdetermined discourse that reads the expression and performance of Black affect as always already excessive, inadequate, or both” (p. 33). As I will describe in my first data chapter, humanistic emotional states, such as vulnerability or empathy can be a tool used to impede anti-racist conversations, which scholars such as Boler (1999), Ahmed (2004a), and Razack (2007) have described. Therefore, I tried to work against the liberal humanistic drive to deploy emotions through a logic of equivalence as I was aware that there were many experiences my participants would describe that I would never experience due to the many privileges in my social location.

Assemblage Theory Methodologically, my research draws from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) “assemblage theory,” a concept that theorizes how various heterogenous elements come together through multiplicities, relations, changes, and becomings (Coleman & Ringrose, 2013, p. 5). An assemblage works outside positivist notions of knowing and dismantles universalizing and

97 totalizing notions of truth by bringing in heterogenous elements that constantly change through every encounter (Delanda, 2019; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Part of conceptualizing my work methodologically as an assemblage required me to note how “affective assemblages” were involved in the production of my data during interviews and my own analyzing of data. These affective assemblages were embodied through “feminist gut responses” (Ahmed, 2016) to “data that glows” (MacLure, 2010, 2013a, 2013b) in both my interviews and my analysis and theorizing of my data. I describe “affective assemblages” below and how Deleuze and Guattari, Ahmed, and MacLure all influenced my thinking. Thinking with assemblage theory provided a means to consider vulnerability away from mere cognitive perspectives and to consider how embodied forms of relationality, vulnerability, and affect create new connections and intensities, methodologically. Assemblage theory provided a means to consider ontologically the different relations involved in the productions of my data and to challenge pre-conceived notions of what “counts” as data in traditional qualitative research. Nail (2017) notes how in translation from French to English, Deleuze and Guattari’s original term for assemblage—agencement—actually indicated heterogeneous elements that are arranged but never come together to make a whole—unity does not take place in an assemblage, nor do the heterogenous parts every come together fully formed—they are always in movement and arrangement. The question becomes not what an assemblage is or its existence, but what does it do? Nail further elaborates how assemblages are not defined by internal relations or essences—i.e. how when a body is defined by all the relations between the organs, with one organ is missing, the body stops functioning (p. 23). Assemblages are between the strata—or societal norms and structures that operate through hierarchies and pre- defined essences—and the body without organs, which operates by “continually dismantling the organism, causing asignifying particles or pure intensities to pass or circulate, and attributing to itself subjects that leaves with nothing more than a name as a trace of an intensity” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 4). What is necessary to note is how an assemblage is continually being remade and reworked, meaning it is different in every encounter. There has been important recent work using an affect theory and Deleuzian lens methodologically (Carroll, 2019; MacLure, 2010, 2013a, 2013b), such as Carroll’s (2019) study of how reading anti-colonial fiction in a book club with six women of color assists in the negotiation of subjectivities and production of embodied processes of reading and becoming in

98 subjectivities. Reading Carroll (2019), Ringrose and Zarabadi (2018), and Ivinson and Renold (2016) as well as other Deleuzian and affect theory studies (Holford et al., 2013; Ringrose & Rawlings, 2015) provided a lens for how I employed assemblage theory theoretically and methodologically. Such Deleuzian and affect theory work commonly focuses on what is left out of “traditional” research. Ringrose and Zarabadi (2018) describe in their interview how affective “hot spots” provide a means “to attend to the things that you would leave out of a traditional research account because you could not make sense of it and did not know what to do with” (p. 210). Important in my conceptualization of assemblage theory is how it challenges the Cartesian divides between mind and body (Springgay & Freedman, 2012). With much literature on gay men’s sexualities grounded in notions of Cartesian divides, my project provides a feminist ethical intervention that considers the place of the body and the attachments of embodied sexualities as beginning sites for research (Butler & Braidotti, 1994). Within my research, gay men’s engagements with technology are considered embodied and affective as the body is a location of affective becoming, challenging the location of affect as strictly within the mind (McHendry et al., 2014, p. 395). Moreover, with GSSAs and similar applications promoting a politic of seemingly emotionally detached “hook-ups,” my research seeks to focus on the embodied and affective productions of such encounters and how affective productions are entangled within gay men’s embodied encounters online. Therefore, assemblage theory’s focus on tackling the binary between mind and body, human and technology, is important politically for me to consider gay men’s sexual subjectivities as embodied and how the body can be a site of intimacy and emotional production. Gay cultural critic and literary critic, Jason Jacobs (2020) notes the common separation between “love here and sex there; or sex out there and love safely secured over here” amongst gay men, reinforcing “the assertion that the separation between sex and love is both a fundamentally gendered behavior and at the same time a cognitive, therefore active and intentional process” (p. 36). In Jacobs’ (2020) analysis critiquing the politics of Cartesian divides and emotional compartmentalization in gay men’s sexualities, he further articulates how, by “reinforcing a conceptual distinction between recreational sex and intimacy (which includes sex of another kind or in a different register), gay men become capable of blocking or forestalling intimacy, whether defined as affective investment, knowledge, or even familiarity” (p. 36). Jacobs’ critique assists in understanding my investment, methodologically, in applying

99 assemblage theory to challenge Cartesian divides between emotional intimacy and investment and the body and sexuality.

Data That Glows It is important to note that my methodology does not follow positivist procedural approaches that value quantification, certainty, or logic (Paley, 2008). Instead, my methodology follows embodied affective responses as forms of self-knowledge. Breaking down the binary between mind and body was critical for my research in terms of considering the body as a site of affective production, both in terms of my participants’ usage of GSSAs and hook-ups, as well as during our interviews and analysis. Throughout my project, I aimed to work with and within the tension between psychoanalytic theorizations of affect and the cultural production of feelings and affect as pre-linguistic, or “gut” intensities by paying attention to specific data that “glowed.” MacLure (2010) writes how when data glows, “something would catch our attention, usually in a project meeting, and start to form itself into an example” (p. 282). Describing the “event” of data glowing, MacLure describes how there is an “affective component” with “intensities,” as there would be as a kind of glow: some detail—a fieldnote fragment or video image—starts to glimmer, gathering our attention. Things both slow down and speed up at this point. On the one hand, the detail arrests the listless traverse of our attention across the surface of the screen or page that holds the data, intensifying our gaze and making us pause to burrow inside it, mining it for meaning. On the other hand, connections start to fire up: the conversation gets faster and more animated as we begin to recall other incidents and details in the project classrooms, our own childhood experiences, films or artwork that we have seen, articles that we have read. (p. 282)

In later writing, MacLure (2013b) notes how each encounter with her data presents a different affective assemblage, with new intensities and connections made. For the purposes of my research, such affective intensities are crucial methodologically as my own interviewing and analyzing became a rhizomatic affective journey in itself. However, this journey did not have a “neat” narrative with a beginning and end. Methodologically, I begin in the middle or rhizomatically, as a rhizome is non-hierarchical, with endless entry and exit points, moving within and against interpretation as it creates new connections, new intensities, and multiplicities (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Coleman & Ringrose, 2013). Deleuze & Guattari (1987) describe how the rhizome “pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always

100 detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and its own lines of flight” (p. 21). This notion of the “rhizome” emerged as central to my methodological commitments and my approach throughout my field work. Although I draw from Deleuzian approaches to affect, I do not neatly distinguish between affective intensities as pre-linguistic responses and the socio-cultural politics of emotions and affects. I do not make this distinction as a way to challenge the notion that inner personal feelings and emotions are apolitical while affect is transgressive, political, and subversive (Ahmed, 2010b). This is a different approach than prior work using an affect-based Deleuzian lens that did not combine Deleuzian theorizations of affect with psychoanalysis (e.g. Carroll, 2019; MacLure, 2010, 2013a, 2013b). I will describe how this played out in my analysis below but it is important to note that I moved between psychoanalytical frameworks for understanding identification, attachment, and affect within the psyche and Deleuzian notions of affect as productive and pre-linguistic. Similar to the “data that glows” (MacLure, 2010, 2013b), Ahmed’s (2016) notion of the “feminist gut” guided my own interviews and analysis process. Moving between a binary between emotions and feelings as “within” the subject and affect as cultural, relational, and intense, Ahmed’s (2016) notion of “feminist gut” became central to my own methodological and rhizomatic process. I employed my own “feminist gut,” a concept that Ahmed (2016) explains as “a sensation that begins at the back of your mind, an uneasy sense of something amiss, gradually comes forward, as things come up; then receding, as you try to get on with things; as you try to get on despite thing” (p. 27), as my methodological framework. Such a feminist gut is an embodied response and sensation; Ahmed (2016) notes: “feminism begins with sensation: with a sense of thing” (p. 21). This sense of things motivated my own research as I entered this project due to my own “sense of things” within gay men’s communities, or that there was a sensation bringing me back to investigating these research questions. Part of this sensation was my own lived experiences and memories in gay men’s communities that moved me beyond a simple binary between mind and body, internal and external, creating what Ahmed (2016) articulates as an embodied memory, or imprinted memories and sensations on the body. As Ahmed (2016) articulates, “a sensation is not an organized or intentional response to something” (p. 22), meaning that these embodied and affective responses were not “measured” or quantified, nor did I try to make

101 meaning of them to find an inner “truth.” These gut responses and affective intensities guided my research process without any attempts to produce “facts.” I felt a gut reaction to a topic, a conversation, a piece of data, and followed my gut instinct: a process that I took in all of my data collection, analysis, and writing. Following these gut responses often did not make “sense” to me in the moment and brought me to new forms of connections to move beyond what Ahmed (2016) terms the “half glimpsed,” so I could “make sense of how different experiences connect” (p. 22). Previous feminist research has employed the notion of a “gut feeling” methodologically to investigate affect theories. For example. Åhäll (2018) conceptualizes a feminist affective methodology that conceptualizes the interconnections of gender, discourse, and affect as structures that “goes-without-saying.” Employing Ahmed’s (2010b) notions of “feelings of structure,” Åhäll’s framework is concerned with presenting a methodology of “feminist curiosity.” This “curiosity” involves a “feminist gut” that moves “closer to the feeling” (Ahmed, 2016, cited in Åhäll, 2018, p. 37) by investigating one’s sense of unease and the impressions which affects can leave in an embodied manner. As noted, Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2016) work on the feminist gut heavily informs my feminist affective work by encouraging the use of one’s emotional states, the affective intensities experienced, and the discomfort and potentially negative emotions to bring one into different ways of thinking about everyday experiences. Carroll (2019) places MacLure’s (2010, 2013b) work on affective “hot spots” and Sumara’s (2003) work on embodied literacies, to theorize “the gut feelings, and unsettling/uncomfortable or intense moments, where the concentration is on what happens in these moments”; she asks: “where do these feelings come from and what do they do?” (p. 60). Carroll’s work similarly focuses on an embodied notion of affect and how such gut moments can provide feminist researchers with provocations for thinking differently about moments of discomfort, unease, and affective curiosity. These combined approaches that focus on the pre- linguistic affective intensities (Carroll, 2019; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010), the cultural production of emotions (Ahmed, 2004a, 2016), and feminist affective methodologies (Åhäll, 2018) inform my understanding of feminist gut responses, methodologically.

102

Surfing Binaries: Virtual and Real Life Data Worlds Queer anthropologist, Tom Boellstorff’s (2010) conception of “surfing binaries” is key to my queer and feminist affective methodology. Boellstorf’s queer methodology seeks to “surf” what he terms the “data-theory-method triangle,” otherwise known as the binaries between data, theory, and method (p. 216). Dismantling this triangle involves, according to Boellstorff, considering how data collection methods are implicated in analytical approaches and theoretical considerations. For my project, it was necessary to consider affect through a “both/and” lens (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013) where I noted both the “data that glowed” (MacLure, 2010) in terms of conversation with participants and my own embodied “feminist gut” responses (Ahmed, 2016) to conversations, points of interest, and the pre-cognitive affective intense responses during conversations. Such a consideration involved surfing binaries that divide forms of “data” (i.e. pre-linguistic affective responses and the psychic emotional states of subjects) to consider how my own affective responses, or “feminist gut” responses during interviews could count as data. Boellstorff (2010) articulates how “[t]o surf is to move freely upon a wave that constrains choice (you cannot make it move in the opposite direction), but does not wholly determine one’s destination” (p. 223). Boellstorff further elaborates that such “a queer method could recognize the emic social efficacy and heuristic power of binarisms without thereby ontologizing them into ahistoric, omnipresent Prime Movers of the social” (p. 223). Therefore, Boellstorff’s approach does not completely deconstruct binaries or create a flat ontology where all entities are on the same ontological level as one another or are universalized. As such, I use Boellstorff’s approach to “surf” the binaries between different theoretical orientations to affect. This is important, as part of my own interest in this project is the production of subjectivities through GSSAs, meaning that I could not completely erase my interest on the actual subjectivities of my participants by focusing only on pre-linguistic affective intensities. Throughout interviews, I found myself moving between my position as a researcher as well as a user of gay socio-sexual applications in an approach which Boellstorff (2010) describes as “surfing binaries” as I moved between insider/outsider in terms of both the communities being researched, as well as in terms of surfing the binary between the “virtual world” of Grindr and other gay socio-sexual applications, and the “real world” of my in-person semi-structured interviews. My methodology entailed vulnerable connections with my participants, meaning that I often moved beyond the typical “researcher” role and opened-up with my participants about my

103 own past experiences in dating, hooking-up, and romantic relationships. This focus on vulnerability with my participants was a political focus on forms of queer relationality and connection with my participants in order to diminish any hierarchies that might take place between participant and researcher. Boellstorff (2010) does not infer that one must completely deconstruct binaries (such as virtual/“real life” or participant/researcher). Instead, Boellstorff describes how surfing binaries entails “a queer method could recognize the emic social efficacy and heuristic power of binarisms without thereby ontologizing them into ahistoric, omnipresent Prime Movers of the social” (p. 223). While I diminished hierarchies that might take place between myself and my participants by being vulnerable about my own past experiences, I still guided the discussion. At times I opened up the interviews by asking: “What kind of connections and intimacies do you find you make on gay apps?” My focus on participants’ online connections purposefully focused on the forms of relationalities that participants experienced online and how this may or may not relate to experiences dating and making connections in “real life.” Boellstorff explicates that, within his research in the online world, Second Life, surfing binaries entails acknowledging the differences between events in “real life” and the virtual life of the video game, while still creating mental frameworks which are comparable within each world. For example, my participants would discuss the notion of “connection” as it pertains both to “connection” within Grindr and the “online world,” and “connection” or “making connections” in the “offline” or “real” world. Moreover, as a researcher, I was continually surfing binaries as I would interview app users within Grindr’s virtual environment while also interviewing participants in semi-structured interviews in “real life.” Thus, I was gathering data “in person” and in “real life” via semi- structured interviews while also gathering data and interviewing within the virtual world of Grindr. While using the socio-sexual application (Grindr), I created a profile and chatted with other users about their experiences using the application and making connections with others, while through semi-structured interviews, I asked about experiences making connections using Grindr and other similar applications. While similar, I viewed these experiences as still surfing the binary between “online” and “offline” or “virtual” and “real.” Media Studies scholar Sam Miles (2020) describes his experiences interviewing participants about their various intimacies online and the necessity of positioning one’s self in relationship with research participants,

104 particularly if they share common experiences and identities: “How we mediate this environment cannot be proscribed, but must be reflexively evaluated by each researcher in the field, via both personal positionality and relational negotiations of intimacy with others. This requires deep reflective work” (Miles, 2020, p. 6). This deeply reflective work involved intimately reflecting on the virtual environment of Grindr while “in the field” and negotiating relationally, as Miles explicates, my own vulnerabilities, conversations, and intimacies with participants as I navigated allowing care and interdependency in my interviews while simultaneously navigating boundaries due for ethical reasons.

Autoethnography and Virtual Ethnography: Surfing Between “Virtual” and “Real” Life Part of my queer and feminist affective methodology involves the interweaving of autoethnographic writings within my data. Writing myself into my thesis data is another political move to encourage an ethic of vulnerability and openness. Autoethnography is a writing-based approach to research which describes and analyzes personal experiences and the self within a social and cultural construct to create new meaning and understandings (Ellis, 2004). Writing the self is never a neutral or objective affair as I continually deconstruct and reconstruct the “self” to “work the limits of the narrative ‘I’” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2008, p. 299). Jackson and Mazzei (2008) describe a poststructural deconstructive autoethnography that “illustrates an engagement with the discursive construction of experience, a critique of the relations of power in the production of meaning from experience, and a treatment of experience as already an interpretation” (p. 304). Such a poststructural approach to autoethnography destabilizes and decenters the “I”; the stable liberal human subject and notions of experience and presence. Traditionally, autoethnography encapsulates a genre of writing that focuses on the individual within a social context by applying a researcher’s personal experiences to further comprehend socio-cultural beliefs, practices, and values through an interpretive lens (Jones et al., 2013). Autoethnography, as an ethnographic approach within the interpretive paradigm, is concerned with “thick” descriptions and analyses of personal experiences (Ellis et al., 2011). Much of autoethnography’s emergence within research is concerned with the importance of personal narratives and challenging positivist epistemological frameworks which herald universal narratives and truths through statistical approaches. Autoethnographers are expected to bring readers into the text through rich descriptions and setting-up the scene of an experience for

105 readers to “experience an experience” (Bochner & Ellis, 2006; Ellis & Bochner, 2006). Instead of using an interpretive lens that centered “experience,” I took “fractions” of my own lived experiences, which I explain below in my analysis section, and often wrote sections that considered my own becomings in different situations where I used GSSAs. These “fractions” are not meant to be complete pictures or tell a complete “truth”; that is, they are simple “fractions” within the greater affective assemblages of my thesis. These writings were experimental in nature, noting my own shifts and changes as I wrote and rewrote sections, considering my own becoming through language and writing (St. Pierre, 2018). Indeed, as Hanley (2019) notes, I approach writing “as a form of thinking rather than a form of representation” (p. 414). Instead of treating experience as the origin of knowledge, or the start of consciousness (Jackson & Mazzei, 2008; Scott, 1991), poststructural approaches to autoethnography problematize experience; language is no longer transparent and subjects are not coherent and stable (St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000). Gannon (2006) describes the “(im)possibilities of writing the self” in autoethnography and how “[k]nowledge in poststructural autoethnography is sourced from our particular locations in particular bodies with particular feelings, flesh, and thoughts that become possible in particular sociocultural-spatial contexts” (p. 476). Such an approach to writing the self puts the self under erasure, which “decenters the knowing I, challenges the writer’s voice, unsettles the concepts of past experiences as the site of subjectivity, and opens the door for multiple voices and perspectives to be heard and performed and seen” (Denzin, 2013, p. 38). My analysis de-naturalizes difference and, similarly to Moneypenny (2013), views the “self” as an “event” or an assemblage, by which I revisit experiences to transform myself into something new and different through ethical self-transformation. This approach to the “self” aligns with my immanent approach that seeks to continually emerge from my analysis as something new and different, while I place my own openness and vulnerability within the affective assemblages of each encounter with my data. Foucault (1997) describes ethical forms of self-creation when he asks, “How was the subject established, at different moments and in different institutional contexts, as a possible, desirable, or even indispensable object of knowledge?” (p. 87). By considering the self as an “event,” I acknowledged how the “self” of my autoethnography was comprised of multiple “selves” while working within the “fictions” of autoethnography. Therefore, the imagined stable human subject was disrupted in my approach to autoethnographic writing as I took my experiences textually.

106

In my approach to the self as an “event,” involved a Foucauldian “writing the self” as a Foucauldian technology of the self. Foucault (1988) writes how technologies of the self, permit individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality. (p. 18)

Gannon (2006) explicates that taking up autoethnographic writing in a poststructural vein does not involve seeking an inner truth, or inner identity, but more dismembering the self “into the social rather than to disclose truths of an inner-self” (p. 480). Foucault (1997) considers writing “a training of the self by oneself” (p. 208). This involved writing as a Foucauldian “technology of the self” which “permit[s] individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (p. 225)

This technology is a component of caring for the self, or continually constituting and reshaping the self. My own autoethnographic writing involvs a form of self-discovery, not to get at a “truth” of my experiences with GSSAs or to find an “essence” in my experiences, but to revisit my own embodied and affective entanglements and encounters with GSSAs. In this sense, my writing is an embodied endeavour because it re-members my visceral and embodied affective productions with GSSAs and “felt” experiences and the structures that constituted my own affective and embodied responses to interactions online. Re-membering is a task of acknowledging the partialities and fissures and breaks in memory; memory is flawed, yet still embodied and material (Ahmed, 2016). My own writing was an embodied and material endeavour as I thought with theory and applied theory while I wrote and recollected my own memories with GSSAs. The “I” of my own subjectivity was split as I “surfed” between myself as autoethnographer and writer, myself as past GSSA user, myself as researcher. I decided to include some poetry in my autoethnographic writing, being particularly inspired after reading queer poetry on love and intimacy, such as How Poetry Can Change Your Heart by Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley (2019). Gibson and Falley (2019), a long-term lesbian couple, write about the affective power of poetry and how, In societies where we cannot publicly emote, many of us weep in the darks of theaters to tragic movies and plays. Lonely and heartbroken songs can be our best companions during breakups. Art created from a place of pain often illuminates to us the breadth of

107

the human experience, the spectrum of possibility in our unique psyches—from shame to peace, desolation to elation, despair to utter joy. (p. 30)

Gibson and Falley (2019) explore the affective dimensions of poetry and what poetry can provide for queer lives and queer love in a society that polices queer intimacies. de Freitas and Paton (2009) describe the splintering of the subject that emerges in poststructural autoethnogaphy, or how there is always a “slippage in meaning” in self-confessional writing, where a “confession is never exhausted through the act of self-disclosure” (p. 493). Similarly, Rolling (2004) describes in his writing on autoethnographic poststructural poetry his own identity crisis and how “[a] poststructural identity construct, it is argued, takes me a step further toward an unfettered freedom to name myself and a self-concept unbounded from authorial pens and validating structures” (p. 551). My approach to my poems throughout this thesis continues with a poststructural lens that does not look to the poems for their ability to recollect a “truth” or pretend that there is a coherent self that my poetry emanates from. Through my poetry, I engage with my multiple and fractured self, looking for how the affects and emotions in my poetry are embodied and the intensities produced. Gibson and Falley (2019) note the embodied nature of poetry and how the affective intensities that poetry, or how it can be something beyond description and words: Sometimes we read or hear poems that we actually feel affecting us in our bodies before we are totally cognizant of what they are saying. That could be the sonic quality of the poem, or the visceral nature of the words chosen, or that could be an image that sears into our brain well before we can completely contextualize it. (p. 61)

Through this “sonic” quality of poetry, individuals are affected in differing and indescribable ways. Seigworth and Gregg (2010) note how such “undulations in expansions and contractions of affectability arrive almost simultaneously or in close-enough alternation, something emerges, overspills, exceeds” (p. 13). The poetry I include in this thesis will always exceed its original intent and purpose, provide forms of affectability that will be indescribable but still intra-psychic, and “overspill” into new ways of thinking/being/becoming beyond the intentions of this thesis. Such affective assemblages are beyond linguistic description, evoking differential psychic attachments and states as new relations and affective productions emerge. I start every chapter with a short and brief autoethnographic “fraction” of data. These fractions of autoethnographic data serve many purposes and are rhizomatic in their own sense. They follow my methodological approach of beginning “in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattai,

108

1987). This means that the recollections from my experiences with Grindr that I autoethnographically chose to recount are random in how they were chosen. Such forms of recollection are partial, incomplete, and always filled with splits and difference (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Ellis, 2004). Jackson and Mazzei (2008) note that autoethnographers are commonly drawn to focusing on the “narrating ‘I’” or the “vocal ‘self’” by “becoming vulnerable, thinking with (rather than about) events from multiple perspectives and stories, and allowing what may have previously been silenced, voiced” (p. 300). While vulnerability is commonly cited as a humanistic emotional state that might reinforce logics of self-reflection and empathy, my own approach to vulnerability opened me up to forms of embodied relationality and affective assemblages between both my “self,” my past experiences, my participants, and even my own laptop as I worked through previous experiences online and typed my recollections. My own embodied subjectivity became intertwined affectively with my laptop, breaking down my reliance on representation and memory strictly for the encounter with my autoethnography. I write the “encounter” because it is embodied and affectively different each encounter that I have with the text that I have written. Barad (2007) articulates in her critique of Cartesian productions of knowledge that “knowing does not come from standing at a distance and representing but rather from a direct material engagement with the world” (p. 49). Through these fractions of autoethnographic data, readers will have their own encounters, which create differences in meaning. Readers’ histories and stories relate to their embodied responses to text, which Ahmed (2004a) articulates in her explication that we must attend to how “embodied subjects come to be wounded in the first place, which requires that we learn to read that pain, as well as recognize how the pain is already read in the intensity of how it surfaces” (p. 173). How others read my embodied pain in the previous section will depend on the histories of the subject reading, which has to do with individual orientations towards norms. As well, embodied feelings and intensities might always be there, but through histories of pain, one might learn to regulate their own body and dismiss such pain. As such, I try and resist notions that individuals will always encounter these autoethnographic fractions in a similar fashion, or that they will experience the same affective intensities and embodied responses that I experienced while both writing and reading my own experiences.

109

While conducting my research, part of my methodological approach included a virtual ethnography (Hine, 2015), which included utilizing the gay socio-sexual applications, Grindr and Scruff, as well as taking notes while using the social networking application, Instagram. While Grindr and Scruff are more utilized by individuals who are interested in men, Instagram has become a popular space for gay men to meet, post “gym selfies” of themselves, and share photos pertaining to mainstream gay culture (Alves de Assis, 2017; Birnholtz, 2018). Involved in this process was setting up a profile, choosing a profile picture, and engaging with other users. While using these phone applications, I took detailed field notes regarding my interactions with other users and the conversations I engaged in. I would ask users about their usage of Grindr and Scruff and interactions with other users online. During these conversations, I chose to take notes instead of capturing screenshots on my phone to ensure that I preserved privacy of the users involved. However, I did take screenshots of posts on Instagram that were accessible to the general public. My notes formed a crystallization process, which will be described below, whereby multiple truths are formulated instead of a positivist method that seeks out an absolute “truth” and certainty. This crystallization process (Ellingson, 2009, 2011; Richardson, 1994) between my virtual ethnography, autoethnography, and semi-structured interviews worked to, as Richardson (2000) articulates, provide “a deepened, complex, thoroughly partial, understanding of the topic. Paradoxically, we know more and doubt what we know” (p. 934). Ellingson (2009, 2011) writes about crystallization as a commonly used ethnographic and autoethnographic method, particularly as a feminist methodological approach to disrupt masculinist notions from positivism. Keeping with my methodological commitment to vulnerable connections, my usage of crystallization challenges dominant notions of “truth” and “authenticity” by viewing the combination of my methodological approaches of seemingly incommensurable. Moreover, I do not only consider my own vulnerability in relationship to other subject, such as the participants in my research, but also my own vulnerability and relationship with myself, or my subjectivity, and even my phone and the apps of interest to my research study.

Scavenger Methodology It is important to note that my methods involved several different approaches for collecting data—diary entries, semi-structured interviews, autoethnography, and virtual

110 ethnography—creating a methodological assemblage of sorts. Diary entries are commonly used in qualitative research to encourage participants to “collect” information regarding their lived experiences and emotional states through self-reflexivity (Iida et al., 2012; Travers, 2011). Still, I viewed my methods of collecting data as rhizomatic: always in a state of becoming, shifting, and changing as I moved through my data collection. With my post-qualitative, experimental design for collecting data, my data collection methods, themselves, shifted and changed as new connections were made and new ways of proceeding presented itself. This is in alignment with Halberstam’s (1998) scavenger methodology, which specifically utilizes differing and varied approaches to collect data on excluded subjects and phenomenon from traditional social science approaches (cited in Hoskin & Taylor, 2019, p. 285). Halberstam (1998) writes how this “queer methodology attempts to combine methods that are often cast as being at odds with each other, and it refuses the academic compulsion toward disciplinary coherence” (p. 13). Hoskin and Taylor’s (2019) study of feminine failure and femme resistance applies Halberstam’s (1998) methodological insights to combine autoethnographic insights with textual analysis and archival research. Hoskin and Taylor (2019) describe how queer femme subjects are constructed as failures through how they “celebrate cultural sites of shame, expose systems of erasure, challenge binary systems of meaning, and promote feminine growth” (p. 281). I propose that my own methodological approach and methods is one of intentional “failure” in their openness to change, flux, and challenging dominant affective erasures in gay men’s communities. My research combines autoethnography with virtual ethnography, and semi- structured interviews. Moreover, as noted, my approach combines methods that are generally seen as incommensurable, moving disciplinary boundaries between qualitative and post- qualitative, humanist and post-humanist approaches. My scavenger methodology became an assemblage of heterogenous elements, coming together to continually re-make and re-do my approach as it became different each time. Through this assemblage, crystallization (Richardson, 1994; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) became central as a creative process of inquiry that Richardson (2000) terms a “postmodern deconstruction of triangulation” (p. 934). Instead of using a post-positivist triangulated approach, crystallization provided a means to bring my own embodied subjectivity into my methodology, as explained by Ellingson (2009): Crystallization combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent text or series of related texts, building a rich and openly partial account of a phenomenon that problematizes its own construction, highlights researchers’

111

vulnerabilities and positionality, makes claims about socially constructed meanings, and reveals the indeterminacy of knowledge claims even as it makes them. (p. 4)

By combining various sources during my writing, including bringing my own subjectivity into my methodological process, I acknowledged the silences and gaps in my analysis and writing and how my interviews always involved my own vulnerabilities and positionality, meaning that absolute claims of knowledge could not be made. However, bringing these various sources together into a methodological assemblage through a scavenger approach provided a means to break down divides between “art,” such as “poetry,” and “science,” such as “data.” Crystallization allowed me to destabilize positivist notions of what counts as “data” as well as boundaries and binaries between forms of data collection, which I discuss in my section above on “Surfing Binaries.”

Methods I utilized qualitative approaches to collect my data through the usage of semi-structured interviews (Smith, 1995). I developed a series of questions that guided my interview process, though remained open to changes in the interview that resulted from the usage of open-ended questions (Ayres, 2008). This fit my approach well because I had a few key topics that I was interested in my participants’ perspectives on—such as their experiences using GSSAs to date, their understandings of the term “connection” and how that played out in gay online spaces—but I still wished to allow participants to carry the conversation in other directions and allow for new directions in the interview. In this sense, my interviews, themselves, were rhizomatic in how my participants and I often veered into unexpected territory during our conversations. I received ethics approval for participant recruitment in November 2018. Participants were recruited between December 2018 and April 2019 through social media, e-mails to local ASOs, and a chain referral technique where participants passed my contact information onto other potential participants to preserve the anonymity of potential interviewees, which went through my own connections through my work as a sexual health educator in the Toronto area. While I had an interview guide, the topics I was curious about initially would often be covered inherently through conversation and if the conversation was heading in a direction outside of the scope of the research project, I could lightly direct the conversation back to the topics of the research.

112

Markula and Silk (2011) note how semi-structured interviews work well with poststructural methodological foundations because of their open-ended nature. This is in contrast to structured interviews in that those tend to be completely pre-determined in nature and are more commensurate with positivist or post-positivist epistemologies. Ayres (2008) describes semi- structured interviews as relevant for researchers who seek out rich descriptions of individuals’ experiences without specifically leading them to provide a pre-determined answer. In this sense, I was open to participants providing contradicting information or challenging my assumptions heading into the research. As I described in my methodology section, I often “thought with theory” in my interviews, meaning that my process of “plugging-in” theory began before my analysis stage of research (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013). I continually read theory and engaged with text throughout my interview process so that my participants and the theorists I thought with “constitute[d] one another and in doing so create[d] something new” (p. 264). Similar to what Mazzei and Jackson (2012) describe, in the “threshold” of my research, the binary between theory and data was constantly folded into each other. In my focus on affect, I recorded field notes describing my affective responses and “gut” reactions to interviews. Acknowledging the limitations of re-presentation and re-membering, I use these field notes with the lens that they are partial and always incomplete in their nature. I describe my field notes below and how they played into the affective assemblages of my interviews. Important to my assemblage and scavenger methodology was the collection of “fractions” of data through pop cultural references, such as television shows and movies, and quotes from books I was reading. Throughout the process of collecting my data, I was continually engaging with gay cultural media. I consider my incorporation of these data as a part of the assemblages of my data analysis and, in alignment with my rhizomatic approach, tried to provide light contextualization for these data in my analysis without presenting any sense of a linear narrative. As such, these data are woven throughout my analysis in combination with various other fractions of data. Lööv (2012) notes that Halberstam’s scavenger methodology is a queer methodology through its combination of various methodological approaches, queering disciplinary boundaries and providing information on specific phenomenon that are under-researched in traditional social sciences research. While the romantic and sexual relations of gay men have been researched in

113 social science literature, the actual feelings of gay men who use GSSAs have yet to be investigated through a poststructural lens and how such feelings pertain to normative notions of gay sexual subjectivities. As such, I collected pieces of data to incorporate into my analysis from television shows, such as Sex and the City and Queer as Folk. Participants commonly referenced media in their interviews and the television show, Queer as Folk, came up a number of times for participants as an influential show in their own understandings of normative gay sexual subjectivities. Participants provided their consent to participate in the interviews (please see Appendix B for consent form) and some participants participated in a diary study component of the study. At first, I limited the age groups to men ages 18–29, but quickly realized that this was leaving out another group of men who might have interesting information about their experiences with apps considering that they did not use them during their young adult years. As such, I changed the age range to 18–49. For the diary entries, participants described their experiences using GSSAs for a two-week period and then returned to meet with me to go through their diary notes. In these diary entries, they specifically focused on their gut reactions and responses when using apps and the specific feelings that came about during these experiences. I purposefully left these diary entries completely open-ended and asked for the participants to decide what they felt should be described. We would talk about the diary entries at the end of the first interview and I would let them know that it would be about their deeply felt emotions and what “resonates” with them during their time using apps in that two-week period. Five participants took part in this component of the study and, after the second interview, they received a ten-dollar gift-card. Some participants did not wish to receive the gift-card for their participation. As well, some participants only wished to participate in the first interview. As I moved through my interview process, I allowed my interviews to unfold in many different ways, which meant that my interview process itself became rhizomatic, shifting and changing as I progressed. The social service workers who I interviewed only participated in one interview and they received a ten- dollar gift-card for their participation. In total, I interviewed 41 participants, with two social service interviews featuring three workers in each interview. I interviewed three high school educators about their experiences with how GSSAs might be addressed in public-school settings, but for the sake of conciseness and focus of the project, chose not to include these data in my analysis. As well, throughout my interviews with these educators, it became apparent that the

114 public-school system is confined in its ability for educators to openly discuss GSSAs with their LGBTQ+ students due to the regulation and policing of genders and sexualities in school settings.

Field Notes Throughout my interviews, I took detailed field notes of my own responses to parts of my interviews with participants and my own embodied, affective responses, or “feminist gut responses” to the conversations (Ahmed, 2016; Brodsky, 2008). As noted, I do not pretend that I can fully re-member or re-call my embodied affective states because, as Seigworth and Gregg (2010) describe, “[a]ffect arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon” (p. 1). Such an “in-between-ness” is difficult to put into words and relies on a “gut” instinct or tugging sensation. For example, during one of my interviews, when a participant noted how he feels all romantic relationships are heteronormative and that his version of queerness holds no space for romance, I wrote, “Tightness. Stomach turning inside feeling. Looking down at the table.” These affective states escape words, yet, words are what we have to describe them. Seigworth and Gregg (2010) note the variability in definitions and theorizations of affect emotion, even stating that there are “infinitely multiple iterations of affect and theories of affect: theories as diverse and singularly delineated as their own highly particular encounters with bodies, affects, worlds” (p. 3). It is necessary to note how through the diversity of theorizations of affect, binaries between the inner psychic feelings of subjects and affective pre-linguistic intensities are shattered in my project, meaning that I do not neatly distinguish between them, nor do I consider feelings as only an interior psychological experience within the subject, which is consistent with my feminist poststructural approach that deconstructs simple binaries. Gannon and Davies (2006) describe how binary categorizations “limit and constrain how we think and what we imagine to be possible” (p. 4), meaning that a poststructural feminist methodology is committed to “disrupt the grip that binaries have on thought and on identity” (p. 4). In my field notes, instead of trying to encapsulate an “accurate” description of the affective intensities, I described both the psychic, intimate “feelings” that emerged and my “gut responses,” without neatly separating the two. This followed my methodological commitment to deconstructing the Cartesian divide between mind and body. Springgay and Freedman (2007)

115 specifically articulate how rhizomatic research “provides an essential means to disrupt Cartesian dualism and to materialize a link between the body and technology” (p. 11). While it has been suggested that field notes be written in an “objective” and “descriptive” manner where the researcher is not imposing their personal beliefs and biases onto the research subject (Brodsky, 2008), my approach was informed by feminist poststructural methodological challenges to positivist notions of “objectivity” and “distance” (Gannon & Davies, 2006) and therefore, my field notes heavily incorporated my own thoughts, feelings, and embodied reactions and responses. As Mazzei (2014) articulates, the “recognition of the limits of our received practices [does] not mean that we reject such practices; instead, we work the limits (and limitations) of such practice” (p. 743). Importantly, my approach did not reject emotion as an inner state, in alignment with theoretical conception of affect theory as both an inner “feeling” and pre- linguistic intensity. For example, in a different interview where a participant described his thoughts that gay men must pretend to be interested in hooking-up and that he convinced himself that he did not want a relationship because he struggled with finding a partner online: My body turned inwards and my back tensed up. I felt for him and it reminded me of experiences I had been through. Before I realized it, I couldn’t look in his eyes. I was tearing up and wanted to look away. Seigworth and Gregg (2010) how affect is “generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion—that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension” (p. 1; emphasis added). In line with my theoretical framework for affect, my approach to field notes focused on both the affective intensities and emotional states and feelings. This entailed challenging the Cartesian divide while not displacing the importance of interior emotional states and feelings.

Participants In this section, I am providing a brief description of the participants whose data is in my thesis. It is important to note that there were many participants whose data I could not fit in the scope of my thesis. Using MacLure’s (2010) theorization of “data that glowed,” I chose “fractions” or parts of the data that glowed to me during my readings of the transcripts, acknowledging that my attempts to re-present my data were always partial, flawed, and

116 incomplete. This failure to re-present my participants’ data fully was important to acknowledge, as is my failure here to accurately reflect their full stories and narratives. Hence, why I called these snippets of data “fractions,” as the stories are always fractional, incomplete, and in processes of becoming something else. Acknowledging this was important for my scavenger approach that amalgamated theories and data from many difference sources. Therefore, the following descriptions are not meant to be taken as “truths” or “accurate,” but are my own failed attempt to convey some sense of who the participants are in my thesis data. As well, I have tried to include some key phrases and words that these participants have used, particularly if the phrases appeared in the “fractions” of data from each participant I “plugged in” throughout my chapters. In this re-telling, re-presenting, and re-membering, I acknowledge how there are potential gaps and limits in the following re-presentations of my participants. Michael: Michael is a 29-year-old cisgender gay man who lives in the Church and Wellesley gay village in Toronto. Michael is very involved in the leather and “pup” communities in Toronto and has consistently been using GSSAs, particularly Grindr, throughout his adult life. Generally, he is online looking for a longer-term romantic relationship, or some emotional intimacy, but has had little success with using the apps. He described Grindr as especially hostile and hard to make longer-term connections and intimacies on and has felt blocked by people in the past due to his desire for more emotionally intimate connections. He often turns to the pup and leather communities for intimacy and finds them more open than the “mainstream” gay politic. Mark: Mark is a 28-year-old cisgender gay man of mixed Caribbean descent who works at an AIDS Service Organization (ASO) in Toronto, Canada He specializes in outreach work within gay men’s online communities and assists in running workshops on helping gay men navigate online spaces. He uses a “peer-based approach” to his work and has many profiles on different websites and apps to represent the agency he works for. He usually answers questions regarding sexual health, safer sex practices, and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP). However, he mentioned that while he is not a clinical trained psychologist, he does answer questions app users have about dating and sex as well. During our interview, he mentioned the difficulties of navigating his professional and personal boundaries as an outreach worker when he is assisting other men with dating issues that he, himself, struggles with as a gay man.

117

Derrick: Derrick is a 33-year-old cisgender queer Afro-Caribbean and Indo-American man. Derrick is a registered social worker and therapist and has worked within the Toronto ASO community as well as training for frontline workers in the gay men’s sexual health field. Derrick mentioned how he receives many clients who come to him about their struggles navigating GSSAs and trying to find long-term partners. Derrick mentioned the need for gay men to have conversations about how to receive rejection online and market themselves online. He brought in several personal examples of his own usage of apps—surfing the binary between “practitioner” and “app user”—and explained how he felt a depersonalization of rejection online might assist with many gay men’s internalizations of their rejection online. Haro: Haro is a 42-year-old cisgender gay Chinese-Vietnamese man who lives near the Church and Wellesley Gay Village in downtown Toronto. Haro is married and has been with his husband for over fifteen years, but within the past five years, he and his husband have opened up their relationship so that they can have sexual partners outside their marriage. Haro explained that there had been infidelity occurring before they officially opened up their marriage, but they just ignored any potential cheating that might had occurred. Now, Haro finds himself using Grindr the most frequently out of all GSSAs and admits to using apps to receive validation from other men. Throughout the interview, Haro noted how he currently sees a therapist to discuss his addiction to Grindr and hook-up culture and how, through working with this therapist, he has realized that he is actually looking for validation that he feels he did not receive as a child due to growing up as a recent immigrant, poor, and bullied for being presumed to be gay. Frank: Frank is a 33-year-old cisgender gay White man who lives in the downtown Toronto area. Frank is a graduate student and is in a long-term relationship that is currently open. Frank uses GSSAs—most commonly Grindr and Scruff—to find hook-ups when he is “bored” or “procrastinating” from his work. Frank generally sees his reason for being online as primarily for hook-ups, although he admits he has made friends from interactions he thought would just be a hook-up. Frank compared Grindr to a “game” in his interview and noted how he knows how to use Grindr specifically to indicate that he is more hook-up oriented. Kashi: Kashi is a 22-year-old cisgender gay South-East Asian man who has recently immigrated to Canada from India. Kashi lives in the greater downtown Toronto area and mostly uses apps to find a long-term relationship. Describing himself as more “relationship” oriented, Kashi noted how he started engaging with hook-up culture through Grindr when he moved to

118

Toronto through the hopes that he would eventually happen to meet someone who he would “click” with for a longer-term romantic relationship. Disappointed when he all his hook-ups did not lead to anything more longer-term, Kashi constantly deleted and reinstalled Grindr under the hope of finding a long-term relationship. Damien: Damien is a 32-year-old cisgender gay White man. Damien works at a local ASO and runs counselling groups specifically aimed for conversations of gay online dating and hooking-up and moderates online discussions and boards around these topics. Damien expressed his own frustration with apps and gay hook-up culture during our interview and how he feels that he struggles to find a longer-term connection. Still, he expressed how he thinks interventions are necessary to assist men in developing “social skills” and how he feels that many gay men who attend his groups do not have proper social skills. Anthony: Anthony is a 25-year-old cisgender gay Afro-Caribbean Black man. Anthony commonly frequents the Church and Wellesley Gay Village although he still lives outside of the downtown core with his family. He described many tensions in his relationship with his family due to his sexuality and how he started using Grindr and other GSSAs as a way to explore dating and sex with other men while not being fully out. Anthony emphasized how Grindr provided an idea of a “mainstream” gay image and how he changed his attire and his physique after starting to use Grindr. As well, he noted that before using Grindr, he had hoped to find a romantic partner through Grindr, but with “maturity,” he was able to realize that Grindr is mostly for hook-ups. Steve: Steve is a 28-year-old cisgender gay White man. Steve grew up in a smaller city outside of Toronto and did not move to the downtown core until after he finished his undergraduate degree. When first starting to use Grindr and other GSSAs, Steve had initial found the apps useful in terms of meeting other gay men since he lived in a smaller city, although he quickly adjusted to the sexualized expectations of the apps and started to explore his own sexuality through hook-ups. Steve is now in a long-term romantic relationship that is open, meaning that, for him and his partner, the relationship is emotionally monogamous but he and his partner have sex with other individuals and use Grindr to find hook-ups. Christopher: Christopher is a 24-year-old cisgender gay White man who is an undergraduate student. Christopher lives in downtown Toronto and frequents the Church and Wellesley Gay Village often. Christopher described himself as artistic and writes poetry and music, often using these art forms as outlets for his feelings. Christopher noted how he has

119 written many songs and poems about the metaphor of the “metal pig,” which, to him, represents the norm that gay men should be “piggy” and have lots of sex but emotionally, they have to be “metal” and have no feelings or emotional attachments to one another. He also mentioned his own history of struggling with mental illness and how he experienced sexual trauma through his usage of Grindr, which has been a stressful experience for him. Charlie: Charlie is a 43-year-old cisgender gay Iranian man who is also a graduate student. Charlie lives in the downtown area of Toronto but does not frequent the Church and Wellesley Village besides going out dancing occasionally at the clubs there. He moved from Iran to Australia initially and downloaded Grindr upon his arrival in Australia as he used websites to meet men when he was in Iran. He mentioned the police surveillance in Iran of websites and apps where men meet other men and how he often would know to meet others in parks and secluded locations for hook-ups and dates. He had hoped upon moving to Australia he would become “free” and be able to live “openly” and find a long-term romantic relationship. He was disappointed when, once arriving in Australia, he experienced a lot of racism in the gay community and found Grindr primarily oriented towards hook-ups. While he has enjoyed being in Canada more than Australia, he noted how Grindr in Canada is similar to Australia and that he feels that gay men, in general, do not want romantic relationships. Isaiah: Isaiah is a 34-year-old disabled queer femme Jewish man. Isaiah lives just outside of the Church and Wellesley Village and often experiences accessibility issues trying to enter establishments in the area and frequently uses the internet to advocate for himself because of the ableism and lack of accessibility in the Toronto gay community. Isaiah expressed much frustration with the cliques he sees on GSSAs and gay social media, noting how he feels all the men online “look the same” and that they commonly feature a masculinized aesthetic, muscles, and beards. Specifically stating how he sees himself outside of dominant sexual economies online due to ableism in the gay community, he has tried to use Grindr to make friends but is often called “needy.” He sees this as a product of the very professionalized, privileged, ableist culture in gay men’s communities where people are always “too busy” to chat and emotional connection and intimacy are noted as “demanding.” Patrick: Patrick is an online outreach worker with a local ASO who specializes in online outreach and programming. Patrick is a newcomer himself and works with ethno-racial

120 minorities in the Toronto area in terms of programming that assists with processes of immigration and settlement for newcomers in the Toronto area. Bernie: Bernie is an online outreach worker with a local ASO who specializes in online outreach and programming. Patrick is a newcomer himself and works with ethno-racial minorities in the Toronto area in terms of programming that assists with processes of immigration and settlement for newcomers in the Toronto area. Dev: Dev is an online outreach worker with a local ASO who specializes in online outreach and programming. Dev comes from an immigrant family and works with ethno-racial minorities in the Toronto area in terms of programming that assists with processes of immigration and settlement for newcomers in the Toronto area, as well as online outreach and experiences of newcomers navigating online spaces (such as GSSAs).

Analysis Instead of conceptualizing a completely flat ontological plane between subject and object, participant and researcher, I analyzed my data through an entangled approach, meaning that theory, methods, and data were intertwined (Barad, 2007) in my analysis as I “thought with theory” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013) and worked with theory in my interviews. I did not collect data first, then organize and “code” my data, and then come to “conclusions” in a positivist fashion. In many senses, I had begun thinking with theory before my data collection and using my scavenger methodology, I had begun collecting various “fractions” of data through pop cultural references, such as TV shows and movies, gay-themed texts I had read, and anecdotal “data” I had seen on social media and GSSAs. During my interviews, I continually “plugged in” theories in my conversations with participants, made notes about theory, and described my embodied responses to conversations during interviews. This was not to make “sense” of the data or to try and come to an “essence” of understanding or “truth,” but to “think with theory” and move beyond the binary between theory and data (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013). In this sense, my approach was process based and experimental as I thought with theory in my interviews themselves. This was also to “surf” the binaries between data collection/methods, and data analysis/theory. Thinking with this “both/and” logic that Jackson and Mazzei (2011, 2013) describe was especially helpful for my poststructural approach. My approach to analysis was rhizomatic in how I chose specific “fractions” from my participants

121 data for analysis; these data were always “in the middle,” always in the fold, never static. This rhizomatic approach to analysis incorporated Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theory of assemblage to consider analysis to be a rhizoanalysis, which Masny (2014) describes as a connection between problems, responses, questions, and reading data through an intensive and immanent lens. I term the snippets of data I chose, “fractions,” to indicate the incomplete and partial nature of all my data and my inability to encapsulate a complete “truth” or totalizing representation. My use of “fractions,” as a small portion of something or an incomplete proportion, illustrates how the data I have chosen to present are always incomplete, not whole, and different heterogenous elements coming together within my data’s affective assemblages. I understood “fractions” through the lens of MacLure’s (2013b) data that glows, which she terms “data fragments” (p. 661), or the “emergence of sense in encounters with data” and “something abstract or intangible that exceeds propositional meaning, but also has a decidedly embodied aspect” (p. 661). This is, as Denzin (2013) would articulate, a “rupture” of traditional positivist notions of data and analysis, or “a world without data, a world without method, a world not run by auditors and postpositivists” (p. 355). While I still employ the term “data” in my research, through my scavenger and assemblage approach, I tried to expand notions of what “counts” as “data.” To avoid relying strictly on the logics of representation and interpretivism, I used my own embodied knowledges and affective productions within my analytical process, which is a part of my methodology of vulnerable connections, which is, as Springgay (2019) might term, “felt.” As described, part of my methodological approach drew from Sara Ahmed’s (2016) notion of the “feminist gut” and Maggie MacLure’s (2010) notion of “data that glowed.” When interviewing, moments that caused some form of embodied sensation, response, or reaction, were noted in my journal that I took while interviewing (described in the “Field Notes” section). Importantly, MacLure (2013c) notes that wonder is “not necessarily a safe, comforting, or uncomplicatedly positive affect. It shades into curiosity, horror, fascination, disgust, and monstrosity” (p. 228). The “wonder” that struck me in interviews and revisiting my data in my analysis was not always positive as my gut responses to stories that my participants told—and at times their own words and descriptions of men online—was quite visceral and strong. Using these embodied reactions as “data” and choosing to start my analysis at moments when I was especially struck or had an embodied and affective responses, these moments or “fractions”

122 became “data” that I plugged into theory in my analysis. As I continued to gather more “fractions” or data that “glowed,” I worked with questions and theory instead of seeking answers, choosing to think with different poststructural theoretical concepts as I went through my data (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013). In this immanent and rhizomatic approach to analysis, I was completely immersed within my data, refusing to enter with a pre-formed question, or code in any sort of linear fashion. As Somerville (2016) articulates, this approach works with “a question, prompting a rethinking of method and data, and a search for new theoretical frameworks through which to explore their (non)meaning” (p. 1162). However, I lightly coded through conceptualizing some patterns in my research. Poststructural feminist education scholars, Ringrose and Zarabadi (2018) explicate this process: “of course you have to do conventional coding. It would be ridiculous to say you do not. All my students code. You have to have a pattern, you have to have a finding, you have to have some kind of conventional orientation, a research question, a reason why you are looking for something. But then we want to go beyond that” (p. 212). The beyond is the thinking with theory, which brought my data alive and provided a means to think differently with my data beyond a post-positivist or interpretivist lens.

Mapping To begin my analysis, I started by “mapping” out my data as an alternative against traditional qualitative coding techniques. “Mapping” through a queer and feminist poststructural lens involved a rhizomatic approach to analysis that incorporated my “data that glowed” through my affective and embodied responses to participant data, my own virtual ethnography, my autoethnographic moments, and pop culture moments and writing. In this sense, my analysis already began before I collected my data in how I was gathering “fractions” of data from various different places and assembling it together, taking it apart, and reconstructing it to make new meanings continually. This approach has been used in previous poststructural feminist methodologies inspired by Deleuzian rhizomatic approaches to work within and against traditional qualitative approaches, such as coding (Carroll, 2019; Coleman & Ringrose, 2013; Mazzei & McCoy, 2010; Ringrose & Zarabadi, 2018). I chose a mapping approach through a queer and feminist affective lens that noted the circulation of affect by engaging with the

123

“messiness” of affect as it pertains to the politics of experience, subjectivity, representation, and post-representation (Ahmed, 2004a; Coleman & Ringrose, 2013; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Drawing on this approach, I tried to queer the binaries between affect within the subject and affective, embodied, pre-linguistic responses. By taking my fractional pieces of data from various sources, I started to map out my subjects’ shifts and changes. However, this came into friction with psychoanalytic theories that focused on their past. Taking the Deleuzian and psychoanalytic theories frictionally became useful as a way to theorize my subjects as never complete, never fully finished. This required a “both/and” approach for the tensions between psychoanalysis and Deleuzian affective methodologies. Mapping on documents became an embodied and material process, as I took fractions of data from various sources and placed them on a document, engaging in what Renold and Mellor (2013) term the “body/object/sound” assemblages. These affective assemblages consisted of my own body, data, and my own voice. While mapping out my data, I would often talk to myself, and sometimes even play music that affectively represented the data. For example, Sam Smith’s album, In the Lonely Hour, about a gay man’s journey in finding romantic relationships and the melancholic loss of potential lovers and loneliness in love, became a central feature in my analysis. I often listened to Carly Rae Jepsen’s album, E•MO•TION, which has become a central feature in mainstream gay music and features many songs about heartbreak and relationships. As such, the music I listened to during this time became entangled and intertwined affectively within my analysis and a constituting force in my own analysis and subjectivity. While not always explicitly noted in my analyses, the music affectively made an imprint on my writing and analysis of this thesis. Mapping out the data was a non-hierarchical and experimental process with “knowledge as rhizome, assemblage, map” (Taylor, 2019, p. 21). This rhizomatic process was non-linear, embodied mapping, trying to put into words what I was feeling on an embodied level, or as Ahmed (2016) articulates how “my body is memory: to share a memory is to put a body into words” (p. 23). Understanding that words will always fail to replicate the indescribable, my mapping wavered, hesitantly, between non-representational theorizations of affect, theories of the unconscious, and cultural productions of affect. This wavering is important for my own approach that is not only interested in the non-representational productions of affect to avoid what Leys (2011) “posit[s as] constitutive disjunction between our emotions on the one hand and our knowledge of what causes and maintains them on the other, because according to them affect

124 and cognition are two separate system” (p. 437). Taking seriously criticisms of Deleuzian affect theories (see Ahmed, 2008; Leys, 2011), my work does not distinguish between affect as pre- linguistic and emotion as intentional and cognitive, using a “both/and” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, 2013) approach in its methodological attention to both pre-linguistic intensities and the production of relationalities beyond the subject (i.e. the production of affect in assemblages between humans and technology) and the production and circulation of affect between subjects (Ahmed, 2006).

Plugging-In Jackson and Mazzei’s (2011, 2013) work, which describes the process of “plugging-in,” became central to my rhizoanalytical approach that sought to work against notions of “coding,” instead focusing on the affective assemblages produced through thinking with theory and when “plugging in” theory with data. This process “relie[s] on a plugging in of ideas, fragments, theory, selves, sensations” meaning that I “engage[d] plugging in as a process rather than a concept, something [I] could put to work” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011, p. 1). As Jackson and Mazzei explicate, plugging-in is an assemblage, “it is the process of making and unmaking the thing. It is the process of arranging, organizing, fitting together” (p. 2), meaning that plugging-in is a creative process, or assemblage, instead of a concept that is applied. Refusing the split between theory and data and method, these were all connected in an onto-epistemological fashion in my process of plugging-in as I sought to explored how “certain connectivities emerged in between data and theory” (p. 2).

This rhizoanalytical process was always in becoming, meaning that, as I made new connections between theory and data, my analysis emerged differently, always becoming something that it was not previously. In this sense, my analytic process was an assemblage of theories in itself, one that was engaged in “data/theory/writing” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013, p. 266) in the mangle of analysis. Jackson and Mazzei (2013) draw from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) writing on plugging-into literary machines, or how plugging-in different traces of data with segments of theory can produce new results within analytical assemblages. This machinic assemblage approach to my data became useful as I encountered my data through different theoretical lenses and combined theories that seemed incommensurable.

125

Springgay (2019) articulates how a “felt methodology” is one that “emphasizes ways of knowing and feeling based in touch” (p. 58) and one that is “co-composed, immanent, and accountable in the midst of mattering” (p. 59). Guiding my plugging-in process was a “felt” methodological approach that aligns with my ethical approach to cultivating vulnerability and connections in my queer and feminist affective methodology. Within my plugging-in processes, I mapped out my affective data through theory in a tactile and material fashion, gutting up “fractions” of data I had printed, gluing my fractions onto different parts of my Bristol boards, and mapping out new directions and lines of flight. Through the intra-actions between my embodied subjectivity and the material maps, I plugged-in and produced new assemblages, creating new ways of thinking about my data. In this sense, my thinking with theory was an embodied act, which as Springgay (2011b) articulates, “is not the autonomous Cartesian body, but a de-centred assemblage of bodies” (p. 636). During my process of plugging-in different theories, Foucault (1991), Kristeva (1982), and Ahmed (2004a, 2010b) emerged as theorists to think/feel/write with as I played with different combinations of theories by reading, re-reading, and thinking with different theorists, which demanded I “live the theories (will not be able not to live them) and will, then, live in a different world enabled by a different ethico-onto-epistemology” (St. Pierre, 2018, p. 604). As I became affectively drawn towards Foucault, Kristeva, and Ahmed, following my “gut,” I started to focus on reading their theories to see the world through the lenses of their theorizations. My reason for specifically choosing these theorists was due to my own emotional responses when reading their works as I felt drawn to their theories on an emotional level and continually read their works during the interview process. Jackson and Mazzei (2013) describe this process as “reading-the-data-while-thinking-the-theory” (p. 264). Applying theories in my analysis was a creative process of experimentation and thinking/feeling/writing, where I printed out text by Foucault, Kristeva, and Ahmed, and mapped them and plugged them into pieces of data that I was drawn to. Doing this in an embodied and experimental fashion was an ethical and political act and was to think with a Deleuzian methodological approach, which Springgay (2011a) explicates as “a political and ethical framework; a thinking outside the boundaries of epistemological, Cartesian thought” (p. 78). This was in alignment with my ethical commitment to considering men’s sexualities and engagements with apps as embodied and to challenge the predominance of compartmentalization within gay men’s sexualities. To analyse the constitution

126 of my participants’ subjectivities in relationship to their usage of apps, I plugged-in Boler and Davis’s (2018) theorization of “networked subjectivity,” which I described in my theoretical frameworks chapter. Plugging-in Boler and Davis’s (2018) work allowed me to conceptualize the affective assemblages that produce normative notions of gay subjectivity within GSSAs. The queer and feminist affective methodology that I drew upon provided a lens to explore affect through a creative and theory-driven lens that refused the positivist divide between theory and data while seeking to challenge Cartesian notions of rationalism through thinking/feeling/writing. By focusing on the data that glowed (MacLure, 2010), my methodology based on vulnerable connections embedded myself into the research. MacLure (2010) notes how when data glows, “connections start to fire up: the conversation gets faster and more animated as we begin to recall other incidents and details in the project classrooms, our own childhood experiences, films or artwork that we have seen, articles that we have read” (p. 282). This poststructural methodology maneuvers between the psychic and the embodied—taking a both/and approach in my theorizations of affect—while applying theories “frictionally,” without drawing a false binary between them in my plugging-in processes (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Puar, 2012, 2013). Ultimately, my approach should be considered rhizomatic in how it grew, evolved, and changed as I went through my methods. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note how a rhizome, in its non-hierarchical and resistance to roots and structure, is “not amenable to any structural or generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure” and that it has “multiple entryways” (p. 12). In this sense, my methods were informed by my poststructural theoretical framework in their openness to change, shifting, and experimentation.

Chapter Four: Foucault’s Governmentality and Gay Intimacies Online

“I could use some help with something if you know what I mean. . . .”

Picking up my phone, my fingers twitch as my thumb instinctively starts moving towards the familiar black and yellow skull on my phone home page. Tapping on the black skull with the yellow background, it expands to take up my whole screen. The same “grid” Grindr home screen appears in front of me, with the similar mosaic of men I see every night as I scroll through the app after work and before bed. When I first downloaded Grindr ten years ago, it was largely marketed as a “dating” app. Experiencing continual frustrations with the gay dating scene and living in a small university town, I downloaded Grindr with the hope of finding a potential romantic partner and going on some dates. Quickly, despite its marketing as a “dating” app, I realized that most of the users on Grindr were not oriented in that manner. Experiencing disappointment after disappointment, apathy began to set in while its usage became a routine and ingrained component of my everyday life. Now, moving through the profiles, I push my thumb to my phone screen, seeing profiles confined to square units. Scrolling back to the top of the grid, I see my neighbour, Carlos, who lives in the apartment above me, and his gym selfie, consisting of him flexing his muscles in front of a mirror at the local GoodLife he goes to. Carlos and I have slept together numerous times but, after I brought up the idea—after we had had sex—of us going for coffee, he told me that I was getting too serious. To be honest, I am surprised that his profile is still visible to me; the last time I had a similar situation with a guy, my profile was blocked. Moving past his profile, I hear a beep that sounds like the Super Mario coin sound, indicating I have received a message from another user. Tapping the messages, I open the exchange: “Hey cutie, whassup? Looking for some fun tonight?” Even though I was really not looking for any fun, I was bored and feeling low about seeing Carlos’s profile on Grindr after our recent bad exchange, so I responded: “Nice profile. You seem interesting. What are you up to tonight?” Realizing that I said his profile was “nice” even though I had not really looked at it yet, I tapped his profile icon in the corner of our conversation exchange. I switched to looking at his picture and reading his bio, or his “About Me” section. Even though I am told that “no one reads bios

127 128 anymore,” I always read them. Except now, apparently, when I am feeling low and reply to profiles I have not even looked at. Similar to Carlos’s profile, this guy has a gym selfie where he is flexing and standing in front of a mirror. He is pointing at his arm muscles, which he seems very proud of, and he is wearing a blue Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap. He has a tight JJ Malibu tank top on—a popular gay clothing brand—and is wearing black Nike sweatpants. As I tap his bio, it states: “No one reads these. I’m a cool guy. Let’s do fun things! ;)” It seems that I was right about no one reading bios. Although I was not particularly aroused at the moment, nor interested in some casual sex, I switched back to the conversation where I had a reply already waiting for me. “What you into? More pics.” Despite my low mood, I decided to engage in this frivolous conversation. I began tapping on the screen before I could think about what I was going to say. Engaging in a back-and-forth with this stranger, I felt myself forcing a flirty and suggestive tone, although I was not particularly interested in this individual. Receiving his pictures, I scrolled through them with a blank stare, barely stopping to look at them. Before I completely lost my ability to feign interest in this man, three quick coin sounds echoed from my phone, indicating that I had three new messages from other users. Quickly switching from the conversation with the Toronto Blue Jays stranger (without saying goodbye) to look at my three new messages, I saw that one was from Carlos. “Hey stud, how u been?” Fingers trembling as I stared down at my phone, my mind started pacing, trying to think of something witty and clever to say in response. Whatever I said, it had to be sexy, indicate a level of coolness about the situation that emerged between the two of us, and showcase how well I’m doing. Tapping at the screen, my fingers started typing out a message as I heard the clicks emerging from my iPhone. “Great. Never better. Been working out a lot and busy with life. How about u?” As I pressed send, the message suddenly went from “Delivered,” indicating he had received it, to “Read.” He must be waiting with the conversation open. He is giving me all his attention. He is eager to reply. This might be a good sign. “That’s cool. U busy now? I could use some help with something if you know what I mean.”

129

As the message from Carlos appeared on my screen, my hopes for a fairy-tale ending quickly vanished. I realized that he had not changed his mind about dating me, nor was he looking to ask me on a date. Still trying to play along with the game, I began thinking of an appropriate answer. The anger within my fingers pressed harder upon the screen of my iPhone as every click that coincided with the typing of a letter pounded heavier and heavier through my body. “Is that all I am to you? You strung me along for ages, pretended to be interested in me and then vanished on me, would only text me when you wanted sex, and then told me that you don’t want a boyfriend. . . . I’m better than a midnight text, thank you.”

As my words flashed across the screen, I realized that I was investing more emotional energy than necessary in this individual. There is a large grid of people out there who I could interact with, and I did not need to waste one more moment’s worth of emotional energy on this person. I turned back to the Toronto Blue Jays user and our four-word-sentence back and forth. He noticed I hadn’t been replying for a bit and sent an additional messaging saying, “Hey dude, whats up?” As I am typing my response to this piece of literary genius, I hear that familiar coin sound go off and press on the top of my screen to go and check my messages. Seeing that Carlos had sent another message, my heart starts to palpitate, thinking maybe he has more interest in me than he is showing. Scrolling to bottom of our conversation, I see the following message, crushing my hopes for any sort of romantic future with Carlos: “You met me on Grindr. What did you expect? Chill out.” Looking at the sea of shirtless men on my black and yellow Grindr grid, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is it possible to find love on Grindr?” Throughout my interviews, participants often referenced instances of emotional “regulation” in their interactions, whether through the exact wording they chose or through gestures that reflected their need to watch what they say, how they express themselves, and the amount of emotional expression they present to other app users. Participants described the need to contain and regulate emotions, feelings, and intimacies throughout the interviews, through verbal conversation and recollections of past experiences with apps, and also on an embodied level through the affective responses to painful memories being recollected. Boler and Davis (2018) articulate in their writing that, while attempts might be made to regulate or contain emotions and feelings, those emotions or feelings are always “on the move”

130

(p. 81). Despite discourses that might encourage the individual containment and regulation of emotional, emotions hold a collective component, as Boler and Davis (2018) state, and denote a performative way in which groups and collectives come to learn to interact with one another and understand themselves. Michael, a 29-year-old white, cisgender, queer participant noted his own frustrations with how individuals who use Grindr come to interact with one another. Throughout our interview, Michael would become visibly frustrated, moving in his chair, showing signs of anger, irritation, and hurt as he recollected his own fruitless attempts to connect with other men through Grindr: I find that a lot of guys on Grindr will just start with “hey,” “hi.” I’ll start with “good morning,” “good evening,” “How are you?” If it’s Monday, “How was your weekend?” “How’s Monday treating you? If it’s Thursday or Friday, “How’s your week been?” I try to strike up small talk and conversation and a lot of the times, they’ll read the message and just not even reply. I’m like, “OK, so they’re not interested.” They probably assume that I’m not there for hookups. They just don’t want to waste the time that they’d be using to get sex on someone that they’re not going to get sex from when sex is their goal. Yeah, they’re not going to go off on a tangent and have a meaningful chat with someone who might become a friend when all they want to do is have sex. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender, queer)

As I will describe in the remainder of the chapter that follows, Michael was not alone in the alienation he felt for not abiding by the affective “rules” of Grindr (Boler & Davis, 2018; Hochschild, 1979). Throughout this chapter, I will be analyzing interview data from two participant groups. The first group of participants are gay, bisexual, and queer identified men (transgender and cisgender) who describe their experiences utilizing GSSAs, such as Grindr and Scruff, in the downtown Toronto area. The second group of participants are social service workers in the downtown Toronto area who specialize in outreach and social service programming aimed at gay, bisexual, and queer men who use GSSA’s, online chatrooms and hook-up websites. Employing Michel Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality alongside Arlie Hochschild’s (1979) work on “emotion work” and “feeling rules,” this chapter theorizes the feeling rules and emotional work that govern individuals’ interactions with one another through affective assemblages within GSSAs, specifically Grindr. Through this, I theorize how norms for intimacy and emotional regulation within Grindr provoke further questions regarding the politics of emotional and romantic intimacies within GSSAs and how this analysis contributes to larger conversations regarding affect and intimacy within gay men’s communities. Throughout this

131 discussion, I “plug-in” Foucault’s (1991) governmentality alongside Hochschild’s (1979) emotion work and feeling rules, with Gill and Orgad’s (2015, 2017) confidence culture and Boler and Davis’s (2018) networked subjectivities. Plugging-in these theories within the affective assemblages of my encounters with my data provides a lens to theorize how individuals might be “working” on their networked selves within Grindr to perform neoliberal notions of self- confidence and entrepreneurship. Ultimately, this chapter contributes to conversations regarding the regulation of emotional intimacies and romantic connections in gay men’s sexual politics and online communities, as well as the common distinction between romantic love and sexuality in gay men’s communities (see Jacobs, 2020). Throughout the chapter, I turn to various moments that stuck out to me, or “glowed” (MacLure, 2010, 2013) in my emotional gut responses (Ahmed, 2016) and reactions to the conversations I was having with the participants, as what was said often related with my own lived experiences. Each glowing piece of data, or “fraction” of data is an embodied and affective encounter, one that changes each time I revisit each fraction. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe the relationship between affect and encounters in A Thousand Plateaus: L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) is an ability to affect and be affected. It is a pre-personal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act. L’affection (Spinoza’s affectio) is each such state considered as an encounter between the affected body and, a second, affecting body. (p. xvi)

In this sense, I move within and beyond representation and language as my approach to affect focuses both on what my participants describe to me in terms of their emotional states and experiences online and the affective pre-linguistic intensities and embodied gut responses which took place during my interviews. Yet, feelings are incredibly important on both a personal and political level. As Berlant (2011) articulates, feelings attach subjects to norms and desires, continuing the perseverance of norms, even in the most difficult of situations. As in my autoethnographic fraction, many individuals might attach themselves to Grindr through the optimistic hope, or desire, for a romantic relationship. Such an optimistic attachment can provide many feelings—excitement, joy, frustration, emptiness—these are but a few, which Berlant (2011) herself even notes, but the important point is that feelings are anything but apolitical. Berlant states:

132

optimism manifests in attachments and the desire to sustain them: attachment is a structure of relationality. But the experience of affect and emotion that attaches to those relations is as extremely varied as the contexts of life in which they emerge. An optimistic attachment is invested in one’s own or the world’s continuity, but might feel any number of ways, from the romantic to the fatalistic to the numb to the nothing. (p. 13)

Importantly, within the affective assemblages of my own interviews, my participants’ experiences online, and my analysis of the data, my own histories, feelings, and attachments were crucial. These assemblages continually involved different elements in every encounter, but were, nonetheless, incredibly intertwined with both the embodied and psychic in my own and my participants’ experiences with GSSAs.

Framing the Remainder of the Chapter This section begins my analysis of interview data from my participants regarding their experiences navigating GSSAs, specifically Grindr. Grindr is the most mentioned application by my participants and is the one which most of my interview data revolves around. As noted in the introduction, Grindr is the most widely used application by gay men and is commonly used primarily for anonymous hook-ups (Licoppe, 2020; Woo, 2013). While some users do use Grindr to meet friends and longer-term romantic partners, these users do report feeling ostracized by other users online (Licoppe et al., 2016; Rivére et al., 2015). Although Grindr sells connections, the kinds of connections it generally sells are generally highly marketized and extractive (Aunspach, 2020). As will be illustrated by my interview data, participants described learning to marketize their very subjectivities online in order to navigate Grindr; they regulated their levels of emotional connection and expressivity with other users, governmentally. To begin, I divide each specific section through a notable quote from the data that follows the heading. I will start by describing the governmental norms that dictate how Grindr users interact with one another and then move to describing the forms of state interventions which are designed for gay men who use Grindr. Finally, I finish with a last section on emotional risk and vulnerability before my concluding section. My interview data consists of both users of Grindr who describe their attempts to establish various forms of connections with other users as well as social service workers who specialize in assisting gay men with their experiences navigating socio-sexual apps. Before my next chapter, I have an intermezzo section with my own affective

133 reflections/responses/becomings from my own writing that I engage with. These affective assemblages are continually rhizomatically changing and evolving during each encounter with my data. This is important to note since this analysis is never “complete” or “finished.”

Grindr and Hope I had placed much hope in Grindr. Similar to many millennial gay men, Grindr has been a key component of my social and dating life as a gay man, with its usage being central to my own social development since I came out in 2013. Quickly, upon using Grindr, I realized that its orientation, although commonly referred to as a “dating” app, was more for casual sexual encounters. Gay men, in general, are no strangers to chatrooms and Craigslist: forums that have been common places for men who are interested in other men, of all orientations, to find sexual and/or romantic partners. However, I quickly discovered that Grindr involved many rules and was a game that I was not very good at, leading to my own frustrations as I attempted to navigate a space advertised as for making “connections” while feeling discarded and replaceable in every interaction I engaged with. While Grindr is marketed as an app for developing connections, it appeared to me that the kinds of connections I was seeking within Grindr did not align with others on the app and that my inability to play by the rules of Grindr left me on the outskirts (an experience noted by commentators, such as Woo (2015) for men on Grindr who are more long- term relationship oriented).

“Interested but not Clingy” In my conversations with outreach workers, notions of independence and self- assuredness emerged within the affective assemblages produced during interviews, and notions of independence and self-assuredness emerged as desirable traits. Participants specifically mentioned how emotional distancing within online hook-up cultures is generally considered a “masculinizing” quality. Derrick, a 33-year-old cisgender gay-identified South Asian and Indo- African social worker who specializes in gay men’s mental health and online communities, noted the importance of “marketing” one’s self when making connections and intimacies as well as how emotional connections and intimacies can be gendered in gay men’s socio-sexual spaces. My conversation with Derrick surrounded the issues he encountered in his social service work

134 with gay men and what his clients generally spoke with him about in terms of their experiences online. The early part of this chapter focuses on fractions of data from my interview with Derrick that emerged from my own affective and gut responses to interactions in our interview. Derrick’s work involved seeing individual clients and engaging with queer community work, particularly amongst gay, bisexual, and queer men. In my conversation with Derrick, he described how clients often come to see him regarding their struggles with online dating and finding a romantic partner online and/or navigating their pacing in terms of emotionally connecting with potential romantic partners: I think people also are unsure of how to market themselves, and I do think about that quite a bit. Like, “what do I put in that will get me filtered out versus what do I put in that’s an accurate reflection of what I’m looking for, and what’s going to scare people away?” I’m just thinking about how people want to portray this interested but not clingy kind of archetype. And I think if I were to interpret it or make sense of it in any way, I think it’s another version of “masc for masc” in a way. I think there’s, like, a distancing from showing too much emotion too soon, which I think is read as feminine. (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian, cisgender, queer man)

Here, Derrick noted the importance of portraying “this interested but not clingy kind of archetype” as a strategic maneuver in managing one’s emotional attachments and expression to other individuals. This “interested but not clingy” subject position emerged as an ideal position within gendered hierarchies on Grindr. Foucault (1980) articulates the interconnections between power and knowledge, with power being intimately connected to knowledge since power reproduces knowledges about subjects that are taken-for-granted as “truth.” The “interested but not clingy” subject position is produced through the demands for confidence and self- assuredness within neoliberal online sexual cultures (Gill & Orgad, 2015; Jaspal, 2017; Tziallas, 2015). The impact of this “confidence culture,” as Gill and Orgad (2015) articulate means “to be self-confident is the new imperative of our time” (p. 324). Through self-confidence as a technology of the self (Foucault, 1988), individuals are encouraged to constitute themselves as subjects under both acts of submission and mastery (Butler, 1997a), as the “interested but not clingy” archetype becomes favoured over forms of emotional dependency and vulnerability. Gill and Orgad (2017) describe the advice from therapeutic cultures and industries that encourages individuals to disavow and regulate feelings of insecurity, neediness, and anxiety. According to Gill and Orgad, such feelings are considered “toxic” and “ugly” within the confidence culture of

135 modern dating cultures. In particular, these feelings seem to shatter the sexiness of the confident, empowered, liberated modern sexual figure: So many of us have experienced shame and rejection from our families, communities, all this kind of stuff. Or, families and communities of origin in particular. So we enter these spaces with all of our funny defenses, and anxiously attaching to someone or getting too close to someone too quickly can be a defense mechanism, right? (Derrick, 33, South East-Asian queer cisgender man)

Admittedly, in these conversations with Derrick, something glowed for me. As St. Pierre (2018) notes, research involves thinking-writing where it is “in the thinking that writing produces” that research happens (Guttorm et al., 2015). During this conversation with Derrick, something happened for me—an affective and embodied response to his words, the flow of our conversation, the tensions and dissonances between our perspectives—where I felt myself making new connections to past events, experiences, and started seeing how shame, as an affect, might relate to governmentality. When Derrick noted the “interested but not clingy archetype,” I tightened up within myself because of my own failure to perform this archetype. I was not “interested but not clingy”; I was clingy. I had already been reading Foucault’s work on governmentality at this point and was curious about how I, myself, was starting to regulate my own emotions and affects during this interview. I did not want Derrick to see how I was reacting to his comments about self-defence mechanisms, yet my own embodied responses were appearing. I did not know how to write about my own responses, and no matter how I tried, words seem to fail. My own failure to describe my embodied responses to this interview due to my feelings of failing as a gay man from my own histories of romantic clinginess became a shame that I carried for some time with me after this interview . . . lots of failure in that situation. I thought about if I regulated my body enough or if I had shown too much of a response. Derrick’s words, “We enter these spaces with all our funny defence mechanisms . . .” haunted me, too. I was not only writing about Foucault’s governmentality, but living it, embodying it. At another point in my conversation with Derrick, he noted his opinion on gay men’s “challenges” with attachment styles and what attachment looks like in romantic relationships. Attachment theory is a popular psychological and developmental framework for understanding both infant-caregiver relationships (Bowlby, 1969/1982) and romantic relationships between romantic partners (Levine & Heller, 2012). Feminist critiques of attachment theory and developmental psychology (i.e. Burman, 2016) have noted the pathologizing nature of

136 attachment theory and how it in particular provides a framework that centrally locates complete autonomy as an ultimate goal. During this conversation with Derrick, I often thought about my own history with romantic relationships and what affective productions were emerging between the conversation with Derrick and I. How was I straddling a line of insider/outsider, researcher/researched, as I became more immanently incorporated into my own research? Derrick noted his specific thoughts about individuals’ frustrations with attachment as it pertained to their usage of apps: I’m thinking people are frustrated with, “this is moving too fast after just one hook up or one date,” as much as they’re frustrated with, like, the more avoidant attachment, which would be, like, “this person ghosted me,” or, like, “this person can’t say what they want.” You know, so I think there’s some challenges in our community and culture around what attachment looks like for a lot of us, right? (Derrick, 33, South East-Asian, queer cisgender man)

In my field notes on this conversation, I still failed to fully articulate my feelings about my responses and gut reactions to this interview. I knew that I felt shame around my own struggles to “move slowly” in romantic relationships in the past and that I thought about my own challenges with dating and how they might be read by Derrick. I was aware as well that I was shifting and changing in my own reflections, too, or that in the “threshold” of my research interview with Derrick, I had emerged as something different (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011). Connections started as I read frantically between Foucault (1991) and Gill and Orgad (2015) after the interview. Gill and Orgad’s (2015) work is situated in a feminist critique of the “cool feminist subject” who is seemingly empowered through stylizing herself aesthetically as a liberated sexual subject. This critique is still important to consider within a gay men’s sexual context, particularly as this population has historically been quite hostile towards feminist critiques of gay men’s sexual cultures (Edwards, 1994, 2005). The “feeling rules” of Grindr, for Derrick, might involve some emotional work of being “interested but not clingy” as well as working on one’s emotional expression online so that anxieties and insecurities are not exhibited. Through reading Foucault and Gill and Orgad together, I began to think about the kind of emotional work that subjects might governmentally engage in and how even social service workers and outreach work might even reinforce specific notions of “confidence” and “self- assuredness.” Derrick’s thoughts on online cultures illustrated how, within the affective

137 assemblages of Grindr, confidence and self-assuredness are feelings and emotional states that subjects on Grindr utilize to marketize themselves. Navigating Grindr demands a persona of self-confidence and emotional security for users to convey themselves as self-fulfilled, emotionally secure, and desirable for other users online (Jaspal, 2017). For many gay and queer men who utilize socio-sexual apps such as Grindr, negotiating gay online cultures involves emphasizing feelings of confidence, sexual empowerment, and individuality. These tasks require the disavowal of emotional vulnerability, relationality, and insecurity (Kong, 2019b; Ong, 2017). Payne (2014) explicates that the modern “sharing subject” emerges through “the belief in impact or contribution effected by circulating content” which “inaugurates and ratifies the subject and does so within a space determined by particular modes of intelligibility” (p. 34). Payne (2014) theorizes how this sharing subject exists in a sphere where it believes itself to be exuding agency and autonomy in its choices online while in actuality, the subject is highly connected through the content, hashtags, and tweets that contribute to algorithms, network formations, and affective politics online. Payne (2014) notes that, for the “sharing subject,” flexibility and adaptability are key tenets to its success. Success is not only accomplished by being adaptable to current trends and sharing items that will receive a lot of attention on social media, but also by transforming one’s own subjectivity into something that will trend and become shareable or, ultimately, “viral.” This process of mastery and submission (Butler, 1997a) works through an understanding of the market and current consumer trends. This allows the user to position their subjectivity as something that can be easily consumed by others and receive high amounts of cultural currency on Grindr, even illustrating how these individuals subjectivities are constituted through their interactions with apps, themselves (Barad, 2007). For example, Scruff, a similar GSSA to Grindr except with a more highly masculinized connotation (an app for “scruffy” guys), has a “Woof” feature where individuals can indicate interest in other users by “woofing” their profile based on looking at their profile photo. This is similar to a “like” feature on Instagram and Facebook. Moreover, Scruff features a “Most Woofed” grid on the homepage of the application where users who are the most “Woofed” for the day are listed alongside a grid for the “Most Woofed New Users.” This ultimately entails that users “learn” how to position themselves in a fashion that is seen as desirable to other users in order to receive Woofs with the possibility of appearing on the “Most Woofed” grid. Feelings of confidence and self-objectification promote users’ desirability online

138 through the popularity of their profiles on global grids, such as Scruff’s “Most Woofed New Users” (Anderson et al., 2018). Consider this link Derrick provided between app usage and validation: Well, I think the apps are, like, in that regard, not that different from Instagram, and I think validation, likes, the attention. . . . I think we all benefit from that. It’s just, personally, I think it’s a bit shitty because we can get those needs met really quickly sometimes just, like, from a like, or a woof or whatever, when in real life, meeting somebody takes a lot more work. I think, I personally really feel like we’re being set up to not learn a really important set of skills. (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian, queer cisgender man)

Interestingly, Derrick sees the apps as impacting the development of a “really important set of skills” amongst gay men (i.e. the ability to self-soothe and to provide one’s self with internal validation). Similar notions were brought up by Mark, a social services worker, who noted how Grindr and Instagram can provide validation through the photos posted: This just an example I’m going to use, let’s say whether it’s Grindr or anything, but I think this one’s a really good example. So, like, Instagram. You put a picture up on Instagram, and then suddenly it gets a like, and you’re looking at your phone, and then it’s ten likes, and then it’s 50. You get this instant rush of pleasure and you get a dopamine hit, basically, right? And it just feels great, and you’re like, “oh my god, people love me.” (Mark, 28, Afro-Caribbean, cisgender gay man)

For gay men on Grindr, this self-objectification and desire for validation is reflected in the photos that one chooses to post as a profile photo, the brands of clothing which are displayed in the selfies (popular gay clothing brands such as J.J. Malibu or Andrew Christian), the specific pose decided upon in the photo (gym selfies are seen to gain more currency on GSSAs; see Enguix & Gómez-Narváez, 2016; Wang, 2020), the “stats” listed (i.e. height, weight, age), the “tribe” identified with, and what form of intimacies listed (long-term relationship, “right now,” dates, connections, etc.). Derrick mentioned how individuals often do not know how to “market” themselves and accurately reflect in their profiles what they are looking for. Grindr users are expected to accurately and honestly display the kinds of relationships they are seeking, despite the taken-for- granted understanding amongst gay men that Grindr is predominately for hook-ups and anonymous sexual exchanges (Licoppe et al., 2016; Tziallas, 2015; Woo, 2013, 2015)—placing the onus on the user to authentically list the kind of interactions they are seeking through Grindr. Realizing this, the savvy market consumer would presumably choose to not accurately list the

139 kind of relationship they are genuinely looking for, as this might deter individuals from interacting with them (i.e. not actively express that they might want a long-term romantic relationship). Making the choice that is best for himself, the rational actor chooses to take precautions against being rejected. This would be accomplished by falsely advertising what he might be interested in, rather than openly stating that he is interested in romantic relationships and seeking such connections on Grindr. Moreover, within the economies of Grindr, the “feeling rules” might indicate that actively seeking a romantic relationship is a sign of neediness and being less emotionally confident. Derrick related this “interested but not clingy” archetype to constructions of gay masculinities by stating that “it’s another version of ‘masc for masc’”—a common phrase used on Grindr to indicate a “masculine” individual searching another “masculine” man—illustrating how this relational form of emotional distancing, or “interested but not clingy” archetype, implicates individuals within gendered hierarchies. My gut feelings went off during my interview with Derrick as I started making connections between the work of social service workers the normalization of emotional regulation in gay men’s sexual cultures. If gay men were being expected to learn how to regulate their own feelings of rejection online, how might this relate to governmental norms and expectations in gay men’s online hook-up cultures? At another point in our interview, Derrick noted that: “gay men celebrate an ideal of being able to get close but not too close, and to be able to be with somebody in a way where there’s this even pacing in terms of how closeness develops, and then the ability to receive rejection in an easy way.” (Derrick, 33, South- East Asian, cisgender, queer man)

This struck me as I recollected my own histories of “moving too fast” romantically. The affective assemblages in my interview with Derrick moved between my own psychic states of shame— feelings of failing normative gay expectations—and my embodied gut responses to Derrick’s text. Yet, there was still more. The movement of my feelings—between my mind and my gut— disrupted what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) would call arborescent systems. Arborescent systems are “hierarchical systems with centers of significance and subjectification, central automata like organized memories” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 16). Arborescent systems are made of dualisms and binarized metaphysical foundations—such as Descartes’s mind/body divide—where there is a central location of “presence,” such as the mind. My interview moved between the arborescent system of mind and body divides, as the affective assemblages produced

140 during my conversation with Derrick incorporated many different heterogenous elements, some of which were being incorporated despite the fact that I was not consciously aware of them. Derrick deployed a gendered discourse through his description of this “interested but not clingy” archetype. This popular discourse operates through the denigration that men might experience online if they fail to regulate their emotional and romantic attachments to other users or are deemed overly emotionally expressive (i.e. being seen as “clingy” or “needy) (see Elder et al., 2015). In our conversation, Derrick described his thoughts on the “ideal” subject in GSSAs and sexual cultures through the amount of emotional distancing required for men to navigate online applications: I think it’s difficult because gay men celebrate an ideal of being able to get close but not too close, and to be able to be with somebody in a way where there’s this even pacing in terms of how closeness develops, and then the ability to receive rejection in an easy way. And I don’t know that that’s entirely possible, but I think that is idealized for a lot of people. Like, the ability to be able to do that: attach, detach, be on the same wavelength, receive rejection and not feel bad about it, and I think. . . . I don’t know what it means for us as a culture, really, but I think individually, I think we would probably need a bit of support and I need to be able to talk about that somewhere. (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian, cisgender, queer)

This ideal of “close but not too close” is similar to Derrick’s earlier statement of “interested but not clingy,” revealing the amount of emotional regulation required as one gets to know another individual online. Derrick makes sense of the relational norms of gay men’s online cultures by stating that gay men require “the ability to receive rejection in an easy way” and “attach, detach, be on the same wavelength, receive rejection and not feel bad about it.” This ability to “attach, detach, be on the same wavelength,” is in line with neoliberal demands for reflexivity in terms of emotional responses and the ability to respond to the unpredictability of one’s environment with ease (Binkley, 2018). This involves emotional work from the individual who is establishing a connection with another user; they must be able to regulate how often they text and interact with another user and how much romantic interest is expressed during their interactions. This emotion work requires being able to “read through the lines” to infer how another user is connecting with them in order to match their emotions with those of the other individual. For Derrick, as a social service worker, he conceptualizes the necessity of gay men requiring “a bit of support” to discuss the ability to “receive rejection and not feel bad about it.” This is interesting to note because Derrick’s statement indicates the idea that gay men require

141 some support, presumably through a social services intervention, in order to receive rejection without expressing too much emotional distress. This ideal of being “close but not too close” can be theorized as an art of governmentality—a rationality—that individual gay men should internalize in order to receive rejection gracefully (Foucault, 1991). This rationality governs users’ behaviours online as they internally regulate their behaviours to ensure that they show interest but simultaneously do not become too interested or too attached too soon. This encourages individuals to freely regulate their emotional interactions with other app users through their own choosing. Derrick continued to explain to me how he employs behaviourist principles with his own clients to assist them in how they utilize socio-sexual apps: Often from a behavioural perspective, it is like, “what is it that makes you feel bad meeting people, being on the app itself?” Like, figuring out what it is and thinking about if there’s a different way to do it, or whether it needs to be done less frequently. And that’s just a behavioural thing, right? So, if you’re really frustrated with yourself for being on apps endlessly, like, “how many hours? When do you tend to do it? Find another activity in place of that and see if you can, like, actually experience joy when you do it less frequently.” (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian, cisgender, queer)

Within socio-sexual applications, relationships are tenuous and always in flux as individuals compete against one another for connections and intimacies, whether one-time sexual encounters or longer-term relationships. Derrick mentions “behaviourist theories,” a psychological approach which postulates how human behaviours can be explained by looking at behaviours of individuals instead of more socio-cultural influences (Graham, 2015). Derrick imagines the app user through a behaviourist lens, which place an emphasis on what the app can do for the individual: a notion based in self-interest and self-fulfillment. This also illustrates how the app, itself, impacts the users’ sense of self, emotional state, and subjectivity (Barad, 2007). Not only does Derrick consider how users must regulate and work on their emotional attachment to other users, but also their dependency on apps, too. Derrick describes the subject as fully capable of regulating their attachment to and dependency upon socio-sexual apps: I think it’s difficult because gay men celebrate an ideal of being able to get close but not too close, and to be able to be with somebody in a way where there’s this even pacing in terms of how closeness develops, and then the ability to receive rejection in an easy way. And I don’t know that that’s entirely possible, but I think that is idealized for a lot of people. Like, the ability to be able to do that: attach, detach, be on the same wavelength, receive rejection and not feel bad about it, and I think. . . . I don’t know what it means for us as a culture, really, but I think individually, I think we would probably need a bit of

142

support and I need to be able to talk about that somewhere. (Derrick, 33, South-East Asian, cisgender, queer)

Throughout my conversations with outreach workers, gay men were often conceptualized as ideally being able to “attach, detach, be on the same wavelength, receive rejection and not feel bad about it” and throughout the interview, I wondered how does governmentality work? In what follows are some fractions of data illustrating the works of governmentality.

“Reading Between the Lines” and the “Unwritten Cues” Haro, a 43-year old Chinese-Vietnamese cisgender gay man mentioned the necessity of emotional flexibility and “reading between the lines” when interacting with other Grindr users and reading text-based communication: Yeah, you know, I think with Grindr there’s always one person that’s always into the other person more. Of course, there’s always guys on there who you think are very attractive, and that guy may seem to be interested, so you keep on going back to him, saying, “hey, how’s it going?” and so on. But, I think, personally, I’ve learned to read between the lines, and if a guy isn’t interested, even though I am really interested in him, then I quickly close down the conversation, and I go on, right? So I haven’t really been attached that way on Grindr because I’m learning to read those cues, those unwritten rules. If a guy doesn’t respond to you for a while that’s an answer. Don’t keep on going back. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese, cisgender gay man)

Critical in Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality is how power produces freedom and fields of action for individuals. Instead of conceptualizing power as only repressive, Foucault theorizes power as productive and, within governmentality, subjects have more responsibility and freedom to choose their action. Part of having more choice in actions is learning the “strategic games” within human interactions and freely choosing the option that will protect the self (Lemke, 2002). The requirements for navigating GSSAs (and online marketed communication-based spaces) is “reading between the lines” in order to be able to decipher another party’s interest, and to follow appropriate emotional cues. This can be noted in Derrick’s interview where he placed the onus on the individual to authentically portray what kind of connection they might be seeking online and to choose to not be online if the app is harming their self-esteem. This argument misses out on the pressures that many gay men feel to be on Grindr and how embedded within mainstream gay cultures Grindr usage has become (Woo, 2013, 2015).

143

For Haro, returning to the same individual for conversation when they might not be mutually interested can be avoided by understanding how to take subliminal cues from someone that their interest might not be as strong. Understanding these subliminal communicative cues demands the ability to emotionally respond to interests of the other party without necessarily directly receiving a rejection. This takes place by understanding the “feeling rules” of Grindr and how they might demand one to “read between the lines” and distance themselves from someone who is not interested in them instead of becoming upset or confronting the individuals. For the neoliberal sexual actor, reading into communicative cues is an interpretive heuristic that prevents the emotional harm that can take place through rejection.

“Hey, Looking?”: Governmentally Orienting Towards Hook-Ups Texting-based communication and phrases are a key component in how users learn to regulate their emotions and indicate whether they are interested in immediate sex or a longer-term intimacy on Grindr, with the content and frequency of texts holding gendered connotations (Garcia-Gómez, 2020; Pinsky, 2019; Rochadiat et al., 2020).

144

Foucault (1991) articulates that, through governmental regimes, individuals consider themselves to be completely free and autonomous in their decisions and completely in control of themselves. Governmentality works through self-monitoring; it links the subject with power, with power being relational, productive, and micro instead of being held through the state and procedures of state control (Lemke, 2015). This self-monitoring is relevant in relation to the norms that mediate textual communication such as instant messaging and texting, as users can seemingly freely make choices in terms of how they text another user online through the belief that certain styles of communication might be more “successful” in producing desirable results. Texting is an example of a micro approach to analyzing power and subject control through the lens of everyday practices and relational norms. Such a micro-approach reflects how neoliberalism works within the everyday actions of Grindr users and infiltrates the online subjectivities of gay men. Users governmentally monitor their emotional closeness and distance with other users through such strategic games (Lemke, 2002) by manipulating and strategizing their interactions with other app users. Michael, a 29-year-old, cisgender, white gay man illustrated his ability to adjust his communication with different people online in order to convey the type of connection he was seeking: A: Yeah. I know that’s been like my experience in the past. If I want to hook up, I just say like, “hey, hey, hey.” M: “Hey, looking?” That’s used so often. . . . Or people’s profiles that just have a set of eyes, or, like, set of eyes, the number four, and an eggplant. An eggplant is a damn vegetable! . . . I don’t know who decided that a peach should be the symbol for a butt! A peach does not look like a butt! (Michael, 29, white, cisgender, gay)

Foucault (1991) defines governmental rationalities as “institutions and practices” and the guiding of conduct. This is important to note in how governmentality is involved in everyday decisions and behaviours, such as the usage of emojis,19 and the terms employed in conversation, which manage and guide contact and human interactions. By self-regulating their interactions with other app users, subjects can relay the kind of connection they are seeking without explicitly stating their wishes. Michael explained how he believed “the less you kind of communicate, the more you’re likely to convey that you want to hook up,” even terming this a “script.” These

19 An emoji is a digital image with origins from Japanese culture that can be incorporated into a digital messaging platform or text messaging to communicate a specific feeling or emotion in a nuanced manner. These images are commonly used in pop culture references and are known for how they can instantly communicate a specific emotional state to a receiving user (Gorgulu, 2020).

145

“scripts” are internalized by gay men online as they learn how to communicate their relational desires based on either more or less text (i.e. more conversation and texting might mean a more emotional and less strictly physical connection) (Licoppe, 2020). This is also related to communicative norms for gay masculinities, as illustrated by Miller’s (2018) analysis of masculinity and self-presentation language on Grindr, as GSSAs, are means for individuals to stylize themselves in accordance with dominant scripts of masculinity.

“You Fall Into This Trap” In their scoping literature review on GSSAs, Wu and Ward (2018) draw from Tziallis (2015) and Fitzpatrick and Birnholtz (2018) to articulate how gay men engage in a “checklist” form of interaction on socio-sexual applications. Wu and Ward (2018) propose that app users draw on this checklist to ensure that communication is kept to a minimum in order to avoid detailing emotionally in-depth or intimate information with potential partners. As individuals go through their “checklists,” they eventually move towards sending photos and planning a potential meeting for a sexual encounter. Individuals might adhere to this checklist script as an efficient way to ensure they “get to the point” and do not “invest” too much in an individual they might only hook-up with. Frank, a 33-year-old cisgender gay man began describing how he “slips” into a way of speaking when his conversations become more sexual: You know, sometimes you feel that you’re having a conversation, you end up slipping into a way of speaking. That may not necessarily be you. . . . You can kind of feel a conversation shifting, and then you kind of fall into this trap. Like if you’re having a friendly conversation and maybe it’s something when you send naked pictures and then all of a sudden the tone of the conversation shifts into a more sexual thing and you just have to kind of swing into that. And it works. (Frank, 33, white, cisgender, gay)

Frank noted shifting his conversation without being fully cognizant of the change in tone as he “falls into this trap” where the conversation changes into a “more sexual thing.” Based on the tone of the conversation, Frank is able to shift the connotation of his conversation into a different style of self-presentation (“a more sexual thing”) in order to ascertain a potential sexual encounter with someone. By altering the conversation style, Frank signals a desire to shift the conversation from the “friendly conversation” style to “sending naked pictures” and then to into a “more sexual thing.” Thus, Frank is able to manipulate his communicative style in a fashion where he is able to receive a certain desired gain for himself.

146

“Trapped in a Cycle” Connecting governmentality to economic gain, Foucault (2008) describes homo economicus as a subject who aspires for his own satisfaction and labours to produce for himself and his needs. Referencing Gary Becker, an early theorist of rational choice theory,20 Foucault (2008) states, “the man of consumption is not one of the terms of exchange. The man of consumption, insofar as he consumes, is a producer. What does he produce? Well, quite simply, he produces his own satisfaction” (p. 226). Similarly, Frank is simultaneously a sexual consumer and producer in his engagements on Grindr as he produces himself as a consumable and desirable subject while also consuming others. By changing the emotional connotations of communication, Frank is able to indicate his interest in sex with another app user, even if it is “falling in a trap.” Frank continued to describe strategies he used when he would become “frustrated” online: I feel like Grindr is often a waste of time. And every once in a while, especially if I am horny and frustrated, if I’m putting all this effort into something, I will wonder what I’m doing, why am I wasting my time doing this? Why am I getting upset over something that is just a square box [the Grindr profile] and I think what I found for me is that the more I don’t care about it, the less I invest. And so I’ve started like not using it during the week so that I could get work done. But I definitely fall into a trap of talking to someone and then just getting more notifications. And then, you know, when I go on, I see someone else and I say hi or whatever. But I just feel like you’re kind of trapped in that in a cycle where I’m putting in a lot of time for something. All of a sudden my attention is gone, like I’m not able to totally focus. (Frank, 33, white, cisgender, gay)

The ways in which Frank articulated managing his frustrations online (i.e. investing less) and his (and Michael’s) strategies for indicating interest in a more sexual connection through regulating text-based communications with other users falls in line with what Lemke (2002) terms “strategic games” within governmentality (Lemke, 2002). By “investing less” in Grindr and associated goals, Frank is actually exerting some resistance to Grindr; that is, while he is self-fashioning himself online to encourage sexual consumption and the consumption of other subjects, he is also resisting Grindr through his frustrations with how the app interferes with his ability to work and be productive in a neoliberal capitalist society. Frank actually conceptualizes Grindr as a blockage to his ability to work and produce, meaning that Grindr actually functioned

20 The notion that individuals will make rational choices in their best interests for their own ends.

147 to interrupt the capitalist need to work by “wasting time.” Still, as Ruti (2017) notes, using Grindr or looking at pornography in the middle of the workday are not necessarily always distractions from the capitalist drive to produce but can actually function as quick breaks to refuel one’s energy to go back to work and keep producing. Ruti (2017) articulates this particularly well: Consider the common practice of using online pornography to take a “break” from work, to recharge one’s ability to tackle the next task, or to endure the dullness of the day. From this perspective, pornography is an efficient tool of biopolitical conditioning, perhaps even the epitome of neoliberal efficiency: you take your break, there is no emotional mess—the mess being limited to the physical surfaces of your immediate surroundings— and then you go back to work, back to the performance principle. The libido, in this scenario, is not repressed but instrumentalized in the service of increased productivity. (p. 62)

While Ruti is specifically discussing pornography here, it is easy to take out pornography and insert Grindr into this situation in how many might use Grindr during a “break” in their working day. With several critiques leveraged at how sexuality politics, including queer theory, can become subsumed within neoliberal logics (Glick, 2000; Ludwig, 2016; McCluskey, 2009), it is important to note that, while in Frank’s case his usage of Grindr might have been a barrier to his own innate wish to produce and work, Grindr might not always operate in this fashion.

“Song and Dance” Frank further noted how he slips into a more sexual tone of interacting with other Grindr users, even when he is not intending to or when it is not specifically on his mind. Describing this experience, Frank articulates how the exchange occurs swiftly between both parties understanding that the conversation is going in that direction: But you can kind of feel a conversation tone shifting, and then you kind of fall into that. Like, if you’re having a friendly conversation and maybe it’s something when you send naked pictures, and then all of a sudden, the tone of the conversation shifts into a more sexual thing and you just have to kind of swing into that. And it works. And the style of talking changes almost telepathically. And I guess once that happens, then at times you kind of feel it change and you know, “okay, well, now I’m doing this song and dance.” So I’ve definitely been in those conversations. (Frank, 33, white, cisgender, gay)

Frank’s description illustrates how, for many users of Grindr, shifting into a sexualized tone and conversation is something that is almost a subconscious experience. Communicative codes (such as sending a naked photo suddenly) indicate to the other party that the conversation

148 is about to “swing into that.” Gendered hierarchies of masculinities and biologically essentialist knowledges encourage men to believe that they are “inherently” more sexual and that they must always be ready for sex at any given moment (Connell, 1995). Men who do not reciprocate such notions are often seen as failing to perform within the highly sexualized economy of Grindr and are often, as a result, cast as deviant. McKie et al. (2019) articulate that “risk management extends beyond sexual behaviours to gendered expression, as men who are seen as unable or failing to comply with masculine expectations are often constructed as outside the masculine norm, or at risk” (p. 346). In order to comply with the sexual scripts of Grindr, individuals orient themselves towards a conversational direction wherein “the style of talking changes almost telepathically” (as Frank mentioned). This “song and dance” that Frank noted occurs through the normalization of certain linguistic codes, such Michael’s mentioning of “Hey, looking?” a common term used by gay men to inquire whether someone is seeking casual sex at the moment (Aunspach, 2020). Subjects quickly realize if they are outside of governmental norms or named deviant and self-correct to ensure compliancy. Key to Foucault’s theory of governmentality is the individual choosing to enact and govern themselves autonomously or making choices that they believe to be autonomous and free (Rose, 1998). Kashi, a 22-year-old South-East Asian gay cisgender man explained how he experienced himself to be outside of the norm on Grindr because he mostly looks for a longer- term romantic partner. He spoke about how this influenced his self-presentation online: Like, if you are going to people’s profiles and you’re trying to see what they are looking for, and all they’re looking for is hook ups, sometimes you get the pressure that maybe most of them are just looking for hook ups, so let’s give it a try and see how it goes. (Kashi, 22, South-East Asian, gay cisgender)

For Kashi, conforming to the relational norms on Grindr is a strategic mechanism that he uses in order to meet the market demands of the app. By comparing himself to other app users, Kashi was able to shift towards what others desire (hook-ups) and “give that a try and see how it goes.” However, for those who might be seeking a longer-term form of intimacy on Grindr, they might strategically present themselves as desiring only a hook-up, knowing that a hook-up is more popular online than seeking a long-term relationship. Noting the infiltration of neoliberalism within sexual politics (Brown, 2019, 2020; Duggan, 2003), it is easy to situate the emergence of homo economicus through Grindr as the ideal neoliberal sexual actor who thinks about his own interests with a lack of concern for social relations with others.

149

State Intervention During interviews, most social service workers noted the importance of having interventions and spaces for gay men to discuss online rejection in order to be able to process their feelings and emotions (as exemplified in Derrick’s statements, for example). The prevalence of specific social service workers who specialize in gay men’s online spaces for outreach is increasing in recent years (Brennan et al., 2019; Brennan et al., 2015; Brennan et al., 2018; Davies et al., 2019). Increased focus is being paid to gay and queer men’s online spaces at local AIDS Service Organizations (ASO) and various ethno-racial specific organizations. Specifically, these workers specialize in questions regarding sexual health, mental health, and navigating the online search for relationships and sexual partners. Considering the high amount of dissatisfaction with Grindr and other GSSAs by gay and queer men (Goldberg, 2018, 2020; Zervoulis et al., 2020), social service outreach workers are employed to specifically assist with gay men’s mental health, well-being, and to develop social skills for navigating gay online spaces and socio-sexual applications. However, such interventions have not been analyzed for how they might be reinforcing normative notions of gay sexual subjectivities and the outreach workers’ perspectives of GSSAs and online hook-up cultures. In this next section, I will argue that through online outreach, normative notions of gay sexual subjectivities are reinforced through interventions and that forms of interventions from social service workers meant to assist gay men in their usage of GSSAs actually further reinforce notions of emotional compartmentalization through one’s sexuality and producing those who fail to compartmentalize as non-nonnormative. For example, Damien, a social service worker at a local ASO, works with gay and queer men leading programs that deal with gay men’s online sexual spaces, dating, body image, and generally navigating gay hook-up cultures. Throughout our conversation, Damien expressed much dissatisfaction with his participants’ interactions with other gay men on Grindr, describing their apparent “inability” to receive rejection, and to emotionally regulate their romantic feelings online. Damien mentioned how he feels that many gay men lack “basic” social and emotional skills and abilities to read social skills and non-verbal cues. This led Damien to explain how he informally diagnoses participants in his program with Autism. This practice continues a history of pathologizing the social and emotional interactions of Autistic individuals, both through

150 medial/psychiatric discourses and through logics which construct Autistic individuals as lacking in self-regulation and theory of mind (McGuire, 2016; McGuire & Michalko, 2011): I think qualities that can be somewhat endearing in person, like, if I meet someone at a party and they’re kind of slightly socially awkward, and shy, and geeky, and blah, blah, I would probably find this person kind of endearing and want to engage with them. On an app, it won’t come across as endearing. Like, I don’t think so. It’s going to come across as needy, weird, awkward, and then I think there’s a need to address the high level of social awkwardness and autism in the gay community. Undiagnosed, high functional, like, Asperger’s syndrome and autism. I always have at least one or two in each of my groups. People I cannot diagnose with them, with autism, but I’ve done a lot of research on autism, and after interacting with them for, like, 15 minutes, I’m like, I always want to say, “do you know you have autism?” Like, “are you aware that you have autism and that you don’t experience social interactions the same way as other people? That’s probably why you keep being rejected.” (Damien, 32, White, cisgender, gay)

In my interview with Damien, I often felt the need to regulate my own affective responses to Foucault’s (1991) theory of governmentality centralizes an understanding of political liberalism as a form of governmentality wherein the state becomes involved in the lives of individuals who cannot manage themselves and are deemed “at-risk.” Damien’s statement follows the logics of neoliberal capitalism, as this form of governmentality involves state management and categorization of individuals to intervene and discipline “abnormal” behaviours. Many scholars in developmental psychology draw from logics that conceptualize autism as “lack.” This pathologizes the social-emotional functioning of Autistic individuals, which can be seen in developmental psychological theories of autism, such as Baron-Cohen’s (1997) theory of “mindblindness,” or a lack of “normative” social and emotional functioning (a notion that has been criticized as empirically invalid by autism studies scholars such as Gernsbacher & Yergeau, 2019). Critiques of the pathologizing developmental logics abound in the fields of critical disability and critical autism studies (McGuire, 2016; McGuire & Michalko, 2011), since such ideologies continue to reinforce normative ideologies of emotional regulation and problematic notions of “theory of mind” that centre a liberal humanist subject (McGuire, 2016; Yergeau, 2018). For Damien, his description of the “high level of social awkwardness and autism in the gay community” rhetorically links social awkwardness with Autism and, therefore, a lack of normalcy. Moreover, Damien states that he would like to ask his participants in his program if they are “aware” that they “have autism” and that they “don’t experience social interactions the

151 same way as other people.” Continuing to question the ways in which gay men interact with each other online, Damien stated, “I, even, in my own personal life, if I’m on apps, and I’m like a well-adjusted white cisgender man, and I know that the way I look fits in the general look of what, like, people want me to look like to have sex with me, and I even get ghosted by eight guys in a weekend.” Damien identified as a “well-adjusted white cisgender man” and as someone who is able to potentially relate to others, capable of deploying feelings of empathy towards clients who he works with who might experience rejection due to structural racism. While Damien might have meant his statement as a means of empathizing through benevolent kindness, critical critiques of empathy highlight how empathy can be deployed through whiteness and liberal logics (Ahmed, 2004a; Boler, 1999; Hartman, 1997; Razack, 2007). Citing Boler (1999), Sherene Razack (2007) writes in her anti-racist critique of Canadian humanitarian efforts, “We ask such questions as who benefits from the production of empathy? Who should feel empathy for whom, and what has been gained other than a ‘good brotherly feeling’?” (p. 390). Boler (1999) questions empathy by asking, “what is gained by the social imagination and empathy, and is this model possibly doing our social vision more harm than good?” (p. 156). Damien’s attempt to empathize with the experiences of his participants through stating his similar experiences with rejection online could be read as a sign that he is trying to “ignore” race, or state that “besides” race, he, too, can relate to experiences of rejection online. Damien specifically described his experiences working with an Asian individual in one of his programs: And I have this client who is this Asian guy. Um, he’s a very attractive, very good looking, intelligent guy, and I’m not Asian, but I know that a lot of Asian guys are dealing with a lot of rejection online, and he has sort of, like, externalized all of his problems with the fact that he’s Asian, and it’s very difficult for me to tell him, like, “I understand that. Being Asian you deal with a lot of discrimination. I cannot relate to you with that because I’m not, but I also have Asian friends who manage to be happy.” (Damien, 32, White, cisgender, gay)

Damien’s description here illustrates an imperative “to be happy” for gay men (Lovelock, 2019), illustrating how, for him, as a social services worker, he sees the imperative of his work with clients to assist them in becoming “well adjusted” (as he termed himself), despite their online discrimination. As Riggs (2017) articulates, racism on socio-sexual apps, such as Grindr, hold a psychic component where it infiltrates the psyches of both gay men of color and white gay men in how the “sexual freedom” of gay men becomes associated with notions of unlimited sexual choice in objects of desire. Through this logic, men of colour are encouraged to dismiss their

152 experiences of sexual racism and fetishization in order to preserve the white gay libertarian project of individual sexual desire. Therefore, the rejection and fetishization that gay men of colour might feel on Grindr and other socio-sexual apps due to structural racism is something to be “overcome.” As Ahmed (2004a) articulates: empathy [strategic or not] sustains the very difference that it may seek to overcome: empathy remains a “wish feeling,” in which subjects “feel” something other than what another feels in the very moment of imagining they could feel what another feels. (p. 30, cited in Bialystok & Kukar, 2018)

In Damien’s description, race becomes the slippery signifier that blocks or disrupts the gay subject from being happy. As Damien stated, he “knows a lot of Asian guys are dealing with a lot of rejection online,” but he also has “Asian friends who manage to be happy.” In this statement, Damien identifies racial difference as a barrier for Asian gay men’s happiness on Grindr and, in a neoliberal fashion, places responsibility on the racialized individual who experiences structural racism to manage their own happiness. Understanding structural racism as an individualized experience to overcome, Damien believes it to be a component of his job to convey that there is the possibility of being “happy.” In his critique of moral anti-racism, Binkley (2016) writes: Racism, commonly understood as an interpersonal disposition or an emotional state, in fact derives from a history of medical, scientific and institutional discourses that described humanity in a new light, and related that knowledge to new strategies of government, whose aim is to divide societies into populations warranting distinct forms of regulation. (p. 182)

Binkley’s (2016) analysis points to the structural elements of racism and how instead of conceptualizing racism as an interpersonal exchange, individual act, or emotional state, racism is structural and embedded within the everyday knowledges that are within medical, scientific, and institutional discourses that define what it means to be human in current society. These discourses are commonly based upon the “psy” knowledges (Rose, 1998) of psychology and psychiatry that often define normative humanity through complete autonomy and self-regulation. The goal of social services workers specializing in GSSAs is to cultivate spaces where men can overcome their differences through the regulation of their own emotions and ascertain feelings of gay normalcy, happiness, and pride in their identity. As social service workers, both Derrick and Damien, instead of questioning the logics that expect gay men to experience social rejection with ease, placed the responsibility on individuals to regulate their own behaviours in a normative

153 fashion through neoliberal individualizing logics. Mark reiterated such ideas when he noted how his job is to assist guys with learning how to create an online profile and navigate discourses of loneliness. These online spaces, in his opinion, actually make men feel worse about themselves: Basically what that is, it’s about navigating online spaces. And we’re going to talk about a bunch of different things like loneliness and isolation, like how to create a profile, you know, like that kind of stuff. And we’re going to talk about sort of, like, all the mental health issues. So what we find is, like, these people that, it’s like people go on Grindr and all this kind of stuff because in some sense, you know, they want to feel like, valued, and they want to feel, like, appreciated. And then it actually ends up making them feel worse. Like, and there’s actually been a lot of studies that have shown, you know, the longer the people use these apps the less happy that they are. (Mark, 28, Afro-Caribbean, cisgender gay man)

As articulated by Mark, the purpose of social service workers’ programs and their interventions is to encourage users to be able to navigate Grindr. This is important work, so without critiquing the individual workers, themselves, these notions play along with ideas that Grindr is an “unhappy” space and that it might be encouraging users through these discourses to governmentally interact with one another in a dehumanizing manner, as these behaviours are normalized and seen as almost expected online.

Risk and Vulnerability In what follows, I make connections between “risk” and emotional “vulnerability” as these connections emerged both through the affective assemblages of my research interviews and also through my own reading of Foucault (1991). O’Malley (2009) describes “risk” as a “technology of government” in that the individual makes estimates based on probability and frequency of past events and occurrences to govern behaviours and actions for future events (p. 5). While navigating interpersonal communications online—particularly text-based interactions—participants, such as Charlie, Dominic, and Michael, noted the risks involved in being emotionally vulnerable with other application users online. Relating Foucault’s (1991) theory of governmentality to risk, O’Malley (2009) states that “governmentality focuses attention on the diverse ways in which we may govern the conduct of others and ourselves” (p. 2). Navigating socio-sexual applications involves emotional vulnerability and risks. Individuals attempt to navigate making themselves open to others to formulate a deeper emotional connection and sense of intimacy, while protecting themselves from being emotionally

154 hurt and experiencing rejection and heartache (Couch et al., 2012; Woo, 2015). Perpetual experiences of rejection online can lead individuals to poorer mental health outcomes as well as feelings of isolation and exclusion from gay communities (Gibbs & Rice, 2016). Therefore, navigating how much to expose oneself online and when to restrain emotional attachment involves a degree of risk, with individuals who are more open and who get attached to other app users more quickly experiencing higher degrees of risk. Interestingly, though created to foster connections and intimacies, Grindr has shifted in terms of its relational norms towards an anti- relational culture where relationality (and potentially vulnerability) is seen as negative (Goldenberg, 2019; Roach, 2019). Butler’s (2016) account of relational vulnerability is useful here in its focus on “the human body[, which] has a certain kind of dependency on infrastructure, understood complexly as environment, social relations, and networks of support and sustenance by which the human itself proves not to be divided from the animal or from the technical world” (p. 21). For Butler, vulnerability involves the relationality of the body to all components of the world, including structures, systems, social relations, and even the non-human, such as animals. Attempts to regulate emotional vulnerability by individuals therefore can miss how subjects are always relational and vulnerable to precarious systems and structures around them. Thus, vulnerability involves navigating discourses of dependency, which are typically coded as feminized, if Butler is accurate in stating that subjects are never autonomous and always dependent and vulnerable to things outside of their control. For gay men who are deemed emotionally dependent or particularly emotionally vulnerable—especially as it involves being vulnerable to another individual—there are risks of feminization and dependency, or risks of such forms of vulnerabilities not being returned (Davies, 2017, 2019). To place one’s emotional security in the hands of another person, as well as the possibility of being rejected, can lead to hesitancy in interactions with other men. Michael described such risks and how the expression of feelings towards another individual online can lead to rejection: It may have something to do with the poor relationship I had with my dad or the fact that I didn’t have any siblings and didn’t really have any friends growing up. Whatever it is, there’s that fear of rejection even as an adult. And when one expresses feelings for someone else, there’s the probability of getting rejected and getting shut down and never talking to the person again. So we all as gay men learn to be so cautious with how we interact with each other online and don’t want to say too much or the wrong thing. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender gay man)

155

Here, Michael related his fear of rejection with the “poor relationship” he had with his dad. He even furthers this as a reason why “gay men learn to be so cautious with how we interact with each other online.” Thus, being intimate and vulnerable with other app users online entails the potential of “getting rejected and getting shut down.” This dynamic entails fearing rejection and regulating one’s emotional expression to another individual in order to avoid the risk of being hurt. For Michael, this fear of rejection results in being afraid of saying “too much” or the “wrong thing,” which can indicate a breach of emotional boundaries. Regulating one’s emotional expression is a way of minimizing the “risk” of rejection, which can result in emotional harm or damage. Michael described how he attempted to control or regulate his feelings for another person through his interactions with them: When I get to the point where I feel I am starting to fall in love with someone, I start to regulate my interactions with them . . . pull back from the person a bit because I don’t want to get hurt. I’ve been hurt numerous times in the past by being too vulnerable. And it’s not something I really want to go through again. So, I learned to protect myself when getting to know guys online. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender gay man)

Michael described the interplay of emotional vulnerability and self-protection (i.e. regulating interactions with other users) out of the uncertainty of the reciprocity of the other’s feelings. This precarious situation involves a level of vulnerability that demands risk. Thus, individuals may govern and regulate their own actions based on calculations or the risk of potentially negative occurrences in their future. Much of the literature on gay men’s sexualities focuses on critiquing risk frameworks as it pertains to gay men’s sexualities, HIV transmission, and barebacking or condomless sex (Dean, 2009; McKie et al., 2019), but risk as it pertains to potential emotional harm has yet to be discussed. Online spaces, such as socio-sexual applications, are filled with potential emotional risks and harms, particularly for subjects who might not have their feelings reciprocated. For Michael, expressing his feelings of love for someone holds the potential of being hurt, and due to past experiences of being hurt and “too vulnerable,” he protects himself by regulating his expressions of emotions and feelings. Romantic love, particularly in Western cultures, is commonly constructed as entailing a form of emotional reliance whereby individuals become intermeshed with one another through a romantic relationship that involves union and complex emotional states (Helm, 2010). Berlant (2012) describes love as “the embracing dream in which desire is reciprocated: rather than being isolating, love provides an image of an expanded self, the normative version of which is the two-

156 as-one intimacy of the couple form” (p. 6). In love, there is always a risk of the lack of such a reciprocation and the risk of being hurt. Through such a “failure” of reciprocation, there is the risk of feminization and shame, which, as Pascoe (2005, 2007) articulates, is associated with the figure of the “fag” or “failed masculinity.” This “fag figure” haunts interactions between men, as feminization and emotional vulnerability with another can indicate a failure to perform hegemonic masculinity, particularly if one’s romantic affections and emotions are not returned. Thus, the risk of failing to have returned feelings haunts many men as they use GSSAs. Charlie, a 43-year-old Iranian cisgender gay man described his own experiences of regulating his emotional expression with other application users and his feelings that he would “suffer” if were to be open with others online and emotionally attach to them: I had to regulate my emotions because of my experiences. . . . I felt that way, that I would suffer. . . . So it’s like that I made myself prepared to not attach because . . . I think that most probably they wouldn’t come back. They wouldn’t want us to go on something frequently or ongoing. (Charlie, 43, Iranian cisgender gay man)

For Charlie, his emotional self-regulation became a method for avoiding disappointment and suffering as he predicted that individuals would not attach to him or “come back.” Charlie’s emotional regulation is a strategy that he deploys in order to navigate the emotional risks of Grindr. Frequent or ongoing indicates a higher level of emotional investment and commitment in the relationship, outside the normative boundaries of Grindr usage. Foucault (1991) articulates how the subjects involved in governmentality are at the level of the “population” but are “ignorant of what is being done” (p. 100). While Charlie is “freely” choosing to engage in the regulation of his emotional expression and attachments online, this is having an effect of operating at the level of the population, whose interests end up ruling over the individual. Regardless of the original intent of using GSSAs, app users internalize the “truth” that these apps are mostly for hook-ups and then normalize their relational desires to conform to this understanding. This relates to Foucault’s (1980) connection between power and knowledge in subject formation in that it illustrate how power and knowledge shape subjectivities through their interconnection. Moreover, this understanding of Grindr and GSSAs as being primarily for sex is created based on calculations of risk at an individual level (i.e. which type of intimacy will ensure the least online rejection) to avoid rejection and being seen as a gay “failure.” This then normalizes the belief that gay men primarily desire sex without relationality.

157

Dominic, a 27-year-old, East-Asian (Chinese-Vietnamese) cisgender gay man noted how he regulates his levels of care and affection for his hook-ups through Grindr as a self-protective mechanism to police the boundaries of intimacies: Very rarely do I even kiss my hookups. Why? It just feels too intimate. . . . I don’t want to cuddle this random hook-up after I’m done. But then just like we’ve had our fun and then let’s make a joke and then let’s make an exception for that. Like too emotional to cuddle the cat. Like I just want to try to avoid any like affection or like emotion. It’s like if I’m going to have some sort of sexual release, it’s going to be very easy. (Dominic, 27, Chinese-Vietnamese gay cisgender man)

For Dominic, he polices the emotional intensity of his affection for his hook-ups, with kissing and cuddling signaling a greater amount of intimacy than he is willing to provide. Going along with neoliberal notions of sex as an exchange based on individualized pleasure and ease of usage, this level of emotional regulation is to ensure that his “sexual release” is “very easy.” This kind of anonymous exchange was termed by several participants, including Michael, as a “fuck and chuck,” an anonymous transactional exchange where individuals meet to “fuck” and then “chuck” the other person. Charlie noted a similar dynamic when he described the application itself (Grindr) as making him feel as though he needed to instantly go back online after having a hook-up: I thought that it’s a place [to date], so I exposed myself more to the judgments [of others]in the hopes to be known better. . . . I got tired of the dating app because I didn’t want to be bullied. I found that even when I’m leaving someone after having sex, I [would] go online and after a while, I felt why do this. . . . I just had fun. . . . And I believe I just have these [hookups] for fun, so I should go online again. . . . But I found that, OK . . . there should be something more that I’m seeking from these apps. (Charlie, 43, Iranian)

Notions of Grindr’s “addictiveness,” commonly cited in the literature (Brubaker et al., 2016; Goldenberg, 2019), is exemplified here in Charlie’s impulse to return to Grindr. Questioning his impulse, he stated “there should be something more that I’m seeking from these apps,” indicating a level of dissatisfaction with his current usage of Grindr and similar apps. The rational sexual actor within Grindr does not question the transactional nature of sexual interactions and views his usage of Grindr as a means to an end. Anderson et al. (2016) note how homo economicus holds Kantian epistemological foundations. These foundations privilege masculinist forms of rationality, reason, and utilitarianism that considers emotionality and emotional expression “irrational” and a distraction to making “logical” decisions. Moreover, the

158 neoliberal rational subject continues to operate within Grindr through gendered and racialized hierarchies that encourage individuals to continually seek more goods for its own interests and purposes; that is, no level of self-fulfillment or individual consumption is ever enough (Brown, 2015; Winnubst, 2015). Imagining itself in a post-race and post-gender society, the neoliberal subject employs social media as a form of stylized entrepreneurship whereby freedom is imagined through logics of self-actualization, self-stylization, and achievement (Winnubst, 2015). Consumption is not enough for the neoliberal subject, as Winnubst (2015) explicates, since arriving at a “destination,” or a location of perfection, implies ceasing the quest for more and better: Subjects of neoliberalism are enticed to engage in the endless and also constantly changing practices of self-fashioning, landing us all in an infinite quest for that perfect self, which turns out to be that perfect look . . . the neoliberal subject of interests is not invested in reaching any resting place of a singular, fixed identity. To be The Perfect Mother or The Perfect Student or The Perfect Worker is the death of subjectivity, the cessation of the freedom of self-fashioning, for the neoliberal subject. (p. 65)

For the neoliberal subject, self-fashioning is a continual “quest,” which means that one can never be satisfied with the status quo. To have reached happiness, as Winnibust (2015) writes, means “the death of subjectivity,” of which there cannot be anything else to reach for in terms of romantic relationships. Thus, the neoliberal subject must have something to keep aspiring towards so that they do not get “locked in” or “tied down,” tying into the logics of online dating and hooking-up where there is always someone new to be found. Even though subjects might have a good sexual encounter or final a potential romantic partner who they could be satisfied with, the quest for more must continue. For Charlie, although he had just had a hook- up, he noted how he immediately returned to Grindr and sought out another sexual encounter, realizing that he was not completely satisfied still, even after just having sex. Similarly, later in Derrick’s interview, he noted the connections between Grindr’s hook- up culture and feelings of envy wherein gay men’s aspirations of “having amazing sex lives” become implicated in hierarchies of desire, comparison, and feelings of inadequacy: I mean, we live in a highly sexualized community. I think we project a lot of assumptions onto guys that we envy, slash resent, slash look up to, slash wish we looked like. I think we think that they have amazing sex lives, and I think that projection in part fuels our own unhappiness. But I wouldn’t disagree in terms of, like, how being able to have casual sex and talk about sex is an important part of gay culture, so it’s a way of doing gay well. I guess part of me has a hard time with this because the pressure to have anonymous sex

159

sounds like it’s so much about performance, frequency, and quantity . . . sex could be a way we do gay right. (Derrick)

As Derrick states, “sex could be a way we [gay men] do gay right,” indicating how frequent sexual encounters becomes a performative feature of gay identification. Indeed, gay male sexualities, anonymous sex, and dissidence to heteronormative structures are a component of the cultural productions of gay men’s cultures and communities (Chauncey, 1994; Halperin, 2012). However, what Derrick noted in this passage relates to what Foucault (2008) describes as “apparatuses of quantification.” Foucault (1991) continues to note how the population became a problem in need of governing and quantifying, particularly through surveillance. Foucault (1977) elaborates, stating that a surveillance society is created through hospitals, schools, and prisons in their architectural design. Taking the design of the prison, Foucault explained how societal control operates as the form of self-surveillance and regulation instead of through the government itself, therefore indicating how the “art of government” became an art of “governing the self.” Moreover, through governmentality, the role of state moves to the well-being and improvement of the population through the collection of statistics to govern appropriately:21 Population is the object that government must take into account in all its observations and savoir, in order to be able to govern effectively in a rational and conscious manner. The constitution of a savoir of government is absolutely inseparable from that of a knowledge of all the processes related to population. (Foucault, 1991, p. 100)

By comparing the quantity or frequency of sexual encounters, gay men might be quantifying sex into a logic of comparison where the higher the numbers, the more one feels they are performing a normative gay sexuality. Therefore, the feelings of envy and comparison which Derrick described as governing gay men’s sexual subjectivities, such as comparing individual sex lives and frequency of anonymous sex, are constituted through logics of performance, frequency, and quantification. This is a stark difference from what theorists, such as Tim Dean (2009) have written about gay male cruising cultures, in stating that cruising is imagined as disrupting the ontologization of the subject and any sense of liberal humanist foundations (c.f. Bersani, 1987; Edelman, 2004; Roach, 2019). Describing gay cruising as an “ethic of openness to alterity,” Dean (2009) differentiates between gay men’s common quantification of sexual encounters and cruising culture: “the ethics of cruising is a matter not of how many people one

21 Understandings of governmentality here come from Baxstrom (2000), Lemke (2002), and Dean (2009).

160 has sex with or what kind of sex one has with them (bareback or otherwise) but of how one treats the other and, more specifically, how one treats his or her own otherness” (p. 177). Feelings of envy and comparison are connected to gay men’s internalization, performance, and amplification of hegemonic and essentialist ideas of masculinity, such as that men have “naturally” high sex drives. (Elder et al., 2015; Ravenhill & de Visser, 2017; Sánchez et al., 2009). While Dean might describe an ethic of openness and alterity through cruising culture, participants did not describe cruising culture and/or hooking-up through apps22 as a relational endeavour, or as something that disrupted their own senses of selfhood. In Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, gay author and historian, Alex Espinoza (2019), writes of the development of cruising cultures amongst gay men and its continuation within gay online websites and phone applications. For Espinoza, there is a continual longing and loneliness that brings gay men back to cruising cultures; however, such longing and loneliness is full of the desire for more affirmation that is from a desire for others from a similar identity, instead of being self-shattering as anti-social queer theorists might posit: Satisfaction is not guaranteed. Yet we still return. We still go back to that park or that alley. We log on once again, check to see who is also on and nearby. Did they leave a message? Did they leave a “smile” or a “woof” or a “wink?” And we return again and again. Because it’s what we do. We never stop looking. The pursuit is in our blood. Cruising speaks directly to our loneliness, it makes us aware of what we are and aren’t alone. Cruising can be viewed as our need to connect with one another, over and over, beyond physical desire, but more out of the necessity all marginalized groups have: the desire to be with one’s own kind.” (p. 135)

In its very design, Grindr orients users towards fast and quick exchanges, with the design privileging anonymity, the usages of short saved phrases with multiple users at a time, and a focus on the quantification of individual bodies (Licoppe, 2020; Robinson, 2016; Tziallas, 2015). Through its design, Grindr governmentally orients users towards focusing on quick exchanges. Derrick expressed this as he noted his thoughts on how the sexual culture and design of Grindr places a higher value on the number of hook-ups which individuals have over the emotional

22 Ruti (2017) is sceptical of the nature of sex to provide “jouissance” (which critics such as Dean, Edelman, and Halperin argue) and shatter subjectivity: “I have never found my “enjoyment” (jouissance) particularly unbearable. . . . It seems to me that (consensual) sex does not necessarily do much damage to our sense of self. It may decenter us momentarily but it does not inevitably leave any lasting imprint of trauma” (p. 138). However, perhaps it is not sex, itself, that is decentering, but more the trauma that one can experience when sex fails to provide the anticipated long-term relation that the heteronormative order promises. This is an argument I draw from personal experience. It is important to also note here that I am not equating cruising culture in terms of its history in gay communities with socio-sexual app usage, although I do see similarities (see Ahlm, 2017).

161 depth of the intimacies that are cultivated on the app, particularly since communicating extensively requires more work: I think Grindr is built for quick exchanges and seeing who’s around you. I think the short interaction and hook up culture doesn’t lend itself to getting to know each other too much. And so, in that way it prioritizes less emotional attachment because usually it takes more communication to feel emotionally attached. Um, and so I think that’s entrenched in the app. It’s also, like, being proximity-based, I know you can do the global searches and stuff, or geographic searches, but being proximity-based . . . it’s using this very specific technology that arguably prioritizes the hook up over any kind of dating. (Derrick, 33, South-East-Asian, queer cisgender man)

As exemplified in Derrick’s description of the utilitarian design of the application, “Grindr is built for quick exchanges,” indicating that the actual design of the app itself, in Derrick’s opinion, orients users towards hook-ups instead of longer-term intimacies. Derrick’s description exposes how Grindr functions in a utilitarian manner, whereby it privileges shorter, less engaged forms of communication. Licoppe’s (2020) research illustrates how Grindr, in particular, privileges short term “connections” which typically are one-time intimacies for individual pleasure. While it is true that Grindr might orient users this way in terms of design, this also coincides with normative ideologies regarding gay sexual subjectivities, which hold a history of privileging anonymous sexual exchanges over romance (Chauncey, 1994). Indeed, the discourses within Grindr place subjects in a binding position whereby they are caught between competing heteronormative discourses of love, romance, and domesticity, and normative gay sexual scripts for anonymous one-time sexual encounters.

The Networked Subject Within online environments, the very subjectivities of users are constituted in relationship to their interactions with technology and their online self-presentations (Barad, 2007; Boler & Davis, 2018; Haraway, 1985). Boler and Davis (2018) describe how the online subjectivities of individuals often involve specific “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1979) within digital media spaces that cultivate certain affective expectations and norms within digital communities. These norms, as explained by Boler and Davis, orient people to specific ways of reacting and responding to information or interpreting interpersonal dynamics. Boler and Davis explicate their theorization through the political opposition between the right and left political spectrums in American politics, describing how “to understand feeling rules in contemporary polarized politics requires

162 grasping the explicit nature of the salience of emotionality in politics, and emotion as politic” (p. 79). In Boler and Davis’s (2018) analysis, the networked subject is constituted within a digital “assemblage” defined by feeling rules that define what is taken-for-granted as seen as true. The networked subject is “an account of the interrelationship of affects and truths—the ethico- epistemological and ontological project of understanding ourselves as intertwined, networked subjects, described by some as an assemblage” (p. 82). Through the networked subject, truth is defined in relationship with technology and emotional and affective interactions with social media and digital algorithms. As Boler and Davis (2018) describe, truth becomes defined in digital assemblages involving subjects’ affective responses. Involved in the constitution of subjectivities is desire and the continual desire for more, which reinforces what Boler and Davis term the “affective feedback loop” (p. 83). Such feedback loops are relation between subjects and technology, keeping individuals continually desiring and craving more in response to both feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. As can be seen by the data from participants, such as Derrick and Charlie, Grindr is an environment that relies on affective feedback loops that tie individuals to it. Digital media and dating in general can be defined through such feedback loops, with literature describing how texting and online dating are interconnected through feedback and affirmation individuals receive through receiving a text message or response from a desired object (Chin et al., 2018; Levine & Heller, 2012). Desire then is involved in defining the “truth” of one’s necessity to “connect” with others and continually search for more connections—the desire for more drives the networked subject’s interactions with technology. Moreover, through the “feeling rules” of Grindr within networked assemblages, the desire for more connections necessitates emotional regulation, as emotional regulation and the “close but not too close” cool and confident archetype become a governmentality by which subjects constitute their networked subjectivities. Boler and Davis (2018) articulate that the networked subject is always relational, always vulnerable, and continually interlocked within affective assemblages with other users, technologies, and socio-cultural norms. The necessity of compartmentalizing and regulating one’s emotional attachments and connections on GSSAs illustrates that individuals considered the regulation of their emotional and romantic connections with users as necessary without noticing how they are always already attached to Grindr and other apps in their interactions with

163 the technology. The networked subject illustrates “the extent to which digital media and its apparatuses are increasingly formative of that [current condition of] relationality for increasing numbers of people” (Boler & Davis, 2018, p. 82). According to Boler and Davis (2018), theorizing the subject online as “networked” does not mean suggest a higher level of relationality in this digitalized era than before the internet and smartphones. Rather, the subject is relational in the intricate connections and dependencies in which subjectivities—even those in “real life”— hold on digital media and social media. This is an important note to make in gay men’s “reliance” and “dependency” on GSSAs in how these apps might be governmentally cultivating a climate where the combination of emotional intimacy and sexuality are discouraged, or a level of emotional dependency between subjects through romantic relationships is seen as negative and less independent (or more “traditional”). Even so, gay men are increasingly more “networked” and “dependent” on these apps in their usage of them and how these social technologies constitute their very subjectivities. Thus, while I see how Grindr cultivates certain “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1979) and ranges of appropriate levels of emotionality for subjects, which can be governmentally regulated, I also see how many gay men are incredibly emotionally dependent upon Grindr and gay social media. This shows the networked way in which their own “real life” subjectivities are constituted within the assemblages of their interactions with Grindr.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter, I have “plugged-in” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011) Foucault’s (1991) theorization of governmentality with Hochschild’s (1979) work on emotion work and feeling rules. I brought these works in conversation with Boler and Davis’s (2018) writing on the networked subject to theorize how my participants are involved in affective assemblages which constitute their networked subjectivities. The affective and emotional interactions of gay men online are, indeed, very networked and relational (Boler & Davis, 2018). A central theme in this chapter is how Grindr users might be navigating governmental discourses that encourage emotional restraint and disconnection by conceptualizing limits in terms of users’ emotional expression and connection with one another. Through the connections between gay identity, logics of capitalism (Chauncey, 1994; d’Emilio, 1983), neoliberalism (Duggan, 2003; Nash, 2013a), and hegemonic masculinities (Edwards, 2005; Eguchi, 2009; Lanzieri & Hildebrandt, 2011), Grindr, as a virtual “gay village” (Crooks, 2013), or a “modern day gay bar” (Miller,

164

2015a), governmentally constitutes normative gay networked subjectivities through normative regimes that encourage forms of emotional distancing and compartmentalization. Throughout my interviews and plugging-in process of thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011) and thinking-writing (St. Pierre, 2018), the affective assemblages of my research encounters with my participants provided many different ways of theorizing how governmentality (Foucault, 1991) is enacted in participants’ daily interactions with Grindr. Although participants, such as Frank, often strived to emotionally compartmentalize during their interactions with other app users, there were other participants, such as Charlie, who sought out something more emotionally intimate in his connections through Grindr. Importantly, my interviews with social service workers illustrate how many interventions meant to “assist” gay men in navigating online spaces can also reproduce normative regimes and further the disciplining and regulation of gay men’s emotional interactions with one another. This is done by reinforcing notions of emotional compartmentalization as a norm for gay men to follow in their sexual interactions with others. The belief becomes that if gay men hold better coping mechanisms, like Derrick noted, they can engage more “freely” with hook-up culture and contain their emotional attachments and feelings for others. It is important to reiterate how these beliefs produce gendered hierarchies within gay men’s communities, with the man who fails to regulate as a “failed man” or “fag” figure (Pascoe, 2007). In what ways might the anti-relational space of Grindr simultaneously disrupt and reaffirm normative identity-based logics? While many scholars who write on Grindr and similar apps, such as Roach (2015, 2019), argue that these online spaces and the circulation of negative feelings of non-belonging and non-intimacies might be disruptive of neoliberal constructions of gay identity, it is hard not to also see how Grindr simultaneously participates in and challenges neoliberal identity projects (Licoppe, 2020). While Haro noted how these apps evoke feelings of rejection (which I will describe more in-depth in my next chapter on abjection) others, such as Michael, illustrated how Grindr falls along with similar normative sexual scripts that place sex over emotional intimacy and value logics of emotional compartmentalization and non- relationality. In this sense, Grindr might reinforce normative logics regarding gay men’s sexual subjectivities and emotional compartmentalization (see Jacobs, 2020). For gay subjects navigating Grindr, the neoliberal emphasis on logics of consumption and transactional exchanges creates what Roach (2015) terms an anti-relational community of shared

165 estrangement. Roach’s (2015) argument that Grindr and GSSAs empty subjectivity of all psychological interiority is specifically anti-humanist in his critique of interior feelings as he writes how in the context of Grindr and the discursive and linguistic norms on Grindr: Adopting the discursive conventions of these forums—bluntness, eschewal of conversational niceties, near prohibition of confessional candor—is to learn a new language, one in which any acknowledgment of subjective interiority (“deep” thoughts, feelings, etc.) becomes a liability. (p. 57)

While, as Roach (2015) articulates, considering “deep thoughts and feelings” a “liability” might be a way of emptying the subject of all psychological interiority, I consider theorizations such as Roach’s as another way to dismiss the political importance of the inner feelings of the subject. As Gill and Orgad (2017) describe, the inner feelings of subjects and how subjects feel about themselves is inherently political and connected to hegemonies and structures of race, gender, and sexuality in society. Theorizations that conceptualize Grindr as inherently disrupting and emptying the interior subjectivities of gay men in the same way—regardless of race, gender, ability, nationality—reinforce a flat ontological playing field re-privileges white gay men. Within the psycho-social affective assemblages, negative feelings of rejection, hurt, pain, and anger are integral for social change and transformation or, as Audre Lorde (1984/2012) articulates, “we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action comes.” Noting how the interior feelings can indicate included and excluded gay subjects might provide a resistance to the normative feeling rules demanded of subjects on Grindr and similar GSSAs while challenging theorizing, such as Roach’s (2015, 2019) and Halperin’s (2012) that seeks to completely empty the interiority of the subject.

Intermezzo Thinking/feeling/writing emerged within the threshold of my research as I entered my data analysis and encountered my data throughout my writing processes. This thinking/feeling/writing involved encounters with my data where I realized my own existence outside of normative gay conventions and my becoming-gay. In my interviews, moments of affective intensity often destabilized my sense of gay subjectivity. In my interview with Frank, he noted many times his primary desire for hook-ups online and how he views the apps as a means to make sexual connections and that due to his open relationship, he does not wish to meet

166 future romantic partners. In fact, he described how love is “never on the table. That’s just like how it is.” My own becoming-gay emerged through our conversation where Frank elaborated on how he is able to communicate his desire for a hook-up. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note how minoritarian subjects, or those who are not within dominant subject positions, are always in a state of becoming-minoritarian, as “man is majoritarian par excellence, whereas becomings are all minoritarian; all becoming is a becoming-minoritarian” (p. 291). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note how “man” is not just a subject position, but also a state of majority and even minority groups based on identity classifications can become entrenched in a state of majority. In order to enter a state of becoming, one must look outside the dominant norms and milieu to challenge “a standard in the universe” (p. 291).This interview with Frank glowed for me because of how I felt constituted as an outsider in my conversation with Frank, or how I noticed that even amongst my conversations with my gay participants, such as Frank, I did not see many commonalities. Frank was gay and I was . . . something else. Part of this might have been due to the assemblages of my own histories, experiences, interactions with men, but in this interview, in particular, I felt my own becoming and realization that I was not in a state of being gay. It was an interview that, as MacLure (2010) describes, “defamiliarises, complicates, obstructs, perverts, proliferates” (p. 278). In these glowing moments, I was not just gay, or in a state of being, but actually through my disillusionment with what I was hearing, I entered a state of becoming and deterritorialization. Such a deterritorialization, as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) explicate, moves beyond identity norms as the strata, or the territorialized, dualistic subject: There is no subject of the becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of the majority; there is no medium of becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of a minority. We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don’t deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off. (p. 292)

Throughout my interviews, it was the jarring and difficult interviews, such as Frank’s and Damien’s, that produced affective intensities within me that deterritorialized my own sense of being and thrust me into a sense of becoming. Hearing these men who identified as gay articulate their thoughts in such a forthcoming manner, such as Damien’s thoughts on men who are emotional potentially having autism and the intense ableism in his line of thinking, defamiliarized and complicated my own sense of being gay, sending me into a state of

167 becoming-gay, or a “deterritorialized variable of a minority” as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe. In some senses, my own attachment to my gay identification is reflective of Berlant’s (2007a) cruel optimism in my own “endurance in the object” and that “proximity to the object means proximity to the cluster of things that the object promises” (p. 93). Yet, during many of these interviews, my attachment to my own identity diminished as I experienced myself becoming thrown into my own becoming throughout my own details. This becoming involved my own feelings of shock, surprise, and, within the affective assemblages of these data, my sense of myself as a subject changed and shifted in the threshold of thinking/feeling/writing. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) ask how the body-without-organs, or the subject intermeshed on the plane of immanence, comes to ask, “what comes to pass, and with what variants and what surprises, what is unexpected and what expected?” (p. 152). During interviews, such as Derrick’s and Damien’s, what was expected and unexpected were often one in the same. I expected that social service workers would have provocative thoughts on interventions for gay men. I expected that these workers would most likely apply behaviourist thoughts about interventions that would pathologize men who did not seek to compartmentalize their emotional and sexual subjectivities. However, what I did not expect was my affective and gut instinctual responses to what many of my participants told me. Going into this research, I often thought I needed to “illustrate” that a certain phenomenon is occurring when I realized that, in fact, I am actually caught up in constant messiness, always in the middle. Fuller and Sedo (2019) note this by writing how they “wish to signal the creativity that informs exploration, especially when we worry less about the results and attend more closely to the process of doing and making research” (p. 624). Indeed, in my research, I came to note that I was immanently implicated in the affective assemblages produced in my interviews. I was intertwined, embedded, and constituted within and through my interactions with my participants. This became even clearer to me after analyzing my data initially through a more traditional qualitative lens and I realized that something was missing . . . in my own becoming, as a researcher, I was left wanting something else, something different . . . I was thrown into something new. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note this process: “We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don’t deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off” (p. 292). In the following chapters, I continue,

168 moving between my different analyses into the mess of my research in my thinking/feeling/writing. . . .

Chapter Five: Kristeva’s Abjection, Emotional Vulnerability, and Gay Subjectivity: “I Don’t do Relationships. Sorry.”

That familiar black and yellow skull pops up on my screen as my Grindr app loads. It had been a really long day at work and I was already feeling frustrated. I really thought that Zach—a guy I had recently began dating—and I were getting along. We had moved from talking on Grindr to even texting back and forth continually throughout the day; we had started to be flirty with one another, and he even complimented me on my sense of humour in one of our conversations. He asked me on a date a while ago and at this point, we had been on a few “dates” (I use that word lightly, but we hung out in public, participated in an activity, chatted and got to know one another). Still, every time I went on Grindr, without fail, his profile was staring right at me as soon as my Grindr grid loaded. Is he not into me? I felt like the closer I got to him, the more he started losing his interest. Lately he had become a lot slower to reply to messages, with more texts being left opened and not replied to. It also doesn’t help that he lives on the floor above me, meaning his profile is almost right beside mine on the grid as soon as I open the application. Finally, the skull and loading sign disappeared and the regular grid presented itself. Sure enough, Zach’s profile was right beside mine, with a photo of him on the beach in Miami wearing Ray Ban sunglasses and a dark blue square cut speedo. Suddenly my phone pinged as I received a text message. Opening up my messages, right away I could see that it was Zach. Me: “Hey.” Zach: “Hey, how are you doing?” I didn’t really know why he was messaging beyond that he might have seen that I signed into Grindr and realized that midway through the day he read my long message describing some childhood bullying I experienced and did not reply. And now he was texting with a “hey.” This might have also been why I was slightly agitated at work today and checking my phone constantly. My iMessage pinged again, meaning he responded. “Good. U?”

169 170

This conversation was not going anywhere meaningful and despite his excellent conversation skills, I was getting annoyed. So I decided to cut to the chase. Angrily pounding on my iPhone’s keyboard, I became very direct. “What is up with you lately? We have been on three or four dates and every time I check Grindr, you’re still on here. I am telling you about childhood trauma and opening up to you and you leave my texts unread. If you’re losing interest in me, just tell me, because I’m feeling like I’m trying to send cute emojis, be romantic, ask how your day goes, and the more I ask, the more you move away from me.”

I press send and quickly see the “Delivered” description below the message turn to “Read.” My heart starts beating. I see the familiar grey dots pop on my screen indicating that he is typing a message. My hands squeeze my phone intensely as sweat comes down my palms. Then, his reply appears on my phone. “I don’t do relationships. Sorry. Not my thing.”

171

Introduction This chapter will engage with Julia Kristeva’s (1982) theorization of abjection as it pertains to the socio-sexual connections that gay men cultivate within gay socio-sexual applications (GSSAs). As described in the theoretical frameworks section, Kristeva’s (1982) writing on abjection focuses on the intersubjective disruption to identity and self that takes place when a subject is repudiated by others23 and simultaneously abjects itself. Kristeva describes abjection in terms of the child’s processes of moving from the semiotic realm of dependency on its mother—or the prelinguistic—towards the world of the symbolic and the Law of the Father,24 which represent independence, autonomy, and the full recognition of the self. Kristeva elaborates on how reminders of the prelinguistic world—the dependence and nurturance of the mother— evoke processes of abjection as the child attempts to navigate its journey towards intelligibility and the Law of the Father. Within the affective assemblages of my interviews, Kristeva’s (1982) writing on abjection emerged as a productive theorization to think with to conceptualize the emotional and affective relations and encounters in both the past and present of my participants’ lives that influence their connections and relations on GSSAs. I emphasize past and present because although abjection is a psychoanalytic theorization, abjection was at work within the field of my interviews as I thought with theory throughout my interviewing process (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011). In literature on abjection, femininity is commonly associated with nurturance, emotional dependency, and mothering (Creed, 1986; Kristeva, 1982). In particular, in Kristeva’s (1982) writing, abjection occurs for mothers upon the realization that their child is no longer emotionally dependent upon them as the child moves towards the Law of the Father and the realm of the symbolic. Through the symbolic light that a third party, eventually the father, can contribute helps the future subject, the more so if it happens to be endowed with a robust supply of drive energy, in pursuing a reluctant struggle against what, having been the mother, will turn into an abject. Repelling, rejecting; repelling itself, rejecting itself. Abjecting. (p. 13)

23 In this chapter, I use the term “Other” in a psychoanalytic sense whereby the “Other” is constructed as the opposite within a binary of that which is in a dominant position (i.e. “femininity and “masculinity”) (Irigaray, 1982). Those in power must repudiate the “Other” to maintain their dominance within the binary (Kristeva, 1982). 24 The Law of the Father draws from Lacanian psychoanalytic theories to describe how for subjects to enter the symbolic, and full subjectivity, the mother must separate herself from the child without the possibility of full reintegration, while the child must disavow their dependency upon the mother and abject the mother herself while taking on the norms and name of the father.

172

Preston (2013) states that, despite criticisms of essentializing femininity leveraged against Kristeva, her depiction of the abjection which mothers experience through their child’s growth towards independence depicts the culturally ingrained logics of misogyny that are at the root of experiences of abjection and disgust. Abjection involves a threat to a subject’s sense of self and sense of autonomy and independence. This threat brings about a pre-linguistic response that recollects an experience of dependency and reliance on the mother and, through the subject’s reminder of its prior pre-linguistic dependence on its mother, it abjects and reacts. Other researchers, such as Hoskin and Taylor (2019), propose that societal constructs of femininity and femme-identified subjects fail “to maintain boundary distinctions between Us/Them or Subject/Abject, and expose a liminality that ‘blurs accepted categories,’ causing us to question the adequacy of how we organise the world” (p. 290). The ways through which feminization destabilizes and disrupts subjects are important to consider in the context of gay men, who have historically experienced exile and repudiation due to the associations between homosexuality and failed masculinities (Chauncey, 1994; Eribon, 2004; Kuhl & Martino, 2018). For the purposes of this chapter, I am particularly interested in gay men’s negotiations of the abjection of themselves and others through the potential feelings of feminization and emotional dependency that can occur through navigating the intersubjective norms of GSSAs. It is through the feminization that emotional dependency enacts—the disruption of the Cartesian compartmentalized “I”—that abjection takes place. This process of feminization is also produced through assemblages of racialization (Weheliye, 2014). As critics have illustrated who have placed queer theory in conversation with black studies (Scott, 2010; Stockton, 2006) and Asian-American studies (Nguyen, 2014), abjection occurs through assemblages of feminization and racialization, particularly productions of blackness (Warren, 2018), which constitute blackness and black subjects as non-being, or, as Warren (2018) indicates, “being.” This will be addressed through interview data with both Haro, an East-Asian gay cisgender man and Anthony, a Black gay cisgender man. This is important to note in how abjection works differently for gay men of colour than gay white men. Subjects commonly congregate within Grindr to seek out sexual pleasure by sorting through the virtual grid of bodies and descriptions in a manner similar to online shopping (Goldenberg, 2019; Tziallas, 2015). This leads some researchers, such as Bonner-Thompson (2017) to term Grindr a virtual “meat market” where men display gym selfies and almost-naked

173 poses, vying to get the attention of someone for a potential hook-up. The attention Grindr has received for propagating online discrimination is what makes it stand out in comparison to other GSSAs. It has become well-known as an app with high levels of overt sexualization and norms for online discrimination, known as “personal preferences,” where users justify posting exclusionary phrases on their profiles since it is “just a preference” (i.e. “No Fats, No Fems, No Asians”) (Conte, 2018). This norm specifically favours a form of “spornosexual” privilege, or white men who attend the gym primarily for aesthetic gain instead of personal health and fitness and who utilize their fit bodies to gain social status and capital by posting gym selfies on social media (Hakim, 2018; Simpson, 2014). This occurs online where users emphasize the highly masculinized and sexualized male athletic body through posed photos of themselves at the gym (Hakim, 2018). Instead of conceptualizing this ideal as something which is ascertainable, I propose that this norm and the affective and emotional norms which accompany it within gay men’s online hook-up cultures promote ideas of inferiority and, ultimately, abjection amongst gay subject who do not meet this ideal in their online personas. I therefore theorize abjection as a common feeling and affective state within Grindr and how abjection lies within the discursive norms of Grindr. In Kristeva’s (1982) writing, the abject subject is one who is outcast, not incorporated into the mainstream, and one who disagrees with a set of “master rules.” Writing about this process, Kristeva notes how abjection involves processes of challenging the “master,” or dominant, scripts that dictate the intelligibility of subjects: A certain “ego” that merged with its master, a superego, has flatly driven it away. It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter’s rules of the game. And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master. (p. 2)

In Kristeva’s writing, the abject is that which challenges pre-existing norms and boundaries, refusing to conform to what is expected of it. For the abject, despite being banished, it still refuses to conform to dominant rules. Challenging boundaries and norms, the abject is placed in liminal position of non-belonging, refusing to align itself with dominant structures. It is important to note that through abjection, normative structures in society become legible as through abjection, included and excluded subjects and normal and abnormal are produced.25

25 I draw this understanding from Miller’s (2012) reading of Kristeva (1982).

174

Bauman’s (2000, 2003) theorizations on liquid modernity and the state of liquid love in modern romantic relationships are helpful for conceptualizing how abjection takes place through one’s desire for a romantic relationship and when one breaks the expected conventions in online dating and hook-up cultures. Within what Bauman terms liquid modernity, he theorized how social ties and moral obligations and ethics are increasingly liquified and disavowed within the late continuation of modernity. Specifically, Bauman articulates how the technological expansion of the late twentieth century increased the rapidity of modern life whereby instant pleasures and gratification are valued through a neoliberal focus on individual gain and self-gratification. In the context of modern romantic relationships, Bauman theorizes how relationships are increasingly malleable and fluid in how individuals easily abandon romantic relationships, enter and exit dynamics, and cut ties once relationships are no longer self-serving and providing individual pleasure. In the age of individualism (late modernity), Bauman sees how technology, in particular, and online dating have created a world where individuals enter relationships and seek out romance for themselves. Within liquid modernity, individuals must move quickly; they must constantly invent and re-invent themselves as well as move on to new intimacies and connections to improve and better themselves (Ligocki, 2019). Moreover, for gay men, frequent hook-ups and anonymous sex with nearby individuals is a way for some to avoid longer-term romantic intimacies due to the immediate sexual satisfaction that a hook-up provides and the ability to leave a hook-up without any romantic and/or affective ties to the other individual (Licoppe, 2020). Considering the connections between gay men’s sexuality and gay sexual identification, for many gay men, having frequent hook-ups and disavowing affective ties within one’s sexuality is a component of becoming an intelligible gay subject (Edwards, 1994, 2005; Shewey, 2018). Thus, for those who choose to seek out romantic intimacies on Grindr, they might be defying some common norms and assumptions regarding being a gay man. Through gender essentialist discourses, men’s sexualities are often constructed as detached and non-relational; in contrast, women’s sexualities are often constructed as emotional, affective, always relational, and romantic under patriarchal constructs of female sexual subjectivities (Renold & Ringrose, 2011; Rich, 1993). Through relations of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995), men are encouraged to regulate their emotional responses to their sexuality and to compartmentalize their emotional and sexual selves. Thus, for gay men who are emotional (and/or expect romantic

175 commitment) through their sexualities, they might experience othering and abjection within Grindr and GSSAs. Academic literature in affect theory, as Lara et al. (2017) describe, often leave out conversations of subjectivity and how feelings and affective productions are critical to the formation of subjects’ senses of self. In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler (1997a) describes subject formation, a process she terms subjectivation, as a result of the relationship between mastery and submission. Subjects emerge as intelligible by submitting themselves to regimes of power. Butler articulates that “regulatory power maintains subjects in subordination by producing and exploiting the demand for continuity, visibility, and place” (p. 29). For subjects who are inassimilable, or outside the bounds of normalcy for subjectivation, Butler writes how they are “haunted by an inassimilable remainder,” which is a “melancholia that marks the limits of subjectivation” (p. 29). In this chapter, I argue that the “inassimilable remainder” that marks melancholia for my participants’ experiences on Grindr which operates through the abjection of relationality and ultimately, romantic intimacy. As delineated in the previous chapter, Grindr is a marketized and commodified app that is often utilized to reference socio-sexual norms within gay communities (Jaspal, 2017; Raj, 2011; Shield, 2018). While some individuals do, indeed, use Grindr to seek long-term romantic relationships, usually those are developed between individuals as a surprise that emerged from what was originally an anonymous sexual encounter (Sullivan et al., 2018). Still, my participants illustrate how when they exclusively seek out long-term romantic experiences on Grindr, they experienced high amounts of rejection online (Zervoulis et al., 2020). Through this chapter I argue that, in their own aspiration for neoliberal norms for complete emotional autonomy, my participants abjected themselves and others within socio- sexual apps. I propose that “the gay romantic’—or the gay subject seeking romantic intimacy—is non-normative within gay men’s socio-sexual communities, particularly Grindr, due to gendered norms that construct this subject as emotionally dependent, feminized, and a gay failure or failing to properly enact a normative gay subjectivity. Contributing to conversations regarding the sexual politics of gay men’s communities, particularly as it pertains to GSSAs, this chapter articulates how the non-normalcy of the gay romantic within GSSAs With white heterosexual male subjectivity representing the Cartesian modernist “I” or autonomous subject in modern society, racialized and feminized subjects become constructed as less-than-human and the

176

“Others” to the white masculinized subjectivity (Scott, 2010; Ussher, 2006). This chapter contributes to academic conversations surrounding femininity, abjection, and subjectivity (see Hoskin & Taylor, 2019). To begin, I will draw links between abjection and gay subjectivity and discuss how some of my participants experienced abjection within Grindr. Next, I will make connections between the abjection of others on Grindr and notions of self-abjection. I will then describe how Steve and Haro—two of my participants—made specific links between the usage of Grindr as gay adults and childhoods of exclusion and rejection. To finish, I will move to Christopher, a participant who theorized his own failure to emotionally regulate in gay men’s sexual cultures and his own rejection and abjection of himself as a result. Ultimately, this chapter will argue that abjection is central to both the processes of self-formation for my participants within Grindr, and their socio-sexual relations with one another through the denigration and abjection of romantic and emotionally intimate forms of relations. Before I begin, I wish to situate my own plugging-in of Kristeva’s work on abjection with Eribon’s (2004) writing on gay subjectivity and my participant data.

Abjection and Gay Subjectivity Kristeva (1982) notes how the abject is “unassimilable”; the abject stands as radically opposed to the “I” as the abject is “the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me towards the place where meaning collapses” (p. 2). For many gay men, experiences of abjection come from being read as outside of heteromasculine norms (Bersani, 1987). Abjection is a feeling of exclusion. It is the inability of gay men to perform heteromasculinity and how their queerness “marks” them that positions them outside of heteronormative structures. This will be explored in how Anthony, one of my participants, described rejecting the relational norms representing heterosexuality (such as long-term romance) due to his feelings of the impossibility of being fully incorporated into heteronormative structures. In particular, through the epithets, “fag” or “faggot,” gay men come to understand themselves as failing heteromasculine societal expectations (Eribon, 2004; Pascoe, 2007). Eribon (2004) states that associations between homosexuality and femininity are commonly articulated through the pejorative, “fag,” leading many gay men to disavow their associations with femininity and failed masculinities to avoid receiving such an insult. French

177 author, Didier Eribon (2004) articulates how being interpellated as an abject subject is a normative condition of gay subjectivity that linguistically operates through insults: The insult is a verdict. It is a more or less definitive sentence, for life, one that will have to be borne. A gay man learns about his difference through the force of insult and its effects—the principal one being the dawning of the awareness of a fundamental asymmetry instantiated by that particular linguistic act: I discover that I am a person about whom something can be said, to whom something can be said, someone who can be looked at or talked about in a certain way and who is stigmatized by that gaze and those words. The act of naming produces an awareness of oneself as other, transformed by others into an object. (p. 16)

In other words, through discovering oneself “as other,” gay men learn that their existence is constituted through non-normativity, or through being named as outside of gendered and sexual norms. In particular, through the epithets, “fag” or “faggot,” gay men come to understand themselves as failing heteromasculine societal expectations (Eribon, 2004; Pascoe, 2007) with the binary between heterosexual and homosexual being defined through homosexuality’s exclusion from heterosexuality (Sedgwick, 1990). Eribon (2004) states that associations between homosexuality and femininity are commonly articulated through the pejorative, “fag,” leading many gay men to disavow their associations with femininity and failed masculinities to avoid receiving such an insult. According to Eribon, this disavowal of femininity by gay men themselves is an internalization of masculinist domination in the psyche, or “the interiorization of domination in the mind of the dominated that guarantees submission to the sexual order and its hierarchies” (p. 66). This is important to note that the “faggot” or the “abject man” are subject positions not equally applied to all gay men, and the experience of being interpellated as a faggot is one which gay men inflict upon one another. Eribon (2004) further distinguishes this in his writing on gay subjectivity by describing the gendered hierarchies that emerge within gay men’s communities and their relation to the internalization of domination within the psyche: “What ‘faggot’ has not one day or another called someone exactly that, or referred in passing to someone as ‘that faggot’ perhaps during his childhood, his adolescence, or even much later?” (p. 67). Being a fag, or a “failed man” (Kuhl & Martino, 2018; Pascoe, 2007), is a state of being outside of gendered norms and a disruption to normative notions of heteromasculinity. Importantly, being a “fag” does not place all gay men equally within gendered hierarchies in gay communities as gender-based discrimination and femmephobia within gay men’s cultures leads

178 to a further devaluation and denigration of femininity in men (Davies, 2020; Miller & Behm- Morawitz, 2016).

“Whether You are Monogamous or Anything, You are Still a Faggot to Them” Throughout my interviews, I began to wonder how abjection worked within the intimate socio-sexual, and romantic lives of gay men as they navigate GSSAs. Experiencing emotional boundary maintenance in terms of individuals moving closer and further emotionally at their own whim as I used apps, participants would commonly describe their reactions when they feel their own sense of self threatened, or when they would be communicating with another individual in a manner that is overwhelming. Abjection worked through both participants’ understandings of themselves as abject subjects and their processes of being abjected or abjecting others interpersonally. Anthony, a 25-year old gay Afro-Caribbean cisgender man, spoke about his experiences being seen as outside of heteronormative conceptions of romantic relationships and future goals. Conceptualizing himself as outside of a “heteronormative lifestyle” that involves “having one person the rest of your life,” Anthony noted how he hooks- up and “has fun” as a way of defying heteronormative life expectations: Like, if you are gay, you have to fit this heteronormative lifestyle of having one person the rest of your life and having a dog, but like straight people aren’t doing that anymore. You can’t live your life based on what straight people are going to say. Like whether you have a partner or have a monogamous relationship, whether you are monogamous or anything, you are still a faggot to them. Because you think that is what you are supposed to be, that is what you are supposed to be. Stop worrying about what straight people think and just fuck around. You do you. It’s all just men in general because like men are shitty to women online and now you have men being men to other men. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, cisgender gay man)

Anthony’s statement illustrates the belief that no matter how much gay men might mimic relational structures associated with heterosexuality, such as long-term romantic relationships and monogamy, they will always be excluded from the dominant heterornormative order, (i.e. “you are still a faggot to them”) In Anthony’s description, even approximating heteronormative relational structures, such as having a partner or monogamous relationship, does not protect from stigmatization and abjection. This understanding of gay subjectivity as always excluded from heteronormative structures provides a venue for conceptualizing how abjecting heteronormative values might be a means for Anthony to perform normative gay subjectivity. This performance is

179 enacted through his understanding of gayness and gay sexuality being inherently in opposition to heteronormative values and assumptions, such as long-term relationships and romantic intimacy. As a result of his exclusion from structures of heteronormativity, Anthony realized that no matter how close he tried to approximate heteronormative values, it might be impossible to accomplish heteronormative monogamous relationships, for he will always be a “faggot,” or an abject subject. Kristeva (1982) writes: If it be true that the abject simultaneously beseeches and pulverizes the subject, one can understand that it is experienced at the peak of its strength when that subject, weary of fruitless attempts to identify with something on the outside, finds the impossible within; when it finds that the impossible constitutes its very being, that it is none other than abject. (p. 5)

Anthony’s perspective on being a “faggot” illustrates an understanding of how, from his perspective, there’s an “impossibility” of mimicking heteronormative values and relationship structures in gayness and an inherent refutation of these values and assumptions. Anthony’s statement expresses the tensions between the ownership he takes over his queerness and his queer position in heteronormative society as abject. In other words, the failure of Anthony’s queerness to perfectly mimic heterosexual expectations led to his own ambivalence towards long-term romantic intimacy. Through the abject space of Grindr, which is theorized as a specific space of non-relationality (Roach, 2015, 2019), a space is constituted wherein Anthony is produced as outside the boundaries of heterosexuality, as he “stop[s] worrying about what straight people do” and “just fuck[s] around.” Queer scholars, such as Roach (2015, 2019) and Goldberg (2020), theorize Grindr as an ethical sphere of non-relationality where the space between self and other is preserved and maintained. Roach (2015) expands on his prior work on impersonal ethics and nonrecogition in gay men’s cruising cultures by theorizing how “an impersonal ethics of nonrecognition: a mode of relating that resists the violent, intersubjective subsumption of self into other, other into self” could apply in GSSAs, such as Grindr (p. 57). However, how might this approach reinforce gendered norms that associate masculinity with emotional restraint and compartmentalization and femininity with relationality? Nonetheless, other scholarship, such as Sarson’s (2020) work on “masculine speech” and Grindr, illustrates how Grindr and similar GSSAs become vehicles for performing heteronormative masculinized linguistic codes and sexual-scripts, which orient individuals towards hooking-up and away from longer-term intimacies. As such, intimacies associated with heteronormativity (and relationality),

180 such as romantic love, monogamy, and deep intimacy, are produced as the “impossible” which Kristeva speaks of. This leads to love, monogamy, and deep emotional intimacy being associated with heterosexual subjectivity. The heterosexual subject position is impossible for gay men to occupy due to their abjection through heteronormativity and their “failed” masculinity (Edwards, 2005; Pascoe, 2007). Anthony spoke of the difficulties that gay men, in his experience, encounter with finding romantic intimacies and “meaningful connections” online: The gay community is super small. It’s like a little village and everybody talks and you hear things and see things. You come to know that people have their own struggles and it comes out in other ways whether you hear it through a rumour and we are trying to navigate our insecurities and navigate having meaningful connections. We often take it personally. We are all human and on all levels this affects our interactions later on. There’s nothing wrong with liking sex and wanting to hook-up with people, but sometimes our own emotions and baggage gets tangled up in that and that is where the problem comes. People say they are not looking for something serious but a friends with benefits, but that is something serious in itself. There’s some form of attachment without saying I’m looking for an attachment. The moment you say you are looking for some form of attachment, people get scared. People don’t like attachment. (Anthony, 25, Afro- Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

Within this statement, Anthony discursively constituted how gay men are simultaneously abjected through their “own emotions and baggage” which “gets tangled up in that and that is where the problem comes.” In this, emotions become the embodied problem in need of rejection. Within the affective assemblages of Anthony’s experiences with Grindr, emotions and intimate feelings and attachments become a problem as “The moment you say you are looking for some form of attachment, people get scared. People don’t like attachment.” Anthony’s wording here of how “we are trying to navigate our insecurities and navigate having meaningful connections” provides an idea of his understanding of meaningful connections. How might notions of “meaningful” reinforce some normative intimacies and exclude others? How is abjection working in relation to those who are seeking romance and intimacy? How might these people be excluded for their relational desires? In my reading of Anthony’s experiences, I conceptualize how emotions have become a “problem” for Anthony, which always is partially informed by my own lived experiences, and how emotional attachment. Romantic relationships, as a form relationality that can disrupt the “I” or the subject’s sense of autonomy and independence, has been received negatively in both Anthony and my own experiences. Anthony’s rejection of emotional attachment and investment

181 might come from his own lived experiences being rejected for emotionally attaching in someone he was sleeping with, or as he stated, “There’s nothing wrong with liking sex and wanting to hook-up with people, but sometimes our own emotions and baggage gets tangled up in that and that is where the problem comes.” Anthony’s referencing of a “friends with benefits” relationship—a popular dynamic where individuals might be sexually intimate but agree not to put a label on their relationship or be romantically intertwined (Bisson & Levine, 2009)—might illustrate his own struggles with navigating compartmentalizing his emotional intimacies and connections within online hook-up cultures: “People say they are not looking for something serious but a friends with benefits, but that is something serious in itself.” Anthony continued to explain to me how, for many black gay men, using GSSAs and apps holds a very specific experience that has to do with the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Anthony described his experiences of homophobia within his own family and at home. Anthony articulated how his family had expectations that he would become a father and find a female partner. Anthony turned to online spaces, such as Grindr, to be able to explore his sexuality and have sexual experiences with other men without having a long-term commitment or romantic relationships: I was very much a loner before coming out. I kept to myself in my childhood and teen years. I didn’t interact with a lot of people. Just because of my upbringing and my family. I was a nervous wreck because of my upbringing. It was a nervous time. A lot of black men who are online, a lot of them are on the down low and discreet and that factor plays into how they interact with people and how their relationships turn out. They feel they can’t have a proper relationship because they are not out to their families or they have internalized homophobia and that they can’t fully be with a man or they still see something wrong with it. It affects relationships. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

Scott (2010) draws connections between productions of blackness and abjection, particularly drawing from the work of postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon, writing that, for black queer and gay men, the connections between blackness, queerness, and abjection involves conceptualizing Black men as a “self-contradicting position at once hypermasculine and feminine, exemplifying an erection/castration paradox” (p. 19). This paradox, for scholars such as Scott (2010) and Warren (2018), represents the ontological state of blackness as abject from white supremacist colonial structures (Scott, 2010; Warren, 2018). Within Anthony’s interview, this paradox of performing hyper-masculinity and the risk of being feminized emerged in his

182 description of the fetishization he experiences in gay online spaces and the expectations such fetishization places upon him: I feel like it could be because of porn, or society in general, I have to be hyper masculine . . . whether you are straight or gay, it is placed on all of us. Black men have to be hyper masculine. These stereotypes everyone follows but they don’t say it out loud. People are like, “If I have sex with this black guy, it’ll be good” There was a pressure at various points to outperform and really it had a negative impact on me in some ways because there’s been instances where I got those messages and I met up with those guys and we hooked up and if I don’t hear back from them, I feel like I didn’t live up to the expectations of a black guy they were looking for. It’s exhausting because there’s been instances where the energy isn’t there and you’re not giving it your all and I just kind of feel it out and I’m feeling like and I know I have more energy than this but other aspects of my life affect my ability to perform even thought I want to. But on their end, they’re like, “this black guy isn’t performing what I want them to” based on lack of response afterwards (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

For Anthony, as a Black gay man, he also imagined his own experience and identity as outside of heteronormative monogamy (“whether you are monogamous or anything, you are still a faggot”) and that many Black men might not be able to “have a proper relationship because they are not out to their families,” resulting in barriers to obtaining traditional relationship structures. Anthony’s data here might illustrate how that the idea of a romantic relationship with another man might not be fulfillable because of experiences of internalized homophobia, or not being out to the family. Within his statements, Anthony also, discursively, constitutes a long- term romantic relationship as a “proper relationship” or as in his previous statement, “a meaningful connection.” This is important to note in how Anthony could be abjecting himself and experiencing abjection from his family due to his feelings of the impossibility of having what he would consider a “proper relationship.” Many Black gay men in large urban centers, such as Toronto, not only face homophobia within their ethno-racial communities but also experience structural anti-black racism in White gay communities. McCready (2015) describes this as the “Double Life” of young black queers. This “double life” often means that black queer young adults might struggle finding longer-term romantic relationships within their ethno-racial communities due to stigmatization. At the same time, they experience exclusion and fetishization within primarily White mainstream gay communities, such as the Church and Wellesley Gay Village in Toronto (McCready, 2015). African American studies scholar Dwight A. McBride (2007) notes the structural erasure of Black gay men in Black communities as well as how Black gay men are commonly positioned as

183 deviant and “lumped together with prisoners and husbands (odd bedfellows to be sure) as the reason that successful sisters have fallen on hard times in the romance department” (p. 429). McBride continues to articulate many Black gay men’s experiences being blamed for “stealing” heterosexual men in African-American communities: “I just don’t want to have to read, yet again, about how that is or might possibly be the fault of their Black gay brothers, for such an understanding of Black gay male sexuality denies the reality of our humanity and our desires” (p. 431). Such discourses conflate black queer sexuality with deviance and deny the humanity26 of black queer men’s sexual subjectivities. Such experiences of being out of place and deviant were replicated in Anthony’s narrative as he was “a nervous wreck because of my upbringing” in terms of how he experienced homophobia within his family of origin. Anthony noted how many Black gay men have to hide their sexuality from their ethno-racial community, which impacts “how they interact with people and how their relationships turn out.” Anthony stated that many Black men might start using Grindr and similar applications because of the anonymity it provides for them while remaining on the “down low” about their sexuality: I know for me, in the beginning [of using Grindr], I was anxious about people seeing me in the village. Literally walking down the street, what if someone sees me? I would watch my back and keep my head. Online it was a little more anonymous. I got to a point where I got to a point where if they see me in person, that’s another thing, but online it was okay. I still had anxiety in my interactions because being online forced me to make the first move because I wanted something and not secure about my appearance and was worried about the rejection element. Whether they would want to stick around, whether they wanted to stick around. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

“I Felt Very Dismissed for What I Wanted” Michael, a 29-year old White gay cisgender man, detailed his experiences of feeling out of place within mainstream gay communities due to his relational orientation leaning towards long-term romantic relationships, particularly when using Grindr. During our conversation, Michael described how he would seek out affection and cuddles on Grindr and men would respond saying he was “on the wrong app.” Michael elaborated on how he would get blocked

26 The term “human” comes with many differing epistemological trajectories, which are beyond the scope of this thesis. As I stated in the theoretical frameworks, my work weaves within and against humanism as a trajectory as I see the value of anti-humanist theorists, such as Lee Edelman and poststructural theories which destabilize the Enlightenment “I” (Butler, 1990; Foucault, 1977). However, McBride’s thinking here regarding “denying the humanity [of Black gay men]” might be more in line with Black feminist thinkers on moving “towards” the human (that we have not yet reached an inclusive form of “humanness”), such as Sylvia Wynter (2003).

184 online when searching for cuddles and dates, noting that men would often distance themselves from him as soon as he said he wanted to go out on a date or do an activity with them instead of having sex immediately: So, I felt very dismissed for what I wanted. Yeah. What I was on there for is, as I said before, not that kind of common of an experience. People that want sex don’t want to, I suppose, waste their time chatting with someone that wants connection when all they want is a quick look. They’ll take that person off of their radar entirely. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender gay man)

Michael’s feelings of dismissal seemed to result from his previous experiences using Grindr. He was aware that what he wanted was “not that kind of common of an experience,” indicating doubt that he would be able to find what he was looking for on Grindr. Michael expressed that he conceptualized himself as “dismissed” for what he wanted, illustrating his struggle to make connections with people online when he was honest about wanting a longer-term romantic intimacy. He even described incidences of being blocked, stating: “people don’t want to waste their time chatting with someone that wants connection when all they want is a quick look.” Michael’s experience is interesting to note in relationship to Bauman’s (2000, 2003) theorization of “liquid society” where longer-term connections and intimacies are continually liquid, highlighting the fragility of modern romances and the provisional state of modern romance. In Michael’s perspective, he feels that the type of relationship he is looking for leaves him as an outsider: a gay subject who does not conform to socio-sexual norms within liquid modernity and liquid society. Michael was rendered abject, or “felt very dismissed” for what he was seeking out, due to his desire for a long-term romantic relationship, and felt outside the norms for Grindr. Men who seek romantic relationships online, such as Michael, may experience abjection owing to the aforementioned feminization of such a desire (Sánchez et al., 2009). Thomas et al. (2014) describe barebacking cultures amongst gay men as cultures constructed from “the world of horse riding, specifically the rodeo circuit, where it means to ride without a saddle.” (p. 160). Moreover, Thomas et al. (2014) state that “[barebacking] evokes the image of the cowboy, those mythic representations of the solitary, self-sufficient man” in that the cowboy “symbolizes virility and freedom” and “unfettered sexuality” (p. 160). This is important, as Thomas et al. note, due to how gay identification is constructed through gendered and sexualized hierarchies, with heteromasculinity being praised as the most attractive and dominant form of masculinity

185 amongst gay men (Davies, 2020; Kendall & Martino, 2006). Hegemonic masculinity deems hyper-sexuality as an “innate” component of male gender, as men are thought to be “biologically” more sexual and less emotional than women (Connell, 1995; Potts, 2001; Sánchez et al., 2009). Potts (2001) illustrates how men’s sexual subjectivities are often considered split between a “rational” sexual individual and an animalistic, penis driven sexual subjectivity that is commonly deemed “uncontrollable.” In gay men’s sexual cultures, sexual frequency is often considered a central component of how one performs their sexual self and gayness, or a normative way to enact “being gay” (Levine & Kimmel, 1998; Nardi, 2000; Sánchez et al., 2009). In the view of men who “fail” such expectations by becoming emotionally invested in their sexual encounters, or by seeking a romantic connection and being constructed as “needy” or less “independent,” they could be considered failing normative gay expectations (Elder et al., 2015; Sánchez et al., 2009). Michael described his own experience of abjection and the abjection of romantic intimacies within gay men’s communities. He states: There are people in the gay community that feel that romantic relationships are not what gay people should want. That it’s not a part of gay culture to want to get married. That it’s a fad that gay marriage is legal. That it’s not something that we should want or need or have. And so those people would be judgmental of gay people wanting relationships. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender gay man)

Michael indicated he believed many gay people think that romantic relationships are “not what gay people should want.” He also hinted at the tensions between mainstream liberal identity-based politic activism and queer frameworks which critique the homonormative agenda of the same-sex equality movement and gay rights organizing (Duggan, 2003). Michael conceptualized himself as someone who might want to be married but still noted it as a challenge within the sexual norms of Grindr and wider gay communities. This tension between his desire for marriage and his understanding of the socio-sexual norms of gay men’s communities presented a form of melancholic attachment as he noted his own fears that he would not find the romantic relationship he desired. When asked if he felt he belongs on Grindr, he stated, “I definitely think I don’t belong on there . . . that my want for a connection doesn’t belong on Grindr.” In equating emotional connection with marriage, Michael’s comment illustrates the power that the idea of marriage has over many gay individuals’ romantic trajectories, despite its potential devaluation within highly sexualized spaces, such as Grindr. The

186 hold that the idea of marriage has on gay subjects creates a situation where gay men are often caught in contradictory discourses regarding romantic relationships, such as the heteronormative “fairy-tale” image of long-term monogamy, marriage, and domestic bliss, and the “gay norm” where sex is seen as anti-relational, with no future orientation, and an individualized momentary pleasure. This opposition to long-term romance, perhaps, is a form of dissidence to heteronormative presumptions about relationships and intimacies. In Michael’s perspective, this opposition to marriage and long-term romance amongst gay men left him on the periphery and even doubting himself. This left Michael in gay communities, as a gay subject, while simultaneously still feeling both rejected and outside of it. Romantic gay men, such as Michael, might struggle to find a home and become abject within the socio-sexual space of Grindr. Such an abjection makes Michael a “non-assimilable alien, a monster, a tumor, a cancer that the listening devices of the unconscious do not hear, for its strayed subject is outside the paths of desire” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 11). The affective assemblages of my interview with Michael caused me to think about how affect becomes a regulating force within gay men’s intimate lives and how this played out for Michael in his experiences. My own experiences became intertwined with Michael’s as I recalled my own history of feeling like a “problem” or feeling “flawed.” This narrative of lack and flaw proliferated throughout this interview as I felt my own gut reactions to Michael’s interview. The internalization of this narrative of lack is one that I am all-too familiar with in personal experiences and events navigating Grindr and other apps. Michael’s statement that marriage is “not something that we should want or need or have. And so those people would be judgmental of gay people wanting relationships” came to my own attention both within the assemblages of my interview and my own analysis. Acknowledging important critiques of the normalizing force of same-sex marriage and its investment in neoliberal institutions and capitalist values, such as Lisa Duggan’s (2003) work on homonormativity, the affective pull of romance and marriage still remains a powerful force, even within my own life in terms of the promise of the institution for happiness and long-term intimacy (Ahmed, 2010b). This will be addressed in the next data chapter, but it is important to note how Michael’s interview touched me in an embodied way in terms of the affective productions from this interview, surfing between researcher/researched and participant/interviewer.

187

Self-Abjection: “But Now I Don’t get Attached and that has Shifted” Kristeva’s writing on abjection focuses not only on the experience of being abjected by norms outside the subject, but also on how individuals can come to abject themselves and their own state of being. Kristeva (1982) illustrates this through the metaphor of the innate reaction when one expels sour milk upon drinking it. The instinctual reaction of the subject to spit out the sour milk exemplifies the rejection of a part of one’s self (the sour milk that has been digested) that is a part of the subject and must be cleansed. Describing an embodied reaction to the rejection of sour milk, Kristeva writes that the subject reacts in a pre-linguistic fashion to the sour milk. The subject expels the sour milk while also expelling itself since the sour milk, once digested, has become a part of its subjectivity: “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not assimilate it, “I” expel it. But since the food is not an “other” for me, who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which “I” claim to establish myself. (p. 3) This expulsion of something within the subject is necessary to note in how subjects learn to reject their very selves when navigating Grindr. For example, Michael views gay men as rejecting an emotional component of themselves—one that might yearn for love and romance— out of a fear of rejection, therefore potentially rejecting others who might seek this out. Guys in the gay community have a hard time expressing their feelings to other gay men. For me personally, that is a fear of rejection. And that comes form my past, my childhood, you know, my past relationships. It may have something to do with the poor relationship I had with my dad. Or the fact that, you know, I didn’t have any siblings, you know, didn’t have—didn’t really have any friends growing up, you know, whatever it is, that—there’s that fear of rejection. Even as an adult, and when one expresses feelings for someone else there’s the probability of getting rejected, getting shut down, you know. Never talking to the person again. (Michael, 29, white, cisgender gay man)

Kristeva (1982) notes how self-rejection involves a birthing process whereby the subject emerges as different than before. Indeed, Anthony noted how his interactions with other men online “changed” him, particularly in his attachment style to other men online: When I first started using apps and I was new to the scene, my emotional maturity wasn’t there, and I started getting attached to people during sexual encounters and that was very disappointing, but now I don’t get attached and that has shifted. This shifted because I go to the apps with a sense of realism that everyone is looking for the same thing and based on how I see the majority of people interact and how they maneuver themselves, I don’t really have high expectations, this isn’t going to make anything happen. I’ve changed. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

188

What is important to note in this section is Anthony’s rejection of his former “attachment” to others during sexual encounters, conceptualizing such an emotional attachment as immature and childish. Anthony’s rejection and abjection of a part of himself came with his own understanding of his emotional maturity whereby becoming an emotionally mature and individuated subject involved obfuscating such emotional attachments with his sexuality and strictly seeing his sexuality as separate from his emotional self. Could this be Anthony’s rejection of his childhood self? In order to assert his own sense of maturity and adulthood, Anthony might have had to reject his own romantic sentiments and abject a part of himself (his childhood self, who was “needy” and became attached) in order to reinvent his online persona. Kristeva (1982) elaborates on the process of becoming anew through the “purification” of the self through the exclusion of the “Other” whereby the “Other” is something that is both external and internal to the self: That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling; it is thus that they see that “I” am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death. During that course in which “I” become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symptom, shattering violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. It abjects. (p. 3)

Describing the maternal body giving birth, here, Kristeva notes that child birth involves a “self giving birth to itself,” with the abjection of the mother and femininity necessary in order for the new baby to emerge as an independent entity (Porter, 2011; Rodgers, 2010). For Anthony, this abjection of the feminine involves the repudiation of the relational in order to provide concrete boundaries between “Self” and “Other.” Anthony’s abjection of his former emotional immaturity posits a developmental narrative where he outgrew becoming attached to others through his sexuality in order to emerge as an emotionally mature adult. Within this trajectory, it is his emotionally dependent former self who is rejected as he emerges from his abjection anew. This means that began to shift his sexual behaviours in alignment with the socio-cultural milieu of gay men’s online hook-up cultures—as an adult—and no longer expects to find such emotional attachments and dependencies embedded in his sexual engagements with others. Of note is the gendered connotations of this abjection that queer theorists, such as Bersani (1987) and Halperin (2008), identify in their own work. Thus, the disavowal of femininity is crucial to processes of abjection in order to remain a properly masculinized and autonomous subject.

189

Therefore, Anthony’s repudiation of his former emotionally dependent self is theorized similarly to Kristeva’s description of a new child abjecting the mother as it learns its own bodily boundaries and independence. Therefore, this process of learning how to become an emotionally autonomous sexual subject, for Anthony, necessitated the abjection of his formerly dependent self, in order to bring himself into “maturity.” Anthony continued to highlight how his hook-ups with other men through Grindr also changed his embodiment and physical self as he started going to the gym more, seeing his former body as lacking and not attractive enough: I can say, like, my hook-ups and men online since starting has kind of been like, it was the main reason I started dieting and trying to look a certain part. It was the reason I changed my appearance because I wanted the validation and I wanted people to talk to me. Like I didn’t have my ears pierced and going to the gym until I started hooking-up with guys. It has been a push in that direction and it in some ways it has shaped my self- esteem. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, cisgender gay man)

These processes could be interpreted as Anthony’s “giving birth to himself” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 3) through his experiences on Grindr as he emerged from Grindr as subject and object, simultaneously a user of the app who feels he has control over his self-presentation online and influenced by the app in how he conveys himself. His own rejection of himself upon feeling that he was not looking “a certain part” presented himself as failing to be attractive enough for other individuals to engage with him. Part of this theme of failure for Anthony is his rejection of his former self (through his self-transformation) upon entering the socio-sexual space of Grindr. Perhaps this rejection of his former self led to the rejection of heteronormative notions of romantic intimacy through the idea that many gay men might feel they cannot fully replicate such relational norms. As Kristeva (1982) notes, upon realizing their own inability to be assimilated into the realm of the symbolic and dominant structures, the abject come to reject such a structure completely and become dissident. Again, Anthony’s realization of the seeming impossibility for his incorporation or complete approximation within heteronormative intimacies, such as romantic love, deep emotional intimacy, and monogamy might have led to his rejection such intimate relations, reinforcing a politic of anti-relationality and dubiousness to romantic love. Anthony later noted how his lack of success in finding romantic partners on Grindr led to him stop using Grindr as a way find romantic partners and to just use the app to focus on hook- ups:

190

2015—I downloaded and stumbled upon Grindr. That became a habitual thing. I was still fairly new. Not fully socialized like I am now. Shy if you will. I talked to a few guys and there I started dating. Looking back now, I started dating. I didn’t know what the parameters of dating were. Made a few emotional connections (on my part), I felt like something could potentially grow from it. That was for a year. Then I took a break from Grindr. 2016 I started using Scruff. Since that time, it’s been like on and off with Grindr and just like taking the lessons from before and taking things as they are. Just meeting guys for sexual encounters. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

Anthony’s frustrations with Grindr (in his “break” and “on and off” pattern) are a common trend amongst gay men, where ambivalence and frustration with Grindr sets in through its inability to provide them with a long-term romantic relationship (Brubaker et al., 2016; Chan, 2018). Understanding Grindr as a place where his emotional connections might not be reciprocated (“Made a few emotional connections (on my part)”), Anthony deleted Grindr and rejected the platform. After returning to Grindr, Anthony “learned lessons from before” and moved to “just meeting guys for sexual encounters,” viewing his likelihood of finding a long- term intimacy on Grindr as minimal. Rejecting the search for long-term romance on Grindr, Anthony not only emerged from his experiences on the platform as a different person, but also began to reject the idea of romantic love itself.

Childhood Experiences: “I Think That Gay Men, From a Very Young Age, are Kind of Taught That Emotions and Sex Don’t go Hand in Hand” During interviews, many participants, such as Steve and Haro, who will be discussed below, related their experiences on Grindr to childhood experiences of rejection. Our conversations slid between past and present experiences, moving between the psychic and the embodied as each participant brought up on their own how their adverse childhoods might be informing their present-day usage of GSSAs. In particular, they explored the relationship between their process of seeking validation and affirmation from other men online to their childhoods and experiencing rejection and bullying as young children. Recounting childhood experiences of rejection from others, these men explained their own desire to become different than their childhood selves and to reject potential emotional attachment to other men out of fears of being emotionally hurt.

191

Steve, a 28-year old White cisgender gay man, spoke at length about childhood experiences in his interview. Specifically, he spoke of how he thought that the childhood experiences of many gay men might impact their romantic and sexual relationships as adults. Discussions of childhood trauma and shame amongst gay men is not an uncommon theme in the psychological literature on gay men and identity development, such as clinical psychologist, Alan Downs (2012) well-known book, The Velvet Rage. While Downs (2012) does not think with Kristeva’s work, within this interview, Kristeva rhizomatically appeared as a theorist to think with in conversation with Downs (2012) in how Steve’s description of the disruption gay men might feel through feelings of emotional entanglement and dependency upon another subject. Downs (2012) articulates how shame operates in the lives of gay men through his psychological and individualistic understanding of shame: “Very few of us [gay men] feel the shame, but almost all of us struggle with the private belief that ‘if you knew the whole, unvarnished truth about me, you would know that I am unloveable.’ It is this belief that pushes us, even dominates us with its tyranny of existential angst” (p. xii). Downs (2012) specifically defines shame as “the fear of being unloveable,” differentiating it from homophobia by stating how “gay shame is not embarrassment over being gay; it is the belief that being gay is a mere symptom of your own mortally flawed psyche” (p. xii). Abjection is related to shame through the notion of failure; as Ahmed (2004a) articulates: “To be witnessed in one’s failure is to be ashamed: to have one’s shame witnessed is even more shaming. The bind of shame is that it is intensified by being seen by others as shame” (p. 103). Ahmed (2004a) proposes that shame involves being recognized as non-normative and out of place, as “shame binds us to others in how we are affected by our failure to ‘live up to’ those others, a failure that must be witnessed, as well as be seen as temporary, in order to allow us to re-enter the family or community” (p. 107). While shame might involve being recognized as non-normative at one point, through the relinquishing of shame and adjustment of one’s self, one can admonish their shame and re-enter normative structures. Steve described his belief that gay men learn to distinguish their emotional selves from their sexual selves as a self-defence mechanism from a young age. This rejection of one’s emotional and romantic self, according to Steve, comes as a survival mechanism to avoid being hurt. He attributed his tendency to compartmentalize his emotions to times in his childhood when he would become emotionally attached to men who would not be able to reciprocate feelings:

192

I think that gay men from a very young age are kind of taught that emotions and sex don’t go hand in hand. I think from that first moment that you have, like, that first preteen crush on a boy, and it’s very obvious that, like, if you become emotionally entangled, you’ll only get hurt. Like, I think you go through so many iterations of you as a gay man just getting hurt by putting emotions and sex into the same person, that you end up being taught that, like, they shouldn’t be one and the same. Um, and it almost becomes a survival thing that they shouldn’t be one and the same, that you should keep them separate. And I think we then, as a gay culture, reinforce that at every turn. (Steve, 28, white, gay cisgender man)

Here, Steve made a link between the rejection gay men experience in adulthood, and childhood memories. Steve’s experience of gay childhood is one wherein emotional affections and attachments could not be reciprocated and that “from that first moment that you have, like, that first preteen crush on a boy . . . if you become emotionally entangled, you’ll only get hurt.” Describing the repudiation of emotional attachment as a survival mechanism, Steve mentioned how this stems from “so many iterations of you as a gay man just getting hurt by putting emotions and sex into the same person.” I wondered where abjection might be taking place in Steve’s narrative and how abjection was working for him. In Steve’s narration, this abjection of emotionality as an adult seems to come not only from childhood experiences of bullying, but adult experiences of placing the promise of a romantic relationship in an individual whose interests might rest exclusively in having sex. According to Steve, when this promise fails to materialize, many gay men learn to regulate their emotional and romantic investments in others they might be sleeping with in order to avoid being hurt. Within the affective assemblages of my interview with Steve, my own histories of dating and Steve’s histories all collided in combination with our experiences on Grindr—as well as other technologies—and our experiences with school bullying. Through these affective assemblages, abjection was produced. Through my thinking with abjection, I started to conceptualize how in order for the adult subject to be constituted as “normal” and emotionally independent (or “mature” as Anthony described), the childhood self might require repudiation. By seeking emotional security in others, this childhood self could be thought of as an unconscious drive,27 whereby becoming emotionally invested in others could leave the subject

27 Here, I am referencing how one’s childhood self can remain as a repressed memory. Freud theorized that memories from childhood, while not at the forefront of consciousness, can still unconsciously affect how one conveys themselves and behaves as an adult. Kristeva (1982) theorizes this as “primal repression” or a time when borders and boundaries were not preserved and the subject and not fully emerged in an ontological state. This aids my own understanding of how the repressed memories of the dependent childhood self—neither fully excluded from

193 vulnerable to emotional hurt and rejection. Wilkie-Stibbs (2013) describes abjection in the context of repudiating childhood taboos: All the childhood taboos, in fact, are relegated to the margins of consciousness, as object, as other, as the abyss; but they continually threaten to invade the subjective sense of “myself,” the “I” of the socialized, signifying, and speaking subject. (p. 85)

Steve’s observation that “gay men from a very young age are kind of taught that emotions and sex don’t go hand in hand” is similar to Anthony’s description of his experiences before and after starting to use Grindr), gay men become intelligible as confident gay subjects by rejecting and disavowing their emotionally and “needy” childhood selves through the internalization of dominant norms. This process allows some gay subjects, such as Anthony and Steve, to emerge as properly individuated adult gay subjects. Again, this is similar to Kristeva’s (1982) description of the emergence of the child as autonomous and separate from the mother through its disavowal of emotional dependence of the mother by abjecting her and gaining an awareness of its own bodily boundaries: What having been the mother, will turn into the abject. Repelling, rejecting; repelling itself, rejecting itself. Abjecting. In this struggle, which fashions the human being, the mimesis, by means of which he becomes homologous to another in order to become himself, is in short logically and chronologically secondary. Even before being like, “I” am not but do separate, reject, abject. (p. 12)

Kristeva (1982) posits mimesis, or imitation, as central for abjection, as subjects engage in processes of separating themselves from their mother in order to enter the realm of language and constitute their own autonomous subjectivity while still holding some dependency upon the (m)other (the figure of the mother could be replaced with the figure of the “other,” or another subject). This struggle, “which fashions the human being,” is the struggle to emerge as emotionally autonomous. The examples of the changes which took place between when Anthony starting using Grindr seeking out predominately romantic relationships and switching his main intention to hooking-up and Steve’s description of the processes of maturation gay men experience from childhoods of rejection to adulthoods of emotional regulation and self- protection are theorized here in relationship to Grindr. Grindr, as a liminal space that many people enter in their young adult lives, can function as a space of abjection where subjects are

the subject nor included in the conscious psyche—could influence Steve’s socio-sexual relations with gay men throughout adulthood.

194 struggling with their own fragility and (lack of) boundaries as they strive to connect with others and learn about their own subjectivity, emotions, and affective boundaries. Involved in these participants’ abjection of their emotional self is the abjection of their emotional dependency on others. For example, Steve articulates: “I think you go through so many iterations of you as a gay man just getting hurt by putting emotions and sex into the same person.” The rejection of investing romantically in another man might become a self-defense mechanism (for Steve) to avoid being hurt. Kristeva (1982) writes that abjection threatens the subject’s sense of self as subjectivity becomes porous and boundaries between self and other are blurred, leaving the subject in a state of liminality. This process of subject formation involves the threat of the re-emergence of a time in the subject’s life when subjectivity was not fully formed, or when the subject was still intermeshed with others and did not have a sense of bodily boundaries. The re-emergence of a threat to one’s sense of self, according to Kristeva, includes a “massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome. Not me. Not that. But, not nothing, either” (p. 2). This process of uncanniness—this childhood self which re-emerges in the adult’s psyche—manifests as a recognition and acknowledgement of something in the “Other” (whether the other within one’s self or the “Other” of a separate subject) that must be rejected. The subject’s recognition of the childhood self in the “Other” results in its repudiation due to the familiarity of its own childhood self which was previously rejected. Plugging Kristeva’s theorization with Steve’s data provided a way to conceptualize how abjection worked for Steve, as abjection emerged throughout the affective assemblages of Steve’s interview as a theory to think with. While many theorists associate shame in gay men to childhoods of exclusion and abjection (Downs, 2012)—in particular due to the associations of effeminacy and young gay boys—this could be read as Steve’s repudiation of his dependency (on the Other) as the subject’s identification with a sense of emotional dependency within itself. Steve’s theory of gay men’s learned emotional compartmentalization through childhood experiences is echoed in the uncanniness that Kristeva speaks of. In Steve’s childhood experiences, he might have learned to separate his romantic and sexual attachments to individuals to preserve his own sense of self from the rejection experienced as a child. Steve continued to describe his thoughts on the influence of childhood experiences on gay men’s intimacy forming behaviours:

195

I mean, I think gay men compartmentalize in that I think gay men, we very much gravitate towards . . . for all that we can make the critique of toxic masculinity, the ideal gay male is the toxic male, in a lot of ways. At least as an image. With that goes hand in hand the idea of rejecting one’s emotions and being emotionally tied. I think we also, to some degree, grew up with the idolization of men who were never going to be emotional back to us. I think most, or I think a lot of young gay men want to be like a straight boy who you may have pined after. His affect is never going to match yours. (Steve, 28, white gay cisgender man)

In Steve’s interview, he spoke about the idolization of men who were emotionally unavailable by gay men and how gay male dating cultures reject the notion of “being emotionally tied.” Steve continued to articulate his thoughts of how gay men often develop crushes on other boys who are heterosexual and how, through the lack of reciprocity of those feelings, men might learn to regulate and hide their romantic feelings for other men because of the fear of rejection. The process of abjection reminds the subject of childhood fears, phobias, and repressed desires that cultivate a mimetic connection between childhood rejection and adulthood fears (Kristeva, 1982). Importantly, within these affective assemblages in this interview, my own childhood memories became intertwined as I listened to Steve, recollecting experiences I had as a young boy with unrequited love. As well, many of my early experiences of dating with other gay men involved rejection, or attachments that were temporarily reciprocated, only to be withdrawn very quickly. Thus, the pattern Steve describes—of men pushing other men away romantically upon becoming “too close” emotionally—is theorized and understood as a self-defence mechanism, rooted in childhood fears and unreciprocated attachments (such as the desire for the “straight boy who you pined after” which Steve described). “And I realized that I’ve tried to seek this validation through external sources rather than through myself”(Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese, cisgender gay man). Haro, a 43-year old cisgender Chinese-Vietnamese gay man discussed the connections between his Grindr usage and childhood experiences of structural racism, homophobia, and his immigration to Canada. Starting out by stating that he discusses his Grindr usage with his therapist, Haro elaborated on how, at first, he thought he was merely using Grindr for superficial reasons but that, as he worked with his therapist, he started to make connections to his childhood and feelings of invalidation, trauma, and insecurity he experienced:

196

I have a therapist, so I’m actually talking about this with her as well, and it’s part of a broader topic that I talk about with her. Grindr is on there, you know, the reasons that I go on Grindr, like, what effects it has on me. And, it’s interesting because at first, I thought it was very superficial . . . you’re bored. But as we went deeper into it, it goes back to childhood trauma, right? You know, trauma as a kid facing being poor, being an immigrant, there was racism, classism, homophobia. . . . As a child, when you get that trauma, domestic abuse for instance, that affects how you see yourself and you want validation. And I realized that I’ve tried to seek this validation through external sources rather than through myself. So, Grindr is one way where I try to seek external validation too because there’s this part of me still that thinks that I’m not worthy. Cause of all that, that trauma as a child. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese, cisgender gay man)

To explore Haro’s insights, it is useful to draw upon Eng and Han (2000), who expand on the writing of Sigmund Freud on the concepts of mourning and melancholia. Freud (1917) theorizes the differences between mourning and melancholia by articulating how mourning is a natural process that one engages in upon the loss of a love-object. Though mourning and melancholia share similarities in the inability to recover from loss, mourning is distinguished in the subject’s awareness of the loss of the love-object and the ability to achieve closure to such a loss. In melancholia, one might unconsciously incorporate their loss love-object into their ego, therefore turning their attention inwards, while remaining unable to move onto a new love-object as one might once they complete the process of mourning (Lupi, 1998). In the context of Asian American immigration to North America, Eng and Han (2000) theorize mourning as process with a finish (often in the result of assimilation) and melancholia as a process wherein one is still holding onto their cultural identity while engaging in an unfinished process of ascertaining an ideal of whiteness. Eng and Han (2000) specifically term this “racial melancholia” by expanding on Freud’s theorization of melancholy and placing it in a structural and depathologizing analysis. They note this experience as “one psychic process in which the loved object is so overwhelmingly important to and beloved by the ego that the ego is willing to preserve it even at the cost of its own self” (p. 695). “Melancholia describes an unresolved process that might usefully describe the unstable immigration and suspended assimilation of Asian Americans into the national fabric” (p. 671). Eng and Han describe the processes by which racial minorities who immigrate to Global North and Western contexts hold onto notions of their homes of origin, language, and culture, while simultaneously being forced to aspire to forms of whiteness and assimilation in Western society that are never fully obtainable. Such forms of assimilation are never fully possible under the ideal of liberal multiculturalism. Notable for Haro’s narrative of

197 his immigration to Canada from East Asia and his feelings of non-belonging in both Canada as a nation, and the white gay mainstream community is similar to Eng and Han’s description of melancholia as an unfinished nationalistic assimilatory process (p. 671). Eng and Han expand their theory to bring it into conversation with other minority groups, including gays and lesbians. The abjection that Haro experiences in his position in gay cultures as included/excluded or longing for inclusion in white gay Western cultures could indicate a mimetic experience between worlds that brings about similar feelings of liminality. These experiences mimic the process of abjection he recalls from childhood memories of bullying through homophobia and racism. Haro linked the affirmation he seeks from White men on Grindr to his own experiences in his childhood being poor, visibly effeminate, and a recent immigrant. He stated how his trauma of “being poor, being an immigrant, there was classism, racism, homophobia” reiterated itself and influenced how he portrayed himself on Grindr as an adult. Han (2000) notes how “the U.S. cultural obsession with body image symbolizes ultimate masculinity as a white male who is strong, muscular, and sexual, which ostracizes the Asian males’ body types” (p. 213). Thus, for many, Asian American men, masculinity is constructed as “lack” through colonial and orientalising stereotypes that depict Asian men as feminized and less masculine than white hegemonic masculinity (Fung, 1991; Nguyen, 2014; Parikh, 2002). Moreover, inclusion within dominant Western imaginaries, for many immigrants, can be aspired towards through money, material goods, and normative familial structures which, according to Eng and Han (2000), cannot provide full inclusion for the gay Asian man (see also Fung, 1991). Thus, gay Asian men navigate complex structures whereby they might be exiled or objectified within mainstream White gay communities but also required to conceal their sexual identity from their own families. This tension is, as Han (2000) articulates: complicated by traditional Asian family, cultural, and ethnic values and beliefs; Asian Americans’ immigration history and political and racial oppression and discrimination; simultaneous process of assimilation and mourning over the gradual loss of their primary culture; and their sexual orientation disclosure to family members who may not culturally and linguistically understand what “being gay” means. (p. 206)

As Han (2000) articulates, there can be some complexities for gay Asian men, particularly in relating to their masculinities, when their sexuality positions them as outsiders in the private realm of their family while structural racism and whiteness in mainstream Western gay communities positions them as undesirable. Tan Hoang Nguyen (2014) writes that Asian

198 masculinity can be presented as a “problem” in mainstream white gay communities and Western nationalist discourses. Nguyen explores how instead of requiring the re-masculination of Asian effeminacies, “bottomhood” and Asian gay bottoms can be theorized through a lens of vulnerability and relationality to challenge individualism and masculinism in gay men’s sexual politics. This rethinking comes from a critique by Nguyen (2014) of the sexual politics of Grindr, in which he describes common epithets and forms of online discrimination that Asian gay men experience on the socio-sexual app: Asian men themselves do not find other Asians to be desirable sexual partners. In a gay sexual marketplace that valorizes fantasies of “masc,” “str8-acting,” “dl,” “bi,” “married,” “muscled,” and “hung”—that is, attributes of masculinity—Asian men appear to occupy the most unsexy, undesirable position of all, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed. (p. 2)

Echoing this sentiment, Haro described experiences of bullying online during which he wished to approximate whiteness to de-emphasise his Asian identity. Similar to Nguyen’s statement, Haro noted his own discrimination against other Asian men. Furthermore, he expressed how his own perceptions of Asian men had been influenced by his melancholic longing to become integrated into Western society: And when you’re bullied for being Asian, you don’t want to be Asian anymore. So you want to fit in. You want to find that white boyfriend to be part of society, and then there’s that internalized racism which carries on into gay life. You know, like, that’s why I don’t see other gay Asian men as being sexually attractive. It’s because I have that internalized racism where I want, you know, the gay white man, right? (Haro, 43, Chinese- Vietnamese cisgender gay man)

Haro’s construction of the gay white man as a symbol of inclusion and societal acceptance illustrates Han and Eng’s (2000) theorization of racial melancholia as a social and environmental condition. They state that racial melancholia “describes an unresolved process that might usefully describe the unstable immigration and suspended assimilation of Asian Americans into the national fabric” (p. 671). In Haro’s perspective, the gay white man represents a form of inclusion within the fabrics of the nation-state (Eng, 2001, 2010). For Haro, his childhood memories of bullying due to structural racism, xenophobia, and classism, and the visibility of his sexuality, were repressed, yet also activated and percolated when he used Grindr. His attempt to supress his own childhood based on his experiences of rejection and marginalization as a child can be read as him attempting to abject his childhood self. Kristeva

199

(1982) explains how abjection works through supression and exclusion as the abject tries to be contained and managed, but still leaks, destabilizing the subject: The “unconscious” contents remain here excluded but in strange fashion: not radically enough to allow for a secure differentiation between subject and object, and yet clearly enough for a defensive position to be established—one that implies a refusal but also a sublimating elaboration. (p. 7)

Put simply, according to Kristeva, the suppression of the excluded child (and their state of dependency) is not fully realized, meaning that the abject could potentially return and always presents a threat to destabilize the fully developed subject’s sense of autonomy. Childhood memories and experiences that have been abjected inform the present subject through the unconscious and their liminal state of partial exclusion. Haro’s childhood memories and trauma, such as familial domestic abuse, as well as internalized insecurities from structural racism, homophobia and class-based discrimination, might be in the forefront of his awareness when he is seeking validation from other Grindr users. Working through his own motivations for using Grindr with his therapist, Haro came to realize much of his own behaviours online were motivated by his past childhood experiences of rejection, a finding that some psychoanalysts theorize as a reason for gay men’s experiences of seeking validation online (Downs, 2012). Haro continued to elaborate on how, due to his childhood experiences of being bullied, he began to only seek out white men online, due to conceptualizing such men as “safe” and signals of being included in mainstream Western society: When you’re bullied, when you’re bullied for being Asian and gay, that’s what, you know, that’s the red flag, right? “Oh, you’re unsafe,” by being Asian and gay. And, and you see what’s safe. Oh, the gay white man is, it’s that place to be safe. (Haro, 43, Chinese-Vietnamese cisgender gay man)

Eng (2001) proposes that Asian Americans are placed in a liminal position within Western liberal societies wherein they float between being outsiders and unassimilable to the norms of whiteness, or ideal citizens who threaten the jobs and security of White Americans. Manifested through citizenship discourses and their connections to spatialization, this liminal position cultivates feelings of non-belonging and insecurity for many Asian Americans. For many queers of color, their relationship with the nation-state is one of ambivalence and contradiction whereby racialized “others” are encouraged to conform their relational structures to the normativity of White Western norms, such as monogamous state-sanctioned marriages

200

(Ferguson, 2004; Reddy, 2007). By being socio-culturally encouraged to perform proximity to whiteness and Euro-centric norms, racialized individuals are promised access to the privileges of the nation-state. Ferguson (2004) explains that “aesthetic practices would grant access to national culture and Western civilization and would bestow the properties of the rational (i.e. “White”) citizen-subject onto the irrational other” (pp. 25–26). Eng and Han (2000) proposes that racialized subjects are put in a mimetic relationship to whiteness and that, if performed to white satisfaction, the new subjectivity that emerges from this mimetic process will lead to access to the nation-state and all privileges with which it is associated. Kristeva (1982) makes links between abjection and place as she theorizes social exclusion to take place as a liminal process where social exclusion comes from being placed on the outside of normative regimes: Instead of sounding himself as to his “being,” he does so concerning his place: “Where am I?” instead of “Who am I?” For the space that engrosses the deject, the excluded, is never one, nor homogeneous, nor totalizable, but essentially divisible, fold able, and catastrophic. (p. 8)

Thus, the abject subject questions where he is located in relationship to notions of normalcy and safety, as he is, as Haro articulated, between borders and boundaries and positioned liminally. Similar theorizations can be seen in the work of Homi Bhabha (1984), who defines “colonial mimicry” as a pattern of mimicking and repeating the patterns of thought, behaviour, and cultural practices of the colonizer (the “rational” White Western subject), in order to ascertain a sense of status and privilege. Bhabha (1984) notes how such a pattern of mimicry involves “ambivalence” as the difference between the colonizer and the colonized must be preserved whereby the colonized still remains not fully White. This difference between colonizer and colonized can be a place of “double vision” where the colonized encounters the culture of the colonizer, while simultaneously questioning it and working within it (Bhaba, 1984). Double vision involves the ability to replicate in a similar fashion the behaviours of the colonizer, while still questioning the logic underpinning such actions. In terms of his interactions with other men online, Haro exemplified this pattern of “colonial mimicry” and “double vision” in his attempts to mimic the behaviours of the White gay men on Grindr who commonly place anti-Asian sentiments in their profiles and openly exclude Asian men online. Describing this in an exchange, Haro elaborated how he interacts with other Asian men on Grindr: A: What do you do online when a gay Asian man, or a man online in general who’s Asian interacts with you?

201

H: I just don’t respond. Like, I don’t respond because, you know—I don’t feel like I’m being rude—it’s just like, “oh.” It isn’t what I’m into, and I think that sexual preference is almost hard wired in me now, after decades of this programming by society.

At first, describing his “hard wiring by society” Haro noted his own lack of response as something that is due to societal condition, illustrating insight that he has been conditioned into seeing Asian men as unattractive and undesirable. Conditioning his desire similarly to those who have rejected him in the past, Haro acknowledged how his own childhood experiences of structural racism have impacted his own sexual desires: So, I’m attracted to white men, for instance. But then there is also, there’s this internalized racism as well, where you don’t want to be seen as part of, of being Asian, cause they are, you know, they’ve got accents, they don’t belong here, like, there’s this internalized racism that I built up, personally. And again, through therapy, I’ve recognized that.

Through his rejection of other Asian men online, Haro came to question the logics that constructed him as inferior; eventually he made connections to his own supressed childhood experiences and traumas. Seeking to deconstruct his own childhood experiences through therapy, he came to conceptualize how his own sense of worth was impacted by his aspiration for inclusion within Western society. This contributed to his desire to disassociate himself from signifiers of Asian-ness, such as having an accent. Haro continued to make connections between his childhood and his sexual desires as he explained to me how he and his therapist worked through his insecure feelings: And it’s taken years to kind of unpack all of this through therapy . . . so my therapist asks, “okay, so you’re feeling as if you’re, you’re unworthy. So why is that?” And we went backwards, right? And we went backwards to, to childhood. I had no idea how much impact childhood trauma had on my current life now, because all that trauma stays with you. You know, trauma of being exiled, of being, like, not wanted, and being bullied as an Asian gay boy. That impacts you growing up.

For Haro, the desire to exile the “Asian gay boy” who was bullied by separating himself from Asian cultural signifiers. By mimicking the sexual desires and ways of the White man (such as attracting the “gay white man” and not having an “Asian accent”), Haro illustrates the means of fashioning himself in relationship to whiteness to fashion himself as fully integrated into Western society. This abjection, or rejection, of his childhood self—the “exiled” and “not wanted” Asian gay boy—represents his attempt to exclude his childhood consciousness as it returns, disrupting subject and object divides and his own sense of self.

202

The Metal Pig Kristeva’s (1982) writings on abjection also focus on the role which self-abjection, or abjecting a component of one’s self, has for subjects. The abject, for Kristeva, exists as an excluded component of one’s self from the past which might present itself again in the present. Abjection involves the exclusion of an element of the self, which instead of being completely rejected, or repudiated, remains excluded in a liminal fashion (p. 7). This is important to note because abjection, particularly abjection of the self, involves the exclusion and desire for a component of the self that has been pushed aside. The abjection of relationality, particularly romantic love, as a simultaneously abjected and desired component of subjectivity, is a reminder of a child-like dependency upon the mother and vulnerability (Benjamin, 1988). Moreover, as Eribon (2004) articulates, gay subjectivity is constituted through the loss that occurs from childhoods of bullying and insults. Through the following section, I specifically follow the narrative of one participant—Christopher—a 24-year-old white cisgender gay undergraduate student who explained his metaphor of the “Metal Pig” to me during an interview. Christopher noted that for him, the ideal sexual subject in gay men’s online socio-sexual applications and sexual cultures is a “Metal Pig.” This phrase is a play on words on the common phrase “pig” or “piggy” used in gay men’s sexual cultures and pornography to describe an individual who receives anal sex often, enjoys lots of casual sex, and is horny all the time (Hurley & Prestage, 2009; Shewey, 2018). In online dating cultures, emotional independence and confidence are valued and seen as sexier than vulnerability (Aitken, 2017; Gill & Orgad, 2015). Kristeva (1982) further notes how processes of abjection are actually “founded” on want and desire: “There is nothing like the abjection of self to show that all abjection is in fact recognition of the want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire is founded” (p. 5). Such a “recognition of the want” which Kristeva writes of that destabilizes meaning and binaries between self-other, object-subject, and senses of coherency and meaning. The feminization of emotional dependency—specifically the feeling of romantic affection and attachment—provides subjects with a brief sense of familiarity from their childhood that they both desire and push away. In Christopher’s perspective, the “metal pig” is an analogy representative of the ideal submissive “bottom” in gay men’s sexual cultures—with the bottom being an identity

203 representing those who choose to primarily receive penetration during anal sex. The bottom is a typically feminized figure, one that is constructed as passive and diminutive. The bottom holds connotations of typical constructions of hegemonic femininities whereby feminized individuals are expected to play a subordinate and yielding role during sex. While the bottom is to receive penetration continually as an organ to serve the pleasure of “tops,” the “metal pig,” which Christopher describes, is also to be unemotional and unaffected by any sexual interactions so as to avoid any attachments or romantic/emotional connections and intimacies with their sexual partner: Absolutely, yeah. And I don’t know why I, like, I wish so much that that weren’t the case. But then, yeah, cause in, like, this emotional instance you are not a metal pig. You’re a normal pig. You’re vulnerable. But that’s not the ideal, you know what I mean? Being vulnerable is risky. (Christopher, 24, white, cisgender gay man)

The “metal pig” represents an archetype of an idealized gay male sexual subject, as Christopher communicated how being vulnerable or emotional through one’s sexuality is “not the [gay] ideal.” This sexual actor is able to engage in anonymous, no-strings-attached sexual encounters with many different people and find individual pleasure from their encounters, while not becoming emotionally invested in their encounters or picturing any long-term futurity. Thus, sex is something that has no future in itself to the “metal pig” as there is no potentiality or possibility of a long-term or future connection. Without imagining sex as an experience that could lead to a future potential or connection, the metal pig moves from person-to-person, having sex with many different individuals without emotional investment. This archetype was reinforced in different ways through participants’ (e.g. Michael, Kashi) descriptions of their failures to detach emotionally from their sexual partners and the necessity of forcing one’s self to compartmentalize between their emotional and sexual selves. Christopher continued to illustrate this failure in his description of his own failure to perform the metal pig archetype with sexual partners he meets through apps: I found the idea of a metal pig, like, a really good metaphor for what a perfect sub[missive] bottom should be. It’s like an indestructible pig. You know what I mean? Like and I was like, “wow, I wish I was a metal pig.” And I wrote a song about it. Yeah. I wish I were, you know, that. Yeah, like, that, but also it’s impossible. Cause people can’t be metal (Christopher, 24, white cisgender gay man)

In this section, Christopher conceptualized the metal pig as an ideal to be “indestructible” in the sense that through not becoming emotionally attached to the objects or one’s sexual desires, he is

204 able to protect himself from harm. Christopher’s comment echoes the idea, proposed by Bersani and Edelman that sex is anti-relational in nature. Moreover, this aligns with Anthony’s earlier sentiment that queerness is inherently resistant to heteronormative constructs for intimacies, such as monogamy, deep emotional intimacy, and romantic love. While gay men might secretly desire such forms of connection and intimacy, some, such as Christopher, might simultaneously desire to cut off from their emotions and abject them, therefore abjecting a component of themselves. This statement echoes Steve’s earlier sentiment about the necessity of compartmentalization for gay men as an experience learned through childhood attachments to subjects that cannot reciprocate one’s desires. By learning to regulate one’s emotional attachments to sexual partners, gay men can protect themselves and guard their vulnerability to other individuals through their sexuality and online interactions. Christopher explained how he learned about the “metal pig” through gay pornography: The ideal’s a metal pig. I’m, like, literally, I engage with pornography, like, video pornography every day that is the most constant model of sex that I’m engaged with, so I am like, “oh, that’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how that sex thing is supposed to be.” An emotionally involved relationship falls short of that. (Christopher, 24, white cisgender gay man)

Christopher indicated that gay pornography held a pedagogical function; it taught him that sex was meant to be devoid of emotional or affective intimacies. Moreover, Christopher noted how “an emotionally involved relationship falls short of that,” indicating an that “emotionally involved relationship” is not a component of the metal pig’s sexual repertoire and might mean a “failure” to be “piggy.” Such discourses are common within gay men’s communities which separate romance and emotional intimacy from sex and physical pleasure. Christopher’s elucidation of the metal pig depicts how his idea of the ideal sexual actor in gay men’s online communities involves a norm propagated by gay pornography and similar sexual economies. This metal pig is entrenched in a sexual economy that views relationships, connections, and sexuality as individualized affairs and temporary: Like, as has happened to many people, I think because the metal pig thing is idealized, like, we want to be that thing. Like, it’s just an everyday norm to have that particular thing be the ideal that we all want to fulfill. And, like, if we’re not doing that thing, other people might reject us and be like, “oh, no, I don’t want to be with you like that. Like, I want a metal pig.” (Christopher, 24, white, cisgender gay man)

205

In the above excerpt, Christopher articulated how the “metal pig” is an “everyday norm” and “ideal” for many gay men within online socio-sexual communities and apps. Moreover, Christopher noted that “if we’re not doing that thing, other people might reject us,” signalling his interpretation that those who do not perform the metal pig archetype within GSSAs are sexual cultures are rejected for their emotionality. Moreover, within Christopher’s data, as well as other participants, emotionality and romanticism were drawn from discourses of dependency and immaturity.

Conclusion It is interesting to be writing this as I am watching a recent Netflix show on dating, called Dating Around, in which individuals are placed in “blind dates” where they do not know any of the individuals that they are seeing. On the episode I am watching, “Lex,” a thirty-something- year-old East Asian gay man in New York City is shown going on several different dates with guys throughout the show. At one point, Lex starts asking the other guy he is having dinner with why he is single. The man answers, “Well, I feel like, you know being gay as well, everyone just wants to have sex. And they, you know, they like the idea of a relationship, but no one wants to actually date. . . . I almost feel like, you know, that I’m almost like a piece of meat.” (Adolphus & Bayron, 2019)

Lex quickly interjects and assures the individual that he does not see him as a piece of meat. The screen moves to Lex talking with a different individual about personal challenges while dating in New York City as a “gaysian.” In Lex’s experiences, if he isn’t seen as “white” enough, or as close enough to approximating whiteness, he is not seen as desirable. He continues to explain his idea that gay men have “next-best-thing-itis,” whereby they will “keep you around for now if you check a couple of boxes,” while “always keeping their eyes open for the next best thing.” As I watch this show, I continue to wonder about the relational norms which position gay men in this fashion. Perhaps this is what Halperin (2012) meant when he wrote about gay cultural practices being dissident to the status quo. Perhaps abjecting dominant relational norms and structures is a gay cultural practice? I’m still not quite sure of the answer to all of this. As I finish this chapter, I’m aware that there’s so much more that I’m leaving out. Employing Kristeva’s (1982) writings on abjection is useful for analyzing how gay men, feeling excluded and abjected from heteronormative discourses on romantic love, monogamy,

206 and deep romantic intimacy, might therefore reject such relational constructs considering them impossible to inhabit. This analysis also points to the understanding of their queer sexuality by these men as incompatible with relational constructs that indicate emotional intimacy. Conceptualizing heteronormative relationship as representational of the very structures which exclude them, the men in this chapter described their own experiences negotiating their desire for emotional intimacies while feeling their queerness negates such intimacies and the potential for romances. What possibilities are there to queer monogamy? Queer seemingly normative relationship structures? This relates to Butler’s (2002) question of “Is kinship always heterosexual?” Butler (2002) writes in her commentary on the potentially normalizing effects of the legalization of same-sex marriage, how for those who conceptualize themselves as outside of normative kinship and intimate relationship patterns, there “is always the possibility of savoring the status of unthinkability, if it is a status, as the most critical, the most radical, the most valuable” (p. 18). The politics of transgression, while slightly outside the scope of this chapter, are important to consider in how the radical and transgressive queer holds neoliberal and masculinizing undertones in his emphasis on transgression and radicality. This focus on transgression in relationship to moral norms for sexuality, or the idea of sexuality without a consideration for the feelings and emotions for the other, is critiqued by psychoanalyst, Mari Ruti (2017), for whom anti-relationality in queer sexuality depends on a form of “queer exceptionalism” that “relies on ideals of fluidity and endless self-transformation that converge effortlessly with neoliberal ideals of individual choice, agency, and self-fashioning” (p. 31). Importantly, within these participants’ described experiences of abjection, feelings, emotionality, and romanticism might actually be the force hindering the neoliberal self-fashioning sexual subject and his access to, as Licoppe et al. (2016) would describe it, their daily “prey.”

Intermezzo Within the affective assemblages of Michael, Anthony, Steve, and Haro’s interviews, my own feelings of invalidation, and rejection online proliferated as I recollected my feelings and histories of exclusion, which rhizomatically informed my own analysis. In this sense, the unconscious became a becoming-experience beyond a mere subject in my thinking/feeling/writing within my entangled interviews with Haro and Steve. Manley (2018) writes of the “associative unconscious” whereby the individual subject and the organs of the

207 subject that make-up memory and cognition, such as the brain, are not emphasized, but instead, the affective productions within and between bodies and the relationalities and connections created provide a means of conceptualizing the unconscious rhizomatically. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) articulate: “The issue is to produce the unconscious, and with it new statements, different desires: the rhizome is precisely this production of the unconscious” (p. 18). Indeed, in this analysis, I provided a psychoanalytic reading of the experiences of Michael, Anthony, Steve, and Haro’s interviews; however, what was produced in the interview and how abjection as a concept to think with was produced emerged through the affective intensities and relations, or, perhaps, the associative unconscious relations that intensified throughout my interviews. Being immanently emerged in my processes of thinking/feeling/writing, I realized that my psychoanalytic approach had emerged within the affective assemblages of my interviews and analysis through discussions of childhood experiences, which becomings instead of retroactive, retrospective reflections. These becomings were beyond the discursive or the descriptions of childhood but involved thinking with abjection conceptually in the assemblages produced in my research interviews analysis. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) articulate how there are no individual statements, only statement-producing machinic assemblages. We say that the assemblage is fundamentally libidinal and unconscious. It is the unconscious in person. For the moment, we will note that assemblages have elements (or multiplicities) of several kinds. (p. 36)

The assemblages produced in my thinking/feeling/writing with my data were beyond linguistic description as abjection became an embodied experience in my re-reading and analysis of my data. The multiplicities in my own embodied encounters analyzing data (thinking/feeling/writing) took me into new lines of flight and directions that emerged as I re- read my own analysis and realized that I did not make “sense.” As much as it seemingly provided a coherent analysis in some forms—a “plugging-in” of Kristeva’s work—I realized that there was much taking place in the affective assemblages of these interviews that I could not describe through language and meaning. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) work on “sense,” MacLure (2013) notes that language has a “doubled relation to the materiality of bodies and the incorporeality of thought” (p. 658). Such materiality of bodies and incorporeality of thought that MacLure (2013) speaks of arose in my analytic process as I re-encountered my own interviews and conceptualized how my own subjectivity was immanently intermeshed within the field of my research. By this I mean that the specific research events I focused on in my analysis

208 were also involved in my own becoming as I was intertwined with my participants’ answers, their subjectivities, as the assemblages within the data produced new thoughts and analyses in every new encounter. In my analysis of Steve’s and Haro’s data, I did not pretend that I was presenting a whole “truth” or that my analysis is the only way to interpret these data. As I mentioned, Kristeva’s theorization presented itself rhizomatically to me in my thinking-with-theory throughout my interviews. As abjection emerged, I thought of how it might be working within these individuals’ lives and their experiences online. Coming to this analysis, I brought my own situated lived experiences and histories into the affective assemblages of my encounters with these data. These analyses are always partial; consistent with my poststructural methodological approach, they are fluid, changing, becoming, and rhizomatic. That means that there are always gaps, breaks, and incompletions in all of this work. Just as my interview with Frank demystified and defamiliarized my own gay identity, so did my interview with Steve as it brought out strong gut responses within me that were hard to conceal during my interview that prompted a deterritorialization of my own subjectivity in the encounter. My own rejection of my gay identity and the emergence of abjection of a theorization to think with during my interview with Steve prompted my “becoming-gay,” which MacLure (2013) describes as a moment “of being caught up in the forward momentum of becoming—of matters spooling out without a predetermined destination” (p. 662). My interview with Steve “glowed” in how it presented me with an abjection of myself, of him, and my gay identity, as I felt an embodied response to Steve’s answers in my interview. I am not quite sure how I wish to identify myself, but after my own affective encounters with my research, I felt myself changing, emerging but also abjecting who I used to be and my sexual identity. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe how “nomadic thought” evades borders, identities, and fixed notions of the subject as Massumi (1987) notes that “it [nomadic thought] does not repose on identity; it rides difference. It does not respect the artificial division between the three domains of representation, subject, concept, and being; it replaces restrictive analogy with a conductivity that knows no bounds” (p. xii). Nomadically moving within the immanent field of this research, my own sense of self as a gay man became unhinged as I moved within and between the representational and identificatory system for gay subjects, moving towards something else. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) write how “the life of the nomad is the intermezzo.

209

Even the elements of his dwelling are conceived in terms of the trajectory that is forever mobilizing them” (p. 380). Moving towards an unknown destination, my own journey within affective assemblages of my research and my encounters with Michael, Anthony, Steve, and Haro unsettled my own sense of gay identity through the affective productions of these interviews . . . which left me unsettled through a “critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behavior” (Braidotti, 1994, p. 5).

Chapter Six: Affective Economies and the Promises of Grindr

It is just assumed that if we’re having sex it’s going to feel good, right? It’s like, no one needs to tell you that sex feels good. It’s, like, that’s why you’re doing it, if that makes sense, right? If it didn’t feel good, why would you do it, kind of thing? So, I think that’s it. And you know, and society, not just in heteronormative culture, but just in general, sex in general is this fun thing, and it’s pleasurable, and that’s why people have sex, right? —Mark (28, Afro-Carribbean cisgender gay man)

In June 2013, I first heard about Grindr as I started using online platforms and phone applications to date other men. 2013 was a monumental year for me in terms of coming out of the closet, starting to create online dating profiles, and having my first intimate experiences with other men. After becoming bored with endlessly surfing profiles on the online dating website, Plenty of Fish, a friend informed me of this social networking application for gay men called “Grindr,” an app that I could download right onto my smartphone. Struggling with making connections with other men, particularly in the small Southwestern Ontario university town I lived in, I thought that this would be a chance to find a strong “gay community,” make friends, go on dates, and potentially even find a long-term romantic partner. Sitting in my tiny student apartment, I sat down on my bed one Saturday morning and searched for Grindr in the App Store on my iPhone, seeing its infamous black and yellow skull logo pop-up on my screen. Tapping the download button, I waited with anticipation as the logo quickly appeared on my home screen. As I opened the app, I had my first encounter with its infamous “grid” layout, seeing hundreds of men’s profiles in square boxes appear right before my eyes. As I scrolled down the screen, I quickly realized many of the profiles looked noticeably similar. Gym selfies. Muscular poses. Baseball caps. Broad shoulders. Eyes staring right at the camera. Suddenly a window presented itself on my iPhone screen. “Welcome to Grindr! Endless possibilities! Endless connections. 0 feet away.” All these men were within my fingers’ grasp. Tapping the photos, I began to read their profiles, seeing that most of these individuals were within one kilometer of my own apartment. One man wore a tight blue tank top, athletic running shorts, and was standing with gym equipment in the background, staring at his phone as he was taking a selfie with a gym mirror. His profile read, “Seeking different kinds of connections. Open to possibilities.” Thinking that maybe, perhaps, I could be one of those possibilities, I tapped the chat icon and started to type him a message.

210 211

“Hey, I just downloaded this app. It looks really interesting. I’m hoping to find some nice guys to chat with on here. How long have you been using this app?”

Hearing a coin-like noise, my phone buzzed and bleeped, indicating I had sent a message. Quickly, I heard a similar sound, presumably meaning I had a response. “Hey man. How big are you?” I wasn’t really sure what he meant, but I knew I had listed my height and weight in my profile. Replying, I let him know I had listed this information in my profile and attempted to start a conversation again. The exchange was not what I had imagined. “My height and weight is in my profile, but I’m just figuring out this thing. Did it post properly?” “No, how big is your dick? Are you cut or uncut?” “Oh. I’m not really on here for that reason. I just came out a bit ago and was hoping to find some guys to maybe go on dates with. Grab a coffee. It’s nice to see there’s actually some gay guys in this town.” “Haha sure, man. Also, I used to look like you before I started going to the gym, but no one wanted me. Might want to beef up a bit. Let me know if you want to hook-up sometime. You could probably be a bottom.”

As I continued to navigate conversations on Grindr that afternoon, I started to see that perhaps the app was slightly different than I had in mind. However, maybe I could still play this game and have some fun. Sex is fun, right? That evening I went to the gym on campus for the first time in my entire undergraduate degree. Talking with a gay friend I had recently made, we decided to start watching the classic series, Queer as Folk. This series helped to introduce us to gay cultural productions and make some sense of how we were “supposed” to act as gay men. He had also just come out of the closet and we had heard that this series was a good place to start. We went to the local DVD store, bought all of the seasons of the show, and started binge watching. Brian Kinney, the main character, exhibited a lot of the traits I was starting to see from guys during interactions on Grindr—confidence, self-assuredness, a lack of care for others, a desire for constant sexual conquests. As I watched this episode with my friend, I kept feeling a dissonance between what was being shown on the screen, and the kind of gay life I wanted. In particular, after watching the first season, my friend turned to me and began articulating how Brian reminded him of all the emotionally unavailable men he loved in the past. In the entire first season, Justin, as a young, feminine high school student chased after Brian, who is an older advertising executive, only to

212 be rejected countless times and shunned. Turning to me, my friend started telling me his thoughts on Brian: “This is so like my dating experiences, Adam. No matter how hard I try, they always seem to leave. It’s like as soon as they get what they want and I’m available and ready, they seem to lose interest. Why do they lose interest as soon as I am finally really into them? I don’t want anymore Brians in my life.”

I had only just begun dating, so I still did not have a lot of experience to draw from but my experiences that I had thus far with gay dating resonated with that. In the middle of our conversation, my friend’s phone kept ringing and beeping until eventually he pulled his phone out of his pocket to glance at the missed texts. I suspected that this might be a potential romantic interest who he had lost interest in. “It sounds like that person really wants to talk to you. Who is that?” His facial expression suddenly turned to a strained look as he shoved his phone in his pocket. “Ugh. Some loser. He’s so needy. We went on two dates and I thought he was nice but now he wants to hangout all the time and it seems like the more I ignore him, the more he keeps calling and texting me. . . .”

Before I could even say anything to promote some further thinking on this topic, I heard the infamous Grindr coin-like beep as his phone came out of his pocket again and a huge grin came across his face. Bouncing off the couch, he turned to me as he briskly walked towards the door. “Gotta go, Adam! Duty calls. I’ll report back later.”

Introduction Grindr holds many promises for individuals. Some invest in its promise for community and “connection,” whereas others seek its usage for sexual pleasure and hook-ups. Despite the fact that Grindr’s users predominately seeking hook-ups (Chan, 2018; Van de Wiele & Tong, 2014), there are still many individuals who use the app to find romantic relationships (Arthur 2017; McKie et al., 2015). Regardless of the motivation for Grindr usage, users are investing in a promise of something that is expected to bring them happiness. When discussing relationships, sex and romantic love are often clearly distinguished. Within this chapter, I argue that on Grindr, the promises of sex and romantic love are not clearly separated. Additionally, I discuss that within the affective assemblages of Grindr, users are oriented towards both the promises of sex and love. Ultimately, the combination of these experiences is expected to bring what Ahmed

213

(2010b) notes as the promise for happiness. While much queer literature deconstructs how the promise of romantic relationships is often cruelly optimistic, as Lauren Berlant (2007a) would write, there is still much left unsaid on the cruel optimism embedded in hook-up culture, or the promise that one places in hooking-up. Do Grindr users feel that hooking-up will bring them happiness? How might the expected happiness of sexual encounters create included and excluded subjects? Ahmed (2010b) writes that social groups and collectives come together based on collectively investing happiness in objects of desire. That is, by seemingly all agreeing that a certain object is “good” and one that will provide happiness, a collective of individuals come to form a united group. Those who do not see such an object as a path to happiness are often not following social norms and become excluded or seen as “other” (Ahmed, 2000, 2004a, 2004b). Socio-sexual and dating applications are generally used by individuals who wish to gain some sort of reward from their usage, such as a longer-term intimacy or perhaps a one-night stand (Essig, 2019). Socio-sexual applications for gay and queer men are unique in that they promise not only connection with others but, specifically, connection through one’s sexual identity (Woo, 2013). The promise of Grindr is not only one of romance and/or sex, but also of shared identity, the happiness and community that can come from finding others who share a sexual orientation, and the desire for both that drives individuals to use Grindr. Desire drives individuals towards an object, as desire always implies a gap between the promises of an object, and what the object actually provides (Berlant, 2012). Our desire for happiness can drive us towards an object or make us view an object as desirable. But once the desired object is reached, our happiness can diminish as our idealized image of the object is shattered. In other words, the presence of desire implies there is something more that you want or need, a gap which needs to be filled, a “next” step which needs to be accomplished. This is evidenced in many gay men’s ambivalent attitudes towards Grindr itself (Brubaker et al., 2016; Corriero & Tong, 2016). An application that makes it easier to socialize with other gay men might seem wonderful as a space where one can have access to sex, romance, and friendships. In reality, users’ discussions of Grindr are often littered with complaints and frustrations (McKie et al., 2017). At the same time, it is hard for individuals to stop using the app; users often delete and subsequently reinstall Grindr, making it hard to “leave” (Brubaker et al., 2016). It could be theorized that one’s desire for the promises of Grindr keep them returning to the app.

214

Before I begin with my analysis, I explore Ahmed’s (2004b, 2010b) work on affective economies and the promise of happiness to situate my work within writing on the cultural politics of feelings and emotions. I then turn to an analysis of the politics of promises as it pertains to the various investments which individuals place in Grindr to bring them happiness and how such promises might provide momentary disillusionment through their failures.

The Promise of Happiness Feelings are central to the construction of included and excluded gay subjects (Lovelock, 2019). Liberal gay identity politics encourage the association of “positive” emotions and feelings about one’s sexual identity; one should be proud, happy, and confident because being gay and finding a community are expected to bring happiness. In The Promise of Happiness, Sara Ahmed (2010b) theorizes happiness as an affective state that holds much power in the Western imagination, as happiness directs and orients individuals towards certain objects, and “shapes what coheres as a world” (p. 2). Happiness, as Ahmed (2010b) explains, is commonly measured in economic and comparative terms such as “investment” and “stability” and is seen to be impacted by one’s social status, capital, and personal networks. Moreover, Ahmed’s argument is important in its challenge to the modern imperative to be happy or find happiness as a necessary social good. Ahmed articulates how by aspiring towards certain objects as good or by positioning and fashioning ourselves in a specific way, we evaluate certain outcomes as desirable and good and others as inherently bad. For example, common rhetoric around self-confidence and self-love encourages individuals to “invest” in themselves, which, for many gay men in particular, might take the form of going to the gym, building up one’s body, and improving one’s confidence and self-assuredness when interacting with other men. Through these investments, anxiety and insecurity are dissuaded and one can appear happy with one’s self and independent. Since what we strive towards in order to be happy is expected to provide us with happiness, happiness itself also involves the production of good feelings. Sex is another avenue by which individuals are expected to achieve happiness and individuation. Through shows such as Queer as Folk or Looking, gay men are commonly sold the narrative that sex brings happiness and self- confidence. It is not only that sex, itself, is expected to bring pleasure, but that gay men are sold the narrative that by having sex—and lots of it—they will ascertain greater capital and status in mainstream gay cultures, such as social status, self-confidence, and feelings of sexiness (Duncan,

215

2008). Relatedly, Ford and Becker’s (2020) research on the sexual scripts of college gay men found that many young gay men feel they must have frequent sex to perform their sexual identity appropriately under normative of gay subjectivities and gay masculinities. Sex itself also holds a promise for many gay men as it is expected to bring greater feelings of self-confidence and potentially even inclusion in gay communities through the notion that a high frequency of sexual encounters is a normative way of enacting gay subjectivity. When—regardless of the amount or frequency of sex had—men still feel unhappy, the very promise of happiness which one invests in sex is questioned. Sex is a central feature of gay sexual identification. In The Trouble with Normal, prominent queer theorist Michael Warner (2000) passionately articulates, how gay men are pressured to sanitize the gay identity in order to gain respectability; they are made to “redeem gay identity by repudiating sex” (p. 42). Despite Warner’s argument, my experiences using Grindr have led me to believe that gay men use the idea of sex quite normatively in everyday conversations and that sex and notions of sexual prowess are actually used as normalizing discursive fields on the online application. According to gay liberationists, presumptions might be that sex is liberating, that it will provide happiness, and that if one has a high frequency of sexual encounters, one is a normative gay subject and holds gay belonging. As discussed in previous chapters, a high frequency of hook-ups and sexual encounters is seen as a normative way through which one performs their gay identity or, as Derrick noted in his quote from my first data chapter, how one “does gay right.” Importantly, for gay men, the promise of happiness through sex is not just one of individual sexual pleasure, but a promise in gay identification itself: that by having lots of sex and performing their gay identity properly, happiness will ensue. This is a notable point, due to Grindr’s normalized status as a feature of mainstream gay culture; by being a proper gay subject, engaging in lots of anonymous sex through Grindr, and feeling satisfied and self-confident from such encounters, one can feel belonging and included within gay identification itself. Belonging and inclusion are tenuous discourses with many gaps and silences. Critical Disability Studies scholar, Tanya Titchkosky (2011) proposes that discourses of inclusion in the context of disability are hierarchized in such a way that many disabled individuals are—and disability itself is—accepted as an “excludable type” whereby it is accepted that people with disabilities are a “justified absence” within educational settings and university campuses (p. 78).

216

This critique of the justification of exclusion is relevant for mainstream gay communities wherein “bad feelings” or negative affective responses to hooking-up, such as sadness, melancholia, or anxiety, can be disorienting to discourses of pride, community, and self- confidence. Subjects who do not feel “at home” in their gay identification, or who “fail” to meet the normative expectations of the happy, confident, sexually liberated, and empowered gay subject, are deemed cultural outcasts and outside the boundaries of inclusion (Klesse, 2007; Lovelock, 2019). Normalcy through notions of self-management, self-sufficiency, and the privatization of negative emotions are ways through which gay men can strive towards a sense of normalcy (de Oliveira et al., 2013; Gideonse, 2016). To express discontentment with one’s gay identity is to question the happiness that gay identification is expected to bring. As Lovelock (2019) and Tilsen and Nylund (2016) explicate, the demands of homonormativity include feeling pride in one’s gay identification, feelings of belonging and individual empowerment. Tilsen and Nylund (2016) ask, in the context of the experiences of therapeutic practices with gay youth, “how has the institutionalization—the cultural acceptance—of a ‘gay identity’ reproduced some of the very oppressive limitations gay liberation originally fought against?” (p. 94). Such a question is relevant in relation to GSSAs, such as Grindr, in understanding how the normalization and institutionalization of gay sex as a component of gay identification continues exclusionary practices. Subjects who do not meet the demands of gay confidence, empowerment, and individuation through gay online hook-up cultures, are further othered. Developing from Lisa Duggan’s (2003) theorization of homonormativity, Lovelock (2019) theorizes proto-homonormativity as “the affective contours of homonormativity, critiquing how mainstream discourses not only encourage gay men to do certain things, but to be certain things; specifically, to be happy” (p. 550). According to Lovelock, this imperative to be happy is perpetuated through neoliberal conceptions of gay identification that focus on self-love and individual authenticity, which further forward the notion of sexuality as an internal essence within subjects. Such narratives can be seen in popular gay shows, such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, where RuPaul ends every episode with the catch phrase, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else? Can I get an amen?” Lovelock critiques therapeutic discourses which encourage gay men to “love themselves” and overcome shame to embrace gay identification and community. Just as Lovelock (2019) notes how many queer theorists have

217 critiqued the institution of marriage for its normative intimate investments, similar critiques can be made of a strict focus on sex as inherently empowering for subjects, or sex as an organizing discourse for gay or queer identification (Huffer, 2013). Accordingly, in order to “properly” become a gay subject within proto-homonormativity, “one must be happy, as defined through a synonymous lexicon of self-love, self-acceptance, authenticity and pride in one’s gay sexuality” (p. 552), or one must feel good about gay identification and gay sex. Ahmed’s (2004b) theory of affective economies provides me a useful avenue through which to explore the relational orientations of Grindr users and to theorize how subjects are relegated as either included or excluded. Ahmed posits that subjects come into alignment as a collective and that these collectives are structured by emotion, as emotions “create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of bodies and worlds” (p. 117). To be in “alignment,” according to Ahmed, requires that individuals are in congruence with imagined collectives and placed in opposition against an imagined threat that could challenge the collective’s cohesive structure. For example, in Ahmed’s reading of white nationalist rhetoric from the Aryan Nations’ website, she describes how white nationalist “love” of the nation positions hate and love as deeply interconnected. That is, the “love” of the nation by the white nationalist, and the “hate” of the asylum seeker who is seen as taking jobs and positions away from the white citizen, aligns the white nationalist with the nation-state and the positions the asylum seeker as an enemy to the nation. Ahmed (2004b) writes that, within “affective economies,” objects come into “alignment” based on what is deemed “good” and valued in a given context. This idea provides an avenue for my study in understanding how the relational “orientations” of men online dictate included and excluded subjects and who belong on Grindr. While dominant heteronormative scripts still present the nuclear family and long-term romantic relationships as a source of happiness (Ahmed, 2010b), gay socio-sexual scripts place an emphasis on anonymous, emotionally compartmentalized hook-ups (Elder et al., 2015). This difference in gay socio-sexual scripts is influenced by a history of eroticizing anonymous sexual encounters, the separation of emotional intimacy and sexuality, and strictly dividing between love and sex, particularly within gay institutions, such as bathhouses (Chauncey, 1994; Edwards, 1994; Levine & Kimmel, 1998). Within the twenty-first century, through the usage of gay sex websites including Gaydar and gay.com, as well as GSSAs such as Grindr and Scruff, these socio-sexual norms for compartmentalization between emotional intimacy and sex have

218 continued to be an embedded component of gay sexual subjectivities (Bonner-Thompson, 2017; Jacobs, 2020; Mowlabocus, 2016; Raj, 2011). Thus, while anonymous sex through apps might not initially hold a promise for a longer-term romantic relationship (for some), these hook-ups and sexual exchanges still hold a promise for normative gay belonging, inclusion, and acceptance, or that one is enacting their gay identity and sexuality appropriately and aligning themselves with a community. As Ahmed (2004b) explains, in such affective economies, emotions do things and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity of their attachments (p. 119). Men are attached to Grindr through the promise of Grindr and become aligned with such online spaces through the promise they place in Grindr for belonging.

The Promises of Grindr, Promises of Belonging: “I Find it Easier to Socialize With Other Gay Men” Similar to my own narrative of beginning to use Grindr, for many users, the promise of Grindr initially entails the possibility of finding community and others who one might be able to relate to, particularly when first coming out and trying to explore dating. Jaspal’s (2017) psychological study of identity formation processes on Grindr illustrates instances wherein men who wished to utilize Grindr to seek romantic relationships or platonic friendships felt a sense of cognitive dissonance between the highly sexualized norms on Grindr, which are associated with normative gay identification, and their own desire for more emotional intimacy in their gay connections. This clash between what one desires from their usage of Grindr (potentially a romantic relationship) and the normative desires on Grindr (hooking-up) can present an upsetting contradiction for users who invest emotional intimacy and connection in their connections on Grindr. Jaspal (2017) described this further as “the coercive norm of seeking casual sex on Grindr, which could lead even those who were not seeking casual sex to feel excluded from the Grindr ‘community’ and many reported negative experiences of prejudice and even denigration from other users” (p. 200). Within the affective economies of Grindr, romantic intimacy— particularly romantic connections through one’s respective sexuality—is commonly devalued, and even considered conflicting with normative understandings of gay identification (Aitken, 2017; Elder et al., 2015), with users initially using Grindr to find longer-term romantic

219 relationships but quickly shifting to anonymous hook-ups due to the online relational norms (Yeo & Fung, 2018). Anthony, (25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man), explained his own process of starting to use Grindr when he first came out and was “new to the scene.” Describing how his attitude towards the app “shifted” after getting “attached through sexual encounters,” Anthony continued to explain why he now uses GSSAs: For the most part, I used Scruff and Grindr. I find it easier to socialize with other gay men in the general sense, whether to make friends or potential lovers, it’s an easier way to find people who are also gay. I started using it 4 years ago. . . . I guess it’s successful. . . . I have been on like a few dates, actual dates with guys. That said, my last relationship was from a guy I met off Scruff. The purpose of the apps is to hook-up and that is what I use it for. I’m a very open person. It’s just an easier way of socializing. (Anthony, 25, Afro-Caribbean, gay cisgender man)

Here, Anthony named how Grindr presented a promise of socialization with other gay men, even if it was just for casual lovers or sexual encounters. These affective promises and assemblages that Anthony referenced in relation to Grindr involve many “happy objects,” or what Ahmed (2010b) would describe as objects that “good feelings are directed toward” and that provide “a shared horizon of experience” (p. 21). A “shared horizon of experience” involves the development of collectives and community and the idea that certain desired objects, such as sex, direct individuals and create a sense of comradery. Even though the purpose of the app is to “hook-up,” Anthony is open to lots of different connections. He finds it “easier” to socialize with other gay men through Grindr, as his connections on Grindr could lead to different end results, with the understanding that the majority of individuals online will primarily be looking for a hook-up. Steve (28, white cisgender gay man) noted how his own experience of coming out involved downloading Grindr. Since he was living in a small town at the time, upon installing Grindr on his phone, he imagined himself being able to connect with many more men that he had previously been able to: I think for me, so historically speaking I grew up in Waterloo, so there definitely wasn’t nearly as vibrant of a gay culture as, let’s say, Toronto. Initially, I think it was largely to reach out, to be able to meet other gay people just in general. Definitely I think because of the nature of the apps there was always a sexual undertone. (Steve, 28, cisgender gay man)

220

Growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Steve felt that there was not a “vibrant” gay culture compared to a large urban centre such as downtown Toronto and that his initial impetus for downloading Grindr was just to “be able to meet other gay people in general.” The affective assemblages of Grindr, for Steve, included a promise of belonging and connection to community. Many men might download Grindr and similar applications to feel connected to other men with similar sexual orientations under a promise of community and others with such “shared horizons of experience” (Ahmed, 2010b). As Davies et al. (2019) explain, the promises of gay community and the feelings of belonging and happiness desired through finding a gay community tend to orient gay men towards engaging with GSSAs. Ahmed (2010b) further articulates that when “something promises happiness, we have an idea of that thing as being promising. In receiving that something, we imagine the good things that will follow” (p. 30). Part of the promise of gay community is the potential sexual encounters that could ensue from meeting other men. These apps, as Steve described, might have a “sexual undertone.” This observation is important to note in that while, for some men, the initial of promise Grindr could be the potential romantic intimacy involved from starting to date, for others, it could involve having sexual encounters and exploring one’s sexuality. This shows that while Grindr (and notions of gay community) might hold a promise, what that promise looks like can vary between individuals. Still, for Steve, his early experiences with Grindr allowed him to enter an environment where he would have the ability to interact and chat with other gay men more easily while living in a small town. Steve continued to describe how, although he understood that Grindr might have held a sexualized undertone, his initial reason for downloading the app was for something beyond hooking-up: Cause the apps do obviously encourage and foster that [sexualization], I think, to a large degree. But I think historically, as far as why I would have first got on them, it was really just to meet other gay people because I was in an area where that wasn’t nearly as easy to do as just going down to Church and Wellesley Village. (Steve, 28, white cisgender gay man)

Steve’s experience using the apps initially involved his lack of physical proximity with the Toronto Church and Wellesley Gay Village, meaning that he felt himself physically out of reach to other gays. Perhaps within Steve’s affective assemblages was the hope for gay connection within a heteronormative suburban milieu. This idea that being geographically near other gay identified men provides happiness, community, and belonging, aligns with liberal scripts for gay

221 identity. These promised experiences of happiness and community encourage one to take pride in their sexual identity and insinuate that, by finding other similarly identified men, one will belong (Halperin & Traub, 2009). As such, “the judgment about certain objects as being ‘happy’ is already made, before they are even encountered” (Ahmed, 2010b, p. 28). Steve’s initial impetus for downloading Grindr involved the promise of sexual community and that other gay men might bring him happiness and belonging; feelings which he was not experiencing in his small town. The “escape from the small town to big city” narrative is a common, but critiqued, gay cliché, as many young gay men flock from their presumably homophobic small-town environments to find belonging and acceptance in gay enclaves in large urban metropolitan centres (Lewis, 2012). Grindr, as a “virtual gay village” (Crooks, 2013; Woo, 2013), could mimic some of the norms within homonormative gay villages, or, as Tziallis (2015) writes facetiously, No need to go to the gay village, the gay village revolves around you! A potential new adventure is just off the horizon! What are you waiting for?! Potential lurks around every corner! Turn on your Grindr! Or better yet, never turn it off! You don’t want to miss out, do you? (p. 763)

This described “potential” of Grindr is affectively produced through neoliberal capitalist promises for happiness through sexual pleasure and “new adventures” that are “just off the horizon.” Always just barely out of reach, Grindr promises a form of happiness which has not arrived yet, with the futurity of the happiness preserving its potential arrival in the form of endless possibilities. The paradox of Grindr might be that, although it offers potentially endless possibilities to connect with others, due to the high amount of individuals available online to talk to, the actual design of the application itself encourages users to keep on looking for “better” options under the guise that someone who is “more” exciting or attractive could be missed if a specific romantic connection would be initiated and one were to delete the app (Rochadiat et al., 2020). Charlie, a 43-year-old Iranian cisgender gay man, described his experiences with Grindr, particularly as it pertained to his immigration from Iran to Australia and eventually, Canada, as he sought out gay belonging through his usage of Grindr: “I was hoping to feel that belonging, but because it was not a successful experience for me.” (Charlie, 43, Iranian, cisgender gay man)

In Charlie’s description of his experiences online, Grindr might have provided some promise for finding a sense of gay belonging, particularly within Western society after immigrating to Australia from Iran. As I will explicate, within the affective assemblages of Charlie’s interview,

222

Charlie blurred the homonationalist binary between Middle Eastern nations, such as Iran, as “homophobic” and Western liberal nations as “free” for LGBTQ individuals (Puar, 2007, 2013). Charlie described differences between his experiences using websites to find other gay men in Iran, where he is originally from, with his experiences on Grindr once he moved to Australia and eventually Canada. Using websites to meet other men while he was in Iran, he mentioned that he did not install Grindr onto his smartphone when he first bought one in 2011: Well, the first time I got my smartphone, I was in Iran. But there was no such apps. It was a Nokia I had. It was a smartphone. So the first time I saw Grindr was through an Apple [device]. I bought an iPhone. And then that’s what I started to install Grindr and Scruff and use them. That was after 2011 in Australia. (Charlie, 43, Iranian, gay cisgender man)

Noting the difference between conceptions and understandings of gay community between Iran, where being gay was pathologized and treated as an “illness,” and Western countries, Charlie continued to explain how he met other men when he was in Iran: Of course, it was more difficult, but because I was raised there, it was routine for me and I think all other gays to find each other through a website. And then there were some unofficial dating places like food courts or in specific parts of Iran, like Tehran on Tuesday nights. I remember that from those days. Tuesday nights was what like we had for gay men to mostly gather there in food courts and like maybe hunt for money or just passing time. (Charlie, 43, Iranian, gay cisgender man)

Charlie had some experience with gay online websites in Iran before downloading Grindr onto his phone, yet these websites were used in tandem with experiences going to specific physical places, such as food courts, where he knew other men who were interested in men would be. He had built some semblance of gay community in Iran despite the pathologization of homosexuality, and through the necessity of some men coming together who hold similar experiences of marginalization. In this sense, Charlie’s feelings of belonging in Iran might have emerged through more covert forms of connections, such as using secretive websites or meeting in food courts. After immigrating to Australia from Iran, Charlie downloaded Grindr onto his phone. He described his disappointment with the app as he did not experience the same feelings of kinship and belonging amongst the gay community in Australia through Grindr that he had hoped for: Well, I was hoping to feel that belonging, but because it was not a successful experience for me in Australia, even much less successful than in Canada, I didn’t feel that much included or belonging. Why? Well, now I think maybe because I was an immigrant.

223

Maybe, you know, there were many times that we started to chat and I used my sense of humour or they used their sense of humour, which I believe is very localized, so I didn’t understand them or maybe they didn’t get my jokes because I think to open up a conversation, sense of humour is very, very important. And people who have a good sense of humour are more successful to hunt more people. (Charlie, 43, Iranian, gay cisgender man)

Charlie’s explanation of his initial experiences with Grindr in Australia described the disappointment he felt as he was “hoping to find that belonging” but “didn’t feel that much included or belonging.” Charlie conceptualized his immigrant status and sense of humour as a barrier to full inclusion, highlighting the racialized nature of inclusion within white mainstream queer communities. To expand, the terms of belonging for many queer migrants must involve incorporation into the neoliberal multi-cultural milieu of gay urban communities and online spaces, which hold assimilatory goals (El-Tayeb, 2012). Charlie could be read as working within what Puar (2007) terms the “queer liberal imaginary” which presents itself as inherently rationalist with “religion, faith, or spirituality as the downfall of any rational politics” (p. 13). Puar (2007) proposes that this form of “queer secularity” focuses on the transgression of norms that are often constructed as religious and binding to the liberation of the queer subject, as the “subject can only ever be fathomed outside the norming constrictions of religion, conflating agency and resistance” (p. 13; see also Mahmood, 2005). In Charlie’s experience, directing his love towards gay belonging and community was not a reciprocal endeavour. One can direct love to the community and enter its fold, but that might not guarantee belonging or acceptance, and may be considered a state of cruel optimism (Berlant, 2011). Belonging, as an affective state, sticks to some subjects on Grindr and orients them towards others who also experience belonging, while it slides over those who do not belong. Charlie continued to elaborate on how he was on Grindr for something “more” than a hook-up, but that he felt “bad” after his hook-ups despite his “hope” for something further. For many participants, such as Isaiah (who is mentioned below), hope for romance, connection or intimacy is what “binds” them to Grindr. Charlie explained how his failure to ascertain such a relation produced bad feelings that were internalized and made him feel he is “another checkbox”: Especially because, you know, I think in general I’m looking for something more than just hook-up. Like for me, making out is very pleasant. And then after finishing like laying down, have a chat. Maybe leading to something more. It’s very pleasant. I hoped for this. And most of the time, it doesn’t happen. You know, when people are finished, they want to say goodbye or take a shower and leave. You want to leave. So, yeah, I could say that it

224

has happened many times that when I leave the place, they leave my place. I feel bad. I’m just another checkbox. (Charlie, 43, Iranian, gay cisgender man)

Some queer theorists (Ahmed, 2010b; Edelman, 2004) view the act of placing hope in community and relationality as a call to liberal humanisms’ dream of universal unity and sameness. Charlie’s disappointment with the lack of longevity in his sexual encounters through Grindr illustrates how his hope had been disappointed in terms of his desire for more emotional intimacy and romance in his sexual encounters online. Charlie noted how his reason for moving from Iran was the lack of ability to be open in public with a potential romantic partner. In this sense, being “open” with a partner in public might be equated, for Charlie, with his investment in the promise of his sexual identity and that in a Western context, he might be able to “freely” express his romantic love in a partner of a same-sex in public without violence. Georgis (2013) notes the “entanglement” of the East and the West in her analysis of shame in the book collection of Lebanese queer life narratives, Bareed Mista3jil: True Stories. Georgis (2013) suggests moving beyond buying into a binary of shame/pride, or repressed/liberated, where “a pronounced hope for a future where the price of gay rights and social freedom is not family ties or religion” (p. 235).28 The taken-for-granted construction of Western liberal society as free presents an imagining of same-sex desires and identities as liberated in the West and repressed in the East: a notion that scholars have challenged (Mahmood, 2005). In Charlie’s narrative, moving to Australia and eventually Canada presented an opportunity to be openly gay and potentially meet another romantic partner. He described further disappointment when he moved to Australia and Canada and did not encounter any gay men who seemed to be interested in having long-term romantic relationships: One of the reasons I left Iran was that I felt, “OK, I have tried hook-ups.” In Iran, it’s not possible to find a relationship. “Let’s go to a so-called free society.” Many of my friends who are living in Iran, they say, “Oh, you’re so lucky you are. Here, people are just looking for sex.” And I tell them, “That’s exactly it. . . . I thought that I will find the relationship in this so-called society, free society.” But no, I have the same feeling. Maybe I’m wrong, but they have the same feeling that people on these apps, like in

28 Queer theorists, such as jack Halberstam (2005), have critiqued white gay men’s investment in the recuperative politics of shame and specifically the ways in which white gay shame intersect with normative notions of white gay masculinities. Queer of colour theorists, such as Hiram Perez (2005), have noted how when shame is taken up by white gay men as an affective dispositif, it illustrates “the often transparent alignments of queer theory with systemic racial domination and violence” (p. 173). The interruptions of queer of colour critique within white gay male theorizing provides an analysis of the limitations of white gay male theorizing of shame and how the binary between shame and pride reinforced through anti-normative queer theory’s investment in shame can erase the cultural productions and knowledges of queers of colour as re-center whiteness (Halberstam, 2005).

225

nightclubs everywhere, are just looking for sex. (Charlie, 43, Iranian, gay cisgender man)

Within the affective assemblages of Charlie’s experiences with Grindr and our interview, freedom emerged as a hope tied to romantic intimacy. Charlie’s desire to escape to a “so-called free society” could be read as a hope he placed in Western gay cultures. Yet, Charlie noted how men in Iran commonly met with one another in “unofficial dating places like food courts or in specific parts of Iran, like Tehran on Tuesday nights.” Reading this section illustrates the tensions between simplistic notions of the imagined version of romantic love promised through Western liberal “love is love” narratives and Islamaophobic discourses that posit the East as inherently homophobic. Even within Charlie’s narratives, these contradictions emerged as a hot spot of affective tensions whereby Charlie’s disappointment in the failures of Western gay communities, and Grindr, specifically, might blur the lines between Western homonationalist discourses of freedom. Korycki and Nasirzadeh (2016) trace the genealogy behind same-sex relations in Iran amongst men, specifically noting how the emergence of the intentional deployment of the Westernized term, “gay,” amongst Iranian same-sex desiring men occurred throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century through three axis: (1) state surveillance of cyberspaces where same-sex desiring men encounter each other; (2) the medicalization of same-sex desire as an inherent feature of the individual instead of an act; and, (3) the usage of Western human rights language to re-deploy same-sex relations and desires as a positive attribute of the subject and self-representation. Charlie echoed this where he even mentioned the medicalization of same-sex relations in Iran: If you are gay—a gay male—you will be exempt from military service, which is mandatory for all boys. OK. After graduation from high school or university, all the males have to go to attend the military service. If you are gay and some specific psychologist can testify or certify, you will be exempt from attending military service. But you will be categorized as an ill person. (Charlie, 43, Iranian gay cisgender man)

Under the belief that Australia and Canada might provide more “freedom,” Charlie immigrated to the West, but quickly realized that “the same feeling that people on these apps, like in nightclubs everywhere, are just looking for sex.” This feeling of disappointment, perhaps, might be read as his failed investment in the Canadian (and Australian) nation-states.

226

Walcott (2015) articulates how, within colonial modernity, the Canadian multicultural nation- state imagines itself as a safe space for certain respectable homosexual subjects who can be incorporated into the body politic of nationhood and nationalist freedom. In what Walcott (2015) names “post-Enlightenment, modernist, colonial practices of containment” (p. vii), through productions of hetero- and homo-normativity, the nation-state continues to provide sanctity and freedoms for certain gays through claims to respectability and forms of sexualities that are deemed normal and natural within liberal identity sexual politics (Puar, 2007; Walcott, 2015). Walcott’s commentary from Dryden and Lenon’s (2015) text on Canadian homonationalism illustrates the ways through which freedom is imagined as an individualistic endeavour by way of modernist and liberal constructions of sexuality identity. While this is my reading of Charlie’s text, it is impossible to “know” how Charlie felt in this situation and what kind of hope he might have placed in the nation-state and his immigration process to Australia and Canada.

Kashi: “There are Times Where I Want to Be There on Grindr and There are Times I Just Don’t Want to be There” Other participants, such as Kashi, a 22-year-old South-East Asian cisgender gay man, noted the “promise” that Grindr held for them and how such a promise or “hope” kept them online or would encourage them to reinstall Grindr on their phones after deleting it: I keep going on and off of Grindr, so yeah. Well, there are times where I want to be there on Grindr and there are times I just don’t want to be there, only if for the fact that I know that I’m not able to find the thing that I’m looking for. So, there’s a part of me that wants to be there and then there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be there very much. A little bit of hope that I will probably find that friend or find that particular someone who I will end up being with. (Kashi, 22, South-East Asian, cisgender gay man)

Kashi kept “going on and off of Grindr” due to his frustrations with the application. Still, the promise that Grindr provides, of potentially “finding that friend or that particular someone who I will end up being with,” kept him online even though he had dissonant feelings about being there. Sara Ahmed (2010b) proposes that hope is an orientation towards a future that is expected: “Hope, we might say, is a thoughtful way of being directed toward the future, or a way of creating the very thought of the future as going some way” (pp. 181–182). Ahmed states that hope is inherently linked to anxiety and loss. To be hopeful for something involves both the

227 feelings of anxiety towards the potential loss of a desired future, as well as experience of loss for the anticipated happiness which the future was to bring. For many, the anticipation of meeting someone and establishing a connection which could lead to a romantic partnership brings much anticipation of future happiness and joy. However, the anxiety and fear of loss that many experience while dating is associated with not only the fear of losing a potential partner, but also losing the expected happiness and future that such a partner was predicted to bring. In Kashi’s description, the hope that he will “find that particular someone” who he wants to “end up with” is a hope for romantic intimacy. Although Grindr does offer users the option of identifying what kind of relationship they are looking for, the hope of a long-term relationship is not something that Grindr specifically promises. A question then emerges: are users placing an expectation in Grindr that is outside its advertised promise? If hope is what binds users to Grindr, what happens when that hope fails? Prominent queer theorists, such as Lee Edelman (2004) and Leo Bersani (1987)—and the general thread of queer theory entitled the anti-social or anti-relational branch—are hesitant to place “hope” in a future, or any sort of future oriented project, particularly as it pertains to sex. According to these theorists, gay sex is self-shattering: a momentary pleasure, or jouissance, with no future ethical relationality required of subjects. This self-shattering jouissance, according to these theorists, disrupts notions of progress and futurity, as well as the humanist desire for empathy and relationality in sex (Bersani, 1987; Edelman, 2004). However, participants such as Kashi described placing some “hope” and “promise” in Grindr and hook-up culture still, in spite of their disillusionment with Grindr and hook-up culture. Relationality and human connection are still desired and, for some participants, it is what orients them towards using Grindr and hooking-up.

Mark: “Maybe I’ll Change His Mind . . .” Online outreach workers hold many differing understandings of how gay men use GSSAs and what their main intentions are for being online (Davies et al., 2019). Mark, a 28-year old Afro-Caribbean cisgender gay man who specializes in gay men’s online outreach, described for me his thoughts on the differing reasons why many gay men might go online and their initial hopes upon entering Grindr. Mark mentioned the potential “hope” that individuals might feel entering a hook-up through Grindr. Mark elaborated on his work with gay men and online spaces

228 to provide an explanation of how many of the men in his professional work engage with online hook-up culture with the hope that eventually one of their sexual encounters might lead to a longer-term romantic relationship. In his professional opinion, individuals might enter a hook-up with the knowledge that it is a sexual encounter while still possibly placing some hope that it might lead to a longer-term relationship: Mark: it’s like, they’ll meet someone online, and then this person will be, like, “it’s only a hook up,” but then in their mind the other person will be like, “maybe I’ll change his mind.” Like, “I’ll be different.” Even if the other person has said that, “maybe he just says that,” or “he’s jaded,” or whatever. Adam: So trying to change the person’s mind? Mark: Yeah. Or just, like, going in with the assumption that that they’re somehow special, or it’s going to be different this time.

Edelman (2004) explicates how queer sexuality (particularly gay male sexuality) presents a challenge to “reproductive futurism” or the promise of a future through heterosexual reproduction and the “future of the child.” Thus, the figure of the queer is filled with negativity, as embracing the inherent negativity in the figure of the queer dismantles normative notions of humanness and the reproduction of the social order. However, as Mark illuminated, not all queers conceptualize their sexuality through negativity and a lack of futurity, as some do place a hope in a future relationship through their hook-ups on Grindr. Ruti (2017) describes the tensions between Edelman’s anti-relational work and the more hope and future oriented theorizations of queer theory, such as Muñoz’s work. Muñoz’s (2009) work considers utopian possibilities and relationality of sex through forms of queer relationalities by articulating how the idea that utopian thinking is by definition liberal, that there is no room for utopianism within posthumanist paradigms, is an indication of the extent to which certain strands of posthumanist theory have solidified into lifeless patterns that no longer serve a critical function. (p. 89)

Does sex ever have a future? Can one consider their sexual engagements as future oriented without resorting to liberal humanist theorizing? Ruti (2017) critiques the notion that sex is always negative and anti-relational, or that future-oriented theorizations inherently fall into liberal humanist theorizing by articulating how Edelman’s thinking centers white gay men and their sexual politics. White gay men, as a privileged group, can afford to have their sex “only be sex” because their need for queer relationships under neoliberal capitalist structures might be less due to their economic and social privilege.

229

This was exemplified in the narratives of the outreach workers who work with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of colour) communities. These outreach workers noted how, particularly for newcomers and recent immigrants who they often work with, downloading Grindr and similar applications is a means to actually meet other gay men, build community, and cultivate emotional supports when starting to become settled in Canada. Patrick, an outreach worker, mentioned how many of the Black newcomers he works with utilize Grindr to make friends at first until they begin to realize what the applications are “for”: So, they [Black newcomers] come here and they’re like, instead of going on Church Street, they would rather want to go online to, you know, try to make, make connections with someone. And so you find that times when, especially when the newcomers are here, they will go online and they will be like, “hey, I’m trying to build a, build a connection with this person, but this person wants to know what size my, what size, the size of my dick You know, if I’m a top or bottom, and really I just want to, you know, meet friends.” Sometimes they want to make friendships to be able to know, get those friendships to sort of help them navigate the system. You know, try to connect them to different resources or agencies where they can really get themselves settled, and, and also sort of form community. So I find that it depends on the time that you’re here. Most people who are here maybe three or four or five years span, they’re . . . I guess they have a sense of what that environment . . . what the applications are for. (Patrick)

In this interview, Patrick noted the specific struggles that Black newcomers experience in the predominately White Toronto gay community, particularly when using online apps. Patrick’s interview illustrated that for many of his clients in his work, they are using Grindr for a purpose in addition to sex, or besides sex completely, noting the need to “build a network and build a connection” for newcomers: When it comes down to someone who’s new to the country, there’s a lot of anxiety cause you’re saying, “hey, I just did not come here, cause sex is farthest from my mind right now. My focus is really to build a network and to build a connection, and to maybe even developing strong friendships so I can know how to navigate myself in this country.” But when they go on the apps, most times that’s not what they’re receiving or getting. (Patrick)

Illustrated in the interviews with outreach workers who specialized in working with BIPOC communities is different in sexual politics, particularly for BIPOC newcomers. Dev, a social services and outreach worker who specializes in working with South-East Asian gay, bisexual, and queer men noted the differences in relational expectations in recent newcomers than Westernized gay men:

230

If there was gay arranged marriage, and it was possible, people would be doing it. If there was a way to go on, so for example, we have these matrimony websites. Shaadi.com, for example, um, if there was a gay part to Shaadi.com, that was only accessible for gay guys, um, that is exactly what they want, because what that happens is you message someone, it’s like Christian Mingle type thing. . . . You start talking to people and then you might be able to meet on dates. So my sister met her husband of ten, uh, eleven years now through Shaadi.com. So if that was there that’s possible. A lot of times what you find is I’ll be talking to, I might be talking to maybe a newcomer guy, right? Not in my role as, as a health coordinator, but in my personal life, I might be talking to them, and they will refuse to show me their face, but they’ll want to be boyfriends within twenty minutes of chatting. I think it’s they want that stability of relationship. They want the label maybe, but they just want that stability of relationship that I can have someone to depend on. (Dev)

Referencing “Shaadi,” a popular matchmaking website in India that arranges marriages, Dev noted how many newcomers might experience some disjuncture between their relational expectations from their own ethno-racial communities and the relational orientations within gay online apps. Describing his own personal life dating, Dev explained how, after talking to a newcomer, the relationship expectations will jump to a long-term commitment “within twenty minutes of chatting.” Within both Dev’s personal and professional life, he sees how the desired relationship outcome of recent newcomers might be more long-term oriented. Bernie, who works within East-Asian communities in outreach, mentioned how for Asian men, the amount of online discrimination and a lack of validation could lead to isolation, despite many men going to use apps as soon as the move to Canada: Asian guys too, they face extra barriers, the extra sexual racism, being discriminated against, feeling like there’s a hierarchy in terms of who is more attractive, especially in a North American context, where the majority’s seen as white men, right? White men who are more masculine as well. Like, there’s all these stereotypes Asian men face, and the also have to face more rejection and feelings of not having as much support in terms of validation or affirmation that they’re attractive as well. Um, that’s coming from mainstream media, representation of Asian men . . . whether you’re a newcomer here, or just newly immigrated here, or newly coming out as a gay Asian guy, gay apps is one of the first places you’re going to meet, try to meet new friends, meet new people, but that’s also where you see more blatant discrimination in terms of discrimination towards preferences, or “no Asians,” or sometimes it’s not even the phrase “no Asians,” it’s just like, “only looking for white guys,” or “only looking for Latinos” or something. (Bernie)

As Bernie mentioned, despite the discrimination that Asian men might experience online, GSSAs are still “one of the first places” individuals might go to make new friends and find community. Despite GSSAs highly sexualized connotations, it is possible that, by placing a sense

231 of hope in relationality and sexuality, many gay subjects can foster new forms of community and coalitional politics. Bernie’s hope that it “will be different this time” indicated how he placed hope for relationality in his sexuality, meaning that not all individuals who use Grindr necessarily conceptualize their sexualities as negative and individualistic, or some might imagine potential futurities through their sexuality in order to build queer relationalities. Hope “bound” participants to Grindr; they placed their hope in it as that which might bring them some form of satisfaction or desired outcome. Mark articulated that he had experiences wherein he hoped that the particular hook-up could be “different this time.” Additionally, Kashi stated that he used Grindr with the hope of “finding that friend or that special someone” to end up with. These excerpts indicate how hope attaches—or binds— individuals to Grindr, despite that they may delete the app and then come back to it later. Ahmed (2010b) writes: If the future is that which does not exist, which is always before us, in the whisper of the “just ahead,” then hope also involves imagination, a wishfulness that teaches us about what we strive for in the present. Hope is a wish and an expectation that a desired possibility is “becoming actual.” (p. 182)

Ahmed (2010b) articulates that hope, as a feeling, provides an avenue through which to conceptualize what kinds of futurity’s individuals might imagine. Mark understood GSSAs and hook up culture in general to be avenues of connection that held potential for relational futurities (“Maybe I’ll change his mind” or “it’s going to be different this time”), particularly in the possibility that a hook-up could provide an avenue into a romantic connection.

Haro: “We Had a Really Good Time, Good Connection, Good Sex that Night, and He Did Call Me” Haro, a 43-year-old cisgender East Asian gay man, explained how, during one anonymous hook-up arranged online, he ended up meeting his current long-term romantic partner. Haro elaborated: It was supposed to be a hook up, and it was a one-night stand. . . . I thought, you know, he lived close to me, and I met him and I really liked him a lot. And I gave him my phone number, my email, and I’m like, “we had a really good time, good connection, good sex that night,” and he did call me. He did email me afterwards and here we are. 15 years later, we’re, you know, like, this is what it’s come to.

232

Haro entered the hook-up with the idea that it would be a transactional sexual exchange, but ended up connecting with his sexual partner, providing his phone number, and eventually entering into a long-term romantic relationship. The progression of this connection echoes a reality that reflects what Mark mentioned about the “hope” that individuals may place in their hook-ups. Muñoz (2009) argues for a form of “queerness as collectivity.” It could be noted here that many participants are looking for forms of queer relationality in Grindr, or at least, queer romance. Queer romance and relationality are not necessarily the same, as queer romance might still follow alongside heteronormative scripts for romantic love; Muñoz’s (2009) writing on queer collectivity considers how queer sex can be relational, but not necessarily reinforce normative kinship patterns or liberal notions of queer identity. Muñoz (2009) articulates that liberal conceptions of queer community and sexuality are resistant to the “contamination of race, gender, or other particularities that taint the purity of sexuality as a singular trope of difference” (p. 11). Moreover, Muñoz speaks of a “we” that is “beside” identity categories and singular definitions of identity, or a “belonging-in-difference,” (p. 20). In other words, individuals are being included in a group because of their differences, rather than despite their differences. It is important to consider how Muñoz conceptualizes queer sexuality as relational between and “beside” differences and his utopian take on queer sex. Muñoz considers queer sex as holding utopian potentialities, as this provides queers with “a space outside heteronormativity. It permits us to conceptualize new worlds and realities” (p. 35). While Haro’s narrative might still fall within heteronormative presumptions regarding relationships (i.e. that a long-term romantic relationship is what will bring happiness and should be an ultimate goal), there is still a level of relationality in Haro’s narrative of his hook-up, exemplified in his story of he and his current romantic partner “liking” each other a lot, exchanging contact information, and continuing to communicate with each other (“he did call me. He did email me afterwards and here we are,15 years later, we’re, you know, like, this is what it has come to”), their lived experiences engaging with GSSAs and hook-up cultures do not match what theorists within the negative strand of queer theory might theorize as the “no future” of gay sex. For these individuals, such as Haro, Kashi, or Mark, their sexualities hold potentiality. That is, they hold hope for a more relational and ongoing experience.

233

Frank and Isaiah: The “Goal” of Hooking-Up and the “Instagays” For some individuals, the promise of happiness that Grindr presents involves sex and the expectation that different kinds of sexual encounters would provide forms of happiness. For example, Frank, a 33-year-old white cisgender gay man, identified his “hope” that using Grindr would lead to a hook-up or sexual encounter. According to Frank, it was not the potential of a future romantic connection that is the promise of happiness, but the excitement that might come from finding a good sexual connection online: So my partner of years and I have a somewhat open relationship . . . not polyamorous, but we sleep with other people. So usually that’s like the goal. But mostly it’s like a procrastination tool. I was hoping it would lead to something in the future, but it’s mostly been procrastination. (Frank, 33, white cisgender gay man)

For Frank, as someone in a “somewhat open relationship,” his utilization of Grindr was to find other sexual encounters and hook-ups. While he was not looking for a long-term connection, he still placed some “hope” in his usage of Grindr that it would end up with a desirable outcome for him. Still, similar to other participants such as Charlie and Michael, Frank eluded to his ambivalence towards Grindr in his statement that “I was hoping it would lead to something in the future, it’s mostly been procrastination,” indicating disappointment in his usage of Grindr. Still, the promise of sex does not just indicate a sexual encounter, as sex, particularly for gay men, can be something that one can utilize to find belonging and community. This was exemplified in the narrative of Isaiah, a disabled 34-year old, White cisgender queer man, who discussed his feelings when seeing “Instagays” on the social networking application Instagram, a term for white gay men who are very muscular and look very similar. Isaiah described how sex becomes a way for men who look similar to one another to congregate and find community while excluding those who are different from them: A lot of the guys who get on that way [hook-up often] look almost like each other. Like, go on any Instagay’s Instagram for five seconds, and what do you have? A muscular white guy with a beard who goes to the gym five days a week. And his boyfriend looks exactly the same. And the guy he’s fucking looks exactly the same (Isaiah, 34, white, cisgender, disabled gay man)

Ahmed (2010b) proposes that promises of happiness are organized through individual likes and preferences, which influence how an individual conveys themselves in the world. According to Ahmed, when individuals establish what they like and what they are like, they draw boundaries between those who are like them and those who are not. As Ahmed explains:

234

“We come to have our likes, which might even establish what we are like. The bodily horizon could be redescribed as a horizon of likes. To have “our likes” means certain things are gathered around us” (p. 24). In Isaiah’s experience, he imagined these boundaries as being drawn between the men who “look almost like each other” and himself as a disabled man. Additionally, those who engage with gay online hook-up culture and those who seek different kinds of intimacies. Isaiah’s naming of how all these men “look exactly the same” speaks to how they might surround themselves with a “horizon of likes” (Ahmed, 2010b, p. 24) or men who look and act similarly to one another. Ahmed articulates: To have “our likes” means certain things are gathered around us. Of course, we do encounter new things. To be more or less open to new things is to be more or less open to the incorporation of things into our near sphere. Incorporation may be conditional on liking what we encounter. (p. 24)

Isaiah’s description of the Instagays illustrated his thoughts about how these men might congregate around one another based on holding similar sexual interests and appearances. Isaiah also elaborated on how others who look similar (“and the guy he’s fucking looks the exact same”) might be incorporated into similar horizons. He continued to elaborate how, in his view, many gay men who might be classified as “Instagays” associate with one another because of how they look: So they all go in these little packs with each other. And so I feel like there is a big privilege of, like, “oh, we can just get on, we’re all friends, we all sort of know each other, we all sort of hang out.” And so, like, “we can just do this because that’s just what we do.” (Isaiah, 34, white, cisgender, disabled gay man)

Ahmed (2010b) writes that happiness “makes certain forms of personhood valuable” and that the “face of happiness” is similar to the “face of privilege” (p. 11). Happiness directs individuals towards what is seen as having value, while what is not considered valuable is turned away from. Isaiah noted the “privilege” that comes with being an Instagay and how, for him as a disabled queer man, he has to “prove” he is “viable.” To be an Instagay, in Isaiah’s opinion, is to be oriented towards one another: to see one another as attractive and good and to associate with one another. Describing his own experiences and frustrations, he stated: “I am a person, and you can actually interact with me, and it’s okay. If I just hopped on and said ‘hey, I want to chat with a guy,’ nobody would, there would be no response.” In comparison to the Instagays, Isaiah described feeling that he had to “prove” himself to others to be considered a sexual subject and

235 for individuals to interact with him. The Instagays, who Isaiah noted as “white, able-bodied, muscular, masculine guys,” turn towards one another as they see each other as subjects of worth and value within the affective economies of Grindr. Isaiah, as a self-identified disabled femme queer man is turned away from and considered less than human, or not a full person, since his embodiment does not conform to these ideals. Isaiah moved to discussing a sexual encounter he had recently had where even after the hook-up, Isaiah felt shame and that he was unsure of his own feelings about the encounter. Starting to describe the experience he stated, “Like, the other night, this guy was a literal stranger. The minute he was done he was like, ‘kay, bye,’ and I was like, ‘why, wait. Hang on.’” The abruptness with which his sexual partner left after sex produced negative feelings for Isaiah; he questioned himself and felt disappointment that he did not feel the “rush” he was expecting: After he left, I was questioning, “what did I just do? I just had literally invited a stranger into my house, and I was in bed in a vulnerable position, did things with him, and he left. What just happened?” It didn’t feel, I still didn’t get the rush. . . . I didn’t give myself permission to really enjoy all of that, cause I was like, well it has to, it has to mean more. (Isaiah, 34, white, cisgender, disabled gay man)

Instead of feeling happiness after his sexual encounter, Isaiah questioned himself about why he “didn’t get that rush.” This feeling of disappointment came from his experience of conflicting relational norms for intimacies. Battling between his own desire for more emotional intimacy and his wish to perform normative expectations of gay sexualities, Isaiah liminally positioned himself between competing norms. He placed himself between anonymous sex with no emotional investment and the imperative for emotional commitment and attachment with sexuality. As a disabled man who often experiences rejection within GSSAs, these competing norms left Isaiah feeling conflicted about his experience, and unsure if the encounter provided the happiness he expected. Continuing to elaborate on this conflict, Isaiah noted these tensions and his own reluctance to tell others about his sexual encounter: It was so weird cause part of me was like, “cool, I was just a total slut,” and the other part was like, “oh, that feels . . . I don’t know how I feel about it.” I went, like, he left and I called my care worker, and they helped me, they put me back in my sleep position, and they were like, “what happened?” And I was like, “oh, you know,” I was like, “oh, you know, I shifted in the bed.” I made up some lies so I didn’t have to explain why I had moved. So they put me back to bed, but I felt weird. Like, I just slept with this dude, I’ll probably never see him again. And part of me was like, “oh, I didn’t want to be his boyfriend, but I wanted something like, some sort of regular agreement that yeah, maybe we’ll hang out again.” (Isaiah, 34, white, cisgender, disabled gay man)

236

In Ahmed’s (2010b) analysis of the politics of hope, she states: “happy and hopeful subjects are well adjusted because they have adjusted to a demand they do not know has been made” (p. 189). According to Ahmed, hope can function through social conformity as individuals conform to societal norms and regulate their behaviours through aspirations for societal approval and success. Isaiah identified that he felt uncomfortable with the gay norm of being able to have sex without any expectations for future relationality. Ahmed’s (2004b) theorization of affective economies is useful to draw upon to understand Isaiah’s narrative. Emotional capital is afforded to some gay subjects, particularly those who meet the “A Gay” or “Instagay” aesthetic, while others who are considered failing such expectations, or outside the bounds of such desired forms of embodiment (“white able- bodied, muscular, masculine” as Isaiah described), are seen as less valuable and less included. The gay emotional investment in such homonormative forms of embodiment, such as the white muscular athletic body, illustrates how such forms of aesthetic and embodied norms are desirable and turned towards, while others are turned away from. Irish Sociologist, Paul Ryan’s (2019) analysis within Male Sex Work in the Digital Age: Curated Lives explores how social and erotic capital is highly influential in the lives of European male digital sex workers. Ryan’s analysis illustrates how erotic and social capital, or the cultivation of a desired form of embodiment through self-stylization, physical fitness, and the conformity to a specific ideal for sexual attractiveness (Hakim, 2010), are present through the standardization of the gay muscular gym body and aesthetic. This appearance is considered a norm to be aspired to in order to ascertain privilege and belonging in mainstream gay communities. Ryan (2019) writes that “while the men may come from different backgrounds, their smooth and muscular bodies represent a global, standardised template that has become idealised and fetishised within European gay culture” (p. 30). Similarly, Tziallas (2015) notes that Grindr allows the opportunity for self-eroticization and the usage of the self and the body as a tool to gain social and erotic capital; this can translate into community belonging and popularity. However, as noted by Isaiah during our interview, for some individuals who self- eroticize themselves, due to being outside of privileged forms of embodiment within gay communities and being deemed lower in such hierarchies of desire, their self-stylization leads to othering and abjection. This was highlighted when Isaiah stated “If I go overly sexual like

237 everybody else is doing and I do it, then all of a sudden they see it, and it feels like they are taken aback. If I’m like, “hey, want to suck my big disabled cock?” Then all of a sudden people are like “whoa, whoa, that’s too much.” Thus, within the affective contours of Grindr, self- eroticization is only responded to positively if it is done by those who hold dominant beauty norms. Within the affective economies of Grindr is the tension between heteronormative demands for long-term romantic relationships as the relational ideal and the hyper-sexual and consumptive norms within gay communities. These different socio-sexual norms cause a tension and dissonance for many individuals who feel that they must either have anonymous hook-ups or find a long-term boyfriend through Grindr. Within Isaiah’s earlier explanation of the “A Gays” or the “Instagays,” it was clear how those who look similar to one another and meet dominant aesthetic norms are able to fuse their friendships and sexual relationships by having sex with each other. Adam Isaiah Green’s (2014, 2015) theorization of sexual fields in the context of his research of gay black men in gay establishments in Chelsea, New York City is helpful to explore in this context. Green (2014) explains how a sexual field “emerges when a subset of actors with potential romantic or sexual interest in one another congregate in physical or virtual space and orient themselves toward one another according to a logic of desirability imminent to their collective relation” (p. 27, cited in Green, 2015, p. 24). Green (2015) notes the relevance of understanding sexual fields in the context of GSSAs, particularly “because many websites and social apps allow users to search on particular criteria facilitate[ing] the development of ever-narrower preference structures around age, race, class, ethnicity, religion, body type, relationship type, and so on” (p. 37). This is important in relation to Ahmed’s (2010b) point about “likes.” She states: “in rejecting the proximity of certain objects, we define the places that we know we do not wish to go, the things we do not wish to have, touch, taste, hear, feel, see, those things we do not want to keep within reach” (Ahmed, 2010b, p. 24). By using apps to decide what they “like” through filters that dictate who users can see and who they cannot (based on categories of race, age, tribes, etc.), users structure their experiences on apps so that the sexual fields within apps reinforce pre-existing hierarchies of desire. Lastly, within the affective economies on Grindr and other similar GSSAs, participants such as Isaiah noted the pathologization of emotional intimacy and connection. Sociologist Tim

238

Edwards (1994), in his work on gay masculinities, notes the connections between gay men’s sexual practices and the normative productions of gay masculinities. Critiquing the commonplace practice of severing the ties between emotional intimacy and gay sexualities, Edwards (1994) describes his own personal frustration with such a divide. He expresses that many gay men “seem to find it practically impossible to relate emotionally and sexually to another person at the same time.” He states that “these men seek escape routes from emotionality in persistent promiscuity and anti-commitment attitudes or a plain lack of emotional communication and explanation” (Edwards, 1994, p. 1). To tie emotional commitment with sexuality can leave one deemed a “gay failure,” provoking questions of one’s “desperation” for a partner, lack of confidence, or emotional instability. This “confidence culture,” which Gill and Orgad (2015) theorize, entails a neoliberal self-enterprising form of personhood that employs confidence as a technology of the self and form of self-governance in a fashion where confidence is a means to stylize the self for self-gain, pleasure, and sexiness. Gill and Orgad (2015) describe how this governmental rationality targets women in particular, and posits a gendered ideology whereby This apparently feminist technology of confidence, which incites women to constantly regulate and work on their bodies and selves in (the cruelly optimistic) pursuit of happiness and success, promotes shame about dependence, failure and vulnerability—the lifeblood of neoliberalism. (p. 340)

I argue, along with Gill and Orgad (2015), that a similar form of self-governance impacts gay men whereby emotional vulnerability and failure become associated with feminization and a lack of compartmentalization whereby confidence and happiness through sexuality are deployed as technologies of the self (Foucault, 1988). This leads to affective economies online on Grindr that privilege emotional detachment and individualism in gay hook-up cultures while pathologizing those who seem less independent. During our interview, Isaiah noted how he has often felt that he is read as less emotionally independent because of having cerebral palsy and having a work schedule that does not meet the typical 9–5 routine: A lot of my time is alone, by myself, overthinking stuff, because I’m alone, by myself, because of disability. So when I text somebody at two in the afternoon, them saying, “oh, I’m busy at work,” my brain doesn’t compute that because I’m also working, but I’m at home hanging out. I can’t. . . . So, like, when people, like, non-disabled, able-bodied gay men tell me they’re busy, I don’t, I get it.

239

Within the affective economies of gay online dating and hooking-up, Isaiah’s desire to connect with someone emotionally in the middle of the afternoon is taken as emotionally dependent and outside of the bounds of the typical professionalized gay discourse. Rumens and Ozturk’s (2019) research on the gendered discourses within professional gay men noted the interconnections between hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and gay men’s professionalized discourses. Rumen and Ozturk’s participants reinforced tenets of hegemonic masculinity in their work life, focusing on notions of independence, “having balls,” or being confident, while reinforcing heterosexuality as dominant, normal, and ideal. Moreover, Rumen and Ozturk’s analysis indicates how a component of the gay professional subjectivity is a repudiation of femininity and holds feminine connotations. This includes the regulation of emotional expressivity that could lead one to being considered “bitchy,” “catty,” or associated with overt emotionality (see Clarkson, 2007). Participants in their study reported anti-effeminacy attitudes, with Rumen and Ozturk specifically articulating how “an overlapping heteronormative discourse of homophobia and masculinity serves to repudiate the feminine in other gay men, acting as a regulatory mechanism” (p. 683). The regulatory mechanisms of homophobia and masculinity are furthered through femme-phobic rhetoric, which seeks to affectively regulate the communications and interactions of gay men within socio-sexual environments. Isaiah further made direct references to femmephobia by connecting discourses of “neediness,” with femmephobia and the classification of emotional intimacy as needy: It’s totally femme-phobic and it’s totally, like, “oh, you’re needy? Why can’t you be more, like, butch about it? “Why can’t you just not . . . ?” And people haven’t said this directly, but it’s totally, like, connected to, “you want too much. You expect too much. You’re too emotional. You’re too intense.” Like, all these things that are coded for saying, like, “why can’t you just be, like, masc for masc, bro?” If I came out and said, like, “hey, bro. Wanna suck your dick and then we’re done.” And I’ve tried that. And every single time I’ve tried that, whether I tried apps, or whether it’s a face-to-face meeting, I cannot do it.

Isaiah’s articulation of, first, his experiences being classified as needy and, second, the feminization of emotional expression and intimacy in gay men’s communities, furthers previous research that investigates instances wherein gay men disassociate emotional intimacy from their sexual environments (Edwards, 2005; Elder et al., 2015; Sánchez et al., 2009). Within the affective economies of Grindr and similar GSSAs, some gay men might conform to hegemonic ideals by interacting with other men through short sentences, using highly sexualized phrases,

240 and disassociating themselves from emotional intimacy, expressivity, and romantic love to align themselves with the collective of Grindr. In this sense, emotional states are not purely individualized or psychologized states but are also involved in the social and collective community of Grindr in order to ensure that they work to produce the imagined collective community of Grindr. While important research has begun to discuss femmephobia in queer communities (Blair & Hoskin, 2015; Brightwell, 2018), with specific mentioning of femmephobia and anti- effeminacy attitudes and experiences amongst gay, bisexual, and queer men (Davies, 2020; Miller & Behm-Morawitz, 2016; Taywaditep, 2002), there is further work required to analyze the affective dimensions of femmephobia, particularly as it pertains to GSSAs and environments. The feminization of emotional expression in gay communities has been written about in previous research literature. For example, Clarkson (2007), wrote an analysis of StraightActing.com, a website for gay men who identify as “Straight Acting,” or masculinized gay men who do not consider themselves effeminate, differentiates between the “Everyday Joes” and the “Pissy, Bitchy Queens” in the StraightActing.com boards. Importantly, Clarkson’s analysis illustrates how not all gay men necessarily tie homosexuality with femininity, illustrating how homosexuality can become associated with hyper masculinity and traits of dominance. As pointed out by Clarkson (2007), although some theorists, such as Halperin (1995) and Pronger (1992), might conceptualize gay men’s glorification of masculinity as a type of mimicry, this can be seen as consolidating an essentialized gay identity (i.e. “Straight Acting Gays”) as the associations between masculinity and homosexuality “other” those gay men who are feminized. Clarkson (2007) notes how muscularlity and dominance are glorified in the StraightActing.com boards, which marginalizes “those gay men who have embraced femininity, who have rejected the quest for masculinity, or who cannot attain the masculine ideal” (p. 202). This is important to consider in relation to norms for affect and emotion in gay hook-up culture, as it can glorify gendered norms which encourage men to be overly sexual and emotionally detached in their sexualities. García-Gómez’s (2020) research on the profile descriptions of queer men on Grindr furthers this point: By denying any feminine characteristics that may be traditionally associated with queer men (e.g. “I’m not an ordinary gay man. I don’t like going shopping or camping it up”), these men attempt to gain power by embracing the male position (i.e. judgement: positive

241

self-evaluation). This configuration of masculinity maintains the ideology of hegemonic masculine practices as superior to any other alternative masculine practices. (p. 14)

These dissociative practices that gay men might engage with to separate themselves from other gay men might operate on an affective level. Additionally, these may encourage men to reject emotional connection and intimacy with other men, particularly through sexuality, due to its potentially feminizing connotations and the hyper-sexual norms of online hook-up cultures.

Conclusion: Unhappy Queers and Disrupting Homonormativity Throughout this chapter, I have explored and connected diverse theories with the goal of better understanding the affective productions of gay men who utilize socio-sexual applications, with a particular focus on the Grindr app. The “bad feelings” and emotional disconnection commonly discussed in relationships with Grindr and gay men’s experiences online provides an avenue to examine the centrality of negative affects online and how even seemingly positive ones, such as hope, can be cruelly optimistic (Berlant, 2007a). Instead of seeking to remedy such negative feelings and affects, I highlight the importance of noticing their circulation online and their disruptive potential, particularly in relationship to homonormative regimes. As explicated by Lovelock (2019), homonormative imperatives and discourses encourage gay subjects to feel notions of pride, self-confidence, and inner strength through their sexual identity, as well as to cling to their identity marker and its related community and collectives for shelter and belonging. Lovelock (2019) expands on the concept of homonormativity to describe protohomonormativity, a position and orientation one takes to their own sexual identity and the affective productions from such a position: Protohomonormativity, and the cultural texts through which it takes shape, position this kind of “integration” as contingent upon a particular way of feeling about one’s gay identity: happy, self-accepting and proud. My conceptualization of protohomonormativity homes in on the affective contours of homonormativity, critiquing how mainstream discourses not only encourage gay men to do certain things, but to be certain things; specifically, to be happy. (p. 550)

Thus, for those who feel feelings of unbelonging, isolation, and loneliness on Grindr and similar GSSAs, negative feelings can be a challenge to normative ideas of belonging and identity.29

29 Queer of colour critics, such as Muñoz (2009) have critiqued the reliance on negativity and “bad feelings” in white gay male theorizing, noting how “the antirelational in queer studies was the gay white man’s last stand” (Muñoz, 2006, p. 825). Without creating a simplistic binary between the relational and anti-relational, which Ruti

242

Moreover, loneliness can be theorized as a queer cultural production, a challenge to normative notions of gay identity (Halperin, 2012), and a challenge to homonormative ideas of inclusion, progress, and rights-based victories (Lovelock, 2019). Lovelock (2019) notes that homonormativity functions in gay men’s communities by facilitating the idea that, by engaging in consumer-based behaviours and by presenting as an ideal gay subject (white, masculine, “fit,” integrated), individuals can ascertain happiness and full inclusion in liberal gay politics. Of course, this is also a form of cruel optimism. Inclusion is always a tenuous process with specific scripts for happiness which subjects must follow. Ahmed (2010b) makes a point that “happiness scripts could be thought of as straightening devices, ways of aligning bodies with what is already lined up” (p. 91). While many might adopt a form of cynicism about Grindr to cope and to detach from love and romance (in order to not elevate their hopes), Berlant (2011) describes how even those who appear detached and “cool” can be quite attached and emotional as a way to navigate cycles of optimism and disappointment and their own expectations: The political depressive might be cool, cynical, shut off, searingly rational, or averse, and yet, having adopted a mode that might be called detachment, may not really be detached at all, but navigating an ongoing and sustaining relation to the scene and circuit of optimism and disappointment. (p. 27)

Navigating such feelings of optimism and disappointment when using Grindr can result in some users, such as Kashi, deleting and reinstalling Grindr as they strive for one more attempt at making a meaningful connection via the app. Navigating the affective economies of Grindr requires managing one’s expectations and moving between optimism and disappointment, or hope and cynicism, as subjects seek out acceptance and belonging from others without explicitly making this fact known. This means that the promise of happiness which Grindr promotes—in the form of connection and community—holds different meanings for different people and shifts based on one’s experiences online. While many might enter Grindr hoping for a romantic relationship, through experiences of cynicism and rejection, a user might shift to seeking a hook-

(2017) critiques, it is important to note how white gay male dissatisfaction with homonormativity might be a means in itself to disrupt white gay male norms, but I am highly skeptical of any glorification of anti-relationality or the power of GSSAs to disrupt homonormativity through anti-sociality, which scholars such as Roach (2019) have argued. Moreover, criticisms of the family as a site of the reproduction of homonormativity are limited, and as Muñoz (1999, 2009, 2020) describes, often quite problematic in their assumptions that queer liberal spaces are havens for queer subjects of colour. As noted by Muñoz, how queer subjects of colour work within and against the traditional confines of family units through disidentification can, in itself, be seen as a way of disrupting Western liberal norms for sexual identification.

243 up, hoping that the hook-up could mean that they are “doing” gay “right.” For some, such as Charlie, the promise of Grindr could be one of community and commonality, with the realization that one might not receive such a place within this community. Ultimately, Grindr can be seen as disrupting users’ promises of happiness, the promises initially placed within the app, and potentially disrupting notions of gay belonging and commonality. The affective politics on Grindr are not just that romance and intimacy are abjected—as might be those seeking such connectivities—but also that the affective productions and individual feelings of the subjects seeking such intimacies can potentially disrupt homonormative ideas of belonging through their dissonance.

Intermezzo Throughout my interviews with Isaiah, Charlie, Frank, and Haro, I noted their becomings as well as my own as we moved within and outside of identity categories in our vulnerable conversations with each other. Through these affective assemblages, Ahmed’s writings appeared as a way for me to think within the affective intensities of these interviews, particularly as negative affects percolated throughout the narratives and stories of these men. My own embodied reaction towards these men began as a response to the narratives in these interviews before words were provided. For example, during my interview with Charlie, tears started littering my eyes before I even realized what was showing on my facial responses to his stories. Part of this could be thought of as my own shame at my affective responses to his narrative: the idea that while they are many very notable differences in our journeys, particularly through my whiteness, I still could relate to elements of his narrative in the loneliness he was describing. While analyzing and writing-up Charlie’s narrative, my own tears and affective responses continued. As I wrote, my body became tighter and I was tempted to turn away from my laptop at times as I thought with Charlie’s responses, Ahmed’s theorization, and my past histories. I felt shame as I wrote and analyzed my data for other participants, including Charlie’s, as it affected me in a way that “disrupt[ed] orders, forms, and substances” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 336). Shame appeared, not just as a personal and psychological interior state, but as an affective production that unsettled my sense of self and gay subjectivity. Probyn (2010) proposes that writing shame involves an embodied affective response that disrupts Cartesian divides between mind and body, moving “experientially—the body feels very different in shame than in

244 enjoyment—but it also reworks how we understand the body and its relation to other bodies” (p. 74). Writing these chapters, particularly working through the narratives of Isaiah and Charlie, was not necessarily an enjoyable experience as I wrestled with my own shame and recollections of past experiences of isolation, loneliness, and also worked with the shame from my earlier lack of awareness for how the issues of belonging, acceptance, and intimacy which I began my project with were actually connected to greater structures of ableism and nationalism. I very purposefully did not try to “overcome” this shame in my writing as I started to make these connections within my thinking/feeling/writing. These are linkages and connections that emerged in the “field” of my project through my interviews and analysis process as I realized that much of the data that I was collecting had many more connections and relationalities than I was originally imagining. It is ethically important to differentiate between shame and guilt as affects in my own becoming. Probyn (2005) differentiates between shame and guilt by describing how guilt involves a fleeting emotional state that quickly diminishes after a singular action, or as Probyn writes, “[w]e feel guilty, so we write a check or add our names to e-mail petitions. Then we bask in the glow of the self-righteous until the next moment we are made to feel guilty” (p. 46). Probyn further distinguishes between guilt as a binary that one possesses or does not possess, and shame as an ongoing process that is somatic, deeply felt in the body through histories and ongoing experiences. Probyn’s differentiation is useful for conceptualizing my own experience of shame in my process of thinking/writing/feeling and working with my data within my affective encounters with Isaiah and Charlie. I use thinking/writing/feeling here to note deconstruct any Cartesian notion of thinking with data or writing as an analytic process and to not separate them from anything affective or felt. I will expand upon this in my conclusion chapter, but this combination of thinking/feeling/writing is important for my own processes of becoming. However, the shame that I felt probed further thinking as connections emerged within the assemblages of my own writing. Instead of viewing my shame as something to overcome, it prompted moments of becoming where I shifted against static notions of my gay subjectivity to creatively imagine forms of difference beyond identification and categorization and create new connections between gay identification, ableism, femmephobia, and logics of empire, as I noted in my analysis of Charlie and Isaiah.

245

As I wrote, my thinking/feeling/writing shifted beyond identity and the affective assemblages of my analytic encounters with Isaiah and Charlie’s data took on forms of expression that worked beyond representation. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) note how “assemblages are defined simultaneously by matters of expression that take on consistency independently of the form-substance relation” (p. 336). The affective assemblages within/through shame in my writing worked to probe new ideas, thinking, and analytic possibilities in my own becoming. In my positionality, thinking/feeling/writing became important affectively as “matters of expression” beyond representation and involved in my own becomings and affective encounters with my data and analyses. Writing shame became thinking/writing/feeling shame, as Probyn (2010) articulates, citing Deleuze, how “shame arises from a collision of bodies, ideas, history, and place” (p. 82). In Probyn’s explanation of Deleuze’s writing on shame, shame emerges not only as an interior psychological state or a condition of self-guilt, but as an affect produced through encounters with histories, writings, and traumas by which one is heavily implicated even through the embodied encounter of reading. Probyn importantly notes this in her explanation of Deleuze’s writings on shame. Describing the death of Italian writer Primo Levi through a fall from his apartment’s balcony, Probyn (2010) notes the debate surrounds his writings on Auschwitz, both in terms of his own experiences at the camp and revisiting the camp in his later years. Probyn articulates how the quick response to Levi’s death as an “accidental” fall might be due to “a need to assuage our collective shame and guilt” in the collective role that individuals play in the ongoing structures and past histories. Probyn (2010) states: If writers commit suicide because of their writing, surely we, the bystanders of history, are more fully implicated in their anguish and death. This understanding would charge our reading of their work. The shame in reading about the atrocities committed by humans on humans would be amplified by and combined with guilt and even disgust; readers might have to turn away. Would we turn away from Levi if this were the case? I hope not. (p. 85)

In my affective encounters with Charlie’s data, my own shame became present through my thinking/feeling/writing, I came to realize that even in my own experiences that drove me to begin this research journey—loneliness, isolation, longing for intimacy—my own subjectivity and positionality granted me a level of inclusion and how my inclusion within such structures

246 might be problematic in itself. This is a point that I will also expand upon in my final chapter as I challenge inclusion discourses through my own becoming with/in this research project.

Chapter Seven: Becoming in the Middle of it All: The Not-Conclusion

Gay men’s ability to separate sex from emotion is often naturalized, evoked as a basic feature of gay men’s gendered nature. In this view, gay men separate sex from emotion as a matter of course. But haunting the notion that this separation is something gay men just do is a sense that maintaining this separation is something gay men must do, must do with caution and care and discipline, must not ever fail to do. —Jacobs, “An Excess of Love,” p. 32

A line of becoming is not defined by points that it connects, or by points that compose it; on the contrary, it passes between points, it comes up through the middle . . . a line of becoming has neither beginning nor end, departure nor arrival, origin nor destination . . . Becoming is the movement by which the line frees itself from the point, and renders the point indiscernible: the rhizome, the opposite of arborescence; breaks away from arborescence. —Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, pp. 293–294.

“Too Much” I’ll do anything to get to the rush Now I’m dancing, and I’m dancing too much So be careful if you’re wanting this touch ‘Cause if I love you, then I love you too much

Is this too, is this too Is this too much? Is this too, is this too Is this too much? —Carly Rae Jepsen

To state that writing this thesis has been an emotional journey for me would be an absolute limitation in words. In my own processes of becoming through writing this thesis, I employed my feelings and affective productions to seek something beyond categorization, or a minoritarian-becoming that disrupts dominant identity-based norms. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe: “Minorities are objectively definable states . . . but they must also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming whose value is to trigger uncontrollable movements and deterritorializations of the mean of the majority” (p. 106). In both the data collection and the analytic process, my “becoming” as a white cisgender able-bodied femme gay man was immanently entangled within the process of thinking and writing with theorists, such as Foucault, Kristeva, and Ahmed—and many others—that productively and provocatively allowed

247 248 my research to move in new lines of flight. In truth, I was not quite sure what this research project would look like at the beginning of data collection, nor did I have an exact “plan” per se. Admittedly, finding words to even describe the exact “phenomena” I wished to investigate was difficult because I was aware how my own experiences and feelings in relation to these apps— particularly Grindr—have shaped my subjectivity. After doing much reading into affect theory, I decided that would be an appropriate lens to use in combination with queer theory. Taking this approach, I focused on different theorists in each chapter and realized throughout my processes of thinking/feeling/writing that I had been affectively drawn to each theorist I focused upon because of how I saw myself reflected within their respective theories. Foucault’s theory of governmentality resonated with me, reflecting the exclusion I experienced within Grindr; my refusal to abide by the common scripts online and my struggles with presenting myself as emotionally autonomous and self-confident could related to greater governmental norms propagated through gay technologies and media. Kristeva’s abjection resonated affectively with me, particularly in her description of the milk being spit out and processes of self-abjection and abjecting others. Reminding me of experiences of automatically rejecting myself through my gut responses to interactions online, I often felt a process of rejecting myself while simultaneously being rejected (or rejecting others) for the amount of emotional “closeness” and intimacy being asked for. Ahmed’s writings on affective economies and the “promises” of happiness wrapped up my theorizations neatly since what initially provoked my interest in the topic of online apps my own failure to ascertain happiness through my usage of GSSAs. As I discuss in my last data chapter, Grindr, itself, holds many different promises for individuals (not always of long-term romance), and can even shatter the promises of identity and common belonging and community through its failure to deliver. In my thesis writing, many of the words and language I used to describe how I felt when collecting and analyzing my data arrived late. In my process of thinking/feeling/writing—a process that similarly to Lather’s (2017) “getting lost”—involved conceptualizing how “we are all a little lost in finding our way into research practices that open to the irreducible heterogeneity of the other” (p. 169). Similarly to that of Lather’s, this process of thinking/feeling/writing meant that I had to “move out of commanding, controlling, mastery discourses and into a knowledge that recognizes the inevitable blind spots of our knowing” (p. 170). Accepting my own inability to to describe the processes I was engaging in was difficult as I

249 worked through my thesis, trusting my gut instincts and affective responses. I still feel as though the actual words I used to engage with my work are not fully formed and, because of this, I understand my own analysis as continually becoming in how it has emerged from my analytic assemblages and thresholds different in every encounter. In that sense, the following delineation of my findings is always partial and incomplete, as my analyses could always continue and become something different. In Chapter Four: Foucault’s Governmentality and Gay Intimacies Online, I plugged-in Foucault’s (1991) writings on governmentality, specifically as it pertained to the experiences of Haro, Michael, Frank, Kashi, Charlie, Dominic, Derrick, Mark, and Damien. I plugged-in Foucault’s (1991) writings on governmentality with Gill and Orgad’s (2015) work on the confidence culture to theorize how my participants navigated discourses of self-confidence and independence online, conceptualizing these as privileged affective and feeling states. In the data from social service workers, such as Derrick, Mark, and Damien, the emphasis on interventionist approaches illustrated how happiness, as an affective state, was considered desirable. In the social services outreach work, this state of happiness was encouraged through normalization and specifically working with men to assist them in receiving rejection well. This was specifically illustrated by Derrick, who described the “close but not too close” ideal archetype for gay men in terms of conveying a small amount of interest while still protecting one’s self from becoming emotionally vulnerable with other users. In particular, as noted by Isaiah, app users who are deemed too emotionally dependent on others for emotional validation or are seen as less confident are feminized and experience femmephobia. In Chapter Five: Kristeva’s Abjection, Emotional Vulnerability, and Gay Subjectivity, I plugged-in Kristeva’s (1982) writings on abjection to theorize the specific experiences of Anthony, Michael, Steve, Haro, and Christopher. These participants were app users who noted connections between childhood experiences and their present-day usage of Grindr, GSSAs generally, and their own understandings of their gay subjectivities. Focusing on the data that glowed from these interviews, participants articulated how their exclusion from heterosexuality provided their understanding of gay subjectivity as antithetical to heterosexual norms and relationship structures, such as monogamy and romantic love. Anthony, specifically, articulated how his understanding of gay subjectivity was defiant to heterosexuality and that his failure to properly perform heterosexuality is what constituted his queerness. Haro made connections

250 between his childhood experiences of bullying, feelings of exclusion from being a poor recent Chinese immigrant, and his continual search for validation online. Christopher described his experiences on Grindr through the metaphor of a “metal pig,” which represented Christopher’s idea of the necessity of emotional compartmentalization in gay men’s online sexual cultures. Specifically, he noted how one is encouraged to be “piggy” in their sexuality, or see their romantic and/or emotional attachments as distinctly separate from their sexuality. In Chapter Six: Affective Economies and the Promises of Grindr, I drew from feminist scholar Sara Ahmed’s (2004b, 2010b) writings on affective economies—the circulation of feelings and emotions—and the affective “promises of happiness” that orient individuals towards Grindr through the auspices of happiness, belonging, and community. Putting Ahmed (2004a, 2004b, 2010a) in conversation with other affect theorists such as Berlant (2007a, 2011), this chapter engaged with the feelings produced when Grindr—the object expected to bring happiness—fails to provide the feelings of acceptance and community (or romantic love) anticipated. In this chapter, I analyzed the experiences of Anthony, Steve, Charlie, Haro, Frank, and Isaiah, specifically focusing on the fractions of data that glowed in their interviews. In these participants’ data, the notion that Grindr might involve many “happy objects” (Ahmed, 2010a) or promises that orient individuals towards Grindr, emerged throughout data analysis. The promises of happiness through common gay belonging, community, and identity was illustrated in data from participants, such as Steve and Charlie. In Charlie’s data, through his failure to ascertain a romantic relationship through Grindr, his idea of individual freedom, which he had hoped to achieve through leaving Iran and finding a romantic partner, was disappointed. I noted in this chapter the connection between romantic intimacy, gay belonging, individual freedom, and homonationalist (Puar, 2007) agendas and discourses. The connections between emotional intimacies, gay belonging, and homonationalism are important to continue to investigate in future research. I finish this chapter by suggesting that the negative feelings that arise from men who are disappointed in the “hope” that they might be placing in Grindr could be a beginning place for disrupting homonormative identity-based politics while also articulating how some men might place hope for relationality in their sexual interactions, in contrast with anti-relational queer theories (Bersani, 1987; Edelman, 2004).

251

Implications of Findings In this research project, I analyzed the experiences of gay, bisexual, and queer men who utilize gay socio-sexual apps (GSSAs)—most commonly Grindr—to form connections and intimacies online, as well as the experiences and perspectives of social service workers who specialize in gay men’s online communities. In this sense, I understand the inner psychic feelings of gay men as inherently political and as worth analyzing, diverging from much purely Deleuzian affect theory work that focused on pre-linguistic intensities. Focusing on the affective assemblages of my research interviews, my data analysis process, and my participants’ own experiences using apps and working with men who use such apps, my project is interested in how feelings (or the regulation of feelings) is involved in the construction of normative gay sexual subjectivities and specifically how the management and regulation of emotional intimacies and connections is involved in processes of included and excluded gay subjects. Placing affect theory literature (Ahmed, 2004a, 2010a, 2010b; Berlant, 2007a, 2007b, 2011; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010) in conversation with queer and poststructural theoretical frameworks (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Foucault, 1991; Kristeva, 1982), my analysis specifically focused on the data that “glowed” (MacLure, 2010) and where I had “gut” (Ahmed, 2016) responses in both my analysis and interviews. As described, much of this process eschewed traditional notions of methods in how my approach was driven by my own feelings and affect. In this sense, I was immanently (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) interwoven into my research project; my own subjectivity was heavily embedded into the research process itself. Through this, I do not separate myself from my research findings, nor do I pretend that my analysis is “objective” or “unbiased.” Consistent with my poststructural approach, I was more interested in what “emerged” through the combination of my own subjectivity with the experiences of my participants. The ways through which the Cartesian divide between mind and body manifests in the normative sexual subjectivities of gay men became prominent within my research project as I strove to deconstruct such a divide throughout my theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches. Writings and research on gay men’s sexualities debate the place of Cartesian rationalism and emotional compartmentalization amongst gay men (Elder et al., 2015; Jacobs, 2020). My work expands on how many gay men experience feminization if they fail to compartmentalize their romantic intimacy from their respective sexualities and specifically, how

252 femmephobia operates on an affective level within gay men’s online sexual communities. Jacobs (2020) notes that the norm for emotional compartmentalization in gay men’s sexual cultures reinforces the notion that emotional commitment and intimacy is to be limited to one partner (emotional monogamy) while gay men’s sexualities can be multiple in a depersonalized fashion. Jacobs argues that it is the disciplining and regulation of emotional attachment and romantic love and intimacies that is at the crux of gay men’s sexual politics, leading to the conclusion that it is “actually [gay men’s] emotional attachments that are most to be feared, controlled, and forestalled” (p. 32). Jacobs specifically names the anti-relational and anti-social thread of queer theory, as well as queer theorists, such as Bersani and Edelman, who Jacobs describes as promoting a specific “promise” in nonintimate cruising cultures. Noted in my research is how many gay men, do, indeed, place a hope or promise for romantic intimacy in their sexualities and the ways in which this promise of intimacy or romance must be hidden or not discussed openly. Many outreach workers brought their own personal experiences using GSSAs into our conversations and described the hope that they would place in their sexual interactions with other men, particularly for those who are from BIPOC communities and/or recent newcomers. Many outreach workers work within specific communities of queer men who are often newcomers and trying to gain financial, material, social capital and connections in Canada. In this sense, while they might be looking for sex online, on a material level, their intimacies with others might hold some hope for connections that could prove helpful on a longer-term basis. This echoes the argument that queer theorists, such as Halberstam (2005) and Muñoz (2009), have made, namely that the anti-social branch of queer theory might be reinforcing a certain privileging of the socio-economic and political needs of white middle class gay men in how for those who experience socio-economic privilege are able to separate their sexuality from their social and relational lives (i.e. white middle class gay men). For example, Halberstam (2005) critiques the focus on overcoming shame in white gay male theorizing or in queer theorists’ focus on shame politically in gay men’s sexualities: So while gay shame stabilizes the pride/shame binary and makes white gay politics the sum total of queer critique, gay shame also has a tendency to universalize the self who emerges out of a “shame formation”: at the microlevel, the subject who emerges as the subject of gay shame is often a white and male self whose shame in part emerges from the experience of being denied access to privilege. (p. 223)

253

Essentially, what Halberstam is critiquing is the notion that the figure who emerges from shame to pride in liberal gay politics is a white masculinist middle-class gay man who is able to liberate himself from structures of homophobia. Bad feelings, such as shame, become associated with feminization as “gay white men can work through gay shame by producing normative masculinities and presenting themselves as uncastrated, muscular, whole” (Halberstam, 2005, p. 228). Yet, my project does not completely do away with the political utility of bad feelings, as the failure of an object, such as Grindr, to provide the expected happiness can be politically useful in disrupting homonormative politics of gay belonging, community, and acceptance. Referencing Ahmed (2010b), Lovelock articulates that homonormativity “is preceded by a stage of proto-homonormativity, in which the self, rather than social formations or inter-personal connections, is the ‘happy object’” (p. 552). In a proto-homonormative politic, the subject takes itself as a governmental object; that is, happiness occurs through the gay subject’s self-stylization and self-presentation (i.e. presenting as “authentic” and “proud”). In this sense, as Lovelock (2019) articulates, “in order to do any of the things normally associated with homonormativity, one must be happy, as defined through a synonymous lexicon of self-love, self-acceptance, authenticity and pride in one’s gay sexuality” (p. 552). This research expands upon Lovelock’s (2019) three step approach to performing proto-homonormativity whereby the gay subject must: (1) emerge from struggle; (2) find happiness within themselves; and (3) claim self-authenticity and market and brand themselves and their self-presentation. My research might ask: what if the third stage is never met? What does it mean for gay politics if the first stage is never met, or if subjects never emerge from struggle? To resist the urge towards therapeutic intervention? This is a question I follow-up with as I describe online sexual health outreach and social service work in GBQ communities. Recent literature has investigated the role of outreach workers and specific programs catered to gay men’s online experiences (Brennan et al., 2015; Brennan et al., 2018; Davies et al., 2019), with specific focus upon the ethics of online outreach, specifically for outreach workers who work within sexual communities which they are also a part of (Fantus et al., 2017). This current research furthers this discussion of ethics by exploring how outreach workers might be acting as normalizing and regulating forces in their work with GBQ men by potentially pathologizing romantic intimacy between men. The importance of teaching skills around self- branding and emotional compartmentalization to clients seeking services arose in many

254 interviews with social service workers thematically, potentially reinforcing a normative notion of gay sexual subjectivity through emotional compartmentalization (see Bonello & Cross, 2009; Elder et al., 2015; Jacobs, 2020). Outreach workers, such as Derrick, commonly articulated normative notions of attachment theory when describing the intimate dynamics between gay men and their romantic intimacies. In attachment theorizing, the anxiously attached individual, or the one who is preoccupied, is commonly pathologized, leading to the notion that they are more attached or emotionally dependent that those who hold different attachment styles (Levine & Heller, 2012). For outreach workers, using attachment theory to understand interpersonal relations amongst gay men, while helpful, might also be reifying femmephobic notions that feminizes emotional dependency and intimacy and sees emotional dependency between men as threatening to hegemonic constructions of gay masculinities. Femme scholars describe how femininity is commonly associated with openness, relationality, and vulnerability (Dahl, 2012; McCann, 2018). As Hoskin (2019a) asks, “Can vulnerability, compassion, empathy and relationality become valued qualities and, if not, what does that say about the governing principles in society?” (p. 9). A pedagogy of vulnerability and relationality for outreach workers might be a means of working towards a vulnerable ethics within outreach work. This project extends my previous critiques of online outreach work (Davies et al., 2019) by analyzing the psychological and rationalistic approaches to outreach and exploring how these approaches reinforce normative ideals of gay sexualities and exclusionary sexual politics. Yet, as noted, many outreach workers held their own difficult experiences navigating gay online spaces, which is important to incorporate within their work. In this sense, by incorporating their own lived experiences into their work and operating through an ethic of relationality and vulnerability with app users, the masculinist sexual politic of gay communities might be able to be de-centered towards relationality. Of note in this project are the implications of own becoming as a researcher. In my processes of thinking/feeling/writing, I emerged as something different, continually and immanently in the fold, moving throughout my research in a non-linear fashion. Within the assemblages of my research, binaries and divides became entangled in my research in a fashion similar to what Mazzei and Jackson (2012) describe as “writing between-the-two” (drawing from Gale & Wyatt, 2009). In this “writing between-the-two in the threshold as a site of embodiment,

255 of affect,” (Mazzei & Jackson, 2012, p. 450), I emerged from the threshold of my research within/through/against my research. At times dismayed by my research, at times excited, at times reflective on my own subjectivity, this current research contributes to post-structural research writing between the lines of humanism and traditional qualitative research, or as Lather and St. Pierre (2013) ask, “what will happen, is happening, to inquiry in this afterward?” (p. 631). My hope is that my plugging-in and thinking/feeling/writing with theory has contributed some new knowledge regarding this question.

Limits of this Study Within this work, my own subjectivity was immanently entangled and incorporated into all facets of the project. While that offered insights and new ways of thinking that are important, it also meant that there and is much more work ahead to build upon my anti-racist analysis and relationship with queer of colour critique and queer indigenous theories. While I began that work, this project did not explicitly focus on the experiences of queer BIPOC men, meaning that whiteness certainly seeped into my theorizing and thinking/feeling/writing. As well, the very notion of a gay identity in itself is universalizing and resorts to whiteness; for example, many BIPOC queer folks do not use the identity label “gay” as this term has repeatedly re-centred white liberal gay subjects (El-Tayeb, 2012; Puar, 2007; Snorton, 2014). As a white gay man, myself, I cannot “know” the experiences of BIPOC men and can only think with the experiences that are provided in my interview data and the writings of queer men of colour. There is much more work that needs to be done in my study and research to link the intimate and relational politics of queer men and logics of settler colonialism. Scholars, such as Scott Morgensen (2011, 2015), have begun to make linkages between hegemonic constructions of masculinities and settler colonialism. As Barker (2009) explicates, settler colonial and imperial structures are ongoing in the Canadian nation-state, creating binaries between Indigenous peoples and settlers while continuing ongoing legacies of the expropriation of indigenous lands and territories. Grindr, as a geo-locative app that relies on colonial logics through its utilization of maps and colonial borders, is intricately connected to settler colonial and imperial legacies. As scholars such as Dasgupta (2017) have articulated, Grindr functions to globalize Western notions of gay identification into Global South locations, therefore importing the liberalization of gay sexualities and erasure of local knowledges and notions of diverse

256 genders and sexualities. The very notions of intimacies and romantic love I worked with in this thesis come from Western scholars and theorists (Ahmed, Berlant); those notions can function to erase and silence non-Western ideas of romantic love. This consideration proves especially problematic since many of my participants were newcomers from Global South and non-Western contexts. As discussed in my chapter on affective economies in the context of Charlie’s data, non-Western locations, such as Iran, are intimately connected to and influenced by Western ideas of romantic love and intimacies. Still, the geopolitical contexts are quite different, and to impose Western theorizations of sexuality can hold erasures, a mechanism which I am very cognizant of as an academic and theorist. Originally, when I conceived this project, I proposed the idea that all my participants were to complete two interviews and then complete a diary entry in-between. Consistent with my post-structural and emergent methodology, I changed this as I proceeded with my interviews, allowing participants the option of whether or not to provide the diary data. Many participants had important experiences to convey but did not wish to participate in the diary entry stage due to time constraints. For consistency, I primarily drew from data from my first interview with participants, but still have much data from the follow-up interviews for the participants who elected to pursue this choice. As a teacher myself, and as an academic who has done work about LGBTQ inclusion within the school system, I was interested in high school educators perspectives and thoughts on GSSAs in the formal school system (if and when they might arise in conversations). However, upon conducting four of these interviews, I realized that the formal public school system is still not at a place where there is much discussion of these technologies. The educators I did interview noted that predominately heterosexual dating apps, such as Tinder, were discussed at times in school settings in an informal manner (e.g. some high school students lying about their age to use these apps or discussing them with their friends) but that conversations around queer students usage of socio-sexual apps were not apparent. For the gay and queer male educators, there were boundary and ethical issues to be thought of in terms of their own personal usage of these apps as they would sometimes sign onto Grindr during lunchtime at school and see students’ profiles online, leading them to block the student online while being aware they were lying about their age in order to use Grindr. All these data were interesting and noteworthy but ultimately outside of the scope of the current project.

257

Extending the Project Throughout this project, I have become fascinated with the construct of romantic love and would be interested in pursuing a project specifically regarding queer men’s experiences with romantic love through a Deleuzian lens. As much as I enjoyed thinking with psychoanalysis, I am critical of the notion of always analyzing through a lens of “lack” and would be interested in completely embedding a Deleuzian lens throughout my work in the future. I would also be interested in continuing the above mentioned work with educators regarding their experiences with apps, particularly as the ethics around their usage of apps and seeing students online intrigued me. This might be a starting point for a future project on queer male teachers and app usage. Within this research, many participants disclosed experiences of sexual trauma within Grindr to me and how this trauma shaped their own experiences of their sexual subjectivity. Part of what motivated me to this research was my own experiences of trauma using Grindr—an underdiscussed area of research. Emerging research is beginning to investigate the complexities of gay men’s experiences navigating sexual consent (McKie et al., 2020), yet there is more work to be done through a poststructural lens on the discourses that inform gay men’s navigation of consent in sexual contexts. Since conversations of sexual consent arose so frequently in my research, I would like to pursue future research analyzing this topic. Another factor that motivated me to pursue this research was my own experiences with anxiety in romantic relationships and dating and my subsequent experiences with social service workers themselves discussing romantic attachment. As I noted in the thesis, attachment theory is a common psychological and developmental lens through which attachment in romantic dynamics is understand (Johnson, 2013; Levine & Heller, 2012). Yet, these approaches commonly hold gender essentialist notions that presume all men are avoidant and distant while feminizing emotional dependency. In future research, it would be important to analyze attachment dynamics through a lens of gay masculinities and neoliberalism—work I started to do in this thesis—to consider how gay men’s psychosocial development might be influenced by greater structures, such as neoliberal capitalism. Within my processes of thinking/feeling/writing, music became influential and constitutive of my writing and subjectivity. For this reason, I provided references to music and

258 lyrics throughout this thesis, choosing to leave the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepsen’s (2019) song, “Too Much,” at the beginning of this chapter. These songs affectively informed my writing and reflected much of what I have experienced in my own life navigating GSSAs as well as what my participants might have been affectively describing in the moment. Thinking about the influence of music within my writings (as noted in my methods and methodologies section) could be an avenue for future exploration methodologically through a Deleuzian lens as much of what I write, particularly as it pertains to gay cultural productions, is informed by music and media. Ultimately, I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to pursue this research, which was truly been an investigation of my own becoming and growth throughout this work. I will end this thesis with a poem that marks my own change and continual becoming as I remain always in the middle: Becoming Moving from Who am I? To what am I becoming? It’s not about Am I enough? Because I am abundant Changing Growing Shifting Emerging I can’t be measured

References

Aciman, A. (2007). Call me by your name. Rosinante & Co. Adam, B. D. (2005). Constructing the neoliberal sexual actor: Responsibility and care of the self in the discourse of barebackers. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 7(4), 333–346. Adolphus, J., & Bayron, W. (2019) Rex [Television series episode]. C. Culvenor (Producer). Dating around. Netflix. Åhäll, L. (2018). Affect as methodology: Feminism and the politics of emotion. International Political Sociology, 12(1), 36–52. Ahlm, J. (2017). Respectable promiscuity: Digital cruising in an era of queer liberalism. Sexualities, 20(3), 364–379. Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. Psychology Press. Ahmed, S. (2004a). Cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press. Ahmed, S. (2004b). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117–139. Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2008). Open forum imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the “new materialism.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 15(1), 23–39. Ahmed, S. (2010a). Happy objects. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp. 29–51). Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2010b). The promise of happiness. Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2016). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press. Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1969). Object relations, dependency, and attachment: A theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship. Child Development, 969–1025. Aitken, C. (2017). Online friendship or sex in Ottawa: A digital ethnography of Grindr and Scruff [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Central European University. Almaguer, T. (2011). Gay Latino studies: A critical reader. Duke University Press. Alvarez, E. (2010). Muscle boys: Gay gym culture. Routledge. Alves de Assis, H. (2017). Be YourSELFIE: The meanings of gay bodies on Instagram. [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Ontario College of Art and Design.

259 260

Anderson, E., Willett, C., & Meyers, D. (2016). Feminist perspectives on the self. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/feminism-self. Anderson, J. R., Holland, E., Koc, Y., & Haslam, N. (2018). iObjectify: Self- and other- objectification on Grindr, a geosocial networking application designed for men who have sex with men. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48(5), 600–613. Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Arthur, T. W. (2017). Geosocial dating apps and the romantic lives of young gay and bisexual men [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Sam Houston State University. Attebery, S. (2016). Indigenous posthumans: Cyberpunk surgeries and biotech boarding schools in File Under Miscellaneous and SyFy’s Helix. Extrapolation, 57(1–2), 95–116. Aunspach, C. (2015). From the gay bar to the search bar: Promiscuity, identity, and queer mobility on Grindr [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of Nebraska. Aunspach, C. (2020). Discrete and looking (to profit): Homoconnectivity on Grindr. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 37(1), 43–57. Ayres, L. (2008). Semi-structured interview. In L. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods, Vol. 1 (pp. 810–811). Sage. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Barker, A. J. (2009). The contemporary reality of Canadian imperialism: Settler colonialism and the hybrid colonial state. American Indian Quarterly, 33(3), 325. Baron-Cohen, S. (1997). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. John Wiley & Sons. Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds. John Wiley & Sons. Baxstrom, R. (2000). Governmentality, bio-power, and the emergence of the Malayan-Tamil subject on the plantations of colonial Malaya. Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 14(2), 49–78. Benjamin, J. (1988). The bonds of love: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and the problem of domination. Pantheon. Benjamin, J. (1998). Like subjects, love objects: Essays on recognition and sexual difference. Yale University Press.

261

Benzer, M., & Reed, K. (2019). Social life: Contemporary social theory. Sage. Beresford, S. (2014). The age of consent and the ending of queer theory. Laws, 3(4), 759–779. Beresford, S. (2016). We’re all same (sex) now? Lesbian (same) sex; consummation; adultery and marriage. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 12(5), 468–490. Bereznai, S. (2006). Gay and single . . . forever? 10 things every gay guy looking for love (and not finding it) needs to know. Da Capo Press. Bergling, T. (2001). Sissyphobia: Gay men and effeminate behavior. Harrington Park Press. Bergling, T. (2006). Sissyphobia and everything after. In C. Kendall & W. Martino (Ed.), Gendered outcasts and sexual outlaws: Sexual oppression and gender hierarchies in queer men’s lives (pp. 27–34). Routledge. Bergling, T. (2013). Chasing Adonis: Gay men and the pursuit of perfection. Routledge. Berlant, L. G. (2007a). Cruel optimism: On Marx, loss and the senses. New Formations, 63, 33– 52. Berlant, L. G. (2007b). Slow death (sovereignty, obesity, lateral agency). Critical Inquiry, 33(4), 754–780. Berlant, L. G. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Berlant, L. G. (2012). Desire/love. Punctum Books. Bersani, L. G. (1987). Is the rectum a grave? October, 43, 197–222. Bhabha, H. (1984). Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse. October, 28, 125–133. Bialystok, L. (2017). Different and unequal: Rethinking justice in intimate relationships. In G. Foster (Ed.), Desire, love, and identity: A textbook for the philosophy of sex and love (pp. 286–295). Oxford University Press. Bialystok, L., & Kukar, P. (2018). Authenticity and empathy in education. Theory and Research in Education, 16(1), 23–39. Binkley, S. (2016). Happiness as resource and resilience: An emotion for neoliberal times. In J. Pykett, R. Jones, & M. Whitehead (Eds.), Psychological governance and public policy (pp. 47–65). Routledge. Binkley, S. (2018). The emotional logic of neoliberalism: Reflexivity and instrumentality in three theoretical traditions. In D. Cahill, M. Cooper, M. Konigs, & D. Primrose (Eds.), The Sage handbook of neoliberalism (pp. 580–595). Sage.

262

Birnholtz, J. (2018). I don’t want to seem trashy: Exploring context and self-presentation through young gay and bisexual males’ attitudes toward shirtless selfies on Instagram. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (pp. 1–12). Association for Computing Machinery. Birnholtz, J., Fitzpatrick, C., Handel, M., & Brubaker, J. (2014). Identity, identification and identifiability: The language of self-presentation on a location-based mobile dating app. Proceedings of mobile HCI, Toronto, ON. Bisson, M. A., & Levine, T. R. (2009). Negotiating a friends with benefits relationship. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(1), 66–73. Blair, K. L. (2019, Dec. 31). Are dating apps making gay men miserable? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/inclusive-insight/201912/are-dating-apps- making-gay-men-miserable Blair, K. L., & Hoskin, R. A. (2015). Experiences of femme identity: Coming out, invisibility and femmephobia. Psychology & Sexuality, 6(3), 229–244. Bochner, A. P., & Ellis, C. (2006). “Autoethnography.” In G. J. Shepherd, J. St. John, & T. Striphas (Eds.), Communication as . . . : Perspectives on theory (pp. 110–122). Sage. Boellstorff, T. (2010). Queer techne: Two theses on methodology and queer studies. In C. Nash & K. Brown (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp. 215–230). Routledge. Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. Psychology Press. Boler, M., & Davis, E. (2018). The affective politics of the “post-truth” era: Feeling rules and networked subjectivity. Emotion, Space and Society, 27, 75–85. Bonello, K., & Cross, M. C. (2009). Gay monogamy: I love you but I can’t have sex with only you. Journal of Homosexuality, 57(1), 117–139. Bonner-Thompson, C. (2017). “The meat market”: production and regulation of masculinities on the Grindr grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(11), 1611– 1625. Bordo, S. (1986). The Cartesian masculinization of thought. Signs, 11(3), 439–456. Bost, D., Bruce, L. M. J., & Manning, B. J. (2019). Introduction: Black masculinities and the matter of vulnerability. The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research, 49, 1– 10.

263

Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the child’s tie to his mother. International Journal of Psycho- analysis, 39, 350–373. Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss vol. 3. Basic Books. (Original work published in 1969). Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. Columbia University Press. Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. John Wiley & Sons. Braidotti, R. (2019). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31–61. Brammer, J. P. (2014, June 9). Op-ed: Why Sam Smith’s “stay With Me” makes me cry. Rolling Stone. https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/06/09/op-ed-why-sam-smiths-stay- me-makes-me-cry. Brennan, D. J., Kesler, M., Lachowsky, N., & Bekele, T. (2019). P562 Health seeking behaviour and acceptability of online outreach efforts among MSM using sex-seeking apps/websites. [Poster presentation]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2019-sti.636 Brennan, D. J., Lachowsky, N. J., Georgievski, G., Rosser, B. R. S., MacLachlan, D., Murray, J., & Cruising Counts Research Team. (2015). Online outreach services among men who use the internet to seek sex with other men (MISM) in Ontario, Canada: An online survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(12), e277. Brennan, D. J., Souleymanov, R., Lachowsky, N., Betancourt, G., Pugh, D., & McEwen, O. (2018). Providing online-based sexual health outreach to gay, bisexual, and queer men in Ontario, Canada: Qualitative interviews with multisectoral frontline service providers and managers. AIDS Patient Care and STDs, 32(7), 282–287. Brightwell, L. (2018). The exclusionary effects of queer anti-normativity on feminine-identified queers. Feral Feminisms, 7, 15–24. Brockenbrough, E. (2013). Introduction to the special issue: Queers of color and anti-oppressive knowledge production. Curriculum Inquiry, 43, 426–440. http//dx.doi.org/10.1111/curi.12023 Brockenbrough, E. (2015). Queer of color agency in educational contexts: Analytic frameworks from a queer of color critique. Educational Studies, 51(1), 28–44. Brodsky, A. (2008). Fieldnotes. In L. M. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 342–343). Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n172

264

Brogaard, B. (2015). On romantic love: Simple truths about a complex emotion. Oxford University Press. Brown, G. (2015). Rethinking the origins of homonormativity: The diverse economies of rural gay life in England and Wales in the 1970s and 1980s. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40(4), 549–561. Brown, G. (2019). From nowhere: Provincializing gay life. Droit et cultures. Revue internationale interdisciplinaire, 77, 129–143. Brown, G. (2020). Diverse subjectivities, sexualities and economies: Challenging hetero- and homonormativity. In The handbook of diverse economies. Edward Elgar Publishing. Browne, K., & Nash, C. J. (2010). Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research. Taylor & Francis. Brubaker, J. R., Ananny, M., & Crawford, K. (2016). Departing glances: A sociotechnical account of “leaving” Grindr. New Media & Society, 18(3), 373–390. Bucher, T., & Helmond, A. (2017). The affordances of social media platforms. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell (Eds.), The Sage handbook of social media (pp. 254–278). Sage. Burman, E. (2016). Deconstructing developmental psychology. Taylor & Francis. Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. Taylor & Francis. Butler, J. (1994). Against proper objects: Introduction. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 6(2), 3–26. Butler, J. (1997a). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford University Press. Butler, J. (1997b). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. Psychology Press. Butler, J. (2002). Is kinship always already heterosexual? Differences, 13(1), 14–44. Butler, J. (2016). Rethinking vulnerability and resistance. In J Butler, Z. Gembetti, & L. Sabsay (Eds.), Vulnerability in resistance (pp. 12–27). Duke University Press. Butler, J., & Braidotti, R. (1994). Interview: Feminism by any other name. Differences, 6(2 & 3), 27–61. Butler, J., Gambetti, Z., & Sabsay, L. (Eds.). (2016). Vulnerability in resistance. Duke University Press.

265

Cadwell, S. (2009). Shame, gender, and sexuality in gay men’s group therapy. Group, 197–212. Cancian, F. M. (1986). The feminization of love. Signs, 11(4), 692–709. Carroll, S. M. (2019). Negotiating subjectivities through literature: Anticolonial counternarrative fiction book clubs and their possibilities [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Toronto. Chan, L. S. (2018). Ambivalence in networked intimacy: Observations from gay men using mobile dating apps. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2566–2581. Chauncey, G. (1994). Gay New York: The making of the gay male world, 1890–1940. Flamingo. Chin, K., Edelstein, R. S., & Vernon, P. A. (2019). Attached to dating apps: Attachment orientations and preferences for dating apps. Mobile Media & Communication, 7(1), 41– 59. Churchill, D. S. (2003). Personal ad politics: Race, sexuality and power at the body politic. Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.25071/1913-9632.5514 Clarkson, J. (2007). “Everyday Joe” versus “pissy, bitchy, queens”: Gay masculinity on StraightActing.com. Journal of Men’s Studies, 14(2), 191–207. Clay, S. (2018). The (neo)tribal nature of Grindr. In A. Hardy, A. Bennett, & B. Robards (Eds.), Neo-Tribes (pp. 235–251). Palgrave Macmillan. Clein, Z. A. (2017). Autobiography and authenticity: Writing are you sure? Experiences of a gay foster youth. [Unpublished honors thesis]. University of Southern Mississippi. Clough, P. (2010). Afterword: The future of affect studies. Body & Society, 16(1), 222–230. Coleman, R., & Ringrose, J. (Eds.). (2013). Deleuze and research methodologies. Edinburgh University Press. Combahee River Collective. (1983). The Combahee River Collective statement. In B. Smith (Ed.), Home girls: A Black feminist anthology, (pp. 264–274). Rutgers University Press. Comunello, F., Fernández Ardèvol, M., Mulargia, S., & Belotti, F. (2017). Women, youth and everything else: Age-based and gendered stereotypes in relation to digital technology among elderly Italian mobile phone users. Media, Culture & Society, 39(6), 798–815. Connell, R. W. (1992). A very straight gay: Masculinity, homosexual experience, and the dynamics of gender. American Sociological Review, 57(6), 735–751. Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley.

266

Conner, C. T. (2019). The gay gayze: Expressions of inequality on Grindr. Sociological Quarterly, 60(3), 397–419. Conte, M. T. (2018). More fats, more femmes: A critical examination of fatphobia and femmephobia on Grindr. Feral Feminism, 7. https://feralfeminisms.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/04/3-Matthew-Conte.pdf. Corriero, E. F., & Tong, S. T. (2016). Managing uncertainty in mobile dating applications: Goals, concerns of use, and information seeking in Grindr. Mobile Media & Communication, 4(1), 121–141. Couch, D., Liamputtong, P., & Pitts, M. (2012). What are the real and perceived risks and dangers of online dating? Perspectives from online daters: Health risks in the media. Health, Risk & Society, 14(7–8), 697–714. Cowen, R., & Lipman, D. (2000). Queer as folk. Television Series. Showtime. Creed, B. (1986). Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection. Screen, 27(1), 44–71. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167. Crooks, R. N. (2013). The rainbow flag and the green carnation: Grindr in the gay village. First Monday, 18(11). https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4958/3790 Dahl, U. (2012). Turning like a femme: Figuring critical femininity studies. NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 20(1), 57–64. Dahl, U. (2017). Femmebodiment: Notes on queer feminine shapes of vulnerability. Feminist Theory, 18(1), 35–53. Dasgupta, R. K. (2017). Digital queer cultures in India: Politics, intimacies and belonging. Taylor & Francis. David, G., & Cambre, C. (2016). Screened intimacies: Tinder and the swipe logic. Social Media & Society, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116641976 Davidson, K., McLaren, S., Jenkins, M., Corboy, D., Gibbs, P. M., & Molloy, M. (2017). Internalized homonegativity, sense of belonging, and depressive symptoms among Australian gay men. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(4), 450–465.

267

Davies, A. W. J. (2017, May). Gay nationhood and masculinist belonging: The biopolitics of inclusion and the rational national man. Presented at The Canadian Disability Studies Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON. Davies, A. W. J. (2019, May). Queering madness and homorationality: A preliminary investigation. Presented at The Disability Studies Conference , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. Davies, A. W. J. (2020). “Authentically” effeminate? Bialystok’s theorization of authenticity, gay male femmephobia, and personal identity. Canadian Journal of Family and Youth/Le Journal Canadien de Famille et de la Jeunesse, 12(1), 104–123. Davies, A. W. J., Souleymanov, R., & Brennan, D. J. (2019). Imagining online sexual health outreach: A critical investigation into AIDS service organizations workers’ notions of “gay community.” Social Work in Public Health, 34(4), 353–369. Davies, B. (2006). Subjectification: The relevance of Butler’s analysis for education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 425–438. Dean, T. J. (2009). Unlimited intimacy: Reflections on the subculture of barebacking. University of Chicago Press. De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Penguin. De Boise, S. (2016). Men, masculinity, music and emotions. Springer. d’Emilio, J. (1983). Capitalism and gay identity. In K. V. Hansen & A. I Garey (Eds.), Families in the US: Kinship and domestic politics, (pp. 131–141). Temple University Press. de Freitas, E., & Paton, J. (2009). (De) facing the self: Poststructural disruptions of the autoethnographic text. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(3), 483–498. DeLanda, M. (2019). A new philosophy of society: Assemblage theory and social complexity. Bloomsbury Publishing. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Trans.). Continuum. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2004). Anti-Oedipus. A & C Black. (Original work published 1972). Denzin, N. K. (2013). The death of data? Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 353– 356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708613487882

268 de Oliveira, J. M., Costa, C. G., & Nogueira, C. (2013). The workings of homonormativity: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer discourses on discrimination and public displays of affections in Portugal. Journal of Homosexuality, 60(10), 1475–1493. Dhaenens, F. (2016). Reading gay music videos: An inquiry into the representation of sexual diversity in contemporary popular music videos. Popular Music and Society, 39(5), 532– 546. Dilts, A. (2011). From “entrepreneur of the self” to “care of the self”: Neo-liberal governmentality and Foucault’s ethics. Foucault Studies, 12(2), 130146. Downs, A. (2012). The velvet rage: Overcoming the pain of growing up gay in a straight man’s world. Da Capo Lifelong Books. Dryden, O. H., & Lenon, S. (2015). Disrupting queer inclusion: Canadian homonationalisms and the politics of belonging. UBC Press. Duggan, L. (2003). The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Beacon Press. Duncan, D. (2008). Out of the closet and into the gym: Gay men and body image in Melbourne, Australia. Journal of Men’s Studies, 15(3), 331–346. Duncan, D. (2010). Embodying the gay self: Body image, reflexivity and embodied identity. Health Sociology Review, 19(4), 437–450. Duncombe, J., & Marsden, D. (1993). Love and intimacy: The gender division of emotion and emotion work: A neglected aspect of sociological discussion of heterosexual relationships. Sociology, 27(2), 221–241. Ecclestone, K., & Goodley, D. (2016). Political and educational springboard or straitjacket? Theorising post/human subjects in an age of vulnerability. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(2), 175–188. Edelman, L. (2004). No future: Queer theory and the death drive. Duke University Press. Edwards, T. (1994). Erotics and politics: Gay male sexuality, masculinity and feminism. Routledge. Edwards, T. (2005). Queering the pitch? Gay masculinities. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 51–68). Sage.

269

Eguchi, S. (2009). Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: The rhetorical strategy of “straightacting” among gay men. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 38(3), 193– 209. Elder, W. B., Morrow, S. L., & Brooks, G. R. (2015). Sexual self-schemas of gay men: A qualitative investigation. Counseling Psychologist, 43(7), 942–969. Ellingson, L. L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. Sage. Ellingson, L. L. (2011). One introduction to crystallization. In Engaging crystallization in qualitative research (pp. 1–28). Sage. Ellis, C. S. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Rowman Altamira. Ellis, C. S., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research/Historische sozialforschung, 36(4), 273–290. Ellis, C. S., & Bochner, A. P. (2006). Analyzing analytic autoethnography: An autopsy. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 429–449. El-Tayeb, F. (2012). “Gays who cannot properly be gay”: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 19(1), 79–95. Eng, D. L. (2001). Racial castration: Managing masculinity in Asian America. Duke University Press. Eng, D. L. (2010). The feeling of kinship: Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. Duke University Press. Eng, D. L., & Han, S. (2000). A dialogue on racial melancholia. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10(4), 667–700. Enguix, B., & Gómez-Narváez, E. (2018). Masculine bodies, selfies, and the (re)configurations of intimacy. Men and Masculinities, 21(1), 112–130. Eribon, D. (2004). Insult and the making of the gay self. Duke University Press. Espinoza, A. (2019). Cruising: An intimate history of a radical pastime. Unnamed Press. Essig, L. (2019). Love, Inc.: Dating apps, the big white wedding, and chasing the happily neverafter. University of California Press. Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. Grove. Fantus, S., Souleymanov, R., Lachowsky, N. J., & Brennan, D. J. (2017). The emergence of ethical issues in the provision of online sexual health outreach for gay, bisexual, two-

270

spirit and other men who have sex with men: Perspectives of online outreach workers. BMC Medical Ethics, 18(1), 59. Fawcett, B. (2008). Poststructuralism. In L. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 667–671). Sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.n334 Feldman, S. (2009). Reclaiming sexual difference: What queer theory can’t tell us about sexuality. Journal of Bisexuality, 9(3–4), 259–278. Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in black: Toward a queer of color critique. University of Minnesota Press. Ferguson, R. A. (2018). Queer of color critique. In Oxford research encyclopedia of literature. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.33 Filice, E., Parry, D. C., & Johnson, C. W. (2020). Traditions in (re)negotiation: Geosocial networking apps and intimate relationships among men seeking men. Sexuality & Culture, 1–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09765-x Filice, E., Raffoul, A., Meyer, S. B., & Neiterman, E. (2019). The influence of Grindr, a geosocial networking application, on body image in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men: An exploratory study. Body Image, 31, 59–70. Fitzpatrick, C., & Birnholtz, J. (2018). “I shut the door”: Interactions, tensions, and negotiations from a location-based social app. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2469–2488. Ford, J. V., & Becker, A. (2020). “A situation where there aren’t rules”: Unwanted sex for gay, bisexual, and questioning men. Sociological Science, 7, 57–74. Foster-Gimbel, O., & Engeln, R. (2016). Fat chance! Experiences and expectations of antifat bias in the gay male community. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 3(1), 63–70. Foucault, M. (1969). The archaeology of knowledge. Routledge. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. Vintage. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795. Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. University of Massachusetts Press. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction. Vintage.

271

Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1997). Ethics: Subjectivity and truth. P. Rabinow (Ed.). New Press. Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Springer. Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2013). The sexuality-assemblage: Desire, affect, anti-humanism. Sociological Review, 61(4), 769–789. Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2017). Sociology and the new materialism: Theory, research, action. Sage. Frederick, R. J. (1995). Internalized homophobia, gender roles, self-esteem and fear of intimacy in gay men [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Fairleigh Dickinson University. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. Hogarth Press. Fuller, D., & Sedo, D. R. (2019). “Boring, frustrating, impossible”: Tracing the negative affects of reading from interviews to story circles. Participations, 16(1), 622–655. https://participations.org/Volume%2016/Issue%201/29.pdf Fung, R. (1991). Looking for my penis: The eroticized Asian in gay video porn. In Bad Object Choice (Ed.), How do I look: Queer film and video. Bay Books. Gagnon, J. H., and Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality, Aldine Transaction. Gale, K., & Wyatt, J. (2009). Between the two: A nomadic inquiry into collaborative writing and subjectivity. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Gannon, S. (2006). The (im)possibilities of writing the self-writing: French poststructural theory and autoethnography. Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, 6(4), 474–495. Gannon, S., & Davies, B. (2006). “Postmodern, poststructural, and critical theories.” In S. N. Hesse-Biber (Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis (pp. 71–106). Sage. García-Gómez, A. (2020). Discursive representation of masculinity and femininity in Tinder and Grindr: Hegemonic masculinity, feminine devaluation and femmephobia. Discourse & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926520903523 Georgis, D. (2013). Thinking past pride: Queer Arab shame in “Bareed Mista3jil.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 233–251.

272

Gernsbacher, M. A., & Yergeau, M. (2019). Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 7(1), 102. Gibbs, J. J., & Rice, E. (2016). The social context of depression symptomology in sexual minority male youth: Determinants of depression in a sample of Grindr users. Journal of Homosexuality, 63(2), 278–299. Gibson, A., & Falley, M. (2019). How poetry can change your heart. Chronicle Books. Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy: Sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. John Wiley & Sons. Gideonse, T. K. (2016). Framing Samuel See: The discursive detritus of the moral panic over the “double epidemic” of methamphetamines and HIV among gay men. International Journal of Drug Policy, 28, 98–105. Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2015). The confidence cult(ure). Australian Feminist Studies, 30(86), 324– 344. Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2017). Confidence culture and the remaking of feminism. New Formations, 91(91), 16–34. Glick, E. (2000). Sex positive: Feminism, queer theory, and the politics of transgression. Feminist Review, 64(1), 19–45. Goedel, W. C., & Duncan, D. T. (2015). Geosocial-networking app usage patterns of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men: Survey among users of Grindr, a mobile dating app. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 1(1), e4. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth. Goffman, E. (1986). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Simon and Schuster. Goldberg G. (2018). Antisocial media: Anxious labor in the digital economy. NYU Press. Goldberg, G. (2020). Meet markets: Grindr and the politics of objectifying others. Convergence, 26(2), 253–268. Goldenberg, D. (2019). Disconnected connectedness: The paradox of digital dating for gay and bisexual men. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 23(3), 360–366. Goodchild, P. (1996). Deleuze and Guattari: An introduction to the politics of desire. Sage. Gorgulu, V. (2020). Emoticons and emojis. In D. L. Merskin (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of mass media and society (pp. 547–548). Sage.

273

Graham, G. (2015). Behaviorism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/behaviorism Green, A. I. (2014). Sexual fields: Toward a sociology of collective sexual life. University of Chicago Press. Green, A. I. (2015). Sexual fields. In Handbook of the sociology of sexualities (pp. 23–39). Springer. Greensmith, C., & Davies, A. (2017). Queer and trans at school: Gay–straight alliances and the politics of inclusion. In X. Chen, R. Raby, & P. Albanese (Eds.), The sociology of childhood and youth studies in Canada: Categories, inequalities, engagement. Canadian Scholars Press. Grindr. (2020). “About us.” Grindr. https://www.grindr.com/about/ Guadagnino, L., Ivory, J., & Aciman, A. (2017). Call me by your name. [Movie]. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Gudelunas, D. (2012). There’s an app for that: The uses and gratifications of online social networks for gay men. Sexuality & Culture, 16(4), 347–365. Guttorm, H., Hohti, R., & Paakkari, A. (2015). “Do the next thing”: An interview with Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre on post-qualitative methodology. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.1421 Hakim, C. (2010). Erotic capital. European Sociological Review, 26(5), 499–518. Hakim, J. (2018). “The spornosexual”: The affective contradictions of male body-work in neoliberal digital culture. Journal of Gender Studies, 27(2), 231–241. Halberstam, J. (1998). Female masculinity. Duke University Press. Halberstam, J. (2005). Shame and white gay masculinity. Social Text, 23, 219–233. Halberstam, J. (2008). The anti-social turn in queer studies. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 5(2), 140–156. Halberstam, J. (2011). The queer art of failure. Duke University Press. Hale, S. E., & Ojeda, T. (2018). Acceptable femininity? Gay male misogyny and the policing of queer femininities. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(3), 310–324. Hall, J. A. (2016). Interpreting social–sexual communication: Relational framing theory and social–sexual communication, attraction, and intent. Human Communication Research, 42(1), 138–164.

274

Hall, J. A. (2017). The experience of mobile entrapment in daily life. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 29(3), 148. Hall, J. A., & Baym, N. K. (2012). Calling and texting (too much): Mobile maintenance expectations, (over) dependence, entrapment, and friendship satisfaction. New Media & Society, 14(2), 316–331. Halperin, D. M. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography. Oxford Paperbacks. Halperin, D. M. (2012). How to be gay. Harvard University Press. Halperin, D. M. (2019). Queer love. Critical Inquiry, 45(2), 396–419. Halperin, D. M., & Traub, V. (Eds.). (2009). Gay shame. University of Chicago Press. Hammers, C. J. (2015). The queer logics of sex/desire and the “missing” discourse of gender. Sexualities, 18(7), 838–858. Han, S. (2000). Asian American gay men’s (dis)claim on masculinity. In P. Nardi (Ed.), Gay masculinities (pp. 206–223). Sage. Hanhardt, C. B. (2013). Safe space: Gay neighborhood history and the politics of violence. Duke University Press. Hanley, C. (2019). Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari: An exploration of writing as assemblage. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(4), 413–423. Haraway, D. (1985). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review, 80(1), 65–108. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature. Free Association. Haritaworn, J., Moussa, G., & Ware, S. M. (Eds.). (2018). Queering urban justice: Queer of colour formations in Toronto. University of Toronto Press. Hartman, S. V. (1997). Scenes of subjection: Terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth- century America. Oxford University Press. Hayles, N. K. (1999). The condition of virtuality. In P. Lunenfeld (Ed.), The digital dialectic. MIT Press. Hayles, N. K. (2012). How we think: Digital media and contemporary technogenesis. University of Chicago Press. Helm, B. W. (2010). Love, friendship, and the self: Intimacy, identification, and the social nature of persons. Oxford University Press. Hepburn, A. (2003). An introduction to critical social psychology. Sage.

275

Hill Collins, P. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge. Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the internet: Embedded, embodied and everyday. Bloomsbury Publishing. Hobbes, M. (2017, Mar. 2). Together alone: The epidemic of gay loneliness. Huffington Post. https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/ Hobbs, M., Owen, S., & Gerber, L. (2017). Liquid love? Dating apps, sex, relationships and the digital transformation of intimacy. Journal of Sociology, 53(2), 271–284. Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3), 551–575. Holford, N., Renold, E., & Huuki, T. (2013). What (else) can a kiss do? Theorizing the power plays in young children’s sexual cultures. Sexualities, 16(5–6), 710–729. Hoogeveen, D. (2016). Fish-hood: Environmental assessment, critical Indigenous studies, and posthumanism at Fish Lake (Teztan Biny), Tsilhqot’in territory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(2), 355–370. hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow. Hoskin, R. A. (2018). Critical femininities: The development and application of femme theory [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Queen’s University. Hoskin, R. A. (2019a). Can femme be theory? Exploring the epistemological and methodological possibilities of femme. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2019.1702288 Hoskin, R. A. (2019b). Femmephobia: The role of anti-femininity and gender policing in LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of discrimination. Sex Roles, 81(11–12), 686–703. Hoskin, R. A., & Taylor, A. (2019). Femme resistance: The fem(me)inine art of failure. Psychology & Sexuality, 10(4), 281–300. Huffer, L. (2013). Are the lips a grave? A queer feminist on the ethics of sex. Columbia University Press. Hurley, M., & Prestage, G. (2009). Intensive sex partying amongst gay men in Sydney. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 11(6), 597–610. Iida, M., Shrout, P. E., Laurenceau, J.-P., & Bolger, N. (2012). Using diary methods in psychological research. In H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D.

276

Rindskopf, & K. J. Sher (Eds.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology: Foundations, planning, measures, and psychometrics (pp. 277–305). American Psychological Association. Irigaray, L. (1982). An ethics of sexual difference. Cornell University Press. Isherwood, C. (1964). A single man. Random House. Ivinson, G., & Renold, E. (2016). Girls, camera, (intra)action: Mapping posthuman possibilities in a diffractive analysis of camera-girl assemblages in research on gender, corporeality and place. In C.A. Taylor (Ed.), Posthuman research practices in education (pp. 168– 185). Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2008). Experience and “I” in autoethnography: A deconstruction. International Review of Qualitative Research, 1(3), 299–318. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2011). Thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives. Routledge. Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2013). Plugging one text into another: Thinking with theory in qualitative research. Qualitative inquiry, 19(4), 261–271. Jackson, M. (2017). Postcolonialism, posthumanism and political ontology. Routledge. Jackson, Z. I. (2013). Animal: New directions in the theorization of race and posthumanism. Feminist Studies, 39(3), 669–685. Jackson, Z. I. (2015). Outer worlds: The persistence of race in movement “Beyond the Human.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2), 215–218. Jacobs, J. (2020). An excess of love. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 7(1), 29–54.

Jagose, A. (1996). Queer theory: An introduction. NYU Press.

Jamieson, L. (2011). Intimacy as a concept: Explaining social change in the context of

globalisation or another form of ethnocentrism? Sociological Research Online, 16(4), 1–

13.

Jaspal, R. (2017). Gay men’s construction and management of identity on Grindr. Sexuality &

Culture, 21(1), 187–204.

Jeffreys, S. (2002). Unpacking queer politics: A lesbian feminist perspective. Polity Press.

277

Jepsen, C. R. (2019). Too much. [Recorded by Carly Rae Jepsen]. On Dedicated [Digital Recording]. Vancouver, BC: Digital Recording. Johnson, E. P. (Ed.). (2016). No tea, no shade: New writings in black queer studies. Duke University Press. Johnson, E. P., & Henderson, M. G. (2005). Queering Black studies/“Quaring” queer studies. In E. P. Johnson & M. G. Henderson (Eds.), Black queer studies: A critical anthology (pp. 1–17). Duke University Press. Johnson, S. (2013). Love sense: The revolutionary new science of romantic relationships. Little, Brown Spark. Jones, S. L. H., Adams, T., & Ellis, C. (2013). Introduction: Coming to know autoethnography as more than a method. In Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 17–47). Left Coast Press. Jowett, A. (2010). “Just a regular guy”: A discursive analysis of gay masculinities. Psychology of Sexualities Review, 1(1), 19–28. Karavanta, M. (2015). Human together: Into the interior of auto/ontopoeisis. Symplokē, 23(1–2), 153–171. Kendall, C. N., & Martino, W. (2006). Gendered outcasts and sexual outlaws: Sexual oppression and gender hierarchies in queer men’s lives. Routledge. Kittay, E. F. (2015). Dependence. In R. Adams, B. Reiss, & D. Serlin (Eds.), Keywords in disability studies (pp. 54–58). NYU Press. Kittay, E. F. (2019). Love’s labor: Essays on women, equality and dependency. Routledge. Klesse, C. (2007). “How to be a Happy Homosexual?!” Non-monogamy and governmentality in relationship manuals for gay men in the 1980s and 1990s. Sociological Review, 55(3), 571–591. Koivunen, A., Kyrölä, K., & Ryberg, I. (Eds.). (2018). The power of vulnerability: Mobilising affect in feminist, queer and anti-racist media cultures. Manchester University Press. Kong, T. S. (2019a). Be a responsible and respectable man: Two generations of Chinese gay men accomplishing masculinity in Hong Kong. Men and Masculinities. http://dx.doi.1097184X19859390 Kong, T. S. (2019b). The pursuit of masculinity by young gay men in neoliberal Hong Kong and Shanghai. Journal of Youth Studies, 23(8), 1–18. Kort, J. (2013). 10 smart things gay men can do to find real love. Smashwords Edition.

278

Korycki, K., & Nasirzadeh, A. (2016). Desire recast: The production of gay identity in Iran. Journal of Gender Studies, 25(1), 50–65. Kramer, L. (1978). Faggots. Grove Press. Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror. University Presses of California. Kuhl, D., & Martino, W. (2018). “Sissy” boys and the pathologization of gender non-conformity. In S. Talburt (Ed.), Youth sexualities: Public feelings and contemporary cultural politics (pp. 31–60). Praeger. Lannan, M. (2014). Looking? [Television series]. HBO. Lanzieri, N., & Hildebrandt, T. (2011). Using hegemonic masculinity to explain gay male attraction to muscular and athletic men. Journal of Homosexuality, 58(2), 275–293. Lara, A., Liu, W., Ashley, C., Nishida, A., Liebert, R., & Bilies, M. (2017). Affect and subjectivity. Subjectivity, 10(1), 30–43. Lather, P. (2012). Getting lost: Feminist efforts toward a double(d) science. Suny Press. Lather, P. (2017). (Post) critical methodologies: The science possible after the critiques: The selected works of Patti Lather. Taylor & Francis. Lather, P., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2013). Post-qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 629–633. Lemke, T. (2001). “The birth of bio-politics”: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2), 190–207. Lemke, T. (2002). Foucault, governmentality, and critique. Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), 49–64. Lemke, T. (2015). Foucault, governmentality, and critique. Routledge. Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2012). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find—and keep—love. Penguin. Levine, M. P., & Kimmel, M. (1998). Gay macho: The life and death of the homosexual clone. NYU Press. Lewis, H. (2017, September 18). Sam Smith and the Sad Gay Boys. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sam-smith-and-the-sad-gay- boys_b_59bfd4b3e4b06b71800c3b90 Lewis, N. M. (2012). Remapping disclosure: Gay men’s segmented journeys of moving out and coming out. Social & Cultural Geography, 13(3), 211–231. Leys, R. (2011). The turn to affect: A critique. Critical Inquiry, 37(3), 434–472.

279

Licoppe, C. (2020). Liquidity and attachment in the mobile hookup culture: A comparative study of contrasted interactional patterns in the main uses of Grindr and Tinder. Journal of Cultural Economy, 13(1), 73–90. Licoppe, C., Rivière, C. A., & Morel, J. (2016). Grindr casual hook-ups as interactional achievements. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2540–2558. Ligocki, D. (2019). Youth consumption of media and the need for critical media literacy in the time of liquid modernity: Everything is moving so quickly. In P. P. Trifonas (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research in cultural studies and education (pp. 1–10). Springer. Lloyd, G. (1979). The man of reason. Metaphilosophy, 10(1), 18–37. Lloyd, G. (2002). The man of reason: “Male” and “female” in western philosophy. Routledge. Lööv, A. (2012). Queering methodology. NORA, 20(2), 158–162. Lorde, A. (2012). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press. (Original work published 1984). Lorenzini, D. (2018). Governmentality, subjectivity, and the neoliberal form of life. Journal for Cultural Research, 22(2), 154–166. Lovelock, M. (2019). Gay and happy: (Proto-)homonormativity, emotion and popular culture. Sexualities, 22(4), 549–565. Ludwig, G. (2016). Desiring neoliberalism. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 13(4), 417– 427. Luibhéid, E. (2008). Queer/migration: An unruly body of scholarship. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 14(2), 169–190. Lupi, R. S. (1998). Classics revisited: Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 46(3), 867–883. Lupton, D. (2013). The digital cyborg assemblage: Haraway’s cyborg theory and the new digital health technologies. The handbook of social theory for the sociology of health and medicine. In F. Collyer (Ed.), Palgrave Macmillan. Lupton, D. (2015). Donna Haraway: The digital cyborg assemblage and the new digital health technologies. In The Palgrave handbook of social theory in health, illness and medicine (pp. 567–581). Palgrave Macmillan. MacLure, M. (2010). The offence of theory. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 277–286.

280

MacLure, M. (2013a). Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 164–183). University of Edinburgh Press. MacLure, M. (2013b). Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post- qualitative methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658–667. MacLure, M. (2013c). The wonder of data. Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 228–232. Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press. Manley, J. (2018). Social dreaming, associative thinking and intensities of affect. Springer. Mannell, K. (2017). Technology resistance and de Certeau: Deceptive texting as a tactic of everyday life. Platform: Journal of Media & Communication, 8(1), 40–55. Mannell, K. (2019). A typology of mobile messaging’s disconnective affordances. Mobile Media & Communication, 7(1), 76–93. Markula, P., & Silk, M. L. (2011). Qualitative research for physical culture. Palgrave Macmillan. Marshall, C. (2018). Being anal about the rules. Press Start, 4(2), 80–89. Martin, B. (1996). Femininity played straight: The significance of being lesbian. Routledge. Martino, W. (2006). Straight-acting masculinities: Normalization and gender hierarchies in gay men’s lives. In C. N. Kendall & W. Martino (Eds.), Gendered outcasts and sexual outlaws (pp. 35–60). Haworth Press. Masny, D. (2014). Disrupting ethnography through rhizoanalysis. Qualitative Research in Education, 3(3), 345–363. Massumi, B. (1987). Translator’s forward: Pleasures of philosophy. In G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing. Massumi, B. (1995). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique, 31, 83–109. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Duke University Press. May, T. (2003). When is a Deleuzian becoming? Continental Philosophy Review, 36(2), 139– 153.

281

Mazzei, L. A. (2014). Beyond an easy sense: A diffractive analysis. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 742–746. Mazzei, L. A., & Jackson, A. Y. (2012). In the threshold: Writing between-the-two. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(4), 449–458. Mazzei, L. A., & McCoy, K. (2010). Thinking with Deleuze in qualitative research.. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 503–509. McBride, D. A. (2007). Toward the new Black studies: Or beyond the old race man. Journal of Black Studies, 37(3), 428–444. McCann, H. (2018). Beyond the visible: Rethinking femininity through the femme assemblage. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(3), 278–292. McCluskey, M. T. (2009). How queer theory makes neoliberalism sexy. In M. A. Fineman, J. E. Jackson, A. P. Romero (Eds.), Feminist and queer legal theory: Intimate encounters, uncomfortable conversations (pp. 115–134). Ashgate. McCready, L. T. (2013). Conclusion to the special issue: Queer of color analysis: Interruptions and pedagogic possibilities. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(4), 512–522. McCready, L. T. (2015). A double life: Black queer youth coming of age in divided cities. Educational Forum, 79(4), 353–358. McGuire, A. E. (2016). War on autism: On the cultural logic of normative violence. University of Michigan Press. McGuire, A. E., & Michalko, R. (2011). Minds between us: Autism, mindblindness and the uncertainty of communication. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(2), 162–177. McHendry Jr., G. F., Middleton, M. K., Endres, D., Senda-Cook, S., & O’Byrne, M. (2014). Rhetorical critic(ism)’s body: Affect and fieldwork on a plane of immanence. Southern Communication Journal, 79(4), 293–310. McKie, R. M., Davies, A. W., Nixon, K. D., & Lachowsky, N. L. (2019). A theoretical examination using governmentality to understand gay men’s risk and sexual behaviours. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 28(3), 343–354. McKie, R. M., Lachowsky, N. J., & Milhausen, R. R. (2015). The positive impact of technology on young gay men’s dating and sexual relationships in Canada: Results from a focus group study. Journal of LGBT Youth, 12(1), 19–38.

282

McKie, R. M., Milhausen, R. R., & Lachowsky, N. J. (2017). “Hedge your bets”: Technology’s role in young gay men’s relationship challenges. Journal of Homosexuality, 64(1), 75–94. McKie, R. M., Skakoon-Sparling, S., Levere, D., Sezlik, S., & Humphreys, T. P. (2020). Is there space for our stories? An examination of North American and Western European gay, bi, and other men who have sex with men’s non-consensual sexual experiences. Journal of Sex Research, 1–12. Messerschmidt, J. W. (2018). Hegemonic masculinity: Formulation, reformulation, and amplification. Rowman & Littlefield. Meyer, I. H. (1995). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36(1), 38–56.

Miles, S. (2020). “I’ve never told anyone this before”: Co-constructing intimacy in sex and sexualities research. Area, 52(1), 73–80. Miller, B. (2015a). “Dude, where’s your face?” Self-presentation, self-description, and partner preferences on a social networking application for men who have sex with men: A content analysis. Sexuality & Culture, 19(4), 637–658. Miller, B. (2015b). “They’re the modern-day gay bar”: Exploring the uses and gratifications of social networks for men who have sex with men. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 476–482. Miller, B. (2017, Mar. 6). Gay loneliness is real—but “Bitchy Toxic” culture isn’t the full story. Slate. https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/03/gay-loneliness-is-real-but-toxic-gay- cultures-isnt-the-problem.html. Miller, B. (2018). Textually presenting masculinity and the body on mobile dating apps for men who have sex with men. Journal of Men’s Studies, 26(3), 305–326. Miller, B., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2016). “Masculine guys pnly”: The effects of femmephobic mobile dating application profiles on partner selection for men who have sex with men. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, 176–185. Miller Jr., G. A. (2012). Exploring the limits of the human through science fiction. Springer. Moneypenny, P. D. (2013). A poststructural autoethnography: Self as event [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Waikato. Moraga, C. (1983). Loving in the war years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios. South End Press. Morgan, N. (2018). Into? A novel. Flatiron Books.

283

Morgensen, S. L. (2011). Spaces between us: Queer settler colonialism and Indigenous decolonization. University of Minnesota Press. Morgensen, S. L. (2015). Cutting to the roots of colonial masculinity. In R. A. Innes & K. Anderson (Eds.), Indigenous men and masculinities: Legacies, identities, regeneration (pp. 38–61). University of Manitoba Press. Morrison, M. (2015). “Some things are better left unsaid”: The “dignity of queer shame.” Mosaic, 48(1), 17–32. Moses, E. E. (2018). Eggplants and peaches: Understanding emoji usage on Grindr. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. East Tennessee University. Mowlabocus, S. (2016). Gaydar culture: Gay men, technology and embodiment in the digital age. Routledge. Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. University of Minnesota Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2006). Thinking beyond antirelationality and antiutopianism in queer critique. PMLA, 121, 825–826. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. NYU Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2020). The sense of brown. Duke University Press. Nail, T. (2017). What is an assemblage? SubStance, 46(1), 21–37. Nardi, P. M. (Ed.). (2000). Gay masculinities. Sage. Nash, C. J. (2013a). The age of the “post-mo?” Toronto’s gay village and a new generation. Geoforum, 49, 243–252. Nash, C. J. (2013b). Queering neighbourhoods: Politics and practice in Toronto. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 12(2). Retrieved from https://acme- journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/960 Nestle, J. (Ed.). (1992). The persistent desire: A femme-butch reader. Alyson Books. Ng, E. (2013). A “post-gay” era? Media gaystreaming, homonormativity, and the politics of LGBT integration. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6(2), 258–283. Nguyen, T. H. (2014). A view from the bottom: Asian American masculinity and sexual representation. Duke University Press.

284

Numer, M., Holmes, D., Joy, P., & Thompson, R. (2017). Profiling public sex: How Grindr revolutionized the face of gay cruising. In D. Holmes, S. J. Murray, & T. Foth (Eds.), Radical sex between men: Assembling desiring-machines (pp. 190–202). Routledge. O’Brien, C. (2017). HIV and AIDS in Irish theatre: Queer masculinities, punishment, and “post- AIDS” culture. Journal of Medical Humanities, 41(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-017-9439-3 O’Brien, J., & Stein, A. (Eds.). (2018). Gender, sexuality, and intimacy: A contexts reader. Sage. Odets, W. (2019). Out of the shadows: Reimagining gay men’s lives. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. O’Malley, P. (2009). Governing risks. Sydney Law School research paper no. 09/86. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1473553 Ong, J. C. (2017). Queer cosmopolitanism in the disaster zone: “My Grindr became the United Nations.” International Communication Gazette, 79(6–7), 656–673. Paechter, C. (2006). Reconceptualizing the gendered body: Learning and constructing masculinities and femininities in school. Gender and Education, 18(2), 121–135. Paley, J. (2008). Positivism. In L. M. Given (Ed.). In L. M. Given (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 446–450). Sage. Palmer, T. S. (2017). “What feels more than feeling?”: Theorizing the unthinkability of Black affect. Critical Ethnic Studies, 3(2), 31–56. Parikh, C. (2002). “The most outrageous masquerade”: Queering Asian-American masculinity. Modern Fiction Studies, 48(4), 858–898. Pascoe, C. J. (2005). “Dude, you’re a fag”: Adolescent masculinity and the fag discourse. Sexualities, 8(3), 329–346. Pascoe, C. J. (2007). Dude, you’re a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school. University of California Press. Payne, R. (2014). The promiscuity of network culture: Queer theory and digital media. Routledge. Perez, H. (2005). You can have my brown body and eat it, too! Social Text, 84, 171–191. Pinsky, D. (2019). Doing gender online through flirtation: Digitally mediated romantic interactions among college students. Recherches en sciences sociales sur Internet, 8. https://doi.org/10.4000/reset.1303

285

Porter, W. B. (2011). John Waters: Camp, abjection and the grotesque body [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Ohio University. Potts, A. (2001). The man with two brains: Hegemonic masculine subjectivity and the discursive construction of the unreasonable penis-self. Journal of Gender Studies, 10(2), 145–156. Preston, S. (2013). Dickens and the despised mother: A critical reading of three autobiographical novels. McFarland. Probyn, E. (2005). Blush: Faces of shame. University of Minnesota Press. Probyn, E. (2010). Writing shame. In M. Gregg & G. Seigworth (Eds.). The affect theory reader (pp. 71–90). Duke University Press. Pronger, B. (1992). The arena of masculinity: Sports, homosexuality, and the meaning of sex. Macmillan. Puar, J. K. (2007). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press. Puar, J. K. (2012). “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-intersectional in assemblage theory. PhiloSOPHIA, 2(1), 49–66. Puar, J. K. (2013). “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Intersectionality, assemblage, and affective politics. Meritum, revista de Direito da Universidade FUMEC, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.46560/meritum.v8i2.2172 Race, K. D. (2003). Revaluation of risk among gay men. AIDS Education and Prevention, 15(4), 369–381. Race, K. D. (2009). Pleasure consuming medicine: The queer politics of drugs. Duke University Press. Race, K. D. (2015). Speculative pragmatism and intimate arrangements: Online hook-up devices in gay life. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 17(4), 496–511. Raj, S. (2011). Grindring bodies: Racial and affective economies of online queer desire. Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, 7(2), 1–12. Ravenhill, J. P., & de Visser, R. O. (2017). “There are too many gay categories now”: Discursive constructions of gay masculinity. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 18(4), 321–330. Razack, S. H. (2007). Stealing the pain of others: Reflections on Canadian humanitarian responses. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 29(4), 375–394.

286

Read, J. (2009). A genealogy of homo-economicus: Neoliberalism and the production of subjectivity. Foucault Studies, 25–36. Reddy, C. (2007). Time for rights? Loving, gay marriage, and the limits of legal justice. Fordham Law Review, 7(6), 2849–2872. Renold, E., & Mellor, D. (2013). Deleuze and Guattari in the nursery: Towards an ethnographic multi-sensory mapping of gendered bodies and becomings. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.). Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 23–41). Edinburgh University Press. Renold, E., & Ringrose, J. (2011). Schizoid subjectivities? Re-theorizing teen girls’ sexual cultures in an era of “sexualisation.” Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 389–409. Rich, A. (1993). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. In H. Abelove, M. Barala, &

D. Halperin (Eds.), The lesbian and gay studies reader (pp. 227–254). Routledge.

(Original work published 1978).

Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.)

Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 516–529). Sage.

Richardson, L. 2000. Writing: A method of inquiry. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.),

Handbook of qualitative research, (pp. 923–48). 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y.

S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978).

Sage.

Riggs, D. W. (2006). What’s love got to do with it: Ambivalence and the national imaginary.

International Journal of Critical Psychology, 16, 32–52.

Riggs, D. W. (2017). The psychic life of racism in gay men’s communities. Lexington Books. Ringrose, J., & Rawlings, V. (2015). Posthuman performativity, gender and “school bullying”: Exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of skirts, hair, sluts, and poofs. Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics, 3(2), 1–37. Ringrose, J., & Zarabadi, S. (2018). Deleuzo-Guattarian decentering of the I/eye: A conversation with Jessica Ringrose and Shiva Zarabadi. In K. Strom, T. Mills, & A. Ovens (Eds.),

287

Decentering the researcher in intimate scholarship: Critical posthuman methodological advances in education. Retrieved from https://wwwemerald.com/insight/publication/doi/10.1108/S1479-3687201831. Rivière, C. A., Licoppe, C., & Morel, J. (2015). Gay casual hookups on the mobile application Grindr. Réseaux, (1), 153–186. Roach, T. (2015). Becoming fungible: Queer intimacies in social media. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, 23(2), 55–87. Roach, T. (2019). Shut me up in Grindr: Anti-confessional discourse and sensual nonsense in MSM media. In T. Waugh & B. Arroyo (Eds.), I Confess! Constructing the sexual self in the internet age (pp. 549–572). McGill-Queen’s University Press. Robinson, B. A. (2016). The quantifiable-body discourse: “Height-weight proportionality” and gay men’s bodies in cyberspace. Social Currents, 3(2), 172–185. Rochadiat, A. M., Tong, S. T., & Corriero, E. F. (2020). Intimacy in the app age: Romantic relationships and mobile technology. In R. Ling, L. Fortunati, G. Goggin, S. S. Lim, & Y. Li, The Oxford handbook of mobile communication and society (pp. 144–157). Oxford University Press. Rodgers, J. (2010). Maternal abject (Kristeva). In A. O’Reilly (Ed.), Sage encyclopedia of motherhood (p. 695). Sage. Rodriguez, N. S., Huemmer, J., & Blumell, L. E. (2016). Mobile masculinities: An investigation of networked masculinities in gay dating apps. Masculinities & Social Change, 5(3), 241–267. Rolling Jr., J. H. (2004). Messing around with identity constructs: Pursuing a poststructural and poetic aesthetic. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(4), 548–557. Rose, C. T. B., & Camilleri, A. (Eds.). (2002). Brazen femme: Queering femininity. Arsenal Pulp Press. Rose, N. (1998). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, R. (2017). The whiteness of gay urban belonging: Criminalizing LGBTQ youth of color in queer spaces of care. Urban Geography, 38(1), 137–148. Rumens, N., & Ozturk, M. B. (2019). Heteronormativity and the (re)construction of gay male entrepreneurial identities. International Small Business Journal, 37(7), 671–688.

288

Ruti, M. (2017). The ethics of opting out: Queer theory’s defiant subjects. Columbia University Press. Ryan, P. (2019). Male sex work in the digital age: Curated lives. Springer. Sánchez, F. J., Greenberg, S. T., Liu, W. M., & Vilain, E. (2009). Reported effects of masculine ideals on gay men. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 10(1), 73. Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed. University of Minnesota Press. Sarson, C. (2020). “Hey man, how’su?”: Masculine speech and straight-acting gay men online. Journal of Gender Studies, 1–14. Scott, D. (2010). Extravagant abjection: Blackness, power, and sexuality in the African American literary imagination. NYU Press. Scott, J. W. (1991). The evidence of experience. Critical Inquiry, 17(4), 773–797. Seargeant, P. (2019). The emoji revolution: How technology is shaping the future of communication. Cambridge University Press. Searle, K. A. (2015). Aspirational identity in British “gay masculinity,” 1991–2011 [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Birmingham. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. University of California Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (1991). How to bring your kids up gay. Social Text, (29), 18–27. Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press. Seigworth, G. L., & Gregg, M. (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In The affect theory reader (pp. 1–28). Duke University Press. Shaw, A., & Sender, K. (2016). Queer technologies: Affordances, affect, ambivalence. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), 1–5. Shaw, D. F. (1997). Gay men and computer communication: A discourse of sex and identity in cyberspace. In S. Jones (Ed.), Virtual culture: Identity and communication in cybersociety, (pp. 133–145). Sage. Shewey, D. (2018). The paradox of porn: Notes on gay male sexual culture. Joybody Books. Shield, A. D. (2018). Grindr culture: Intersectional and socio-sexual. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 18(1), 149–161. Shield, A. D. (2019). Immigrants on Grindr: Race, sexuality and belonging online. Springer Nature.

289

Simpson, L. B. (2013). Islands of decolonial love. Arbeiter Ring Publishing. Simpson, M. (2014). The metrosexual is dead. Long live the “spornosexual.” Telegraph. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/men/fashion-and-style/10881682/The-metrosexual-is-dead.- Long-live-the-spornosexual.html Slavin, S. (2009). “Instinctively, I’m not just a sexual beast”: The complexity of intimacy among Australian gay men. Sexualities, 12(1), 79–96. Smith, J. A. (1995) Semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis. In J. A. Smith, R. Harré, & L. Van Langenhove (Eds.) Rethinking methods in psychology (pp. 9-26). Sage. Snorton, C. R. (2014). Nobody is supposed to know: Black sexuality on the down low. University of Minnesota Press. Somerville, M. (2016). The post-human I: Encountering “data” in new materialism. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(9), 1161–1172. Speice, T. (2019). The “okay” gay guys: Developing hegemonic sexuality as a tool to understand men’s workplace identities. Journal of Homosexuality, 1–17. http://dx.doi.10.1080/00918369.2019.1616428 Springgay, S. (2011a). The ethico-aesthetics of affect and a sensational pedagogy. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 9(1), 66–82. Springgay, S. (2011b). “The Chinatown Foray” as sensational pedagogy. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(5), 636–656. Springgay, S. (2019). “How to write as felt” Touching transmaterialities and more-than-human intimacies. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38(1), 57–69. Springgay, S., & Freedman, D. (2007). Curriculum and the cultural body. Peter Lang.

Springgay, S., & Freedman, D. (Eds.). (2012). Mothering a bodied curriculum: Emplacement,

desire, affect. University of Toronto Press.

Springgay, S., & Truman, S. E. (2017). Walking methodologies in a more-than-human world:

WalkingLab. Routledge.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2018). Writing post qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(9), 603–608.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2019). Post qualitative inquiry in an ontology of immanence. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(1), 3–16.

290

St. Pierre, E. A., & Pillow, W. (2000). Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and

methods in education (pp. 284–311). Routledge.

St. Pierre, E. A., Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. (2016). New empiricisms and new materialisms:

Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16, 299–110.

Stempfhuber, M., & Liegl, M. (2016). Intimacy mobilized: Hook-up practices in the location-

based social network Grindr. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 41(1), 51–70.

Stenner, P. (2018). Bridging the affect/emotion divide. In L. Zhang & C. Clark (Eds.), Affect, emotion, and rhetorical persuasion in mass communication. Routledge. Stockton, K. B. (2006). Beautiful bottom, beautiful shame: Where “Black” meets “queer.” Duke University Press. Sullivan, S. P., Pingel, E. S., Stephenson, R., & Bauermeister, J. A. (2018). “It was supposed to be a onetime thing”: Experiences of romantic and sexual relationship typologies among young gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(4), 1221–1230. Sumara, D. (2003). Towards a theory of embodied literary experience. English Teaching, 2(2), 88. Sykes, H. (2016). The sexual and gender politics of sport mega-events: Roving colonialism. Taylor & Francis. Szymanski, D. M., & Hilton, A. N. (2013). Fear of intimacy as a mediator of the internalized heterosexism-relationship quality link among men in same-sex relationships. Contemporary Family Therapy, 35(4), 760–772. Taylor, C. A. (2019). Unfolding: Co-conspirators, contemplations, complications and more. In C. A. Taylor & A. Bayley (Eds.) Posthumanism and higher education (pp. 1–27). Palgrave Macmillan. Taywaditep, K. J. (2002). Marginalization among the marginalized: Gay men’s anti-effeminacy attitudes. Journal of Homosexuality, 42(1), 1–28. Thomas, F., Mience, M. C., Masson, J., & Bernoussi, A. (2014). Unprotected sex and internalized homophobia. Journal of Men’s Studies, 22(2), 155–162.

291

Thomas, I. R. (2016). Network-assemblages of mediated sex: A post human study of the digital sexual practices of men who have sex with men [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Cardiff University. Tigert, J. K. (2019). Commitments counter publics: The (un)importance of romantic intimacy in the lives of gay emerging adults [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of Toronto. Tillapaugh, D. (2013). Breaking down the “walls of a façade”: The influence of compartmentalization on gay college males’ meaning-making. Culture, Society and Masculinities, 5(2), 127–146. Tilsen, J., & Nylund, D. (2016). Cultural studies methodologies and narrative family therapy: Therapeutic conversations about pop culture. Family Process, 55(2), 225–237. Titchkosky, T. (2003). Disability, self, and society. University of Toronto Press. Titchkosky, T. (2011). The question of access: Disability, space, meaning. University of Toronto Press. Todd, M. (2016). Straight jacket. Random House. Traister, R. (2018). Good and mad: The revolutionary power of women’s anger. Simon and Schuster. Travers, C. (2011). Unveiling a reflective diary methodology for exploring the lived experiences of stress and coping. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 79(1), 204–216. Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428. Tucker, K. (1998). Anthony Giddens and modern social theory. Sage. Tziallas, E. (2015). Gamified eroticism: Gay male “social networking” applications and self- pornography. Sexuality & Culture, 19(4), 759–775. Ussher, J. M. (2006). Managing the monstrous feminine: Regulating the reproductive body. Psychology Press. Van den Hoonaard, W. C. (2020). “Vulnerability” as a concept captive in its own prison. In R. Iphofen (Ed.), Handbook of research ethics and scientific integrity, (pp. 577–588). Sage. Van de Wiele, C., & Tong, S. T. (2014, September). Breaking boundaries: The uses & gratifications of Grindr. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 619–630).

292

Walcott, R. (2015). Introduction. In O. Dryden & S. Lenon (Eds.), Disrupting queer inclusion: Canadian homonationalisms and the politics of belonging. UBC Press. Wang, S. (2020). Chinese affective platform economies: Dating, live streaming, and performative labor on Blued. Media, Culture & Society, 42(4), 502–520. Warner, M. (Ed.). (1993). Fear of a queer planet: Queer politics and social theory. University of Minnesota Press. Warner, M. (2000). The trouble with normal: Sex, politics, and the ethics of queer life. Harvard University Press. Warren, C. L. (2018). Ontological terror: Blackness, nihilism, and emancipation. Duke University Press. Weed, E., & Schor, N. (Eds.). (1997). Feminism meets queer theory. Indiana University Press. Weheliye, A. G. (2014). Habeas viscus: Racializing assemblages, biopolitics, and black feminist theories of the human. Duke University Press. Weinrich, J. D. (1997). Strange bedfellows: Homosexuality, gay liberation, and the internet. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 22(1), 58–66. Whittier, D. K., & Melendez, R. M. (2004). Intersubjectivity in the intrapsychic sexual scripting of gay men. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 6(2), 131–143. Wilkie-Stibbs, C. (2013). The feminine subject in children’s literature. Routledge. Wilkinson, S., & Kitzinger, C. (1996). The queer backlash. In D. Bell & R. Klein (Eds.), Radically speaking: Feminism reclaimed (pp. 375–382). Spinfex Press. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford Paperbacks. Winnubst, S. (2015). Way too cool: Selling out race and ethics. Columbia University Press. Woo, J. (2013). Meet Grindr. Author. Woo, J. (2015). Grindr: Part of a complete breakfast. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2(1), 61–72. Wu, S., & Ward, J. (2018). The mediation of gay men’s lives: A review on gay dating app studies. Sociology Compass, 12(2), e12560. Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337.

293

Yeo, T. E. D., & Fung, T. H. (2018). “Mr. Right Now”: Temporality of relationship formation on gay mobile dating apps. Mobile Media & Communication, 6(1), 3–18. Yep, G. A., & Elia, J. P. (2012). Racialized masculinities and the new homonormativity in LOGO’s Noah’s Arc. Journal of Homosexuality, 59(7), 890–911. Yergeau, M. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Duke University Press. Youdell, D. (2006). Subjectivation and performative politics—Butler thinking Althusser and Foucault: Intelligibility, agency and the raced–nationed–religioned subjects of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 511–528. Zembylas, M. (2016). Affect theory and Judith Butler: Methodological implications for educational research. In M. Zembeylas &. P. A. Schutz (Eds.), Methodological advances in research on emotion and education (pp. 203–214). Springer. Zervoulis, K., Smith, D. S., Reed, R., & Dinos, S. (2020). Use of “gay dating apps” and its relationship with individual well-being and sense of community in men who have sex with men. Psychology & Sexuality, 11(1–2), 88–102. Zuckert, C. H. (1995). On the “rationality” of rational choice. Political Psychology, 179–198.

Appendix A Study Poster

Interested in chatting about your experiences with gay phone networking applications, such as Grindr, Scruff, etc.? Want to share some of your positive and negative experiences? Want to be part of an innovative research project interested in gay men’s emotions?

If so, please contact Adam Davies, PhD Candidate in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto for more information on how to get involved!

E-mail: [email protected] Supervisor: [email protected]

You will receive a $10 gift card for your participation in this research study.

294

Appendix B Letter of Informed Consent—App Users

Principle Researcher Research Supervisor Adam Davies, PhD Candidate Dr. Heather Sykes, Associate Professor Curriculum Studies & Teacher Development Curriculum Studies & Teacher Development 252 Bloor Street West 252 Bloor Street West Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6 Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6 Canada Tel: 647-535-2136 Tel: 416-978-0073 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

QUEERING APP-PROPRIATE BEHAVIOURS: A STUDY IN GAY NETWORKING APPLICATIONS

Informed Consent Form

You are invited to participate in a research study regarding the usage of gay social networking applications. Through semi-structured interviewing, we will discuss the meanings of gay social networking applications for men seeking various forms of connection online. This research aims to explore how gay social networking application users understand the role of emotion in their online connections.

Your participation in this research will take between 1 and 1.5 hours through an interview in a public library meeting room, a private meeting room at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, or a location of your choosing. You are invited to participate in this research because you are an individual who uses gay social networking applications and is between the ages of 18-29. Your experiences and insights from using gay social networking applications are invaluable for my research study.

The second component of the interview process will consist of diary entries and a follow- up interview. You will be asked to write three (3) diary entries within a two (2) week time span regarding your experiences using gay social networking applications. You will write these entries shortly after using such applications at various points during the two- week time and you will focus on how you felt during such experiences, your interactions with other application users, and the various emotions you experienced. Diary entries will only be seen by the researcher and will collected by the researcher and stored in a password-locked and secure space where all information will be anonymized. Entries can be as long as you feel accurately describes your experience using the

295 296 application. After the two-week time, there will be a follow-up interview where you will be asked to describe your diary entries to the interviewer and to discuss how you felt while using gay social networking applications. This follow-up interview will be approximately 1 hour long and will take place at a location of your choosing.

Please note that participation in this research is voluntary. You may decline participation in this study and may refuse to answer any questions during the interview. You may also withdraw from the research any time before or during, the interview, or afterwards by emailing me within 30 days of your interview. There will be no negative ramifications linked to refusing participation in the study or by withdrawing yourself from participating in this research.

Some potential risks for participation in this research do include psychological and/or emotional discomfort. Please do note that you may decide to not answer certain questions and/or withdraw yourself from the research at any time to minimize discomfort. There are social risks associated with this research due to the small possibility that you could be identified by others who read the research and identify you through your sharing of personal experiences.

Although identifiable information will be collected including your name, email, and information regarding where you live, only your ethno-racial identification and your age will be shared. All other identifiable information, including audio recordings, be kept on an encrypted, locked computer accessible only to the researcher. Data will be retained until transcription and then destroyed. You will be asked to provide a pseudonym to replace your real name and all your information will be kept confidential at all times.

The research study you are participating in may be reviewed for quality assurance to make sure that the required laws and guidelines are followed. If chosen, (a) representative(s) of the Human Research Ethics Program (HREP) may access study-related data and/or consent materials as part of the review. All information accessed by the HREP will be upheld to the same level of confidentiality that has been stated by the research team.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected] or 647-535-2136. You may contact my research supervisor, Heather Sykes, at [email protected] or 416-978-0073. If you have any questions about your rights as a participant, please the Research Oversight and Compliance Office— Human Research Ethics Program at [email protected] or 416-946-3273

Giving of Consent

The purpose of the interview has been explained to me, and all of my questions about the study and the informed consent process have been answered to my satisfaction. I freely consent to participate in this study, and I agree to the interview being audio-recorded.

Participant Print Full Name ______

297

I give consent for my interview to be audio recorded: ☐ YES ☐ NO I give consent for the initial interview: ☐ YES ☐ NO I give consent for to participate in the diaries and follow-up interview: ☐ YES ☐ NO

Please choose a pseudonym for yourself to be used in research: ______

Participant Signature ______Date ______

Investigator Signature ______Date ______

Appendix C Letter of Informed Consent—Outreach Workers

QUEERING APP-PROPRIATE BEHAVIOURS: A STUDY IN GAY NETWORKING APPLICATIONS

Informed Consent Form

Your participation in this research will take between 1 and 1.5 hours through an interview in a public library meeting room or a private meeting room at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I have invited you to participate in this research because you are an individual who works at a community organization and specializes in outreach within gay geo-social networking applications. Your experiences and insights from using gay geo-social networking applications are invaluable for my research study. I am recruiting 6 individuals, such as yourself, to participate in this study.

298 299

Giving of Consent

Participant Print Full Name ______

I give consent for my interview to be audio recorded: ☐ YES ☐ NO I give consent for the interview: ☐ YES ☐ NO

Please choose a pseudonym for yourself to be used in research: ______

Participant Signature ______Date ______

Investigator Signature ______Date ______

Please retain a copy of this form for your own records

Appendix D Letter of Informed Consent—Educators

QUEERING APP-PROPRIATE BEHAVIOURS: A STUDY IN GAY NETWORKING APPLICATIONS

Informed Consent Form

Your participation in this research will take between 1 and 1.5 hours through an interview in a public library meeting room or a private meeting room at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. I have invited you to participate in this research because you are an educator who works within a formal school board doing anti-homophobia and/or health education work. Your experiences and insights working with youth use utilize gay geo-social networking applications are invaluable for my research study. I am recruiting 4 individuals, such as yourself, to participate in this study.

300 301

Giving of Consent

Participant Print Full Name ______

I give consent for my interview to be audio recorded: ☐ YES ☐ NO I give consent for the interview: ☐ YES ☐ NO

Please choose a pseudonym for yourself to be used in research: ______

Participant Signature ______Date ______

Investigator Signature ______Date ______

Please retain a copy of this form for your own records

Appendix E Queering App-propriate Behaviours Interview Guide

Questions for App Users

1. Could you please identify your age, ethno-racial/ethnocultural identification, gender identity, and sexual identity? 2. What brings you online to gay networking applications (Grindr, Scruff, etc.)? a. What kind of connections do you look for when you are on gay networking applications? 3. What does “hooking-up” mean to you? a. What does seeking “connections” online mean to you? b. How do you seek hook-ups and connections online? c. Do you think “hooking up” means something different for different groups of gay men (i.e. depending on one’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, ability)? 4. How do you feel about hooking-up via gay networking applications (i.e. Grindr, Scruff)? a. Do you feel there is anything missing from your experiences online? Are you left wanting something more? i. If so, what are you left wanting? Why do you think that isn’t offered? 5. Do you consider emotions and sex to be something that can be separated? a. Do you feel like your sexual interactions with others are emotional? b. Do you think emotions come into play when you are hooking-up? How? 6. Describe some of the different feelings/emotions that have emerged for you and others when interacting with people online? a. How do you think gay men who openly express feelings and emotions online are treated? b. What if these emotions/feelings go beyond sex? c. Do you think gay men are treated differently in this regard if they are racialized (not white)? transgender? disabled? 7. Do you ever feel conflicted when you are online (i.e. feeling confliction about “hooking- up’)? a. Describe what you feel before and after “hooking up?” b. Do certain emotions emerge for you during this experience? 8. How do you feel those that are seeking love, intimacy, and romantic attachment online are treated in gay cultures? a. Do you feel gay men are treated differently depending on whether they choose to participate or not to participate in “hooking up?” b. Are certain communities/groups of gay men viewed differently for participating in “hook-up” culture (i.e. based on race, ethnicity, gender, and ability)? 9. Have you ever felt lonely when hooking-up online? a. If so, in what ways and does that change how you use the apps? 10. Have you ever felt or experienced shame while hooking-up online or using gay networking applications? If so, how? a. What do you think some of the sources of that shame might be?

302 303

b. And does it relate to any of the respective communities you are a member of or any of the identities you occupy? 11. Tell me about an experience where you have felt dismissed online . . . a. Do you think that type of dismissal is common/rare? Do you think it is connected to forms of discrimination/oppression in the gay community? b. Tell me about an experience where you have felt accepted and/or validated? 12. Tell me about a time when you connected with someone in an unexpected way online through a gay networking application. a. What emerged for you from this experience? 13. Do you feel you have learned anything about the gay men’s sexual habits, behaviours, or cultures through hooking-up online? 14. Have you ever felt feelings of emotionally attachment or desires for commitment with a hook-up? a. If so, what happened? 15. Have you ever experienced feelings of abandonment in your connections and relationships? a. Do you ever experience such feelings when online or connecting with someone online? 16. Have you ever experienced feelings of acceptance in your connections and relationships? a. Do you ever experience such feelings when online or connecting with someone online? 17. Tell me about a time when you got anxious when hooking-up online. How did this experience unfold? 18. Have you ever been anxious when messaging or texting a potential partner? How might you get anxious when using technology? Has this resulted in messaging someone multiple times in a row? 19. How might norms for masculinity be connected to the ways in which gay men connect online? a. What are your thoughts on the norms for masculinity in gay men’s communities in relation to gay men’s online hook-up cultures? b. What role do you think race, ethnicity, gender, and ability might play in these norms as they are applied to gay men’s online hook-up cultures? 20. Is there an ideal type of gay men that gay men’s online cultures promote? If so, what does this figure look like? What are the emotional norms for this individual? What do you think this individual’s race, gender, class, religious affiliation, and ability might be? 21. Would you like to see any shifts in gay men’s online hook-up culture? If so, what would you like to see shift in regards to how gay men connect with one another online? Do you think these connections promote inclusiveness/acceptance? If so, why?/If not, why not? 22. What stories do you think gay men’s social media convey about what it means to be a gay man? Do these stories ring true to you? If not, what other stories would you like to see being told? 23. How would you like to see gay social media and networking applications being used to tell more stories regarding mental health? [extension]: (and mental health as it intersects with other identities and social locations i.e. race, ethnicity, gender, ability, etc.)? 24. Do you have anything else you’d like to share with me before we finish the interview?

304

App User—Follow-Up Interview

1. What caught your interest during your time online these past few weeks? Tell me a bit about this. 2. Tell me about what you wrote about in your diary entries and why it was meaningful for you. 3. Why did you choose these events as noteworthy moments these past few weeks? 4. How does this relate to other experiences you may have had with people on gay networking applications online? Please describe. 5. Do you feel this interaction is normal or exceptional in terms of your experiences with gay men online?

Questions for Educators

1. Could you please identify your age, ethno-racial/ethnocultural identification, gender identity, and sexual identity? 2. In what ways do the gay youth you work with use social media? What have you learned about their usage of social media from them? 3. What kinds of pressure do you feel that youth are placed under in modern social media? What do you think might be some of the specific pressures in which young gay men experience in gay specific online spaces? 4. What do you think gay networking applications or gay social media in general teach gay men about notions of a normative gay identity? a. What do you think gay youth are learning about enacting their respective masculinities from gay men’s social/online media and networking apps? 5. Do you believe that youth under 18 are using gay networking applications (specifically Grindr, Squirt, Scruff, etc.)? If so, how do you think this might impact them? 6. How do you feel that an individual might change their appearance and their sexual behaviours after being exposed to gay men’s social media and networking applications? 7. What kind of pressures do you think gay youth are placed under in gay cultures (and online cultures)? How do you think this might relate to norms for masculinity in gay men’s communities? What do they learn about their masculinity from gay applications? 8. How do you find that these applications are discussed within your own work in schools and with youth? How do conversations regarding gay networking applications emerge? 9. What are some of your concerns about how young people are engaging with hook-up culture? How about gay youth and young adults? 10. Do you feel that schooling, as a space, can allow for properly addressing the lived realities of gay youth as it pertains to online communities and hook-up/networking applications? 11. Do you have anything else you’d like to add before we finish this interview?

305

Questions for Outreach Workers

1. Could you please identify your age, ethno-racial identification, gender identity, and sexual identity? 2. What are your thoughts on gay online hook-up cultures? a. What do you think these spaces provide for gay men? 3. From your professional work experience, what are the biggest struggles you think young gay men experience within these online spaces? a. What kind of pressures do these spaces place upon young gay men? 4. How does mental health appear in your work broadly? 5. How do you see issues of mental health appearing within these online spaces and within the lives of gay men broadly-speaking? Do you think there’s space for gay men to discuss feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression online? How does mental health factor into your work online? 6. In what ways do men cope with these feelings of isolation and loneliness? How does this play into gay men’s online cultures? 7. What norms for masculinity do you feel operate online for gay men? How might this affect men’s willingness to open online or to be authentic? Do you feel men are authentic online? 8. How might shame operate within gay online networking applications? a. What do you think some of the sources of that shame might be? b. And does it relate to any of the respective communities individuals are members of or any of the identities they occupy? 9. What are the complexities of hooking-up online when considering one’s gender identity/expression, ethno-racial identification, ability, etc.? 10. How would you describe some of the competing feelings and emotions men experience online? a. How might this relate to discourses of loneliness, depression, and anxiety that are prevalent in contemporary gay men’s cultures? 11. Do you think men are looking for love and romantic intimacy within these online spaces? a. If so, do you think that men can find these things within these online spaces? b. How do you feel men are treated within these spaces who are looking for romance or a higher level of emotional intimacy, commitment, or attachment? 12. What kinds of stresses and anxieties do you think men might experience while engaging with other gay men online? a. Do you think these stresses and anxieties might stem from greater pressures within mainstream gay male cultures? 13. Do you have anything else you’d like to add before we finish this interview?