{"id":26368,"date":"2021-08-12T01:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T01:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=26368"},"modified":"2021-08-13T22:38:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T22:38:44","slug":"how-gay-men-justify-their-racism-on-grindr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-gay-men-justify-their-racism-on-grindr\/","title":{"rendered":"How gay men justify their racism on Grindr"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Christopher T. Conner<\/a>, University of Missouri-Columbia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On gay dating apps like Grindr, many users have profiles that contain phrases like \u201cI don\u2019t date Black men,\u201d or that claim they are \u201cnot attracted to Latinos.\u201d Other times they\u2019ll list races acceptable to them: \u201cWhite\/Asian\/Latino only.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This language is so pervasive on the app that websites such as Douchebags of Grindr<\/a> and hashtags like #grindrwhileblack can be used to find countless examples of the abusive language that men use against people of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2015 I\u2019ve been studying LGBTQ culture and gay life<\/a>, and much of that time has been spent trying to untangle and understand the tensions and prejudices within gay culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While social scientists<\/a> have explored racism on online dating apps, most of this work has centered on highlighting the problem, a topic I\u2019ve also written about<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m seeking to move beyond simply describing the problem and to better understand why some gay men behave this way. From 2015 to 2019 I interviewed gay men from the Midwest and West Coast regions of the United States. Part of that fieldwork was focused on understanding the role Grindr plays in LGBTQ life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A slice of that project \u2013 which is currently under review with a top peer-reviewed social science journal \u2013 explores the way gay men rationalize their sexual racism and discrimination on Grindr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s just a preference\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The gay men I connected with tended to make one of two justifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most common was to simply describe their behaviors as \u201cpreferences.\u201d One participant I interviewed, when asked about why he stated his racial preferences, said, \u201cI don\u2019t know. I just don\u2019t like Latinos or Black guys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
A Grindr profile used in the study specifies interest in certain races. Christopher T. Conner, CC BY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That user went on to explain that he had even purchased a paid version of the app that allowed him to filter out Latinos and Black men. His image of his ideal partner was so fixed that he would rather \u2013 as he put it \u2013 \u201cbe celibate\u201d than be with a Black or Latino man. (During the 2020 #BLM protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, Grindr eliminated the ethnicity filter<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sociologists have long been interested<\/a> in the concept of preferences, whether they\u2019re favorite foods or people we\u2019re attracted to. Preferences may appear natural or inherent, but they\u2019re actually shaped by larger structural forces \u2013 the media we consume, the people we know and the experiences we have. In my study, many of the respondents seemed to have never really thought twice about the source of their preferences. When confronted, they simply became defensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was not my intent to cause distress,\u201d another user explained. \u201cMy preference may offend others \u2026 [however,] I derive no satisfaction from being mean to others, unlike those who have problems with my preference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other way that I observed some gay men justifying their discrimination was by framing it in a way that put the emphasis back on the app. These users would say things like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t e-harmony, this is Grindr, get over it or block me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Grindr has a reputation as a hookup app<\/a>, bluntness should be expected, according to users like this one \u2013 even when it veers into racism. Responses like these reinforce the idea of Grindr as a space where social niceties don\u2019t matter and carnal desire reigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prejudices bubble to the surface<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While social media apps have dramatically altered the landscape of gay culture, the benefits from these technological tools can sometimes be difficult to see. Some scholars point to how these apps enable those living in rural areas<\/a> to connect with one another, or how it gives those living in cities alternatives to LGBTQ spaces that are increasingly gentrified<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, however, these technologies often only reproduce, if not heighten, the same problems and issues facing the LGBTQ community. As scholars such as Theo Green have unpacked elsewehere<\/a>, people of color who identify as queer experience a great deal of marginalization. This is true even for people of color who occupy some degree of celebrity within the LGBTQ world<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps Grindr has become particularly fertile ground for cruelty because it allows anonymity in a way that other dating apps do not. Scruff<\/a>, another gay dating app, requires users to reveal more of who they are. However, on Grindr people are allowed to be anonymous and faceless, reduced to images of their torsos or, in some cases, no images at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emerging sociology of the internet has found that, time and again, anonymity in online life brings out the worst human behaviors<\/a>. Only when people are known do they become accountable for their actions<\/a>, a finding that echoes Plato\u2019s story of the Ring of Gyges<\/a>, in which the philosopher wonders if a man who became invisible would then go on to commit heinous acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very least, the benefits from these apps aren\u2019t experienced universally. Grindr seems to recognize as much; in 2018, the app launched its \u201c#KindrGrindr<\/a>\u201d campaign. But it\u2019s difficult to know if the apps are the cause of such toxic environments, or if they\u2019re a symptom of something that has always existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors.<\/em> You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher T. Conner<\/a>, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Missouri-Columbia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher T. Conner, University of Missouri-Columbia On gay dating apps like Grindr, many users have profiles that contain phrases like \u201cI don\u2019t date Black men,\u201d or that claim they are \u201cnot attracted to Latinos.\u201d Other times they\u2019ll list races acceptable to them: \u201cWhite\/Asian\/Latino only.\u201d This language is so pervasive on the app that websites such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[501,1937,5017,2103,7938,7936,2677,2071,1538],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26368"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26375,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26368\/revisions\/26375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}