GLR July-August 2023

are only seeking other masculine men, and there’s even a short hand phrase that’s used to set the parameters: “masc for masc.” Curiously there was some disagreement among my subjects on whether Grindr or Scruff had the more “masculine” clientele. At least one user gave the nod to Scruff, but another saw Grindr as promoting a “hypermasculine” ideal, while Scruff had a land scape that was more open to people outside the mold. C OMMUNITY C ONCEPTS OF COMMUNITY illustrate differences between rural and urban settings with respect to Grindr and Scruff. As Michael quickly learned in Uncoupled , gay clubbers in New York use Grindr to check out the very guys they’re cruising and some times meeting at the club. In nonmetropolitan places, Grindr serves a more urgent purpose as one of the few ways for queer folks to meet at all. One user explained: “There aren’t any gay bars or meeting spaces where I can meet other gay men in per son. I feel like there is no explicit gay community [here]. Grindr is the only place where I feel a sense of connection with other gays. If I didn’t have Grindr then I’d feel very isolated.” An other told me that they “come on here [Grindr] a lot to kinda get away ... and meet people [who] are too afraid to be them selves” in public places. Grindr and Scruff fill other community functions as well. ways to live ur life and so many decision[s] for you to make, it make[s] me think a lot about my own [life] and how I want mine to be.” What’s more, even on Grindr much of the interaction can be related only tangentially, or not at all, to sex per se. Respon dents told me that they had discussed such topics as their expe rience living with HIV, sexual health practices, and feelings about their desires and desirability in the context of the other users on the app. One user described using the travel feature of Scruff to study a foreign city where they were set to reside for a summer and to make connections with users there. The “drag personality” mentioned above, for all their mixed feelings about Grindr, concluded on a hopeful note: “I think we all secretly hope we will bump into our soulmate in cyberspace.” On balance, Grindr and Scruff currently offer interfaces for users to share virtual space together, for gay club goers to secure hook-ups in big cities, for queer folks in nonmetropolitan areas to find a sense of community where otherwise there would be none. On the other hand, Grindr and Scruff can be spaces in which users harass others anonymously and compete for a narrow slice of users who approximate the “gay boy mold.” So, we take the good with the bad, as one user observed, and continue to hope for a “future bound in our desires and designs,” in José Esteban Muñoz’ words,* for a more humane and equitable world. ___________________ * Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity . NYU Press, 2009. One user, new to their area, told me that these apps had provided initial connections to their physical context. Another described how Grindr puts you in the grid with people that you may not have interacted with out side of the app, and there is a community impact when that’s the case. This user ex plained: “U realize there is [ sic ] so many

they ended up being quiet and shy in person. Another said that they knew people from in-person interactions who would not interact with them on Grindr (who knows why?). Yet another mentioned that people on Grindr can be crueler than they prob ably would be in person—a well-known casualty of online in teraction of all kinds. One reason for being anonymous on Grindr is the fear of being outed. This can be a special concern in nonurban or rural areas: some respondents referred to the precautions they take to avoid being identified. But there are other reasons to be anony mous on Grindr. Two users observed that anonymity gives users greater freedom to explore sexual fantasies and the like than they would otherwise have. A user who described their area as “sheltered and traditional” suggested that anonymity allows for “more convos and sexual encounters” (especially in a place where there’s a fear of being outed). And if that were not enough, anonymity has the benefit of disavowing accountability for one’s behavior on the app. How ever, this “benefit” can be a detriment for other users. Two users described being harassed for their physical appearance online, and they blamed anonymity for allowing this. One of them detailed a scenario involving an organized hook-up that fell through, and pondered how people cling to anonymity at the expense of real-life experience: “I feel like some of them may never have explored their sexualitiies if they weren’t able to do so anonymously via an online dating/hookup app. It’s simi lar to how the asshole guy felt like he could fat shame me. It’s easy to do those things when you aren’t face to face with someone, just as it’s easier to explore parts of your sexuality that may be deemed taboo by so ciety when you’re able to do so anonymously. So you’ve kinda gotta take the good with the bad.” I DENTITY B EING GAY OR LESBIAN OR QUEER is a big part of one’s identity in our culture. But these categories further subdivide into more specific identities within queer communities: bears and twinks among gay men, for example, or lipstick lesbians and butches in sapphic communities. Grindr lists a total of 31 “tags” that capture this diversity. On both Grindr and Scruff, age and phys ical features clearly play a role. In describing oneself and one’s preferred sex partner, there seems to be a hypothetical ideal that one user called the “gay boy mold,” described as young and masculine with a muscular body type and a big dick. This paragon of desirability is of course more aspirational than real. However, its hold on users is such that many felt excluded by their personal stats or looks. Being older was cited as a major barrier to access—no surprise there. One user identified as “a drag personality ... older, black and overweight” and wrote: “When you can’t check all of the masculinity boxes you get overlooked in this Grindr community.” They added: “We live in the Midwest. This is a predominantly white, predominantly rural community.” Masculinity is a part of the “gay boy mold,” and many users spoke of it as a source of anxiety. Being or looking masculine confers a degree of privilege on Grindr to which some users can only aspire. Many men who describe themselves as masculine

Rural areas don’t have the queer population density or the LGBT spaces that a metropolis has. But they do have Grindr and Scruff.

TheG & LR

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