Negotiating and reproducing gender norms on the gay dating app Scruff.

This contribution analyses the way in which sexual and gender norms are reproduced by users and at the same time encouraged by the interface of the app. These norms are structured at the intersection of gender, race, class, age along with body types, gay subcultures belonging, and sexual factors (preferences and practices) and they create hierarchies of desire and desirability that users have to deal with. In this process, app’s interface plays an active role, because it makes possible to reproduce them through its features (e.g., information, filters etc.), as well as more broadly by its functioning system (proximity and immediate availability), in order to capture the user’s “connection”. 

My paper is based on my MRes fieldwork conducted in Paris (France) with 15 users of Scruff.