Navigating Sexual Racism in the Sexual Field: Compensation for and Disavowal of Marginality by Racial Minority Grindr Users in Singapore

Navigating Sexual Racism in the Sexual Field: Compensation for and Disavowal of Marginality by Racial Minority Grindr Users in Singapore

Sexual Racism, Sexual Fields, Grindr, Same-Sex Attracted Men, Mobile Dating Applications, Singapore

This study investigates racialized sexual desires of Grindr users in Singapore, a multiracial East Asian society. We found that users are continually pigeonholed into racial categories tethered to
stereotypes, hierarchizing users such that the Chinese majority are considered more desirable. Users employ race labels to communicate racial membership, circumnavigating Grindr’s preset ethnic categories. Users also creatively appropriate interface affordances to enforce racialized preferences; this includes a preoccupation with verifying racial identities, especially through photos. Racial minorities
strategically respond to sexual racism by negotiating for Chinese majority membership, emphasizing the cosmopolitan self over the ethnic self, and/or reframing the situation to disavow victimhood. This research counterbalances the ethnocentric focus of existing sexual racism literature on whitecentric contexts by applying sexual fields theory to multiracial East Asia, yielding meaningful theoretical contributions. We also foreground the importance of considering internal dispositions of feelings and attitudes as situated resistance against sexual racism on Grindr.

Ming Wei Ang, Justin Ching Keng Tan, & Chen Lou

https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/26/3/129/6262058

Oxford University Press

5 November 2020

Sri Wahuni

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English

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Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 26 (2021)