Digital Desirability: A Sexual Fields Approach to Examining Young Women’s Unequal Dating App Histories

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Gender and Economics

Abstract

Sociologists have drawn our attention to how the features of individual digital dating applications shape user’s experiences. This research has overlooked the ways in which dating apps, as a collective site, create a unique structure of desire that shapes the rules users must follow to attract partners. To address this gap, I adopt a sexual fields approach to investigate the unequal dating app outcomes among (hetero)sexual young adult women. Drawing upon 60 in-depth interviews, I find that in the dating app sexual field women must construct a unique, casual, presentation of self—what I call digital desirability—across all dating apps. To be digitally desirable on all apps women must: (1) demonstrate disinterest in romance and intimacy, (2) lower their stakes, and (3) limit personal information on their profiles. Yet, the intersection of race/ethnicity and class shape women’s abilities to access the sexual capital necessary for constructing a casual digital desirability. As a result, marginalized women are placed in double binds of either remaining on apps and being subjected to dissatisfying hookups or leaving them entirely. Taken together, these findings advance sexual fields theory by elucidating how digital technologies diffuse sexual fields, extending their influence across different digital contexts and locations.

Author

• Katelyn Rose Malae, Utah Valley University