“It Feels Like Agreeing to Meet Up Implies Consent”: Gendered Implications of Dating App Implied Consent

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12. Dating, Friendship, and Intimate Boundaries

Abstract

Digital dating applications have generated many changes to the dating and intimate practices of heterosexual young adults. In theory, these applications should help users break the silence characteristic of hookup scripts by providing young adults the opportunity to communicate their sexual boundaries and interests before meeting in person. Yet, at the same time, dating apps upend existing interactional norms and generate new forms of ambiguity, which in turn leads young adults to rely on traditional heterosexual norms to guide their sexual behaviors. In this article, I use in-depth interviews with 97 (hetero)sexual women and men to examine how dating shapes practices of consent and unwanted sexual activity. I find that, unlike traditional dating and hookup scripts, during dating app courtship, users assume sexual consent before meeting with a match in person, what I refer to as implied consent. However, assumptions of implied consent and the location (private vs. public) of the initial meeting generate new interactional pressures toward sex, shaping gendered patterns of consent and unwanted sex. This study advances the literature on dating apps and heterosexual scripts by generating insight into how cultural assumptions of digital dating interact with contemporary scripts to facilitate interactional gendered patterns of unwanted sex.

Author

• Katelyn Rose Malae, Utah Valley University