Imagining Queer Futures: Grindr Users, “America”, and Negotiations of Belonging in Global Pakistan

• In Event: Mediating Affect Onscreen and Online

Abstract

Despite the increasing ubiquity of smartphones globally, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the uses of smartphone-based social networking apps in the non-West, especially South Asian and Muslim contexts. Equally, scholarship has not fully addressed the ways that participation on social networking apps, especially for many queer men in the Global South, contributes to an imagination of “America” as a land of sexual freedom and liberation, despite the rise in attacks over LGBTQIA+ rights and freedoms in the United States.

This paper addresses such scholarly gaps through an ethnographic study of the uses of Grindr, a mobile social networking app, among gay, bisexual, trans, and queer men in Pakistan. The paper utilizes data from participant observation, targeted conversations, and life history interviews in Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, and tracks Grindr users from 2015-2024.

With an estimated 27 million users in 192 countries, Grindr is among the most popular social networking apps for gay, bisexual, trans and queer men globally. Reflecting such global popularity, Grindr is among the most subscribed social networking apps in Pakistan. Narratives of men included in this research illuminate a global Pakistan where the global flows of media, technologies, and ideologies are contributing to the emergence of westernized gay communities that importantly, also accommodate a wide spectrum of culturally constructed non-normative sexual identities.

A central argument in this paper is that Grindr’s usage in Pakistan creates opportunities for casual sexual encounters and demonstrates the construction of a modern non-normative sexual identity, as evidenced by Pakistani users on a global social networking app targeting gay, bisexual, trans, and queer men, and their appropriations of a Western language of sexuality (e.g., gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) and sex roles (e.g., top, bottom, versatile). Such appropriations notwithstanding, Grindr’s usage in Pakistan illuminates a culturally constructed homosexuality. Many men in my research profess profound sadness over their inability to be openly gay in all spheres of life due to familial, religious, and culturally negative valuations of homosexuality. Many are married or plan to marry a woman. Given these real-life considerations, participation on Grindr allows many of my interlocutors to explore their sexuality and construct an identity as “gay,” “bisexual,” “trans,” and “queer.” Moreover, Grindr provides a significant space to negotiate obligations to adhere to societal heteronorms with a desire to be part of global queer communities and experience same-sex sexual intimacies.

Significantly, the desire to immigrate to “America”, bolstered by the possibility of sexual freedom that many find elusive in Pakistan, was a common theme in my interviews and conversations with several interlocutors. In this paper, I refer to the narratives of interlocutors to explore the constructions of “America” in their imagination of liberatory queer futures. I include narratives of interlocutors who have relocated to the United States and the United Kingdom to provide insights into their experiences as new immigrants and sexual migrants, and their challenges in building a life as openly gay men, and especially their negotiations of Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and racism in the West.

Biographical Information

Ahmed Afzal is Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. He received his doctorate from Yale University in Cultural Anthropology, the master's degree in Cultural Geography from the London School of Economics, University of London, and his bachelor's degree from Vassar College in Third World Studies (Independent Major). Afzal is a past recipient of fellowships and research grants from the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, the Border-Crossing Initiative of the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Junior/Senior Faculty Intramural Grant at California State University, Fullerton. He has published in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, American Studies Journal, Amerasia Journal, City and Society, Development: Journal of the Society for International Development, Journal of American History, Journal of Language and Sexuality, and Urban Anthropology. His scholarship has also been published in several peer-reviewed edited volumes, notably, Asian Families in Canada and the United States: Implications for Mental Health and Well-being (Springer Press), Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective (Routledge Press), Global Asian American Popular Cultures (New York University Press), Cultural Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Asia (University of Hawai’i Press), Shifting Positionalities: The Local and Global Geopolitics of Surveillance and Policy (Cambridge Scholars Press), and Culture and the Condom (Peter Lang Press). Selections from his work-in-progress, Tales from Grindr: Emerging Queer Communities, New Media Technologies, and Negotiations of Belonging in Global Pakistan, have appeared in an edited volume, Pakistan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere (2023, Duke University Press), and Sexualities (forthcoming in Fall 2025).

Author

• Ahmed Afzal, California State University-Fullerton