This piece was originally published on HyperVocal as part of a special series on the End of Gender. This series includes bloggers from HyperVocal, Role/Reboot, Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, Salon, Ms. Magazine, YourTango, Psychology Today, Princess Free Zone,The Next Great Generation, and Man-Making.
In June 2011, the creators of Grindr, a popular gay and bisexual smartphone app, announced that they had reached 2 million users worldwide, with 45,000 men online at any given second. The app’s purpose is pretty clear: Using geotagging services, men are able to see how close other men are to them, often for the purpose of hooking up.
After using it for a year, while I’ve met friends and had plenty of hook-ups otherwise unlikely, I’ve noticed the site is ripe for analysis in terms of gender. And far from hinting that we’ve reached a point of abandoning traditional gender roles, Grindr lets us know that these roles are alive and well, even flourishing in the very communities we believe are embracing flexible gender roles and expressions.
The first thing you’re likely wondering is, “What does gender have to do with gay sex?” And to answer that question, we have to look at why sexual acts are tied to gender. To that effect, it’s rather easy to look at heterosexual relationships, where a pattern emerges that constantly values masculinity, attaching it to strength and virility, while female sexuality is labeled as passive, and femininity is devalued.
In this instance, sexuality is not tied to biology, but instead it becomes a question of power and control that ties it to many other public spheres.
When talking about gay sex, it’s easy to imagine flexibility to talk about and engage in sex outside of these confining structures. And while it’s true that the gay liberation movement opened up forms of sexual practice that heightened traditional sexual roles through conscious plays with power, it’s clear that use of applications like Grindr have not done the same thing. While Grindr doesn’t inherently reaffirm these traditional gender roles, it does offer some the space to assert them, which has unintended causes.
I would describe myself as a guy who is not, by any means, traditionally masculine. My interests and passions seem to diverge wildly from those that define traditional masculinity. I always walk around in tight jeans, cut-off shorts, and a signature, always changing tote bag. These characteristics have led to me being called “faggot” more times than I can remember. (Here it is very clear because I look more feminine, I’m devalued as being gay, and not a “real” man).
But these attributes have also led to conflict within those who identify as gay. Sexual practice comes into play here, and has fueled the love/hate relationship that I’ve developed with Grindr. Since I first started having sex, I’ve been labeled the “bottom,” which means, for those unfamiliar, the one who gets penetrated. For the longest time I struggled to understand why, at least until I began to use Grindr more for the purpose of hooking up. It was through these experiences that I first grew fed up with people pigeonholing me into a specific sexual role. I lusted for some level of flexibility that I saw inherent in the history of queer political and social struggles.
I knew at once I needed to look more carefully at the way that people represented themselves through Grindr. And while I don’t profess to be a strict researcher, it became abundantly clear that terms like “straight-acting only,” “masculine only,” and “no fems” were popping up far too frequently for me to be comfortable. I want to make it clear that I am not targeting people and advocating that they adopt any series of characteristics. Instead, I want to challenge individuals to examine the consequences that how they talk about themselves influences sexual behavior and those who aren’t traditionally masculine.
To call yourself “straight-acting,” as an example, assumes heterosexuality as traditionally masculine, and reaffirms the stereotype of the flaming queen. Of any of the terms used, it most clearly shifts the conversation on sex away from practice into gender presentation. To call yourself “masculine” assumes a particular set of characteristics attached to masculinity. You’re not going to imagine that someone who calls himself masculine is going to like romantic dramas. You’re going to assume he means a specific set of physical attributes and behaviors that are taught to us from the very earliest of ages.
In these realizations, I began to see how my own sexual behaviors and practices fit in with my use of the application. New phrases like “power bottom” emerged, which is defined most commonly as the aggressive receptive partner during anal sex. But terms like power bottom, I realized, did not disrupt gender roles. By qualifying the noun bottom with power as an adjective, it makes the term bottom, like it’s heterosexual analogy, mean passive and receptive to the desire of the top. It actively denies the bottom’s sexual agency.
But I also began to see how, in refashioning normative gender roles in sex, we not only neglect the beauty and joy that comes from the ability of these sexual relationships to offer new forms of expression, but we also help fuel a culture that prizes the traditional images of masculinity at the expense of anyone, including myself, who sits outside of these boundaries. This is because adopting an assumed masculinity allows for our broader culture to create spaces that make those who are less normative in gender expression feel insubordinate. It helps create phrases like “no fems,” which is another way of saying, on a much larger scale, it’s okay to discriminate against guys who are more effeminate.
But how can you possibly engage in more flexible, non-normative definitions when you’re only given a limited number of characters to write with? Grindr, like most social media technology, favors rapid responses at the expense of more intellectual discourse. But it’s not impossible to communicate wants, needs and preferences without resorting to these labels.
It all begins by making the personal commitment not to use them. Rather than saying, “I am straight-acting,” you can say, “I’m tall, I have a beard, I enjoy sports, hiking, the gym, etc.” If I can write about academic theory in 140 characters on Twitter, you can easily be descriptive about yourself and your sexual preferences. At the same time, it’s wrong to settle for something you are confined by, and taking the time to communicate your desires can make the difference between creating, and not creating, a space of sexual agency.
It’s not easy to dismantle traditional gender roles, and technologies like Grindr aren’t on our side at the moment, but I remain hopeful that through the discussions we try to create, things are not hopeless. We can be more open-minded, in the process valuing all different forms of sexual expression.
Kyle Bella currently resides in Philadelphia, PA, and will be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College in April 2012. Follow him on Twitter @quixoticblazes.
Photo credit bastique/Flickr
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