Femmephobia and online dating apps

Online dating applications of various kinds have been gaining popularity over the last years. Since the early 2010-s when the majority of the apps were introduced they acquired millions of users worldwide. According to Statista all of the online dating services combined are used by 265 million people who bring more than half a billion-dollar revenue to the owners of the apps[1]. The apps are based on the idea of building new acquaintances for different purposes, but the prime aim is usually establishing romantic or sexual connections (Sevi, 2018; Sumter, 2017; Ward, 2017). Such set of major motivations for dating apps usage makes us think of the phenomenon from the gender perspective as it can give a complex view of the topics of sexuality and romantic relations. In particular as we are dealing with dating apps where self-representation plays a great role (Ranzini, 2017; Birnholtz, 2014) the idea of investigating masculinity and femininity displaying practices seems vital and have a great interest for a researcher. In the present work we will focus only at masculinity due to several reasons. Firstly, to research both masculinities and femininities would be too much information which is not available for the present work. Secondly, there is more research on masculinity especially toxic masculinities which allows to produce a more complex research of the topic. And finally, the majority of Tinder users are male[2]. Hence, if we conduct the analysis of the masculinities we would cover more of the users of the dating apps as we presume that the values of masculinities are mostly shared by men.

In this part of the research we should explain how dating applications function and where in them we can find masculinities. The majority of the applications presume that a person creates his/her profile where he/she includes photos, information about him/herself, place of job and education. Several applications allow users to include their «hymn» (like it is on Tinder) and to attach Instagram profile to the app profile. We explain the characteristics of the profile as in all of the named features can be used to show masculine patterns. As one of the researchers investigating masculinities puts it «constructing one's gendered self requires a literacy that, while founded in cultural scripts, is performed and improvised through particular media platforms» (Hess, 2018, p.1089). For instance, a person can mark his/her masculine qualities through showing muscles. Alongside with that he/she can use aggressive music as his/her hymn to additionally show masculine features. This is the «area» where the masculinity is shown before the interaction has started, but it is also important to investigate the presentation of masculinities in the interaction, which is also an important part of the research.

One might notice that till this moment the concept of masculinity is not defined in the work. It was done due to the existence of multiple masculinities which prevent us from stating one particular masculine masculinity. Nevertheless, we can try to find some features of masculinity and trace the speculations of other scholars on masculinities in attempts to somehow frame the performance on Tinder.

One of the possible ways to define masculinity is to derive it from non-femininity, as, for instance, Kimmel does it (Kimmel, 2007). Thus, masculinity appears to be built on the rejection of everything that is defined as feminine. This tactics of defining masculinity seems convenient but have a grand problem – we must define femininity at first, but the only way to define femininity in such terms is to oppose it to masculinity. Thus, we get a vicious cycle of tautologies hinders us from defining masculinity.

It seems though possible to define masculinity with another kind of opposition – opposition to homosexuality.
A masculine person is the one who rejects everything that is homosexual where homosexuality is easier to define than it is with femininity. For instance, the traditional concept of hegemonic masculinity includes homophobia (Connell, 2005). Here we face two major problems for such interpretation of masculinity: (1) masculinity is relative and depends on the group where it is established, (2) masculinity is dynamically changing and may be different in different time periods. As for the first argument we can address to the Connell's idea of levels of masculinity: local, regional and global (Connell, 2005, p.832). The idea itself means that we are dealing with various local and regional masculinities. Each of the masculinities is different form the another which prevents us from stating one single concept of masculinity. Moreover, to support the thesis and to avoid defining masculinity as homophobic we can address the Inclusive Masculinity Theory which postulated the idea that the modern world masculinity allows men not to be afraid to seem gay (Anderson, 2018), so the homophobic pattern is partially diapering form the idea of masculinity.

Thus, we are dealing with rather a spectrum of masculinities then with a conventional one, we cannot state that there is one particular ideal masculinity that we will use to measure dating apps performances. Nevertheless, as we are dealing with the works of other scholars we will rely on the choice of the interpretation of masculinity chosen by them and analyze them accordingly.

As the analysis of the literature shows there are several practices through which male dating apps users show and reinforce their masculinities. One of them as Haywood states building on the set of interviews is that male dating app users tend to objectify and commodify women (Haywood, 2018, p.142) which help them to establish their masculinity. One might mention that it is not the practice itself and do not have the effect on reinforcement of masculinity, but it leads to several practices that seem to be of a great importance. One of them is being impolite as a tool of reinforcing masculinity. Haywood states that politeness is associated with femininity and is avoided by men who want to portray themselves as masculine (Haywood, 2018, p.191). Rudeness may become a part of toxic masculinity patterns which even gained a name of a Tinder nightmare. By the term people often mean a pattern of toxic communication that comes from male users. Practices of the so-called Tinder nightmare include rudeness and/or cyber harassment which involve constant hinting on sex and the desires of the male actor (Thompson,2018; Hess, 2018). For a better understanding of what Tinder nightmare one may consider some examples presented by Thompson:

Example 1:

"A: i wanna boink you.

Nov 21 3:29 PM

B: Just no

Nov 21 3:34 PM

A: your gonna turn this into a rape

Nov 21 3:43 PM

B: Learn to respect women you a hole

Nov 21 3:47 PM

A: its POF repect is out the window"

Example 2:

"YOU MATCHED WITH THOMAS ON 2015.12-19

A: Hey how's it going?

Dec 21. 2015. 6:25 PM

A: You know you're not attractive enough to not respond right?" (Thompson,2018, p.78-82)

From these patterns we can derive that masculinity here can be connected to mentioned anti-politeness (in turn connected to anti-femininity) and high heterosexual desire. Thus, accordingly it is possible to reinforce it through using these practices.

Considering multiple masculinities mentioned above and the idea of defining masculinity as femmephobic it seems also important that among gay men traditional masculinity patterns are encountered as well. For instance, as Miller states it having analyzed information from 143 gay men dating apps users, there is an association between using femmephobic language and perceiving the person using it as more masculine (Miller,2016, p.182). Thus, we can state that there is a certain perception of what is feminine and opposition to this idea makes a person more masculine in the eyes of another actor. Hence, it is problematic to define the concept of masculinity through "not femininity" but there can be such a perception among people who use dating applications.

As we mentioned the practices of reinforcing masculinity through the actions it seems also important to pay attention to the "static" masculinity on dating apps meaning the profile features of the users. The majority of the research on the topic of construction profiles is dedicated to self-representation and not usually analyzed through the concept of masculinity. One of the attempts to do it was conducted by Haywood who derived a trope of a "Bad boy" from the analysis of the interviews. The picture of the Bad boy is based on rejecting sensitivity and caring nature (again addressing to femininity). What is important here is that men often construct their profiles in accordance to what they think other men would think about their profile and not women (Haywood, 2018, p.155).

The research of the masculinities on dating apps may have several conclusions. Firstly, it is important to research masculinity in dating apps, because the majority of users are male and also because masculinity reinforcement practices can be toxic and mentally harmful for the other actors of a communication. Secondly, we can investigate masculinity in two dimensions: active, when a person uses the patterns in communication and passive, when a person creates a profile where he/she puts certain masculine features. Both dimensions include such practices as femmephobic language usage, anti-politeness, homophobia and high sexual desire. As we can see all of them may be connected to the traditional perception of masculinity and hegemonic masculinity in particular. And thirdly, we may state that despite the fact that we cannot derive one single idea of masculinity people tend to understand masculinity in their own way and evaluate other people from this perspective

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