How to do Grindr :sensory, visceral and haptic geographies of men who use Grindr in Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Abstract

This thesis explores how Grindr – a location-based dating app used mainly by men – mediates the everyday lives of the men who use it in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK. I take a feminist corporeal approach that aligns with assemblage thinking, enabling an exploration of how sexualities and masculinities emerge in and through multiple bodies, objects and places. I explore Grindr as a digital screen, space and technology. I focus on emotional, sensory, visceral and haptic experiences of Grindr. The thesis is based on analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews and four participant research diaries with men who use Grindr living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I focus on the ways discourses of gender and sexuality work to shape the lives of men who use Grindr, and how they emerge differently through digitally mediated lives. I argue that using Grindr has the capacity –in work to disorientate and reorientate users in their everyday spaces and places, shaping the ways men perform and embody gender and sexuality differently. Different men are learning how to do Grindr in different ways. There are multiple ways that gender, sexuality and bodies emerge through Grindr. Therefore, there are different bodily and spatial disorientations and reorientations. Exploring the ways the body feels, I bring feminist corporeal scholarship in conversation with geographies of sexualities and digital geographies. I attend to calls for materially grounded studies of the digital, highlighting the complex entanglements of flesh, skin, screens, emotions, desires, and discourses. I explore how geographic concepts such as public/private, home, mobility, sexual citizenship and proximity and distance are being reorientated as bodies become entangled with digital technologies. I conclude by suggesting three ways that future research can enhance understandings of the ways the digital is (re)shaping everyday spaces, places and bodies.