UC Irvine

In my dissertation, I use 100 in-depth interviews to examine how digital dating applications shape gendered courtship and sexual practices among (hetero)sexual young adults. In the first chapter, I draw upon 60 interviews to examine how gendered beliefs about sex and intimacy during young adulthood shape how women approach using dating apps to seek intimate relationships with men. My findings reveal the emergence of constructing digital desirability, where rather than using the chatting features of apps to communicate intimate boundaries, the pressure to act casually about sex and intimacy during young adulthood urges women to construct a front premised on obscuring their motivations for using apps. By examining how women construct digital desirability, this chapter illuminates how gendered beliefs about sex and intimacy and the intersection of race and class override the features and designs of dating apps. In the second chapter, I use 40 interviews with college-attending and educated men to examine how they construct masculinity on dating apps. I find that narratives about women’s “dating app horror stories” and gendered perceptions of risk posed challenges to men as they constructed their masculine identity while using dating apps. To reconcile their desires to be progressive with the potential danger they pose to women on dating apps, men engage in identity work to construct respectful masculinity. However, in the process of constructing respectful masculinity, men place women in subordinate positions, ultimately reaffirming gendered essentialist ideals of women being vulnerable and in need of men’s protection. In the final chapter, I use 97 in-depth interviews with (hetero)sexual women and men to examine how dating apps patterns of sexual consent and unwanted sex. My findings reveal that users assume sexual consent before meeting with a match in person, what I refer to as implied consent. I examine how the assumptions of implied consent and the location of the initial meeting (private vs. public) generate interactional pressures toward sex to shape gendered patterns of consent and unwanted sex. Taken together, this dissertation reveals the paradox of heterosexual digital dating. Although dating apps allow users to rewrite sexual and dating scripts, they disrupt existing interactional norms. In response, rather than challenging existing scripts, heterosexual young adults continue to rely on gender to guide their intimate interactions.