Internet Dating

Intimacy and Social Change

Chris Beasley, Mary Holmes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781317961765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Investigación y habilidades de la tecnología y la ingeniería

Internet Dating deals primarily with the experiences of UK and Australian daters, examining their online accounts to see what kinds of narratives, norms, emotions and 'chemistry' shape their dating.

Has the emergence and growth of internet dating changed the dating landscape for the better? Most commentators, popular and academic, ask whether online dating is more efficient for individuals than offline dating. We prefer a socio-political perspective. In particular, the book illustrates the extent to which internet dating can advance gender and sexual equality. Drawing on the voices of internet daters themselves, we show that internet dating reveals how social change often arises in the unassuming, everyday and familiar.

We also pay attention to often ignored older daters and include consideration of daters in Africa, Scandinavia, South America, Asia and the Middle East. Throughout, we explore the pitfalls and pleasures of men and women daters navigating unconventional directions towards more equitable social relations.

Chapter 1 Introduction

She’s had fun dates and boring dates, been pursued and ghosted, charmed and cheated on, fallen in love and had her heart broken, and drunk way more wine on a school night than anyone rightly should. She’s met nice guys, dull guys, guys who think they’re God’s gift, inept guys, hopeless wastes of time, some who didn’t look at all like their photos and some who were more attractive in real life, some short, some tall, some super lovely and some total fucking arseholes. And yet, in all that time she has yet to meet Mr Right. So she carries on, war-torn and battle-scarred, living to date another day.

(Lucy, UK, individual blog, no date)

Introduction

Internet dating is a relatively novel and increasingly popular practice, defined by Barraket and Henry-Waring as a ‘purposeful form of meeting new people through specifically designed internet sites’ (2008: 149). In the wake of its growing usage, internet dating has become entangled in wider concerns regarding sexual and emotional marketisation and misuse of personal data by internet companies, as well as associated with deceit, fraud, harassment, abuse and rape (see for example, AnKee and Yazdanifard 2015; Bogolyubova et al. 2018; Rosenbloom 2011). Yet, simultaneously it has also been a site of hope, pleasure, joy and of course desire, romance and love. The characterisation of internet dating outlined by Barraket and Henry-Waring, tendering a careful and blandly descriptive mention of ‘meeting new people’, hardly seems to cover its rather more complicated and conflicted history, let alone its significance in contemporary societies. We aim in this book to flesh out its tensions, import and implications.

Internet dating deserves to be treated as a distinct phenomenon. However, it is not entirely new (see further discussion in Chapter 5). Commercial dating sites emerged soon after the internet was established in the 1990s. Although the technology is different and there are many sites and apps which each work differently, the basic principles are very similar to previous conduits for connection. Personal advertisements in newspapers and long-established forms of matchmaking all provided ways to find sexual and life partners (Barraket and Henry-Waring 2008; Hardey 2002; Whitty et al. 2007). People across the globe of all ages, gender orientations and sexual preferences use internet dating and some engagement with it has become more and more common (Bar-raket and Henry-Waring 2008: 150; Couch and Liamputtong 2008; Hillier and Harrison 2007; Jamieson and Simpson 2013: 64–67; Smith and Duggan 2013; Statista 2020a; Whitty 2008a). The growing commonality of the experience and its significance in terms of social life and the development of intimacy provides a strong, ever more compelling rationale for giving detailed attention to examining online dating.

In this context, the central question put forward by this book is, ‘Does heterosexual internet dating as a new technology of intimacy offer any opportunities for enhancing social equality, specifically for moving beyond the constraints of gendered heteronormativity and advancing gender equality?’ As Finkel et al. (2012: 3) note, ‘[o]nline dating sites frequently claim that they have fundamentally altered the dating landscape for the better.’ We ask, ‘Is this the case for heterosexual gender relations?’ To determine what internet dating brings to social change and, in particular, what it brings to heterosexual gender relations, it is necessary to outline what we understand as normative and what we understand as progressive non-normative possibilities in order to clarify what and how social change occurs.

Internet dating and heterosexuality

We deliberately focus upon heterosexual accounts of internet dating because of our existing theoretical interests in exploring signs of social change within ‘the realm of the dominant’ (Beasley et al. 2012: 84). Here, we draw upon our previous publications with regard to our understanding of heterosexuality and opportunities for change. We readily acknowledge that sexual relations are not power-free spaces for individual pleasure-seeking. Furthermore, heterosexuality is not merely one option in a fluid range of equally weighted choices. Indeed, as feminist and critical sexuality scholars, we question its dominance and the constraints it imposes. However, relations of domination cannot describe heterosexuality in its entirety. We explore a critical alternative perspective in which heterosexuality is not viewed as an undifferentiated and unchanging monolith and, unlike the common trope in feminist and critical sexuality studies, is not always to be understood as ‘nasty, boring and normative’ (Beasley et al. 2012 passim).

In short, we reject widely accepted views about heterosexuality as inevitably heteronormative, a term which draws together a conception of heterosexuality as the natural, normal and best form of sexuality with a notion of an abiding gender binary in which there are only two forms of selfhood which are different and necessarily complementary (see Warner 1999). In other words, ‘heteronormativity’ refers to the myriad ways in which social norms of gender and sexuality work together to make heterosexuality, heterosexual power relations, gender polarity and gendered power relations seem given, unquestionable and innate (Beasley and Brook 2019: 14; Beasley et al. 2012: 3–5, 12, 22–23). However, we are conscious that when the term is used, the axis of gender is sometimes less evident and hence throughout the book we have referred to ‘gendered heteronormativity’ to render its interwoven meaning in relation to gender, as well as sexuality, more visible.

To suggest that heterosexuality is not always equivalent to gendered heter-onormativity challenges the hegemonic coherence of heteronormativity and thus resists constituting change as only available at the social margins. Rather, we draw attention to the ‘micro-politics’ of change in the domain of the mainstream and everyday, such that change cannot be presumed to be top-down or linear but rather is viewed as diverse, highly uneven and potentially unpredictable. Our overall approach is a socio-political one but that approach is shaped by concern with what we term micro-politics: this term registers a broadened conception of ‘the political’, of power relations. Such an enlarged conception enables re-consideration of the familiar and commonplace and invites consideration of inconsistency and plurality. It includes not only rational cognitive activities but embodied, emotional, libidinal aspects of conduct. Furthermore, micro-politics provides a different perspective on the scope and scale of ‘the political’, providing a bridging terminology between localised, private innovations and larger-scale, organised movements and institutional developments usually connected with more public terms like ‘dissent’ and ‘protest’. We consider an approach which expands understandings of the political as especially appropriate to examination of internet dating in that internet dating involves everything from intimate exchanges between individual women and men through to the involvement of institutions like the family or religions. Our approach considers social change in a framing which includes small-scale private innovations, that may be deeply personal but are also linked to macro social assemblages, as we explore the complexity of heterosexuality. Moreover, this approach is marked by our willingness to investigate meanings and practices of heterosexuality in heterodoxical ways. In other words, we not only intend to counter the comparatively limited and primarily negative existing scholarship on heterosexuality, we do so in ways that attend to heterosexuality’s intricacies enabling teasing out of unconventional directions—that is, of divergent, transgressive, subversive, dissident and pleasurable elements. These non-normative elements are not necessarily dramatic: we do not so much aim to explode the notion of the immutable monolith of heterosexuality as investigate its marbled contours and fissures (Beasley 2015; Beasley 2011; Beasley et al. 2012: 84). In this volume, heterosexuality’s complexities come to light through the lens of internet dating.

Figure 1.1 Heterosexuality and heterodoxy—from heteronormative to heretical. A colour version of this figure is downloadable from: www.routledge.com/9780415720694.

Our alternative view of heterosexuality enables a frame of reference in which it is considered as a diverse range of practices, providing a means to investigate departures from gendered heteronormativity, as portrayed in Figure 1.1.

In the centre is ‘cissexuality’,¹ where heterosexuality does match with heter-onormativity, where sexed bodies, gender and sexual practices largely conform to hegemonic definitions of the normal (Harrison 2013: 12–13). Contained within the wider inner circle might be slightly less hegemonic, but still satisfactory options in relation to normative requirements. Beyond this the figure displays the non-normative possibilities for heterosexuality, from divergent to ‘heretical’. Divergence describes practices linked to the norm but departing, to a limited degree, its boundaries. For example, normatively, and often legally, marriage has been expected and indeed required to involve sexual consummation as part of what is supposed to be a close link to reproduction. However, there are instances which breach this link such as the case of a marriage being judged not to have been consummated and hence capable of annulment, even though the wife became pregnant from her husband ejaculating between her legs (Beasley et al. 2015: 687). Such an example, along with many others, to some extent diverge from normative expectations of heterosexual performance, showing that even at the institutionalised heart of heterosexuality, practices might not quite fit the ideal. Further ‘out’ from divergent practices arise somewhat more challenging possibilities. Transgression from heteronor-mativity involves temporary and not usually deliberate departure. A couple, for example, may occasionally enjoy ‘swinging’ relationships where they have sexual relations with other partners, without this challenging their otherwise conventionally heterosexual relationship in which they privilege emotional connection to each other (Visser and McDonald 2007).

More conscious and continuing undermining of heterosexual norms is described as subversion. Subversion may not always be radical but might upset heteronorms in quiet ways. An example here might be ongoing non-cohabitation amongst established, committed heterosexual couples (Beasley et al. 2015: 689–690). Subversion blurs into dissidence, which is more radical and more intentional in its departure from the norm. Dissident forms of heterosexuality might include those that problematise homosexual/heterosexual boundaries such as some bisexual practices, or those like celibacy that entail an alternative (even if possibly temporary) direction (Donnelly and Burgess 2008). Last, we come to heresy. Heretical forms in some way or another involve a refusal of heterosexuality. These forms include homosexuality, non-binary challenges to the gender distinction which disturb the very basis of heterosexuality, and asexuality which questions the centrality of sexual activity per se to personal identity and social life (Scott et al. 2014).

Where the boundaries between each ‘level’ of the circle lie is unclear and questions about how or why people might travel out or back, or ‘swivel’ between these different levels await further research, but it is clear that this model assists in the consideration of gender and sexuality in more fluid ways, both within heterosexual practices and across the permeable boundaries which supposedly demarcate them from, for example, practices associated with same-sex, trans and non-binary experiences.

This elaboration of the non-normative in heterosexuality provides a framework for analysis of internet dating as a potentially exciting form of social connection and intimacy amongst heterosexuals and one that may promote progressive social change. The framework highlights how heterosexuality online may be understood in more nuanced ways and is used throughout this book to consider our central question regarding the potential of internet dating in terms of advancing social innovation (Beasley et al. 2015).

Researching internet dating

Existing studies of internet dating tend to be descriptive and typically give little attention to progressive change towards enhanced social equality.² On this basis, further exploration of experiences of internet dating is warranted. This book not only focuses on possibilities for social change, specifically in relation to troubling gendered heteronormativity and advancing gender equality, but additionally foregrounds accounts by internet daters and our analysis of their experiences. Despite the increasingly extensive body of analyses and research studies that provide conceptual and empirical commentaries upon heterosexual internet dating, they are not all-encompassing. Current scholarship is largely ‘Western’, but it is even more clearly disproportionately North American (Cardona 2019; Kisilevich et al. 2012; Luo 2017; Rosenfeld 2018). We contribute something new to this body of work by noting commentaries and research arising from a range of social contexts including ‘non-Western’ sources. All the same, although the book has an international flavour, our discussions about internet dating are primarily derived from ‘Western’ and English-speaking sources and sites. In particular, with the exception of Chapter 7, our online accounts are from internet daters based in the UK and Australia.

The book has some further noteworthy restrictions. We have concentrated upon our central concern with intersections between gender and sexuality. Intersections between race/ethnicity/culture, gender and sexuality are given some attention in Chapters 4, 5 and 7, and Chapter 6 specifically deals with intersections between age, gender and sexuality. However, intersections between class and gender/sexuality are only occasionally noted (see for example, Chapter 3) and largely fall outside the scope of this book. It is also worth noting here the partisan weighting of existing sources about dating—as well as associated terms like intimacy, romance and desire—arising from psychological and health-oriented literature, as well as the tendency to divide off dating from sexology and sexual activities (see for example, Döring 2009; Eleuteri et al. 2014). By contrast, while we do reference the psychological and health literature, our perspective is primarily a socio-political one focussing on potential for social change in relation to gender and sexuality. Moreover, we bring gender, sexuality and dating into conversation under the rubric of intimate sociality.

Here, it becomes necessary to clarify our understanding of intimacy. While sexuality may be viewed as within the continuum of intimacy, it is also useful to distinguish them. The term sexuality encompasses not merely sexual acts, practices and experiences but also a conglomerate of institutions, identities, social assumptions and customs, as well as resources and labour (Beasley et al. 2012; Jackson 1999). By comparison, intimacy for us is usually employed to refer to a more diffuse arena than sexuality, concerned with a sense of close, embodied and particularised personal connection (Budgeon 2008; Henriksson 2014; Jamieson 1999; Roseneil and Budgeon 2004), as well as physical affectionate touch (Debrot et al. 2017; Debrot et al. 2013). This is typically not only about the individuals that experience it but also embedded in relationalities beyond it (Smart 2007). In attending to the micro-politics of internet dating we conceive sexuality and intimacy as linked, though not reducible to each other.

In this context, we note Lauren Berlant’s conceptualisation of intimacy as a

narrative about something shared, a story about both oneself and others that will turn out in a particular way. Usually, this story is set within zones of familiarity and comfort: friendship, the couple, and the family form, animated by expressive and emancipating kinds of love.

(Berlant 2000: 1)

Our concern with intimacy in this book also examines a well-known shared narrative—about (heterosexual) dating—but departs from Berlant’s stress on the familiar and comforting. Rather, we wish to examine the ways in which a narrative of dating may activate zones beyond the known and secure and animate a range of possibly unexpected connections. Rather than a term that is tied to what is felt to be cosy, we focus on the transformative potential of internet dating. Since internet dating has become an ever more significant method for developing intimate relationships, it is important to investigate its possibilities in terms of considering links between intimacy and social change which potentially disturb theorising about what social change might be and how it might appear. This book is intended, in other words, to provide a picture of the socio-political possibilities of internet dating, as a technology of intimacy, in a primarily ‘Western’ frame.

To flesh out this picture, we have employed a variety of sources. Dating websites regularly undertake research and may permit scholars to develop and publicly analyse their data sets, thus providing an important, if partial source (see for example, Lee and Niederle 2011; Ong and Wang 2015; Ortega and Hergovich 2017; RSVP Date of the Nation Report 2015). We make use of both the information which the websites provide and academic analyses of the information. We attend also to social science and other scholarship (which includes methods such as interviews with internet daters), to contributions and conversations about dating such as blog posts, and to journalistic and other commentaries, such as those by ‘experts’ including psychologists, therapists, sexual counsellors and relationship coaches (for example, Her-benick 2014; Leggatt 2017; Shpancer 2014). Furthermore, as indicated earlier, this book deals with socio-political approaches to intimacy in relation to gender and sexuality, rather than having a primary focus on the internal psychological or health risk literature, and deals with a variety of scholarship concerning relationship formation and sexual attraction (Allen 2003; Asen-dorpf et al. 2011; Beasley 2017a; Eastwick and Finkel 2008; Fisman et al 2006; Garcia et al. 2012; Gillies 2003; Lenton and Francesconi 2010; Sassler 2010; Sassler et al. 2018).

However, we also draw upon of our own study which has as its core focus the experiences of UK and Australian heterosexual internet daters. We attend to the perhaps surprisingly extensive range of online narratives of their experiences. From these burgeoning sources we selected a sample describing hundreds of dates, appearing in more than 40 blogs, articles or collections of stories which describe the dating experiences of at least 70 different individuals from the early 2000s until 2020. Roughly half of the daters are from the UK and half from Au...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Nutter narratives and the boundaries of heterosexual gender norms online
• 3 The new norms and etiquette of internet dating
• 4 Emotionally exciting novel heterosexual practices?
• 5 Chemistry
• 6 Older internet dating: Over 50 and beyond
• 7 In an international frame
• 8 Conclusion
• References
• Index