Tinder’s lesbian digital imaginary: Investigating (im)permeable boundaries of sexual identity on a popular dating app

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Ferris ◽  
Stefanie Duguay
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Lesbian Identity ◽  
Heterosexual Identity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Dating Apps ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Interview Studies ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Self Presentations

Dating apps have received rapid uptake, with Tinder as one of the most popular apps in the heterosexual market. However, little research has investigated the experiences of women seeking women (WSW) on this app. This article combines two interview studies of WSW in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom to investigate their self-presentations of sexual identity on Tinder. By configuring settings to “seeking women,” participants perceived they were entering a space conducive to finding WSW. However, men, couples, and heterosexual women permeated this space, heightening the need for participants to signal non-heterosexual identity. Their signals fused references to lesbian and queer culture with Tinder’s infrastructure to evoke a digital imaginary, as a routinized set of practices imagined to resonate with a shared community. Although signals within this digital imaginary were sometimes playful and ambiguous, their default toward a recognizable lesbian identity often rendered other sexual or gender identities invisible.

scholarly journals Sex During Menstruation: Race, Sexual Identity, and Women’s Accounts of Pleasure and Disgust

2020 ◽  
pp. 961-984
Author(s):  
Breanne Fahs
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
White Women ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Male Partners ◽  
Bisexual Women ◽  
Heterosexual Identity ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
And Bisexual

Abstract This study analyzes qualitative interviews with 40 women across a range of age, race, and sexual orientation to examine experiences with sex during menstruation. Results show that 25 women describe negative reactions, two describe neutral reactions, and 13 describe positive reactions. Negative responses involve four themes: discomfort and labor to clean ‘messes,’ overt partner discomfort, negative self-perception, and managing partner’s disgust. Positive responses cohere around physical and emotional pleasure from sex while menstruating and rebellion against anti-menstrual attitudes. Race and sexual identity differences appear: White women and bisexual or lesbian-identified women describe more positive feelings than women of color or heterosexual women. Bisexual women with male partners describe more positive reactions than heterosexual women with male partners, implying that heterosexual identity relates to negative attitudes more than heterosexual behavior. Those with positive attitudes also enjoy masturbation more than others. Additionally, interviews address sexual and racial identities’ informing body practices, partner choice affecting body affirmation, and resistance against ideas about women’s bodies as ‘disgusting.’

LGBTIQ+ Teachers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily M. Gray
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
North America ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Major Research ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Western Nations ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
To Come

Major research that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer plus (LGBTIQ+) teachers demonstrates that the field encompasses largely Western contexts and shows that although LGBTIQ+ people enjoy legal protections within many Western nations, schools remain dominated by heteronormativity. A major concern for LGBTIQ+ teachers is whether or not to come out at work—this means disclosing one’s gender and/or sexual identity to staff and/or students. In addition, working in schools as a LGBTIQ+ teacher is difficult because it often involves negotiating private and professional worlds in ways that heterosexual and cisgender teachers do not. There remain absences in the work on/with/about LGBTIQ+ teachers, with gender diverse, trans*, and bisexual teachers particularly underrepresented within the literature in the field. Most research on/with/about LGBTIQ+ teachers under discussion here is located within North America, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and Australia.

Sexual Orientation as a Human Right

2015 ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
Despina A. Tziola
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Sexual Orientations ◽  
The Supreme Court

In this chapter, the authors examine the matter of sexual orientation as a human right. Human rights violations take many forms, from denials of the rights to life to discrimination in accessing economic, social, and cultural rights. More than 80 countries still maintain laws that make same-sex consensual relations between adults a criminal offence. Those seeking to peaceably affirm diverse sexual orientations or gender identities have also experienced violence and discrimination. A gay man was entitled to live freely and openly in accordance with his sexual identity under the Refugee Convention (“the Convention”) and it was no answer to the claim for asylum that he would conceal his sexual identity in order to avoid the persecution that would follow if he did not do so. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom had to solve this complex problem as many issues were raised in the hearing.

Female St. Sebastian: Parallel lines in the radical lesbian art of Gina Pane and Catherine Opie

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Leszkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
American Art ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Lesbian Identity ◽  
Parallel Lines ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Aids Crisis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Queer Movement

This paper is a comparative analysis of works by two contemporary artists: Gina Pane, an Italian, and Catherine Opie, an American. Both use performance and autobiography and raise the subject of lesbian identity. Moreover, both share themes of suffering, pain and relationships between women. They were active in various cultural contexts, however. Pane worked in Western Europe during the moral revolution of the 1960s and '70s. Opie has been active in American art from the beginning of the '90s and she has been participating in political changes from the AIDS crisis and the radical queer movement to the present day assimilation of the LGBTQ community. The tradition and symbolism associated with St. Sebastian serves as the historical background the for the analysis in this paper, as both artists used the iconography of this male homoerotic idol in their subversive depictions of femininity and sexual dissimilarity. The works of the two artists are subjected to a comparative interpretation considering various contexts, similarities and differences, and evaluated in terms of contemporary artistic and political challenges of queer culture.

Correlates of in-person and technology-facilitated sexual harassment from an online survey among young Australians

Sexual Health ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin H. Douglass ◽  
Cassandra J. C. Wright ◽  
Angela C. Davis ◽  
Megan S. C. Lim
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Innovative Strategies ◽  
Heterosexual Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gender Diverse ◽  
Dating Apps ◽  
And Gender

Background Technology-facilitated sexual harassment is an emerging phenomenon. This study investigates correlates of sexual harassment among young Australians. Methods: Participants aged 15-29 were recruited for an online survey. Participants reported how often in the past year they experienced sexual harassment in person, via phone, social media and dating apps. Correlates of in-person and technology-facilitated sexual harassment were identified using logistic regression. Results: Of all participants (n = 1272, 70% female), two-thirds reported sexual harassment in person, 34% through social media and 26% via phone. Of participants who used a dating app in the past year (n = 535), 57% experienced sexual harassment. Sexual harassment in person was correlated with being female (aOR = 9.2, CI = 6.9–12.2), trans and gender diverse (aOR = 2.6, CI = 1.2–5.7) and being aged 20–24 years (aOR = 1.5, CI = 1.1–2.1). Heterosexual identity reduced the odds of sexual harassment in person (aOR = 0.7, CI = 0.5–0.9). Technology-facilitated sexual harassment was correlated with female (aOR = 3.5, CI = 2.6–4.6) and trans and gender diverse identities (aOR = 3.0, CI = 1.4–6.5). Older age [25–29 years (aOR = 0.5, CI = 0.4–0.8)] and heterosexual identity (aOR = 0.7, CI = 0.5–0.9) significantly reduced the odds of technology-facilitated sexual harassment. Conclusion: Young people identifying as female, trans and gender diverse and non-heterosexual are at risk of in-person and technology-facilitated sexual harassment. Service and technology providers, academics, and policy makers must respond with innovative strategies.

scholarly journals Profiling the Self in Mobile Online Dating Apps: a Serial Picture Analysis

Human Arenas ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Lisa Degen ◽  
Andrea Kleeberg-Niepage
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Online Dating ◽  
Free Association ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Dating Apps ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Picture Analysis ◽  
Self Presentations ◽  
Profile Pictures

AbstractProfiles in the widely used phenomenon of mobile online dating applications are characteristically reduced to condensed information mostly containing one or a few pictures. Thus, these picture(s) play a significant role for the decision-making processes and success, supposedly holding vital meaning for the subjects. While profile pictures in social media are omnipresent and some research has already focused on these pictures, especially selfies, there has been little attention with regards to the actual self-presentation when mobile online dating. In this paper, we show the results of a reconstructive serial analysis of 524 mobile online dating profile pictures investigating how subjects present themselves in the context of a mobile online dating app. This context is highly specific and characterized by continuous and dichotomous judgments by (unknown) others, unseen competition, and permanent validation of the self. Despite the conceivable multitude of possible self-presentations, our analysis led to eight clear types of self-presentation. Contemplating on subject’s good reasons for presenting the self as one of many and not as varied and unique when mobile online dating, we refer to the discourse of the private self (Gergen, The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life, Basic Books, New York, 1991; Rose, Governing the soul: Shaping of the private self, Free Association Books, London, 2006) and to (Holzkamp, 1983. Grundlagen der Psychologie. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus.) concept of restrictive and generalized agency in a context of socially constituted norms.

Incongruous and illegitimate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Kuperberg
Keyword(s):  
Women In Politics ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Political Norms ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Abstract Violence against women in politics encompasses physical, psychological, economic, sexual, and semiotic forms of violence, targeting women because their gender is seen as threatening to hegemonic political norms. Theoretical debates over these categories and empirical applications to global cases often overlook that backgrounds and lived experiences of women in politics can differ considerably. Using the United Kingdom as a case study, in this article I analyze different manifestations of online semiotic violence – violence perpetrated through words and images seeking to render women incompetent and invisible (Krook 2020, 187) – against female, religious-minority politicians. Through a qualitative discursive approach, I identify patterns and strategies of violence in an original dataset of Twitter posts that mention the usernames of seven prominent Muslim and Jewish female politicians. Results show that multiply-marginalized politicians are exposed to both sexist and racist rhetoric online. In this case, semiotic violence functions to render women incompetent using racist disloyalty tropes as well as to render women invisible by invalidating their testimonies of abuse.

Are Women’s Mental Health Units Needed?

2018 ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Aoife Rajyaluxmi Singh
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Women Patients ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
The Core ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Experiences Of Women

This chapter describes the shift from mixed-sex to same-sex in-patient wards in the United Kingdom and the current challenges in providing in-patient psychiatric care. Two women’s-only mental health units (WMHUs) are described and the views of women patients and staff are highlighted with the use of case examples. The available evidence regarding the need for WMHUs is examined and demonstrates that women with mental illness have different preferences with regards to mixed- or same-sex in-patient care, that same-sex wards are not necessarily safer, and that quality of care can vary considerably. Given the differential life experiences of women as compared to men, a WMHU should be able to address issues such as the effects of trauma and violence. Further research is needed to improve the understanding of the core factors underlying women’s mental illnesses and the specific skills that staff need to provide effective treatment.

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