Smartphones enable greater control over intimate lives for queer men, says new book

What’s the link between smartphones and intimacy?

There is always a lot of panic around the way new technologies impact people’s lives, particularly when it comes to sex and intimacy. Whilst we recognise in the book that the digital can open up a whole new set of problems around abuse, harm and danger, our interviewees showed us that they were creative and clever in their everyday digital practices in order to mitigate some of these challenges.

Your book explores what you refer to as cultures of intimacy. How would you explain this term?

Queer theorist Lauren Berlant describes intimacy as the connections we depend on for living, which we used as the definition for our book. In the interviews, we left it to the participants to define what intimacy meant for then.

Often when people talk about queer men’s intimate relationships and digital media, they think about hook-up culture and apps like Grindr, but there were many broad definitions of intimacy. Somebody talked about sharing concern with queer colleagues at work over homophobia in Russia, and that felt like a form of intimacy by sharing this emotion. Another participant, who was Asian, talked about how uncomfortable they were made to feel growing up in Austria, then moving to the UK, where there are particular ideas about body hair and its attractiveness. They talked about threading eyebrows with a friend who was also Asian, which felt like an intimate act to them.

You conducted these interviews during the pandemic lockdowns. Did those circumstances shed a different light on intimate relationships?

Massively. A large part of the book puts what queer men are doing within the context of the chaotic, crazy moment that we are currently living in – culture wars, the ‘trans debates’, Black Lives Matter, and the pandemic. Conducting interviews during lockdown was kind of amazing because digital routes became the major way for people to maintain their intimate relationships for an extended period of time. It was like a controlled environment where we could see what happens if you can only have intimacy over the internet.

People were often very ingenious about the ways they managed. One person had a relationship for three months online and never met the person in real life. They would watch Netflix together and sleep next to each other, all through a smartphone. For queer people who historically have not had ways to meet each other, the internet has always been an important infrastructure for building connections.

What surprised you about the interviewees’ answers?

The definitions of what intimacy meant for the participants was surprising: the most common answer involved wanting to be vulnerable with another person. Academic literature about queer men and intimacy doesn’t define intimacy in this way; instead, it’s in terms of closeness or as a euphemism for sex, romance, or connection.

The second thing was the idea that people use their smartphones to gain control. Since the emergence of dating websites, but particularly since Grindr and other hook-up apps, there has been a common narrative or moral panic that these technologies put gay men’s lives and sex lives out of control – that they mean that gay men have too much sex, become too promiscuous and contribute to the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STIs). Instead, we found that queer men use their smartphones to feel in control of their intimate lives. One person spoke about how their boyfriend prefers to have intimate conversations on WhatsApp because it makes him feel more in control of when the conversation takes place. Some people talked about graduating through different social media platforms to control the pace of a relationship, while another talked about exposing more and more of themselves on a hook-up app to feel in control of their coming out process.

What were the negatives of traversing intimate relationships through a smartphone?

It’s a complicated picture as smartphones, the internet, social media, and apps aren’t always controlled spaces; they can offer control, but they can also put queer men at risk of violence. The interviewees gave examples of how they used the affordances of platforms and social media to feel in control by using simple techniques to protect themselves. For example, one participant said in some ways he preferred to deal with racism online; in real life he was conflict-avoidant so wouldn’t respond, whereas online he could block or report people who were ignorant or outwardly racist, which made him feel more in control.

Did you discover anything about the differences between how people treat one another in real life versus online?

One Spanish participant used X [formerly Twitter] as a way of expressing himself, but also to meet new friends as he had recently moved to the UK. But then Brexit happened, and he suddenly became exposed to huge amounts of xenophobia, such as messages that he should go home. All of this was happening online, not on the street in real life, as the digital provided a sense of anonymity for the people harassing him.

However, being online put him in connection with people that he wouldn’t meet otherwise, which developed into valuable friendships. He ended up making friends with another gay guy who said he initiated contact by saying that he was sorry on behalf of his countrymen. Smartphones were vital for maintaining this friendship as they worked different hours. X became this interesting, complicated space for him to negotiate, by showing him violence but also allowing him to build intimacy.

What do you think queer men’s intimate lives will look like in the future?

We need a better and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between technology and intimacy. Popular discussion suggests it destroys intimacy or makes people disposable, but this is often inflated, exaggerated, and simplified. What our project has shown is that the queer men we spoke to were quite good at navigating problems online and making life with that technology more bearable in inventive ways.

What could wider society learn from the findings in your book?

I hope the book makes people pause and take a breath when it comes to thinking about digital technologies. That’s not to say there aren't problems that need dealing with, but there are other things happening in those spaces that can be worthwhile and lead to relationships that can sustain you.

Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis by Jamie Hakim, James Cummings and Ingrid Young is free to download digitally and available for purchase in print.