Unicorns on the Digital Range: Bisexual Persons’ Experiences of Geo-Social Networking Application Use

Abstract

Abstract Geo-social networking applications (GSNAs) like Tinder and Grindr are popular tools for connecting with people for romance, sex, and other purposes, particularly among sexual minorities. This paper draws on narrative interviews with 13 bisexual persons (5 cisgender men, 6 cisgender women, 2 trans/nonbinary persons) to explore their GSNA use, including motives and gratifications, relational dynamics, and implications for individual identities and cultural understandings of bisexuality. Participants presented complex and ambivalent accounts of their GSNA use, revealing a variety of relational aspirations and experiences. Whatever users’ goals, cultural meanings associated with bisexuality shaped online interactions in ways that impeded their fulfillment, with binegativity routinely preventing relationship formation in the first instance or precipitating relationship dissolution. Despite these challenges, bisexual persons regularly have successful digitally-mediated encounters which can reshape private and collective understandings of bisexuality. GSNAs expose users to new experiences and discourses that help them make sense of their erotic predilections, including partner sex/gender sexuality. They may also play a role in the broader sea change in attitudes toward bisexuality by facilitating the formation of mixed orientation relationships wherein stereotypes are gradually replaced by direct personal experience.