Textos verbo-visuais de homens que se relacionam afetivos-sexualmente com homens: te(n)sões entre masculinidades no aplicativo Grindr

Abstract

Grindr is a digital media and gay dating app, whose users develop self-performances to attract the attention of potential partners. These performances, marked by strategic construction of altered-directed personalities, appear as restored behaviors and repeat gender-sexuality´s actions. Sometimes conditioned by norms related to gender dualism, homophobia and hegemonic masculinity, users rely on verbal-visual texts that are associated with feminility inferiority, virility, corporal-sexual power and moral firmness as aspired attributes in others and itself. In this sense, the main aim of this dissertation is to categorize the verbal-visual texts existent in self-performances that reinforce hegemonic masculinity´s valorization. This research is also a methodological experiment, as my presence in the field happened in an affective, sensitive, fluid and free way, guiding me by my personal perspective and by the frequent app´s dynamic, such as connection in areas where daily practices are developed and access at unpretending days and hours. In order to methodologically position the phenomenon the production of verbal-visual texts related to masculinities in Grindr I utilised Butler's perspective of frame, who states that the ways we see the world are full of social and historical norms. It defines what is acceptable or not and, in the context of masculinities, shows which manners are worth more or less, or which lives are more or less precarious. For the study of the corpus, composed by dialogues and profiles collected in the city of Belo Horizonte, the verbal-visual text analysis elaborated by Abril was used. Through it, I looked at how complex semiotic systems, composed by verbal and visual elements, emerge in the app, producing meaning effects and specific grammar in the digital culture of men who have affective-sexual relationship with men. Based on the texts, 8 categories emerged as important points in self-construction and partner choice on Grindr. These categories´degrees of relevance are in descending order: gender, body, sexual position, age group, sexual orientation, race, sought/lived relationship status, financial and intellectual capital. In nearly all categories, hierarchies amongst masculinities reinforce certain characteristics and emphasise greater value to one man over others.