Scripts and Sexual Markets of Transgender People on Online Dating Apps: A Netnographic Study

Abstract

In recent years, the LGBT community has seen an exponential increase in the use of specific online dating apps ( e.g. Grindr and Wapa), designed to encourage meetings and affective or sexual exchanges, that have partially disrupted the traditional way of approaching studies on non-regulatory sexuality. Indeed, they changed the very meaning that some terms assumed in the past, such as “LGBT community” or “Rainbow Community” (Masullo, Gianola, 2017; Masullo, Coppola, 2020; Bacio, Peruzzi, 2017). This study aims to answer some research questions: how transgender people use the meeting apps ( e.g. Grindr, Wapa, Badoo); which dating apps are most used by T people and how these new “communicative and intersubjective spaces” influence, orient and determine the defining processes related to gender expressivity and sexual script construction; to what extent these channels constitute spaces to meet emotional and sexual needs; and whether these spaces reflect the same discriminatory dynamics that T people experience in offline reality. This research has shed light on how the ambivalence of dating apps for T people. On the one hand, they are places of emancipation; on the other, they perpetuate the exclusion mechanisms experienced offline. The choice of a platform is crucial from an identity point of view and it roughly reflects the perceived stage of the user’s transition process. The app is regarded as a place to find confirmation and recognition of their newly acquired identity.