The men on the dating sites tell us that they love Kerouac, whose Dean Moriarty epitomizes this hero
Despite their increased tolerance for gay male sexual orientation, the users I encountered expressed their disdain for the feminine in the content and the style of their profiles
As for content, the profiles I examined mark gender through cultural references, which are a key element of the script of hegemonic masculinity. Many male profile writers’ lists of favorite authors and musicians are exclusively male, and these are often not short lists. Moreover, the central characters in frequently-mentioned books reinforce hegemonic masculinity. In Men and Masculinities, Stephen M. Whitehead discusses the mythical image of the man as adventurer and explorer: the myth of man leaving home, rejecting the private sphere, distancing himself from the feminine. Whitehead offers a few of many examples: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, its film adaptation, Apocalypse Now, Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities and its film relation Wall Street, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and all of the road films that have followed it. Many profiles I encountered also highlight beat poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, whose alter ego Henry Chinaski speaks of his exploits with women throughout Bukowski’s work. In a search on OkCupid of male heterosexual users between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-seven in a one-hundred-mile radius of Philadelphia, 3.4 times as many men than women expressed an interest in Bukowski. (To access the heterosexual women’s profiles in order to make relevant comparisons, I made a profile as a straight male user.) In a search of the same population, 115 male users and thirty-four women expressed an interest in Bukowski; seventy-four men and forty-one women stated an interest in Palahniuk; and seventy men and seven women indicated an interest in Kerouac. Female authors, by contrast, comprised thirty-five percent of the women’s lists, but only seventeen percent of the men’s lists. The average length of women’s musical interests was also shorter than the men’s lists.
Other research into online dating shows that the aversion toward gay male sexual orientation might be losing its key role in maintaining hegemonic masculinity
Men and women’s profiles differ in styles as well. Users express femininity by demonstrating openness and flexibility, and users express masculinity by demonstrating expertise. Men catalogue more interests than women do, often with encyclopedic specificity. They show us by the length of these lists that they have achieved mastery in these subject areas, while women claim that they are open to learning what their partner is interested in. Women’s stated interests are general and broad.
For example, Walker and Eller examine how straight and gay men construct their masculinities online. Culling the written portions of 385 profiles of straight and gay men on Match, Walker and Eller find that gay men and heterosexual men both value the accrual of masculine capital, though they go about earning it in different ways. Walker and Eller observe that gay male sexual orientation does not bar entrance into dominant masculinities. Rodriguz et. al. also find through their examination of networked masculinities on gay dating apps that “hegemonic masculinity is a macro-level process that informs micro-level processes of inclusive masculinity,” which is to say that even on sites where all participants are gay, men perpetuate hegemonic masculinity.
Walker and Eller agree that what prevents access to hegemonic masculinity is not sexual orientation but rather femininity. Gay and heterosexual men alike filled their profiles with signs of hegemonic masculinity, which included being “laid back” and “easy going”; emotionally strong and levelheaded; athletic, adventurous, and fearless; and financially independent and ambitious. What seems most important to these men is to distance themselves from femininity and emphasize their own masculinity. Rodriguz et. al. question Anderson’s optimism. They investigate “networked masculinities” on gay dating apps and examine a process they call “mascing,” which involves emphasizing one’s own masculinity. They conclude that Anderson’s optimism about decreased homohysteria leading to decreased hegemonic masculinity is misguided insofar as the “digital space of gay dating apps mulheres ChinГЄs is free of homophobia and is exclusive to users who engage in sex with other men, yet we still see the policing of masculinity” and thus the disavowal of femininity on these sites.
