Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis

Queer men’s cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, safer sex, sexual racism and gay marriage. The introduction of the smartphone in 2008 only intensified these debates whilst also raising a further set of questions which are explored in this open access book.

Through interviews with a diverse group of 43 queer men about their smartphone mediated intimacies, Digital Intimacies reveals that queer men use their smartphones, not simply to arrange intimate encounters, but more specifically to gain a sense of control over the parts of their intimate lives that make them feel most vulnerable. For instance, some use messaging apps to gain a sense of control over intimate conversations that they feel too vulnerable to have in person. Others use the ’block’ function on dating apps to feel in control of the racism and transphobia they are vulnerable to on these apps.

Digital Intimacies therefore illuminates not only hitherto underexplored aspects of queer men’s cultures of intimacy but crucially also brings into view previously obscured cultural dynamics, gaining insight into the historical moments in which they occur.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

Jamie Hakim is Lecturer in culture, media and creative industries, King’s College, London, UK. His research interests lie at the intersection of digital culture, intimacy, embodiment and care. His previous book Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture was published in 2019.

Ingrid Young is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is a medical sociologist who is particularly interested in how experiences of and inequalities across gender, sexualities, race and technologies shape sexual health and wellbeing.

James Cummings is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York, UK. He uses ethnographic and interview methods to explore relationships between gender, sexuality, being and living and how these play out in everyday social and material settings, as well as over life courses. James is the author of The Everyday Lives of Gay Men in Hainan: Sociality, Space and Time (2022).