OVER-SEXUALIZATION OF THE BLACK BODY IN DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS DATING APPLICATIONS.

“Within neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the black male body continues to be perceived as an embodiment of bestial, violent, penis-as-weapon hyper-masculine assertion.”

– Bell Hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

Disclaimer:

It should be noted that in an effort to get reliable and unbiased responses from the individuals used as the “sample population” in the different dating sites used in this project, there was no initial mention of the conversations being recorded as part of the project until the end. 

There is very sexually explicit content in the chats from the dating sites.

The main subjects of this project are of African- American decent.

Their identities and those of their counterparts will be kept anonymous for privacy reasons.

The deductions and conclusions drawn are from a small demographic and as such the findings obtained should not be concluded as factual but should instead open up avenues for further investigation and critical re-examination on racial discrimination and how to overcome them.

Introduction

Over the recent years, online dating has become a recurring theme among majority of individuals. Although it can be argued that majority of the people have “flourished” in these sites, with social interactions that could essentially develop into something more, this cannot be said to be the same truth for most African – American (black) people. In a dissertation recently done by Adeyinka – Skold titled, “Dating in the Digital Age: Sex, Love, and Inequality”, her study evidenced that the “embedded and structural racism and belief in unconstrained agency in the American culture makes it harder for Black women to date”. This article questions the running narrative of racial attraction being a simple case of personal preference by exploring a compelling relationship between sexual politics and the larger attitudes toward certain racial and ethnic groups.

In another article, “Debiasing Desire”, highlighted that online dating in the context of minority groups such as African Americans, demonstrated that discrimination on the basis of perceived racial identity was closely associated with generic racist attitudes. Furthermore, when individuals from these minority groups are objects of sexual attraction, their attraction and desirability is governed by a stereotypical image often associated with a specific racial body and identity.

Thus, the number of interracial online relationships to a greater extent, has been reduced to a “positive discrimination” of over-sexualization of the black body based on the recurring stereotypes about their nearly perverse and oversexed bodies repeatedly shown in the pornography industries and the media i.e. “Black guys are sexy and big”. Sexuality for the black men and women on the online dating sites has arguably become an avenue for fetishization of the black body and the degree of “out of body satisfaction” it can provide. Thereby reinforcing the objectification of the black body acts as a continued reflection of the disgust for black people and their humanity. On the other hand, negative discrimination within these dating sites have also been leveraged by users of these platforms on their user profiles for example, “No Blacks/Negros/Slaves”.

One can ask how exactly this “positive discrimination” is wrong. Research has shown that the perception of African American men in white- dominated spaces as masculine, sexually active and dominant, forces them to take on intimate roles in the hookup settings, making them more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections including HIV.

In this project, I aim to further investigate the findings in Sarah Adeyinka-Skold’s study on structural racism in dating apps and whether this over sexualization is a recurring theme, especially in the African – American population. However, in an effort to make this study a bit more focussed, I will be exploring this structural racism within the religious dating applications.

Objective

In this project, I aim to investigate if this structural racism in the form of over-sexualization and objectification of people of African American decent is a recurring idea even within the religious dating sites. This is of particular importance as I seek to explore whether the essence of religion, being one of justice and truth, plays any role in how individuals who follow these religions respond to women or men of color. 

Methodology

Participants and partner selection

The participants who were used in this project were of African – American decent i.e. two heterosexual women and one homosexual man. They were also between the ages of 21-23, in their junior or senior year of college and were open with regards to their sexual preferences with respect to race. Other than race, the specific age range and their level of education chosen was to try mitigating any external variables that may potentially affect the findings.

The participants were requested to create a user profile that explicitly highlighted their interest only in “Christian” or “Islamic” partners. This was particularly emphasized on Grindr which is not a religious dating site.

Furthermore, the user profiles for all the participants was set to the following partner preferences: age between 20-22, some form of college education, does not drink or smoke, height between 5″ 10′ – 6″ 00 and open to a long term relationship. All these specifications not only further aided in narrowing our intended audience of study but was also necessary for a dating profile in these different dating applications. For all the applications the general idea was to upload a profile photo which in this case all the participants had a simple photo that only highlighted their facial features and nothing more, after which create a profile with the preferences highlighted above and once this was concluded the participants could start swiping on their potential online partners (right/ like for a match and left/ discard for no match).

The participants were asked to engage with their online partners for a duration of 8-10 days with all forms of communication limited to either the dating site or through text messages. In the event that a conversation turned aggressive, the participants were allowed to block their online partners.

Dating applications used

The dating sites used were Grindr, Muzmatch and Christian Dating Connection. These applications were chosen as they are fairly known for the large online user presence they have especially for Grindr with respect to the LGBTQ+ cimmunity or for their religious partner match- making skills which was in the case of Muzmatch and Salt.

Christian Dating Connection is an award- winning Christian dating up that caters to the Christian congregation and was developed by Christians. It is free to join with no registration and allows one to instantly start swiping after the initial profile set up process. One has an option to subscribe for extra features such as being able to have access to those who have previously swiped on you, but you didn’t feel they were an ideal match. Muzmatch on the other hand is a Muslim and Arab focused dating site that exclusively caters to Muslim single individuals who are seeking dates and life-long partners. In terms of functionality, the application is quite similar to Salt. 

Grindr, although not specifically tailored to a particular religion, is equally an online dating application that larger caters to the gay, bisexual and bi-curious community. It has been argued to be the most “well-known and successful all-male social network in the world”. Since this application has no particular religious affiliation, the participant was requested to specify in their application that they were seeking Christian affiliated individuals. After two weeks, I asked the participant to change their preference to Muslim affiliated men in order to gather some for of comparison on the online dating culture within the LGBTIQ+ community. 

Findings

Case one:  Muzmatch dating Application

Participant : Heterosexual female, age 21.

The very nature of the online dating culture relies on an initial physical attraction, in this case, the profile picture and the few words describing oneself and what they are looking for. In this particular application, the participant put their profile picture as one where they were casually dressed and in their hijab; the profile picture was in no way revealing in order to reduce any chances of the results being skewed due to some “underlying” sexual advances given off to the target audience. With respect to the filters available to the user, they included timeline for marriage and future prospects, frequency of prayer, religious sect they belonged to, dietary restrictions and a brief tagline ( this was upto the participant’s discretion). Although their racial identity was not highlighted in their profile, it was still apparent in the profile picture they used.

The participant casually swiped right for their favorite profiles of the men and left for those they did not instantly feel drawn to. The participant got a couple of connections with different individuals within the first 2 hours of setting up their account and they proceeded to chat.

Findings:

Majority of the online pursuers – for lack of a better word, would initially start off as casual and respectful conversations that would eventually result in explicitly sexual phrases such as :  “I have never had chocolate. You would be my first”, “Hi caramel amira”. 80% (8 out of the 10) of the conversations that the participant had with their online partners ended with some indication of their race and how they would be interested to having some sort of sexual interaction and these conversations eventually ended up with explicit sexual comments. This was especially evident in the cases where the online partner was from another race e.g. caucasian.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Case Two: Grindr Dating Application

Participant : Homosexual man, age 20.

In this dating application, the dating profile used was similar to case one. However, since Grindr is not a religious dating application, the participant had to highlight in their headline that they were “looking for a christian partner” and after two weeks they changed their headline to “looking for a muslim partner”.

The findings in this application although similar to case one, were different in the fact that most of the men overly sexualized the participant with repeated references being made towards the “large” size of the penis irrespective of their religious affiliation. Some of the “pursuers” were also very forward and indicated a quickness to “hook up” also irrespective of their religious affiliation. When the advances of the online “pursuers” were rejected by the participant, the conversation (6 out of 10) turned rather aggressive with some of the pursuers referencing to the participants race and hair as some form of derogatory insult. For some of the online users, their “racial preferences” went as far as including tagline such as “White only”.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Case Three: Christian Dating Connection dating application

Participant : Heterosexual female, age 22.

In this application, even though the initial expectation was that it would be predominantly full of Christians seeking some form of online relation, most of the individuals who were in this application were actually “non-practicing” Christians. When asked about this, the general response was along the lines of being a believer but not necessarily living by the Christian teachings. The user profile used was also very similar to the one created in the case one as the applications profile and preference filters were very similar.

The findings in this dating site were also not any different from the two previous cases with most of the online partners overly sexualizing the conversation and the participants general appearance, unprovoked in most cases, making references to what they would want to do to them sexually.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Although one can argue that these conversations may have been taken out of context and there may have also been some bias in the responses selected for the sake of this project, the recurring theme in most of these dating applications was that the participants were repeatedly overly sexualized by individuals irrespective of the religious preferences or what their partner preferences were. The only difference was the duration it took for their online partners to initiate this sexual conversations – unprovoked. Further supporting that these online dating platforms, even religious ones, still have individuals reaffirming their racial stereotypes on a particular group of people. One can also argue that this structural racism with respect to reaffirming these stereotypes on these platforms is further encouraged by the images these sites uplift as ideal partners and matches leaving room for anything else as being “less than”.

• 

• 

In conclusion

From this small – sample size case study, there are in fact high cases of structural racism through discrimination on the African American population through over-sexualization of their bodies by the other races. Thus there needs to be a large scale consideration and reframing on how online dating can be carried out in ways that promote positive online community building and civic engagement. Furthermore, these dating applications should equally take up responsibility on how they can mitigate these inherent biases by some of their users by for example; enhancing their community policies on racial discrimination of any form and reducing the use of match-making by algorithms which base individuals potential partners on the preferences they select as this in some way equally promotes certain subtle biases that further along brew into these outright racial biases. If nothing else, this project aims act as an avenue for each one to question, reflect and critically rethink our beliefs and tendencies, religiously or socially influenced.

Resources used

“Dialogue, Revisited”. Omnia, 2020. https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/dialogue-revisited.

Hobson, Janell. “Remnants of Venus: Signifying Black Beauty and Sexuality.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 46, no. 1/2 (2018): 105-20. Accessed December 8, 2020. doi:10.2307/26421165.

Levinson, Justin D. “Forgotten Racial Equality: Implicit Bias, Decisionmaking, and Misremembering.” Duke Law Journal 57, no. 2 (2007): 345-424. Accessed December 8, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40040596.

“Modern Dating As A Black Woman”. Omnia, 2020. https://omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/modern-dating-black-woman.

“Redesign Dating Apps To Lessen Racial Bias, Study Recommends | Cornell Computing And Information Science”. Cis.Cornell.Edu, 2020. https://cis.cornell.edu/redesign-dating-apps-lessen-racial-bias-study-recommends.