Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Publication Date

Spring 3-28-2024

College

Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, College of

Department

Sociology, Department of

BURS Faculty Advisor

Erin M. Pryor, Ph.D.

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Abstract

Gender is the socially constructed norms, expectations, and roles assigned based on biological sex. Thus, gender is the actions and behaviors expected of men and women, while sex is a set of biological checkboxes used to categorize bodies into the male/female binary (Lewontin, 1991; Lorber, 1993). Both sex and gender are continually constructed, maintained, and reinforced through social interactions and formative gender performances (Martin, 2004; Schwalbe, 1998; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Contemporarily, these hegemonic expectations of doing gender are perpetuated by modern technology, such as online dating and/or dating apps. When reinforcing gender norms, most dating apps establish a space of hyper-masculinity, where men must put on their best performances to attract potential partners (Eller & Walker, 2016; Hanson, 2022). On the other hand, women are given more opportunities to express their gender in nonnormative ways. For example, apps like Bumble force women to make the first move, therefore, destabilizing the heteronormative, hegemonic sexual script (Cvetkovska & Arora, 2020; Owen & Gerber, 2017). The goal of this exploratory research is to better understand the heteronormative, hegemonic gender performances on apps. Through Dr. Pryor’s Social Research Methods class, we sent an online survey to her Introduction to Sociology classes, analyzed secondary data from the ICPSR database, conducted content analysis by looking at online dating profiles, and lastly, interviewed students about their gender performance and gender expectations on dating apps. In this presentation, we will clearly explain our methodologies, processes, analyses, findings, and potential future research.

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