Charms, likes and crush: Contemporary masculinities in desires negotiations in search of partners in mobile apps

Abstract

The current project aims expand the online ethnography developed in a previous research about men who were looking after sexual and affective dates out of their marriage, using specialized websites that promised "secrecy" and "security", besides "adventure" and "emotion". At that research, I have focused at the Canadian website Ashley Madison, when the gender arrangements added up to discussions about sexuality, leading me to pay attention to the constitution of the contemporary masculinities. To this new entry key, added up the enlargement of the use of apps to smartphones as a insertion resource on the competitive affections market, and mostly, showed how adult men, whom understand themselves as heterosexuals, belonging to middle and low class, has been dealing sex and love with their potential partners, and, this way, dealing with gender issues, assuming, even if not intentional, the political dimension of their desire. Therefore, the main goal of the current research is to understand how this communicational resources has been focusing on how this men, born between 1946 and 1986, understand and deal their own masculinity, guided by the romantic consumption logic, at the realm of affective capitalism. Also, I'm interested in map the routes of what I call here "the new desire economy", considering as macrosocial transformations has focused on the singular lives of my interlocutors. I consider, as well, the geolocation as a reference that helps to delimitate the corpus of this research, which intends to focus comparatively between Bauru and Sao Paulo, betting on the differentiated dynamics between social relations and specific spatiality. Methodologically, it will associate to the online ethnography analysis about the emergence of a new emotional ethic associated to the sexual/loving contemporary experienced by digital media. The results of the analysis dialogue with the sexuality and gender studies in a post-structuralist perspective, utilizing, as well, the queer theory as theoretical scope. (AU)