Privacy-Sensitive Apps Are a Lifeline in “Gay Dixie”

“It’s no secret that the South isn’t the safest place for members of the LGBTQ community,” writes Dylan Staley , describing some of the challenges of dating in Baton Rouge. The scene there today is familiar to much of America a generation ago, or indeed to any setting where gay life is stigmatized: At cafes, he finds himself pondering whether he should approach an attractive guy across the room, unsure whether that person is gay. If he guesses wrong, he fears not only rejection, but also the potentially aggressive or violent reactions from the person he has approached, or from bystanders. These challenges were once familiar across the country, but today they remain particularly acute in the south. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks more than two dozen organizations that it identifies as anti-gay hate groups, many of them religious organizations in the South; in Mississippi, the governor last month signed a law “authorizing businesses to refuse service to LGBT people or anyone else who contradicts an owner’s religious beliefs.” Male high school aged users of Facebook who live in Rhode Island are 5.5 times more likely to identify as gay than those who live in Mississippi. For gay people, particularly gay men, in such environments, phone-based dating apps that are sensitive to privacy provide a safe way to find each other. Grindr, Jack’d and others are helping to carve out safer, more inclusive spaces for Staley and his LGBTQ peers. These online spaces help them to find not just dates, but a greater sense of community, which Staley hopes will serve as a basis for more significant, offline social changes: For those of us who live in places that aren’t conducive to our identities and sexualities, technology is an important piece of the puzzle we’re trying to solve. It can play a larger role in our efforts to create a more equal society, as long as we use it effectively.” At the same time—as in the larger community—the ways technology can reshape social life are complex. Some have argued that these apps may be isolating people by allowing them to find one another completely out of context, undermining the broader community cohesion that was once found in physical meeting places.