Volatile desirability in tourism: A multi-method intersectional analysis

Abstract

Tourism is a site where difference is consumed, celebrated, and marginalised. This paper examines how queer men of colour navigate tourism and Grindr as interlocking contexts in which desirability is continually recalibrated. Drawing on interviews with thirteen participants and auto-ethnographic reflections, we bring intersectionality into dialogue with sexual field theory to conceptualise racialised digital embodiment and touristic erotic repositioning. Findings highlight the volatility of erotic capital: travel may generate visibility and validation, yet this is often tethered to fetishisation, objectification, or exclusion. By foregrounding how digital infrastructures mediate racialised desire, the paper advances intersectional approaches in tourism by centring queer men of colour and unveils how tourism and digital platforms together may recalibrate erotic capital across shifting sexual fields.