Collective Exclusion: How White Heterosexual Dating App Norms Reproduce Status Quo Hookup Culture

Abstract

This article analyzes how heterosexual college students use dating apps with their peer groups, and how their collective behaviors privilege heteronormativity and whiteness on a college campus in the United States. By focusing on the collective practices of heterosexual dating app users, this article draws out how taken-for-granted assumptions about hookup culture and dating apps manifest in group behaviors that are shown to limit the available sexual scripts for heterosexual women and men while simultaneously excluding people of color. Using interview data from 27 heterosexual college students, this article argues that offline and online interactions are sites where dating app users and their friends reconcile interpersonal and intrapsychic sexual scripts within their cultural milieu. The findings of this study suggest that their collective rationalizations appeal to heteronormative gendered expectations and whiteness in ways that reproduce social inequalities.