Clickable Consent: How Men Who Have Sex with Men Understand and Practice Sexual Consent on Dating Apps and in Person

ABSTRACT

Smartphone-based dating applications like Grindr are popular among men who have sex with men (MSM), and it is common for MSM to engage in sexual activity with other users. Despite this, there is limited research on MSM’s negotiations of consent for online sexual interactions and in-person sexual encounters. This study examined MSM’s understandings and practices of consent on dating apps and in person. Interpretative phenomenological analysis of 25 interviews with MSM dating app users revealed that many participants could identify key aspects of consent but did not always apply those understandings to their own practices. For online sexual interactions, some participants viewed consent as connecting to a dating app – a practice I term “clickable consent” – while other participants viewed consent as continuous and communicated consent in explicit and implicit ways. Although all participants negotiated consent online in preparation for an in-person sexual encounter, some renegotiated consent in person with explicit or non-explicit communication, while others did not renegotiate consent in person. Results shed light on how MSM’s online conversations impact their in-app and in-person sexual activities, and reveal challenges that MSM face in digital and physical spaces. Conclusions, implications, and suggestions for future research are discussed further.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ Contributions

The author is the sole contributor of this paper.

Availability of Data and Material

The data for this study were collected by the author in Fall 2017. The author received ethics approval from the Research Ethics Board of McGill University.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) Grant [2019-B2Z-259244] and also supported by iMPACTS: Collaborations to Address Sexual Violence on Campus; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Grant [895-2016-1026] (Project Director, Shaheen Shariff, Ph.D., James McGill Professor, McGill University.