Despite the increasing ubiquity of smartphones globally, very little scholarly attention has been paid to the uses of smartphone-based social networking apps in the non-West. Drawing on participant observation, qualitative interviews, and oral life histories, this paper explores the uses of Grindr, a social networking app, among men who have sex with men in Pakistan. 

Grindr’s usage in Pakistan illuminates a culturally distinctive reconfiguration of a non-normative queer sexuality. A majority of interlocutors in the study profess profound sadness and regret over their inability to be “truthful” about being gay in all spheres of life due to familial, religious  and societal mores that negatively assess homosexuality. Indeed , many are married or plan to marry a woman. Given such real-life expectations and considerations, Grindr provides a significant space to negotiate multiple truths centered on obligations to adhere to societal heteronorms on the one hand and the desire to imagine cosmopolitan queer sexualities and experience same-sex sexual intimacies on the other. 

This talk is sponsored by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research.

Dr. Ahmed Afzal is an associate professor of anthropology at the California State University, Fullerton. He is the author of “Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas” (NYU Press, 2015).