Queered online pandemic relationships: Mobile expressions of intimacies, care, and emotion work

TY - JOUR

T1 - Queered online pandemic relationships

T2 - Mobile expressions of intimacies, care, and emotion work

AU - Labor, Jonalou S.

AU - Alcazaren, Holden Kenneth G.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Drawing from the assumptions on queer and mobile intimacy, emotion work, and care, this paper explores the role of mobile communication platform access and use among Filipino gay couples who have been physically separated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper looks at in-depth narratives of 24 gay men whose romances have been transferred to and transformed by messaging apps due to the pandemic. The accounts of these gay couples represent the realities of cosmopolitan gay men in negotiating digital romantic presence as they manage connection despite the distance. Mobile technologies have deepened the synchronous and asynchronous rituals of maneuvering romance as couples manage imagined emphatic romances. The participants' descriptions revealed queered technology-use in bridging and maintaining imagined intimacies while feeling trapped in the dependence on mediated means of enacting such intimacies.

AB - Drawing from the assumptions on queer and mobile intimacy, emotion work, and care, this paper explores the role of mobile communication platform access and use among Filipino gay couples who have been physically separated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper looks at in-depth narratives of 24 gay men whose romances have been transferred to and transformed by messaging apps due to the pandemic. The accounts of these gay couples represent the realities of cosmopolitan gay men in negotiating digital romantic presence as they manage connection despite the distance. Mobile technologies have deepened the synchronous and asynchronous rituals of maneuvering romance as couples manage imagined emphatic romances. The participants' descriptions revealed queered technology-use in bridging and maintaining imagined intimacies while feeling trapped in the dependence on mediated means of enacting such intimacies.

KW - COVID-19 Pandemic

KW - Mediated Intimacy

KW - Messaging Apps

KW - Mobile Intimacy

KW - Queer Intimacy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124988517&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.52518/2021.18.2-02labalc

DO - 10.52518/2021.18.2-02labalc

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85124988517

SN - 1656-2534

VL - 18

SP - 29

EP - 53

JO - Plaridel

JF - Plaridel

IS - 2

ER -