Masc for Masc? Desire, Discipline, and the Market of Queer Manhood
© Sterling_Steelwood
Open any gay dating app and you’ll likely see the phrase “masc for masc” floating in a profile—short for “masculine for masculine,” and shorthand for a particular kind of desire.
On its face, it seems simple: a preference. But dig a little deeper, and it becomes clear that this small phrase tells a much larger story about how masculinity is commodified, policed, and reproduced in queer male culture.
As an anthropologist studying the intersections of masculinity, power, and culture—particularly through queer experience—this recurring invocation of “masc” fascinates me. What does it mean to be masculine in a space already defined by its departure from heteronormativity? And why are we so invested in making sure that masculinity looks and sounds a certain way?
Let’s start with the obvious: dating apps are marketplaces. Users become commodities, and desirability becomes currency. In this space, masculine traits—broad shoulders, deep voices, emotional restraint, athleticism, a certain kind of sexual dominance—are consistently prioritized. These ideals are reinforced through profile language (“no fems,” “straight-acting,” “rugged,” “jock”), filtered photos, and algorithms that reward conformity to the dominant aesthetic.
What’s being bought and sold here isn’t just attraction—it’s social capital. Masculinity is a kind of symbolic wealth. The more convincingly one can perform it, the more attention, validation, and access one is likely to receive (Cassese & Holman, 2018; Miller, 2015).
The phrase “masc for masc” doesn’t just express a preference—it enforces a norm. It signals what is acceptable and what is not.
Feminine traits, bodies that deviate from the muscular ideal, expressive language, or visible signs of queerness are often marked as less-than. This boundary work—what anthropologists call the process of drawing lines around identity—isn’t neutral. It disciplines bodies, behaviors, and desires (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).
In other words, the digital arena is not a free-for-all. It is a carefully curated stage where certain types of queer masculinity are amplified while others are silenced or erased.
Discipline and Desire
Michel Foucault (1977) wrote extensively about how power doesn’t just operate from the top down—it’s internalized. We don’t just follow rules; we learn to govern ourselves according to them. The same can be said here. Many queer men discipline their own behavior—lowering the pitch of their voice, adjusting their walk, altering their wardrobe—not necessarily out of shame, but because they’ve been taught that masculinity makes them more desirable, and desirability equals value.
Desire, in this context, becomes deeply entangled with identity. We don’t just want a certain kind of man; we want to be wanted in return. And if masculinity is what gets us there, we may contort ourselves to fit the mold—even if that mold doesn’t reflect who we really are.
“When masculinity becomes the price of admission, authenticity is what we leave at the door.”
To be clear, the problem isn’t masculinity itself. Masculinity can be beautiful, tender, strong, and nurturing. The issue is when masculinity is treated as a limited resource, one that must be hoarded, performed, and protected. When “masc” becomes a gatekeeping term rather than an expression of identity, it narrows the spectrum of what it means to be a man, especially a queer one.
What would happen if we decoupled masculinity from dominance, from desirability, from market logic altogether? What if queer spaces—digital and otherwise—celebrated the full range of expression without tying worth to conformity?
Anthropology teaches us that culture is made, not fixed. That means we can make new scripts, new desirabilities, new ways of relating. But to do that, we have to name the systems we’re caught in—and dare to imagine our way out of them.
References
Cassese, E. C., & Holman, M. R. (2018). Playing the gender card: Ambivalent sexism in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. Political Psychology, 39(1), 55–74.
Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Pantheon Books.
Miller, B. (2015). “They’re the modern-day gay bar”: Exploring the uses and gratifications of social networks for men who have sex with men. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 476–482.
