Sexuality and Search:

About

Privately owned and operated information retrieval systems profit off user data. This analysis explores the ways in which Google manipulates search results in order to create an oppressive economy. Gay men are asymmetrically represented in the online arena of search, calling into issues surrounding social justice and machine bias.   

Introduction

Search engine giants such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are advertising companies that privilege revenue-generating information results. Their design focus is predicated on anticipating user needs, both the literal and imagined. Being so, search engines retrieve information backed with commercial and financial weight, irrespective of whether these results contribute to the user's anticipated search outcome. The focus is on manufacturing desires and revenue, not on providing accurate information. In alignment with this issue, various media and information scholars such as Safiya Noble and Virginia Eubanks have begun unpacking the problems associated with commodified search, focusing namely on communities of color and those from low-income backgrounds. While these entries have provided a discursive foreground for engaging how queried results represent groups of people in the global economy of search, they lack analysis of how queer communities, namely gay men, are represented, distorted, and sold within the online marketplace. Here, gay identities and notions of queer masculinity are often hypersexualized and associated with violence. As a consequence, search engine results often conflate same sex desires with gay identities through advertisements in order to profit off the social hysteria surrounding homosexuality.

Masculinity

In order to discuss the ways in which search engine results misrepresent or conflate queer identities through search, a history of homosexuality's position within masculinity is necessary. The foundation of masculinity theory starts with R.W. Connell's idea of hegemonic masculinity, an omega point for understanding the construction of Western gender identities. Connell describes hegemonic masculinity as the force or ideology among men that is most honored or valued at one moment in time; this idealized form "requires all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimates the global subordination of women [and gay men]" (Connell 832). Hegemonic masculinity, however, is not a fixed character; rather, it is the construction that occupies the position of power at a given, contestable moment. The structure gives way to argue for a plurality of masculinities. Nevertheless, men are in constant competition with one another in order to position themselves at the hegemonic apex. This competition requires spectators and judges, namely women, to affirm the gender order. Given that men exact and deride power in society through the subjugation of women and feminine masculinities, it is clear that female participation is required to affirm male dominance. Homosexuality and homo-coded behavior become feared to the extent that men repress their platonic emotions towards other men so as not to be misconstrued as feminine, and thus, non-hegemonic.

Since the construction of hegemonic masculine theory in the 1980s, the Western climate has become more inclusive to feminine or "soft" forms of masculinity, and has moved away from what Eric Anderson has termed homohysteria, or "men's fear of being homosexualized" (Anderson 80). This shift adopts the idea of "inclusive masculinity"—or masculinity that is less homosexually panicked—and functions as a flexible icon set to replace Connell's theory of hegemonic masculinity. Anderson's research discovered that "a decrease in homophobia simultaneously permits an expansion of heteromasculine boundaries" (Anderson 81). Consequently, the fall of homohysteria (according to Anderson) has permitted men to enjoy the privileges of the feminine world, including access to emotions and intimacy. The model asserts that men are no longer in direct competition with one another over an apex of power, given that the inclusion of femininity obfuscates the gender matrix and the position of female participation.

Torn by the two systems of masculinity—hegemonic and inclusive—some men operate in rivalry over women in order to indirectly relate to each other. Through this rivalry and competition, quasi-homohysteric men may experience one another through the pivot of a woman, ensuring the retention of masculine capital. This triangulation of desire, as coined by Eve Sedgwick, is successful insofar as it objectifies women by placing them at the center of this counterfeit competition. With the temporal shift towards inclusive atmospheres of masculinity, Sedgwick's model continues to be useful as a tool to analyze the changing gender matrix. Now, men who are hesitant to openly express themselves among other men no longer necessarily use women as a pivot in their desire; rather, the objected woman if oft replaced with a form of feminized technology (i.e. computers). Sedgwick's 1985 Between Men; English Literature and Homosocial Desire engages in the social structure of male-only spaces. Although these male-only, or homosocial, spaces are defined as structures of "men's relations with other men," they do not, however, necessarily exclude the feminine (Sedgwick 696). Cloistered within them is often a form of feminized technology that replaces the human woman within Sedgwick's framework of triangulated desire. With the absence of the human woman, the structure of competitive power falls apart, giving way to the possibility of emotional exploration among the triangulated men. Thus in order to combat "the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids, and the other nuisances of adult life" men retreat into these homosocial spaces where "guys [can] gather to be guys with each other" without the fear of emasculation (Kimmel 4). The goal is to break down the gender frameworks of society that simultaneously privilege and oppress men. Although inclusive masculinity has provided a broader avenue through which men may live their lives, it still affirms that there is a position of power to be achieved at the cost of women. Through this discourse, men find solace in triangulated desires through the pivot of feminized technology, given that such desires facilitate (in their minds) the best of both words: emotional expression and masculine affirmation.

Gay Men, Technology, and Search

The culture of homohysteria continues to reinstate the discourse of female subjugation—the foundation upon which hegemonic masculinity built its church. As a result, queer womanhood and feminine men are excluded from representations of gay identities in film, media, and online search. Instead, searches for "gay men" populate results that troublingly conflate gay identities with same sex desire and hypersexualization. These results do not include feminine understandings of maleness due in large to the lexical understandings of search algorithms. As Safiya Noble points out in Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, the individuals who design search algorithms do not demographically represent those who might be considered the searchable object. This lack of queer representation ultimately contributes to algorithmic bias. In performing a Google Image Search for "gay men," the results only include muscled, white men with little or no clothing. 

Here, gay men are not only favored as overtly masculine, but also as hypersexual. These results suggest that gayness is inextricably tied to sexual desire and masculine capital. Given that gay rights hinge on the humanization of gayness, the carnal and "animalistic" ways in which gay identities are presented prove deeply problematic. A Google Image Search for the more pejorative "gays" includes porn and similar white, muscled men.

With public confidence in Google as an objective proprietor of information, there exists a cultural blind spot to the ways in which financial incentive manipulates search results. Looking at the sites attributed to the retrieved images, some of the names that standout are eBay and Pinterest. These companies have the financial means to purchase positioned search results, and regularly do so. In this way, Google affirms congenial relationships among companies that buy advertising space in order to ensure future capital returns, regardless of the social impacts. In a third search for "gay man," Google Image Search brings back conflicting representations of gayness: some images are bloodied survivors of abuse, while others are of men wearing makeup. 

The proximity of these images together suggests that feminine forms of masculinity are tied to blood, abuse, and violence. The difference between the singular "gay man" and the plural "gay men" results suggest that feminine forms of gay identity are outliers to the dominant narrative of hypersexual masculinity. Not only are these individual identities aberrations, but also must be bloodied and destroyed—a correlation founded on misogyny. The question now becomes: What does it mean to have profit-seeking companies construct these narratives?

The consequences are damning. Feminine expressions of gay identities either become lost in a sea of homoerotic lust or made present alongside abuse. The situation between user and retrieved object becomes complicated: results for gay men are sexual and violent; therefore gayness is tied to sex and violence. This syllogistic logic creates a slippery slope that allows search engines to eschew their burden of socio-ethic responsibility and batten off homosexual objectivity. As objects, gay men lose not only their agency, but also their voice and storytelling ability. These top ranked Google Search results subsume gay narratives and identities, positioning fiction as fact and propaganda through proximity.

While the pictorial representations of gay men are troubling, the default webpage results for gay terms have their own unique flavor. The top results for "gay men" under Google's "All" tab returns articles about gay marriage anal exams and hookup sites.

These results, once again, make gay identity analogous to sex and sexual desire. In this instance, Google has optimized the results based on the location of the user—in this case, Los Angeles. The first result is for realjock.com, a site whose name reinforces the flight from the feminine and underlines the desire for authentic masculine pleasure. Located just above the link for realjock.com are headlining news articles not tied to the Los Angeles location setting; they concern Tanzania. This signifies that location—and possibly other algorithmic facets—are mercurial in their application to the queried object. Most likely, paid advertising space takes precedence over location. Two of these articles are from notorious clickbait news sites, The Independent and The Guardian. These online news journals generate income through selling advertising space on the margins of their site. In order to generate traffic to these advertisements, The Independent and The Guardian likely pay Google to bolster their ranking and present their outlandish headlines. These headlines co-opt buzz words, tags, and terms likely indexed for search. Riding together, this for-profit system works to sustain and promote the misrepresentation of gay identities to the financial benefit of corporations. When performing a search of the singular "gay man" in the generic "All" table of Google Search, the results are once again in stark contrast to the plural "gay men." The retrieved results are practical, informative, and only somewhat problematic. 

Most notable is the second result for a Wikipedia article on the "History of gay men in the United States." Although "gay men" is a more accurate keyword search for this article, the singular "gay man" is the query that produces this result. In fact, this article does not appear anywhere on the first page of results for "gay men." So why is the singular more informative and "objective" than the plural? Once again, the assumption is that keywords and terms chosen by advertising companies augment the search engine's results. However, nothing online is transparent.

The exact nature of Google's search algorithm is proprietary, but Google has affirmed, as Noble's research shows, that the concept of PageRank and paired relationships are integral to the retrieval system. Google's PageRank is a system based on "the objective measure of its citation importance that corresponds well with people's subjective idea of importance " (Brin and Page 110). Objects are thus presented in results based on the democratic process of voting. Even so, the weight associated to this feature is undisclosed, making it just one of many facets associated with retrieval. To an even greater extent, this process favors the idea that Internet users are autonomous individuals making rational choices in pursuit of their own and other's educational well-being. This is certainly not the case. The vastly different results associated with minor lexical shifts suggest that Google's search engine assigns greater weight to the semantic value of keywords and phrases, especially in a given, contestable moment. Do votes or capital affect this shift? If there is a hierarchy attached to search conditions, what are they and whom do they benefit? What is clear is that search engines do not adhere to matching rules or simple metadata schemas, but rather match consumers with products and manufactured desired.

A company with a political and financial agenda cannot be a neutral information retrieval system. In 2008, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page donated $140,000 in opposition to California's Proposition 8, which if it had passed would have limited the rights of queer individuals. Brin claimed in a Google blog post that, "we [Californians] should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love" (Brin 1). While Brin's support is clear, his intentions are not. Given that Google rarely stakes a claim in politics, one must read this human rights effort as suspicious. The hype surrounding Google's support will lead individuals to Google. Brin's sympathetic maneuver is a veiled form of human rights profiteering. Not only does this increase site traffic to Google, but also to partnered advertising company's content. Given that Google can and does modify search, it would be interesting to compare how searches around gayness and Proposition 8 varied before and after Brin and Page's donation. Were search results modified to influence California voters? How did advertising partners respond to the assumed influx of new gay searches? How much money was made at the expense of a human rights issue?

Triangulation, Search, and Women

In considering the position of technology as the pivot between user and retrieved object, a relationship between men is formed, as the imagined user for information retrieval systems has always been men. Apple's Siri and Android's Cortana are both feminized forms of technology that retrieve and create information for users. In positioning female subservience between user and searchable object, information retrieval begins to follow Sedgwick's model of triangulation. Men accrue masculine capital when online female personas satisfy their search needs. In this context, men use computers or AI's in order to perform search on other men. When AI's are unable to satisfy search needs, they default to search engines like Google, and the cycle continues. The distance and anonymity of search coupled with the accrued masculine capital allows homohysteric men to experience same sex desire via displaced tactility. The user physically interacts with proxy-women (via keystrokes or voice command) in order to reach the landing point of "gay men" in search. This model makes femininity complicit in the degradation of search. Although there is no direct mechanism in place—nor should there be—that surveys the sexuality and gender of users, it can be assumed that the majority of those who search for "gay men" online are likely either gay men themselves or straight, questioning men. The economy between male user and male object is problematized insofar that the ferried relationship does not forge congenial and expressive relationship among men, but instead reinforces discourses of female objectivity and masculine hierarchies. Male on male searches does not foster inclusive communities, but rather promote online search as a marketplace to satisfy desire and conflate sexuality with identity. The pornification of gay men in search results contributes to how straight men interact with gay identities; when their experience is mediated through Google search, the results are sexually charged and violent. Even if these searches were banal, what do users hope to find? Is a search online for "gay men" always motivated by gains in social capital or sexual desire?

Conclusion

Search engines and online information retrieval system are designed with an extreme focus on user experience. Companies such as Google partner with advertising companies in order to manufacture desires and present them in the form of queried search results. Although infinitely complex, these algorithms fail to process the nuances of social structures, and instead favor financial outcomes. In the case of "gay men" and gay identities, these terms are often conflated with same sex desire in Google Search. Advertising distorts and unfairly positions representations of gayness online, reinforcing the hysteria surrounding homosexuality and homo-coded behavior. Search is facilitated on the pivot of women and feminized forms of technology, further evoking transforming the social framework of search for the worse. As the media-saturated environment diversifies and creates new technologies, there is a need to curtail the desire of finding a balanced or ideal form of masculinity in gay identities. A shift towards promoting the mobility of gender and sexual expressions will continue to be necessary until more cultural blind spots are made apparent to the public. Financial incentive will continue to thrive, as Google remains a capitalist entity that values money over objectivity. More attention must be spent educating individuals on how retrieval systems function and how to understand the ranking process. The onus is on Google to help make their algorithms more transparent and promote a space where information can thrive unencumbered by financial incentive.

**All Google Search results are from 18 November 2018**