“Eu como trans eu não existo!”: formatação, visibilidade e exclusão de pessoas trans* em aplicativos de relacionamento

Abstract

This study examines the registration forms of dating apps Tinder, Badoo, and Bumble, understanding them as mechanisms that function both as formatting tools and as operators of exclusion for trans* individuals. Engaging with theorists such as Koopman (2019), Halberstam (2023) and Butler (2019a, 2019b, 2022), the empirical analysis of Tinder, Badoo, and Bumble reveals that the issue extends beyond transphobia. This study follows the concept of “infopower” (Koopman, 2019), which creates “informational persons”, hybridly shaped by the data entered by users on these platforms. The construction of these “informational persons”, particularly based on gender identification and sexual orientation, serves to direct resources, tools, and usability features, among other material-discursive alternatives. The objective is not only to retain users within these platforms but, more importantly, to generate profiles shaped by the combination of collected data and the mechanisms that structure these users. In a scenario of platformization, datafication, and algorithmic performativity (Lemos, 2019, 2021b), these platforms do not merely mediate interactions. They performatively modulate gender, reinforcing exclusions and limiting diversity in digital spaces. Methodologically, this research employs approaches developed at Lab404 (Lemos, 2020; Lemos; Bitencourt, 2021), which adopt neo-materialist perspectives based on Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2012), the “walkthrough method” for app analysis (Light; Burgess; Duguay, 2018), and the dynamics of “infopower” (Koopman, 2019). The study concludes that the visibility promoted by these apps, while generated through the recognition derived from the formatting of gender identities, simultaneously exposes trans* people to exclusionary and violent mechanisms.