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Paper short abstract

This sensory ethnography argues that dating apps like Grindr algorithmize caste and class hierarchies, transforming them into codes of digital desire. It exposes how "Pure Top" masculinity and trans-fetishism commodify marginalised bodies, centring Dalit-queer embodied resistance to this violence.

Paper long abstract

This article presents a sensory-embodied-experiential digital ethnography of the "Pure Top" figure on Indian dating apps (Grindr, Bumble, Tinder), centring the experiences of working-class, lower-caste, rural-origin, and transqueer people in North India (Delhi, Haryana: Hisar, Rohtak, Karnal, Panipat) and East India (Kolkata, West Bengal: Ranaghat, Kalyani, Krishnanagar, Barasat, Bongaon). Positioning myself as a Dalit-Queer-Trans-Kothi researcher from rural West Bengal, I argue that the Pure Top positioning is not a sexual preference but a performance of caste and class respectability that reproduces Brahminical hierarchies through hypermasculinity, body hair removal, and the violent commodification of trans and feminine bodies. The article traces a specific form of trans-fetishism wherein Tops demand trans bodies in feminine presentations (sarees, underwear, makeup) while simultaneously denying trans identity, rendering trans bodies as detachable sexual commodities available only for insertion-based pleasure. Through sensory ethnographic methods attending to the haptic, olfactory, and affective dimensions of digital desire, I document how apps materialise caste discrimination through language ("clean," "decent," "educated"), spatial segregation via geolocation, and the eroticization of master-slave hierarchies that mirror caste-based exploitation. The research draws on interviews with working-class gay men, trans sex workers, and Dalit-queer activists across six sites, combined with my own embodied experiences as a Grindr user. I conclude by centring emerging Dalit-queer collective spaces that refuse app-mediated desire and practice sensory, embodied, care-centred community-building outside neoliberal logic.