Trans-forming Tinder Into a Safe Community

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A Blast from the Past?: Gayle Rubin’s Charmed Circle of Sexuality

Rubin believes that sexuality could not be separated from politics because of a history of sexual oppression within society. The 1940s-1960s cemented a period where sexuality that differed from the heteronormative standard was condemned. Social movements set up campaigns that fought against prostitution and masturbation, encouraged abstinence, and demonized homosexuality. 

Rubin’s charmed circle illustrates actions that are deemed as a socially acceptable use of sexuality and other actions that are not. Everything located within the center of the circle, represents a form of sexuality that has been ingrained within social and political life, allowing for individuals to have the preconcieved notion that sexuality must be expressed in one way. 

While we can certainly argue that some things within the charmed circle could be updated within the 21st century, its ability to illustrate how society polices and oppresses certain forms of sexuality, casts some similarities to the extent of which transgender individuals are increasingly excluded and condemned from dating apps like Tinder. I think it is important to remember that if sexuality is always ingrained within the individual, then so is the ability to express hatred. 

It is important for not only Tinder’s users to be aware of the policed state of sexuality, but for Tinder’s CEO, employees and policy-makers to be aware. While the online exclusion of a group can appear like an easy issue to fix, removing the hegemonic oppression of non-conforming sexuality is not. 

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How Tinder Can Improve Their Practices

It is important to acknowledge the steps that Tinder has taken in recent years to become a more inclusive environment. However, there are still many ways that they can improve their practices. They need to listen to the feedback that their users are providing. For example, they should not immediately block a transgender user’s profile when it is reported. It is currently very easy to report a Tinder user. In fact, all a user has to do is press one button. By altering their procedures so that that users would have to provide a legitimate explanation for wanting to have a person removed from the app, greater onus would be placed on the person who is filing the report. Perhaps, once a user has filed a homophobic or transphobic complaint, their profile could be flagged and a note can be placed on it to notify other users of his/her harmful actions. Tinder should even consider removing a suspension, or removing these profiles permanently. In order to promote inclusivity, Tinder needs to use their platform to spread awareness about the presence of transphobia and homophobia in our society and on dating apps, in the hopes that it will eventually make their app a safer place. Since this appears to be something that Tinder cannot tackle on its own, they should consider partnering with organizations like GLAAD. This incredible organization is led by experts in the field, who would be well equipped at making the app a safer place for people of all genders and sexualities.

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A Day in the Life of a Transgender Tinder User: 

After beginning a conversation with a guy on Tinder and making plans for a future date, the guy said to Stef, “I just read your profile, and transgender means you were male before?” After explaining to the guy that she was assigned male at birth but has always been a woman, he responded saying “Oh, okay. Respect, but that is not what I’m looking for.”

Stef goes on to teach her audience that not all transgender women are the same. For example, transgender women who have not undergone SRS (sex reassignment surgery) are still transgender women. Stef argues throughout her video, that there is a serious issue with men assuming that all transgender women have penises. In doing so, this assumption may lead to unwanted harassment.

She states:

“It’s so hard to explain and people get so fired up because they automatically think ‘Oh you are pressuring men to be attracted to you’ and it’s like no. I am asking that people realize that there are all kinds of trans bodies and that they are not all the same. So when you say that you are not attracted to transgender people, you are saying that you think we all look a certain way, and that it is physically impossible for you to be attracted to a transgender person. We know this is untrue because he swiped right.” (5:16). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXbc9C4dNbQ&t=268s

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Tinder Updated Their Policy To Help Protect The LGBTQ+ Community

Tinder has been working to update their policies in order to create a more inclusive app for its transgender users. Their 2016 update involved adding more gender options. This was motivated by the awful harassment that transgender people were experiencing on the app. They were being wrongfully reported as "fake" by other users for presenting themselves as "female,” however, at the time, the app only had two gender options; male or female. The 2019 update focuses on the overall experience for members of the LGBTQ+ community. With the help of GLAAD (a non-governmental organization that monitors the media and was founded by members of the LGBTQ community), they have added 37 sexuality options, where people will be able to select up to three terms that best describe their sexual orientation. This is located under an "orientation" tab and includes options such as: a trans man, trans woman, transgender. Furthermore, an update to the security of the app has been enforced. A new security feature helps to protect LBGTQ+ users who travel to nations that still criminalize same-sex acts or relationships. As soon as they arrive there, Tinder will hide their profile. This feature relies on the phone’s network connection to determine its location, It will prompt you with a choice to keep your profile public or not. If users choose to make their profile public, Tinder will hide their sexual orientation or gender identity from their profile in order to protect their information and prevent any type of targeted acts. In a statement, Tinder also noted that they will not let people filter out others by their sexual orientation. 

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Is Tinder Safe?

Tinder is a public dating app, which helps to match you with people who are located in your geographic vicinity. Thus, the app is constantly tracking you through location services, whether you are actively using the app or have not been on it for several months. Even if you take precautions to stay safe, such as meeting up with people in a public place, not revealing any personal information and over all, making smart and informed decisions, bad things happen that are often out of our control. These horrible incidents are often a direct result of the fact that social media makes it easy to surveil people. People can now uncover an individual’s personal information and use location services to physically track him/her and in return, use it to harm them. This is especially problematic for members of the trans community who are using Tinder. The app helps to single them out and identify them by making their appearance and any personal information easily accessible by the public sphere. Some people who are homophobic and/or transphobic may even go as far to make fake profiles and impersonate in order to identify members of marginalized groups, thus, they can harass members of the trans community.

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Are Trans People Excluded from the World of Dating?

New research explores the extent to which trans people are excluded from dating.

In a study conducted by Karen L. Blair, she asked 1000 participants using popular dating apps to check off on a list, who they would consider as potential dating partners. The list included: 

- a cisgender woman 

- a cisgender man 

- a transgender woman 

- a transgender man 

- a person with a non-binary gender identification 

Blair’s results concluded that 87.5% of participants perferred only the cis-gendered options. These results validate that most of the individuals utilizing popular dating apps and sites are cis-gendered, themselves. What Blair discovered further into her her study was that using dating apps was perhaps most difficult for trans women as they had continuously fallen victim to harrassment and transphobia. In fact, while 55% of participants within the study who identified as bisexual or queer stated that they were open to engaging in a relationship with trans people, 20% of this group provided a lack of interest in transwomen. 

Blair’s study is an extremely important contribution to transgender representation in the era of dating apps as she frames her focus around how their invisibility in the world of dating effects their overall mental health. It is important that current studies on LGBTQ+ speak on the extent of which trans people are excluded on dating apps. 

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Tinder Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Transgender Discrimination | Top Class Actions

A trans woman is suing Tinder for allegedly discriminating against her and banning her account based on her gender identity.

You’re not alone. Others are fighting against this active discrimination.

Take a look at what Ariel Hawkins is doing to fight her case and how she’s taking action to address the issue!

#standtogether #makeachange

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Tinder’s customer service team MUST adhere to the needs of ALL of its users. By not addressing the explicit harassment occurring to trans users, Tinder is not succeeding at making itself more inclusive. 

We see here another example of an informal “review process” where Tinder is pushing aside these real life situations and lacking to acknowledge the real issue at hand; that being the inappropriate behaviour executed by others, towards trans users.

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Tinder has 50 gender options but transgender people are being banned for their gender identity

Despite having 50 gender options, trans folks tell PinkNews that they are being banned from Tinder for disclosing that they are transgender.

An Interesting Read. 

Tinder had just recently updated their gender options in June of 2019, although, due to a lack of support from Tinder’s customer service team combined with poor policies in place, transgender men and women are still having their accounts banned or removed, despite doing nothing offensive or inappropriate on the app.

#tindersupport #stoptheban @tinder

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Real life situations such as these thus prove the harassment Transgender people experience on Tinder. Reporting, Banning of Profiles, and Verbal Abuse are just to name a few. 

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The Reality of Online Dating for Trans Users: A Personal Perspective

Christiana: I honestly don’t want a “looking for transgender” option on dating apps ― I feel like it would be used for more guys trying to treat us as a fetish! Tinder does need to be more inclusive, though. Tons of trans people, including me, get kicked off Tinder temporarily because guys don’t read your bio and see you’re trans so they unmatch or report you. If that happens enough, your account gets flagged for review and you can get banned for too many reports.

Jackson: Nerve-wracking. I mean, this is totally just my opinion and maybe it’s not the most accurate read on the climate, but I do have to say that it’s pretty dang nerve-wracking to not know if your date is someone who will be cool with you being trans, awkward about it or want to murder you. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are bigots using dating apps to find trans people so they can harass us online or potentially assault us in person. That’s why I generally try to date queer people and friends of friends so I can be fairly confident they’re cool with trans people.

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What can be done: The Tinder Landscape

We have some ideas that could change the Tinder landscape into a more gender inclusive environment. The first being Tinder should focus on policing hate crimes towards the LGBTQ+ community, especially those that identify as transgender. Trolls on tinder have a tendency to ban those that are visibly transgender which in turn places the individual in a position where they feel as though they have to hide their identity (Riotta, 2019). Tinder collects, surveilles, and sells the abundance of data filtered through the app. The platform has the resources and the ability to supervise and control negative interactions within the site. Rather of selling 800+ pages of big data to advertising companies, Tinder should be utilizing their power to promote a more gender inclusive climate for all users to feel safe in (Duportail, 2017).

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Who Agrees? A Theoretical Approach

Corrine Mason suggests that “socially mediated digital space also afford possibilities of recreating hierarchies of race” (Mason, 2015). Similar hierarchies of sex exist on Tinder, and they marginalize those who identify as transgender. Heterosexual and Cisgender users on the platform reinforce the social norms of dating, by desiring those who reflect traditional modes of sexuality and excluding/harassing those who deviate from the norm. Mason quotes, “Choosing images to display for oneself on Tinder, and choosing hook-up partners based on images of others reflects and maintains hierarchies and norms” (Mason, 2015).

Transpeople’s experiences on Tinder are limited and challenging as their identities are ultimately judged based off a set of reinforcing ideologies. By judging one’s behaviours based off their image and descriptions can be harmful to trans daters on the platform because they become the subject of harassment, and are accused of being “misleading” in appearance to other tinder users.