If you exist outside the gender binary or align with sexuality outside that binary, you know this to be very true: dating apps aren't inclusive but they're all that we have. Dating apps both help and hurt queer people. Apps like Tinder and Bumble let us know who is also queer, who is single, the monogamy preferences of folks out there and many more of the hundreds of obstacles queer folk face while dating in comparison to heterosexual dating, but they also hurt us in a great way when it comes to our identities and representation. Because of my personal bad experiences, I thought that I would try and go through the major dating apps and show some of the difficulties non-dominant identities face based on several categories: gender/sexuality options, the culture of the app, popularity and user base.

Okay, let's dive in!

Tinder/Bumble/Hinge is the go-to for most people and easily the most popular. Because of this, despite all their MANY faults, the most people of the three, tinder, tends to be used most by queer folk because it provides the most options for connections, but fewer options for building a profile that lets you feel seen and heard. Tinder presents a huge problem that many dating apps share — Tinder/Bumble/Hinge care too much about what’s in your pants with no consideration that the user might be intersex.

When you start any three of these app you are given many options to represent your gender and sexuality but then immediately prompts you with "show me in searches for men or women," and only allows searching for "men or women." Historically (and I believe so still) the app will assume that if you pick "show me in men," it will assume you are searching for women without even asking you.

So, how do we navigate this? Assume you're in my position; an often femme representing non-binary person, assigned male at birth, looking for femme, non-binary, or occasionally men. When choosing what to be searched in and what to search for, I have to make heavy assumptions about what might be a suitor's deal-breaker whether it be my biology, my gender or my presentation. It also forces me to make the same judgments about others. Because of that, describing my own experiences in navigating these filters CANNOT be assumption-free. However, let's review.

(A) male looking for female. This often results little to no matches or matches where women question me about my appearance, assuming I'm cis and gay and looking for a female friend. Option (A) leaves me feeling both interrogated and itemized.

(B) Male looking for Male. This might align me with more people that understand me than option (A) but give me less of what I'm looking for, it also excludes a lot of trans men from finding a place where they feel comfortable.

(C) Female looking for Male. For my own identity, this choice is the absolute worst. From personal experience this is where I am most likely to be harassed and it is where trans women are most likely to be harassed.

(D) Female looking for female. I see a lot of trans men, trans women, and a lot of non-binary on here. For me, it is the place where I feel least likely to be judged and I am most likely to find someone right for me. I have to go in with the assumption that everyone here is already queer so they are likely to understand my gender and that if they don't want me I will never know if it's because of my body or if I'm just not for them. However, with many genderqueer people using F to F we are crowding a space built for F to F dating.

Tinder often also bans people who might need to be switching back and forth between “shown as” male or female. It’s suspected that their computers detect your account as a bot trying to spam as many people as possible. And once you’re off Tinder, there’s pretty much no way back on. 

On the topic of sexuality, the gender options give you few opportunities to search for specific identities that you might be interested in, ex; trans-men and non-binary, or cis and trans women. There is no way to seek people who are polyamorous. This often leads to complaints on F to F platforms of an abundance of "unicorn hunters." These are usually cis-het couples looking for a female third. They usually bait these on F-F with the male-only in the last slide.

So why not try a homosexual-only app? Well, to be honest, apps like Her and Grindr have incredibly toxic environments. Her is littered with bots and isn't so kind to non-cis folks. I have heard the same about non cis-folks on Grindr. Grindr is also notorious for its openly racist user base. You can google this for yourself — it's quite horrifying what people will put in their bios.

Finally, there are sites like OkCupid, more queer-friendly services and several trans-specific dating sites. You think they would solve the problem but sadly genderqueer folks already make up a smaller percentage of the population and thus a smaller fraction on lesser-used dating sites. You can often run through everyone in your area on these sites in an hour depending on how rural your location is. OkCupid allows for some of the best gender and sexuality options available, but chances are you won't find anyone closer than 50 miles away.