At a time when love is just a right swipe away and cupid says OK, online dating apps are still playing favourite child with ‘straight’ folks. As if walking into a bar, and asking a person of the same gender out (all this while, hoping your gaydar is spot on) is not difficult enough, most dating apps aren’t very forthcoming when it comes to non-heterosexual dating.
While gay men still have grinder and sites such as Planet Romeo coming to their rescue, the creators of dating apps seem to turn amnesiac when it comes to cisgender lesbian women, transgender and gender non-binary people.
Gowthaman Ranganathan a city lawyer with Alternative Law Forum says, “Dating apps are inaccessible to a large part of the queer community.” Certain apps like Tinder and OK Cupid have an umbrella cover which does include the LGBTQ community, but finding a same sex date within a myopically heterosexual app is like finding an apartment in a badly done classified section, you have to sift through a lot of irrelevant profiles.
Sneha, a student of Christ University shares, “All the apps have fake profiles of women with male users and the few genuine non-heterosexual ones use fake names to shield their identity for fear of persecution.”
Tinder which is increasing becoming popular within the LGBTQ community also has a loop hole. The ‘interested in’ mechanism does not care if you are looking for a partner of the same gender, you will be inundated with profiles of the opposite gender. Krithika, a city blogger says, “If you are a girl looking for a girl, your feed will be flooded with dudes and women who are not interested in women.”
OK cupid is marginally better as it lets you write a lengthy bio which makes your purpose of being on the app and sexual-orientation easier to figure out. However OK Cupid does not have a ‘match’ requirement for messaging and anyone who is on the app can message you. Sneha relays her horror tale, “My inbox is filled with obscene messages and images from men. I have been abused and called a dyke when I refused offers of group sex,” Alex a.k.a Mayamma, who performs as a drag queen says, “I started getting a lot of hatred from profiles on these apps just because I do drag.”
And the story gets darker, lawyer Gowthaman Ranganathan says, “A lot of extortion cases have come to us which have happened through these apps. People are threatened for money on the basis of the fact that they will be taken to the police station under section 377 or out-ed to the family.”
But it is not all gloom and doom, there is a rainbow to the cloud. Vijay Chauhan, executive director of Swabhava, an LGBTQ NGO which organises the Bangalore Queer Film Festival, says “It is because of these apps that you are likely to meet more people from the community. More than the urban community, it is places like rural Karnataka which need access to these apps where people are more closeted.” And love does blossom for the rainbow people through these apps. Bharath, a city poet says he found love with a right swipe, “I met the love of my life on tinder.”
