On Queer: On Tinder

I made a Tinder account during my senior year of high school. I never saw myself as the type of girl to use a dating app, but it was hard for me to meet other LGBTQ+ people without it. I always found that the high school dating pool for queer students can be small and unhealthy.

I wound up deleting and re-making my Tinder account multiple times between my senior year back home and my sophomore year at college. I would find myself getting depressed if I got too absorbed in the app, but would miss it if I kept away from it for too long. In a way it was good for me: I met some really nice female-identifying and genderqueer people on Tinder, and our conversations were reliably good.

When I match with a female-spectrum Tinder user, the conversation usually starts with some greetings, questions about majors, a few funny jokes or discoveries of mutual friends. It is usually a meaningful and validating conversation.

About a month ago, I decided to alter my account so it showed me both male-spectrum and female-spectrum users in my area. I did it on a whim; I wanted to explore a new side of my identity. I never expected the differences between guys and gals on Tinder to be so striking.

I have found that some cisgender, heterosexual men on Tinder can be pretty icky. When I flipped that switch on my Tinder settings page, the whole dynamic of the app changed. The guys I saw there almost invariably started conversation by commenting on my appearance, and if I responded (or even if I didn’t), they would usually send a thinly-veiled request to have-some-intercourse-soon-please-and-thank-you.

Tinder became a point of stress for me. I felt obligated to respond to these guys when they messaged me, but I never liked the direction our conversations went. They were explicitly sexual in a way that made me uncomfortable.

It’s not that I’m not interested in dating someone who identifies as male: it’s that the male spectrum people who I saw on Tinder frequently made me feel like an object. An object who deserves some very poorly-crafted pick up lines and an object who is super excited to strip off her panties the second she sees a picture of a cis boy standing next to [insert celebrity name here]. I decided that these new Tinder interactions were not for me.

I deleted my Tinder account again last week. Maybe I will reboot my Tinder someday, maybe I will not. For now, I am happy focusing on the many people I know and love in real life.

This column was written by an anonymous resident of the Rainbow House. Have a suggestion for an article, a question or a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at rhousecolumn@gmail.com!