www.mic.com Open in urlscan Pro
18.155.68.79  Public Scan

Form analysis
3 forms found in the DOM

<form class="Kym"><input name="source" type="hidden" value="OnDeck">
  <div class="gQD"><input autocomplete="email" name="email" placeholder="enter your email address..." required="" type="email" value="" class="VU5 VU5">
    <div class="Rp5">
      <div class="i5n"><input checked="" id="MIC_CHECK" value="MIC_CHECK" name="MIC_CHECK" type="checkbox"><label for="MIC_CHECK">Mic Check</label></div>
      <div class="i5n"><input checked="" id="UP_NEXT" value="UP_NEXT" name="UP_NEXT" type="checkbox"><label for="UP_NEXT">Up Next</label></div>
    </div><button type="submit" class="qgj">Submit</button>
    <div class="g-0">By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our <a href="https://www.bdg.com/info/terms-of-service" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Terms of Service</a> and
      <a href="https://www.bdg.com/info/privacy-policy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Privacy Policy</a></div>
  </div>
</form>

/search

<form action="/search" target="_top" autocomplete="off" autocapitalize="off" class="Ag6 Ui6"><input type="search" placeholder="Search Mic..." aria-label="Search Mic" name="q" value="" class="lix"></form>

<form id="verticalsForm" class="eAo">
  <a href="/culture" class="fdE"><span>Culture</span></a><a href="/identity" class="fdE"><span>Identity</span></a><a href="/life" class="fdE"><span>Life</span></a><a href="/impact" class="fdE"><span>Impact</span></a></form>

Text Content

Menu


ONE SENTENCE SUMS UP THE STRUGGLE LESBIANS FACE WITH ONLINE DATING





Impact
ByChelsea Hawkins
Dec. 19, 2014

When it comes to lesbian and bisexual online dating, the general premise is the
same as usual — see photos, scroll through profiles, swipe or message when
intrigued. 

But the responses gay women can expect have a distinct flavor to them, one that
can be summed up a little like this:




Pleasant, right?

For the young and straight, there are Tinder and OkCupid; for the gay male
community, Grindr and Scruff. But while sites for American women seeking women
do exist, there are not enough "safe spaces" specific to the diverse range of
queer women's interests.

And the message above proves why we need them: Lesbians, like other minority
sexual identities, are often fetishized and viewed as a novelty for people
wishing to experiment. On sites like OkCupid, gay women are too often treated as
useful objects to furnish your threesome fantasies.

A dating space free of curious men. Some attempts at sites for lesbian and bi
women, like Brenda, have been met with lukewarm enthusiasm. A new app, Scissr,
is gaining buzz as "the new Tinder for lesbians," but is still in its infancy.
The one that's gotten the best response is the U.K.-based DATTCH, which launched
in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco to much fanfare this year — and
that's likely because it was created with this specific concern of lesbians in
mind.

DAATCH founder and CEO Robyn Exton told Mic that the idea started two years ago
when she realized that platforms for gay and bisexual women were limited to "a
gay guy product that had been re-skinned pink and given to women, or a straight
product where I could say I was interested in women."

"But across both platforms I was constantly messaged by men asking for a
threesome or trying to convert me," she said, "and those were the best things I
could recommend to her. [I thought] this is crazy and I felt I could do
something better that could address this."

> "I was constantly messaged by men asking for a threesome or trying to convert
> me."

Exton's experiences aren't singular. Queer, lesbian and bi-women, along with
other sexual minorities, are often fetishized, seen as "an item to check off
someone's sexual bucket list," as a trans woman wrote in the Guardian. Even on
other lesbian-focused spaces, women encounter "bi-curious girls, looking for a
gay girl to 'teach [them] all there is to know'; heterosexual couples searching
for someone to have a threesome with (surprisingly abundant and so very
irritating) ... and the odd charming individual who asks you to masturbate in
front of them on Skype." 



There's nothing rewarding or complimentary about being seen as an object for
another person's one-way gratification. 



Unwanted attention online isn't foreign to women for all sexual orientations,
but it's exacerbated by a lack of inclusive language on many dating sites. The
mainstream platforms cater to a heteronormative user, first and foremost. Tracy
Garcia, a femme queer woman of color, says she had trouble connecting with other
women online even when she made her disinterest in men clear.

"When I was using OkCupid I had a hard time meeting other womxn [sic] and was
constantly hit up by dudes, even if I put that I was a lesbian — which was an
issue because I only had the option of selecting lesbian or bi, which are both
hella limiting," Garcia wrote in a message to Mic. (OkCupid has since expanded
its identification lexicon.) "Ultimately I was over getting random messages from
guys and not finding any muxeres [sic] who were queer feminists."

> "I was constantly hit up by dudes ,even if I put that I was a lesbian."

Harassment aside, lesbian dating can be different. Lesbian and bi women can
operate differently than gay men or straight people when it comes to digital
dating. Fast hookups are less common; as Rachel Kramer Bussel wrote in the
Village Voice, "Lesbians tend to use social media to be more, well, social. That
means holding out for the first few dates anyway, in stark contrast to those gay
men for whom 'date' means 'fuckfest this Friday.'"



According to Exton, it takes an average of seven days for DAATCH users to meet
in person, and within those seven days, users engage in three conversations on
average. (That's arguably more than users on sites like Tinder, although the
data is hard to pin down.) 

Beyond possibly distinct dating styles, there's another reason lesbians and bi
women benefit from their own apps: volume. Self-identifying lesbians make up
1.5% of America's female population, and bisexual women just 0.9%. "There's no
debating reality: lesbians are working with a far smaller potential dating pool
than straight women," Chloë Curran writes on After Ellen. 


Getty


"The community is there — it's just not connected in one centralized
place," Exton said, and an app allows women to both see how big the community is
and to connect with more women who share their interests. That includes platonic
friends, in addition to sexual or romantic partners.  

Women need safe spaces to form connections. As Megan Johnson, a bisexual student
in Vancouver, Washington, wrote in a message to Mic, these spaces are important
to her as a queer woman because they are necessary "to have a more accessible
arena to find love, sex, partnership, whatever it may be."

"Not having a place that allows the freedom of sexual expression has limited my
playing field and for a while limited my expectations of what I could seek and
find," she said. "All women — lesbian, bi, hetero, questioning — deserve a place
to develop and cultivate the relationships they want with people of like minds."

And that includes a place to meet people free of harassment — and from men just
looking to experiment.

Stories that Fuel Conversations
Mic Check
Up Next
Submit
By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our Terms of Service and
Privacy Policy



NewsletterAbout UsMastheadAdvertiseTermsPrivacyDMCAYour Privacy Options

© 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
CultureIdentityLifeImpact