Young. Old. Fat. Skinny. Tall. Short. Beard. No beard. Asian. White. Black. And now – man or woman?

Filters are once again in the spotlight. Something that looks so innocous is in fact highly controversial. All dating and hookup apps allow you to filter in and out what you are looking for. The controversy lies in what you are allowed to filter on.

A few years ago Grindr removed their ethnicity filter. You could no longer filter based on skin colour. Brown and Asian people were complaining they were being approached just on the basis of their ethnicity. Fetishized by some users. Black guys told stories of being approached by white guys with a penchant for big ding dongs, assuming all black men have big ding dongs (they don’t). They did not want to be approached purely on the basis of their ethnicity. They wanted to be liked for who they are not some of their external characteristics. In theory that all sounds good. However, after a few years some users are complaining that it prevents them from being found. Black guys are complaining they can’t find other black guys. Users take to describing their preferences (and showstoppers) in their profiles to compensate – black guys state they only want other black guys. Which I think is perfectly OK. It’s what you somehow like. But imagine a white guy stating “white guys to the front”. You would not last long. It currently only goes one way.

The controversy obviously lives on. A user on Reddit recently complained that “removing the ethnicity filter just made certain minorities less visible”. He points out the actual effect of removing a filter: People can no longer find you based on your ethnic attribute. The Asians can no longer find other Asians, black guys can no longer find other black guys in their area. You have to trawl through the grid of users and if you don’t pay there is only a limited number of users shown in your grid. So there you are – you see a handful of users but none might be what you are actually looking for.

They mean well…

When removing a filter the apps mean it really well. They want you to be considered for you, not what you look like. The person within. It’s noble but I am not sure it has the desired effect and I question if it’s realistic. Especially on hookup apps we seek the ones we are physically attracted to, first and foremost. On card-based apps where you swipe we swipe based on how they look, and maybe what they say on their profile. In real life – if you go to a club would your eyes scan the club for people you are attracted to? Yes. If you were blindfolded would you walk around the place talking to anyone who sounds interesting? You might. But when the blindfold comes off, we are down to that physical attraction again. And, to a certain degree “people like me” – like the guy above who feels more comfortable with guys from a similar cultural and genetic background. Some guys also miss being able to find others like them, not for hookups, but to make connections and to share experiences of being a minority, and find support.

Enter…trans

Grindr recently rolled out a new Gender filter, but for some reason have not rolled it out in every country. Perhaps because they decided to go back to the drawing board on this? As with the ethnicity filter, this one is equally controversial. As the user Aussie_GC_Man on X points out you can only filter for “men” or “women” so if you filter for “men” you will also get transmen. Grindrs argument is that “transmen are men”. We are back to the same as for the ethnicity filter – should everyone deserve a chance by you no matter what skin colour they are, or what genitalia they have? Are we missing out by filtering out someone, instead of considering them for who they are? The other side of the debate is that gay men and lesbian women are simply same sex attracted. This filter removes the ability to find other men with male genitalia. Or women with female genitalia for that matter.

 

Of course some men on Grindr will appreciate this filter because they are not looking for other men – they are looking for transmen, or transwomen. There is a growing userbase of men who are looking for transwomen in particular, and specifically state that they only want transwomen, some also want “fem” guys.

Now you could argue that Grindr is for gay men who are attracted to other gay men with ding dongs. You could equally argue that if you have transitioned you should be treated like the gender you transitioned into, and treated like that, with the only difference that you may still have the genitalia you were born with. That debate still rages on – but it’s interesting to see that this has now bubbled up to the filters in a hookup app like Grindr.

I question if the “we are all equal” argument holds up since you can still filter on weight and height. And of course, age. Where does the filtering start and where does it end? If you removed the age filter could you say it was to make everyone equal, put everyone on an equal playing field and make everyone consider everyone regardless of their age? We all have preferences – and you could argue we may sometimes need to expand our horizons – but when it comes to our attraction we know what we are sexually attracted to. Perhaps we are sometimes emotionally attracted to other things but the emotional nuances are just lost on a hookup app like Grindr where it’s all about the sexual attraction.

Grindr state that they feel it’s important for non-binary and trans users to be able to find each other, which is in fact great – this can be a great feature of a filter allowing you to find people in the same situation or background as yourself. But at the same time it excludes biological gay men who are attracted to other biological men from finding each other.