Okcupid Transgender
May 14, 2015 I created OKCupid dating profiles before and after my gender transition Online dating as a woman is hard. It's even harder if you're transgender. Winter LaMon is a 28-year-old transgender man who lives in New York City. He joined the online dating site OKCupid six years ago, about three years before he transitioned. He dates men and women, both transgender and cisgender (a term for people who aren't trans). After LaMon transitioned from female to male, he didn’t change his gender to. I created OKCupid dating profiles before and after my gender transition Online dating as a woman is hard. It's even harder if you're transgender. I live in the middle of the Bible Belt (Missouri), which isn't known to be a terribly progressive area. I chose to disclose my trans status in my profile, but it's an offhanded thing. I'm bisexual and polyamorous, too. I've been on OKCupid for sev. Show off your successes online and enjoy the potential of dating with confidence, knowing that you know your credit score. Whatever you do, use your credit in the way that works for you. Be proud of it – and love how it helps you look great and get access to the financial world.
When it comes to meeting potential partners (or, at least, looking at their profiles), OkCupid offers users lots of choices. But critics have pointed out an area where the service provides much less choice: identifying one’s own gender and sexuality. At least for some users, though, that’s changing — and many see it as an important step toward inclusivity.
Dan Avery of NewNowNext reports that some users are now seeing an enlarged list of ways to identify their sexuality, including “asexual, demisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible, pansexual, queer, questioning and sapiosexual (one who finds intelligence to be the most important sexual trait).” He also notes that “gender has now been extended to include agender, androgynous, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, gender nonconforming, hijra, intersex, trans man, trans woman and two spirit, among others.” Previously, he writes, all users had to identify their gender as male or female, and their orientation as straight, gay or bisexual.
“These changes are about respecting users for who they are, and creating a better service,” writes s.e. smith at xoJane. “OkCupid joins a slowly growing group of sites who are showing a better awareness of gender, sexuality and sex in order to make users feel more comfortable, which is a positive sign not just on the Internet, but socially.”
Smith argues that the change will help those who don’t fall into the previously available categories better describe themselves, seek out who they’re looking for — and avoid who they’re not: “While some users may find themselves targets for abuse because of how they identify (because humanity is awful), abusive users can helpfully be reported, and ideally, being able to seek out other gender nonconforming people and those along the sexuality spectrum will allow users to find like-minded and more tolerant people.”
Smith also notes that users have been asking for changes to the service for some time, citing a Huffington Post story by Alex Berg. “As a queer cisgender woman,” Ms. Berg wrote in May, “(that means the sex I was assigned at birth matches my gender identity), I’ve found OkCupid’s options marginalizing because I can only identify as straight, gay, or bisexual.” She noted that some users were launching an OkCupid “blackout” — “replacing their profile photos on the website with a black box, and then logging out for 24 hours” — to protest the lack of options. And she quoted Trey Greene, a transgender man, who said it was “a danger to trans* people using the site when they may be matched with an intolerant person who does not read profile details or for other reasons is unaware that the ‘male’ or ‘female’ person they are interested in is on the queer spectrum.”
Benn Kessler, a former OkCupid user, tells Corinne Segal of PBS that he left the site because of its limited gender choices: “ A lot of people would make assumptions about me, if I listed myself as a man, that were incorrect.” He adds, “The first line of my profile would basically say, ‘Hi, I’m a trans guy,’ but people would just completely ignore that.” Users who have access to the new options will no longer have to use such workarounds — or risk having them ignored.
Some transgender users may prefer not to identify as such on OkCupid. A transgender woman told Ms. Berg she would “never choose ‘trans female’ as a gender option even if it were available because a) I don’t see myself as different from any other women and b) It would likely limit the number of matches I receive (assuming people would be able to filter) and c) it would increase the volume of messages that I already had to deal with from fools, fetishists, or people who are ‘curious’ about hooking up with a trans girl.”
And at The Daily Dot, Samantha Allen writes:
Okcupid Gender Options
“Some transgender people choose not to disclose their transness on their profile. If you want to date a transgender person, you have to recognize that this choice is their prerogative. For many transgender people, a gender transition is just another thing that happened to them, perhaps even a long time ago; for them to tell you about their history of transition would be about as relevant as you giving them a list of every car you’ve ever driven.”
Okcupid Search
And she notes that because of the prevalence of transphobia on the site, “OkCupid feels the need to warn people (in the bottom of Privacy Controls) that they should not try to delete transgender people from the service by reporting their profiles. This clarification is probably necessary because many people like this Reddit user want OkCupid to force every transgender user to mark themselves — but don’t worry, he has ‘nothing against gender identities.’”
The new options may not end the problem of transphobia on OkCupid. But they may be a start. “In the grand scheme of problems for LGBTQ people, the options of a dating website might seem like minutia,” writes Ms. Berg. “But with so much of our lives lived in the digital realm, we are legitimatized when an institution as popular as OkCupid recognizes trans* and non-binary identities and sexualities. That recognition has the power to change the hearts and minds of those who would deny our rights in the physical world.”
“As if online dating wasn’t fraught enough with anxiety over finding and meeting a suitable match,” she concludes, “the limited options add another layer of angst.” If the new choices become available to everyone on the site (and OkCupid hasn’t yet said when they will be), then that layer, at least, will be removed.