No Fats, No Femmes, No Love

use of gay dating apps such as Grindr and Scruff has changed how people interact and form romantic relationships in the technological world. While many make the argument that the use of these apps helps connect and strengthen the gay community, the insidious effects of commoditizing sex and labeling for the purpose of sexual selection are worth considering.

Launched in 2009, Grindr quickly became the most sensational app for the gay male community. It’s orange glow design, with seemingly endless amounts of headless torsos from ages “twink” to “daddy” won the fickle hearts of gay men around the world. Grindr adequately addresses some of the challenges gay men have with finding other gay men in a heteronormative society, such as location and guessing whether or not the guy next door is gay. It has opened up the doors and closets of gay men in need of affection and it did so by effectively marketing consumers to each other. The app’s simple way of linking the mostly sexual but also non-sexual desires of gays — networking, friendships, or “gym-buddies” — has altered the way gay men see relationships within the gay community.

Realistically speaking, most people who have Grindr or other similar dating apps use them to find the nearest casual hook-up. We would like to make it clear that some people on Grindr aren’t just there for the potential sexual experiences, but for also the great emotions that come along with friendly cyber relationships.

But for the sake of highlighting some of the toxicity that comes along with using these types of apps, we will assume that the vast majority of Grindr users are looking for hook-ups. The purpose of acknowledging this fact is not to “slut-shame” or decide whether the use of Grindr is bad or good for the gay community, but rather to comment on the implications at hand. It is simply important to look at the issues with the commoditization of sex and what behaviors may follow as a result. Even though instant sex sounds like the best thing on earth (and it can be), it would be ludicrous to ignore the relationship between on demand sex and the way we value or devalue intimacy.

One of the more unfortunate things Grindr does is play into the stereotypes and labeling of queer men as a way to promote them to one another. The app even has a “tribe” system that encourages users to label themselves under one of the twelve names such as Bear and Discreet. In an attempt to make it easier for gay men to find and select each other, this aspect of Grindr hinders the diversity that the gay community offers and puts consumption of other gay bodies as the central motivation for interaction. This method also allows gay men to carry through with their own guilt and blindly engage in discrimination against other body types and even races. It is not very rare to find a profile that says “Whites Only!” or “No fatties or femmes” or, our personal favorite, “Masc for Masc.” We understand that everyone is entitled to a sexual preference but at what point does the labeling used to help find potential mates become a mechanism to discriminate against other gays?

What we have noticed is that those that are being shamed for their race body, type and fabulous femme personalities are the ones that don’t typically fall within the margins of how the “ideal” gay man should look like or act. Consequently, the behaviors used in Grindr give in to the creation of a superiority complex within the gay community that is counter to the whole overarching purpose of creating some basic level of solidarity.

To end, we pose this question “Is Grindr simply reflecting the systematic flaws in how society wishes to see gay people or is Grindr enabling gay men to lead their lives clouded by labels and blind discrimination?”