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  1. Politics
3 July 2014updated 09 Jun 2021 10:57am

Like so many things in life, Tinder is just different for lesbians

I feel like Tinder is a place where lesbians play badminton and drink iced tea, while straight women trawl through skips while dodging rotten turnips that are being lobbed at their heads.

By Eleanor Margolis

“My dick has died, can I bury it in your arse?”

It’s almost art. My inner literature student wants to call it something like “verbal brutalism”. Anyway – it’s Shakespeare; it’s Byron; it’s Virginia bloody Woolf. Presenting: a message a man sent to a woman I know, on Tinder.

Over a pint, some of my straight female friends are comparing gross things that men have said to them on Tinder. For those who aren’t in their twenties and single, Tinder is a dating app with around ten million users worldwide. You know how, in Fifties America, young people supposedly met in malt shops? That’s exactly what Tinder is – a gargantuan, spermy, digital malt shop. And it recently emerged that everyone’s hook-up generator of choice is run by at least one heinous person. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, one of the brains behind an app that men are regularly using to vent their disgustingness has been accused of sexual harassment. Former Tinder executive, Whitney Wolfe, claims that the app’s head of marketing, Justin Mateen, called her a whore and was generally quite medieval about the whole her being a woman thing.

But back to the pub. After listening to stories about dick pics, Poundland-quality banter and the least appealing anal sex offer I’ve ever heard, it’s my turn to reveal my Tinder burns. I’m struggling. In all honesty, the most traumatic message I’ve had on the app was one in which there was a “your” where there should’ve been a “you’re”. Like so many things in life, Tinder is just different for lesbians.

I’ve been using it since last year, and Tinder has generally treated me kindly. When I message a match, we usually chat about twatty London things, like how great Brixton Market is, or where does the best flat white. Not once have genitals (let alone deceased ones) entered the picture. One of the few downsides for me is that, in spite of having my preferences set to “women only”, men regularly crop up. I have no idea why this is, but it means I have to look at a lot of pictures of the Tinder stalwart that is “man stands next to sedated tiger and pretends he’s some kind of fucking beast master”.

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But apart from having to left-swipe male intruders, my experience with the app has been everything from “fine” to “quite good”. I’ve been on a couple of Tinder dates (not including the one where I was stood up, but let’s not go into that) and even know people, both gay and straight, in bona fide Tinder relationships. Broadly speaking though, I feel like Tinder is a place where lesbians play badminton and drink iced tea, while straight women trawl through skips while dodging rotten turnips that are being lobbed at their heads.

The recent sexual harassment scandal probably came as little surprise to the turnip dodgers. Before speaking to them, I didn’t know the full extent of the app’s generalised horribleness. Maybe I should have been less naïve about a dating model where you look at someone’s face for a couple of seconds before deciding whether or not you’d like to sleep with them. But could Tinder actually be one of the near-mythological areas in life where lesbians get a better deal? For the ones who are after primitive gruntings about sex parts, no. But those of us who get off on gentle discussions about beverages, Tinder is queen.

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