PERSONALS App Brings an Old School Dyke Dating Format Into a Hot New Future, Thanks Instagram

Have you heard? Your favorite queer personals account on Instagram is cha-cha-changin’! We’ve been following Kelly Rakowski’s wildly popular passion project, formerly named Herstory Personals (a spinoff from the queer history instagram h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y), since its inception, and we were excited to learn Rakowski has big new plans for the project. She’s changed the name from Herstory Personals to PERSONALS, to create a more inclusive community, and is hard at work building a text based dating app for queers that will function entirely separately from Instagram.

Though I’ll be the last to claim the mystique of the swipe left / swipe right dating apps are gone, you and I both know that our odds of

1. finding someone you’re attracted to
2. someone who’s attracted to you and
3. ready to start a conversation and will maintain it past the initial what’s up,

is low. I’m assuming it’s low for the straights but I don’t talk to them so I wouldn’t know, but if it’s tough for them, then my God! How’re we even finding each other?

PERSONALS aims to be a new answer to that question. Open only to our community, the instagram was inspired by the smokin’ hot personals section of now-defunct lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs, excerpts of which were often posted on the  h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y instagram. PERSONALS brings back the text-based ads of yesteryear with a modern twist — you read the text first, and have the option to find the ad’s author on instagram if you’d like to see more.

Countless couples have already found each other on the PERSONALS Instagram, so imagine what could happen if we had a whole app to ourselves, free from Instagram’s censorship and built entirely by queers for queers.

So, we chatted with Kelly to talk about her plans for PERSONALS and their upcoming launch party.

AS: I know you’ve changed the name to be more inclusive, what lead you to the name PERSONALS?

KR: Personals seemed like the obvious solution, just omitting the herstory prefix. I wanted to keep the reference to the past which inspires the current model, newspaper personal ads.

Aside from making a donation or being a lawyer who can help with contracts, what other skills can one offer to help get this app going?

The number one task to get the app built is spreading the word. Tell your queer friends, your lovers to follow @_personals_! And once the crowdfunding campaign is live [tomorrow], donate – if you are able to – or even better, share the Kickstarter page with friends.

How will the app complement the Instagram account? Do you think this will be an example of how the queer community can bridge social media with IRL, so to speak?

With the app you will be able to access PERSONALS 24/7, write personals whenever you feel, scroll through ads sorted by location or gender expression or relationship needs. The app will use Instagram handles as usernames but you also have the choice to remain anonymous. On Instagram PERSONALS will continue to post users personals, highlighting what is going on inside the app. It’s my desire to create a queer space outside Instagram/Facebook megaplex, a place where we aren’t censored for using hashtags – Instagram has censored all location tags for Personals, eg: #personalsnyc #personalseurope – and words we like to describe ourselves – dyke, for example. Instagram will also be used to promote happenings on PERSONALS app, build community on both IG and PERSONALS.

contributed by PERSONALS

What will the app be similar to, if anything? 

In a way, the app will be most similar to texting friends since the app will be text based. The beta version or the first version of PERSONALS will be stripped down to basic functionality, you’ll write personals, organize by locations, identities, what you’re looking for. It will flow a lot like PERSONALS Instagram, scroll through endless posts, or sort for fewer using tags.

Do you know when it’ll be ready for use?

After funding is secured, the goal is to have a solid beta model by September.

I hear there’s going to be a party in NYC on June 13 to support PERSONALS as well as a the first issue of a newspaper with PERSONALS. Could we get more details about that?

Yes! Please come! On June 13th, the PERSONALS app will kickoff its crowdfunding campaign. I’ll raise money on Kickstarter to pay for the designer, developer, and additional costs along the way. None of the funds will go to me, I am working on this without pay – 100% of money will go to building this app. The party is at Honey’s in Brooklyn. Exclusive to the NYC party PERSONALS is printing a limited edition free newspaper on actual paper with actual ink with 100 LBTQIA+ NYC-area personals written exclusively for this party. JD Samson is DJ-ing, among others!

contributed by PERSONALS

There have been lots of PERSONALS stories that have made me believe that there’s good out there (thank you!). Do you have any favorite PERSONALS stories or stories that have given you hope?

Aww. Yes, the stories are so sweet. I was scrolling through the personals that will be included in the newspaper last night and I can’t help to have warm and fuzzy feelings. It sounds a bit much but I feel love for everyone who writes a personal. Everyone has something special to add, we are all so different, yet so similar. It’s like PERSONALS is sewing together a text based rainbow quilt or something. I’m in awe of people down to travel (hundreds of miles, sometimes across oceans) to meet each other. Distance does not stop a dyke/trans/queer heart! Recently someone posted pics of themselves on a weekend long first date in the New Mexico desert. Only yesterday my friend texted me to thank me for a hook up care of PERSONALS (and she’s meeting the person again this week.) Non-stop action on PERSONALS.

What do you hope will come from this exciting change?

I hope to build a queer app that brings people together in a solid way, a dating/community app that thinks about queers first and is not looks based. PERSONALS is about getting to know the person through their personality, interests, passions – seeing, and relating to their full self. There’s many different directions I see PERSONALS growing, I’d like to build a media component, advice columns, interviews, book reviews, meet ups. @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y and @_personals_ evolved organically (though work and focus) but its truly a passion to build of community full of knowledge and love.

contributed by PERSONALS

Is there anything else you want to tell PERSONALS followers?

PERSONALS encourages a wide range of people to submit – people of color, people with children, 40+crowd, rural queers, people with disabilities, with chronic illnesses, fat bodies. PERSONALS is run by one person – me. Over the past couple years I’ve spent hundreds of hours calling for submissions, formatting personals and posting, even keeping up with the DMs. I truly love doing this. I am not a tech bro but I am passionate about design, and building a product that will be successful for our community. I’ve been a designer and photo editor based in NYC for 13 years, and as a Taurus will do everything in my power to bring this app to life. Rah rah!

Are you ready for this dream to become reality? There are a lot of ways to support the project. If you’re in NYC, PERSONALS is hosting a party to kickoff their crowdfunding launch TOMORROW, June 13, and you should go! Donate to the project here.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjqMI8ulLEj/

If you’re a lawyer and want to help with contracts or have any other skills that could help the project, email them at hello@personalspersonals.us. Keep an eye out for the crowdfunding launch and sign up for the beta program here. If you aren’t already, follow _personals_ and h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y on Instagram.

How to Write a Non-Monogamous Dating Profile

Writing a lesbian, bisexual or queer online dating profile — whether on an app like Tinder or HER, or on a website like OkCupid — can be especially anxiety-inducing if you’re into alternative relationships. Do you put that you’re non-monogamous in your profile, or wait until you meet people to share it? Do you announce that you’re already in multiple relationships? Do you include pictures of your partners? What if you and your girlfriend want to find a unicorn for an occasional guest star role, and how do you create a profile that doesn’t come off as creepy or tacky? When swiping through the thirsty masses, what red flags should you look out for?

Here’s how to fly your ethical consensually non-monogamous, polyamorous, open, unicorn or whatever else flag in your online dating profile so you get the best possible interactions.

1. Put your relationship style in your profile, especially if you’re looking for more than sex.

Lead with what you’re available for! My Tinder profile highlights my polyamorous identity, along with all my identities, in the very first line: “I’m a queer white kinky polyamorous switch in two committed LTRs, and I am primarily into trans grrrls and MoC folks.” This sets me up for maximum success in that it automatically deters racists, vanilla folks, heterosexual cisgender people and monogamous folks. You could also try lines like: “I have lots of different types of relationships in lots of places, and I’m excited to see what kind of relationship I could have with someone else,” “poly/open, you should be too,” or “firmly poly/ethically non-monogamous.”

If you don’t make it blatantly obvious, especially in profiles aimed at relationships, that you’re only available for non-monogamous connections, you risk being accused of being “deceitful,” “tricking” or “wasting the time of” monogamous matches you follow up with. And to be honest, I don’t blame those folks one bit! Time is finite. If I were seeking a monogamous commitment and my match waited until the end of our first dinner date to say that she was non-monogamous, my brain would immediately run through all of the other ways I could have spent that time.

For a hook-up profile — like one on Grindr — it may not be necessary to list what your preferred relationship style is one way or the other, unless you’re notorious for catching fast feels after connecting sexually.

2. Be clear about the type of relationship(s) you’re open to.

Specificity is key for many non-monogamous people on the prowl. “Non-monogamy” is an umbrella term that includes a ton of concepts. There are dozens of ways to do lesbian, bisexual and queer non-monogamous relationships, so the more specific you get, the better. If you’re a relationship anarchist or a swinger, for example, say so. In general, it’s usually good to mention if you practice hierarchical non-monogamy, and if so whether or not you already have a primary partner.

Whatever language you use, remember that people have different working definitions based on age, geographical location, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc., and that it’s good to go into any potential interaction with as few assumptions as humanly possible both about how someone else uses a word and about their understanding of how you use it.

For example, if I’m traveling for work and only in a city for a few days, my visiting profile might read: “Only in town for the weekend! Looking for new erotic friendships and hook-up buddies who want to stay in touch.” Simply writing that I’m in a “long term relationship” wouldn’t be enough information, since each long-term relationship looks different from the next and you’re not actually saying what you can get up to or not.

3. Point to your partners’ profiles if applicable.

Some people use the label “non-monogamous” dishonestly with the goal of gaining increased access to more sexual partners. These individuals are often in monogamous commitments IRL yet advertise themselves as non-monogamous online so that they can have their cake and eat it too, and most participants in ethical, transparent, consensual non-monogamy want NO PART of that cheating bullshit.

To assure possible matches that you truly walk the walk, consider including your partners in your profile, both in text — try “I’m in a wonderful primary relationship with an amazing queer femme” or “I’m in a committed relationship with an amazing bisexual man who loves seeing me get my needs met” — and in photo! I typically include a picture of myself with my partners alongside all of the solo pics I post to show off. Bonus points if your partner(s) use the same dating app and you can link to their profiles; this gives you a level of credibility that is ultra attractive to non-monogamy newcomers.

4. Remember that sometimes discretion is legit.

Despite everything I said earlier, there ARE a few legitimate reasons why people might not come out as non-monogamous in their dating profiles. Some people are on Tinder for only platonic friendships (hey, it happens!), or have a job in a conservative field and don’t want coworkers to see them identify as non-monogamous on OkCupid, or have kids and are afraid a partner might use polyamory to prove they’re an “unfit parent” in a custody battle. If you need to leave your alternative relationship structure out of your profile, I HIGHLY recommend including it — as well as the reason for its absence from your profile — in the first message you send a match. Try something like: “Hey there! Thanks so much for reaching out to me — I was really intrigued by [something very specific] on your profile. I believe in absolute transparency with online dating, and I wanted you to know right off the bat that I’m not currently available for monogamous commitments. I practice ethical non-monogamy with openness and pride, but I’m stuck in this conservative job where I can’t risk advertising that on a profile that a coworker could find! Hope you understand.”

5. Watch out for red flags.

Specifically:

• • People who are “trying out” non-monogamy. You don’t want to be anyone’s experiment.
  • People who are new to non-monogamy but haven’t taken the initiative to educate themselves through text, podcasts, workshops, discussion groups, etc. This indicates laziness and a predisposition against personal growth.
  • Couples looking for unicorns. More on that below.
  • People advertising that they’re only available for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). It sounds like a con, and often is. Additionally, DADT relationships have a low chance of sustainability because they’re inherently not transparent.
  • People who identify as “single” and “fine with non-monogamy.” These folks rarely have any experience with or desire for non-monogamy and will typically become problematic quite fast. If it were truly part of their identity or experience, they would say so.

6. Unicorn hunting: Proceed with caution.

“Unicorn hunting” is a controversial concept. While I don’t think that couples who want to add a third person to their sex life deserve any shame or ridicule, there is a certain finesse to seeking her out. Here are some tips and tricks to help you word your profile in the most authentic, respectful, mature way possible:

• If you want a unicorn, watch your wording. You may think you’re being cute by writing that you and your partner want to “spice things up!” or “add to the mix!,” but it can come off as objectifying and trivializing of whatever genuine connection you and your partner may make with someone. It’s better to be succinct, specific and sincere, and to name things for what they are, for example, “We are a loving couple looking to date a special person together” or “We’re loving girlfriends looking to meet a switch! Our ideal relationship structure is a triad.”
• If you want to approach a couple seeking a unicorn, consider the power imbalance. As a potential third, you’re often expected to be attracted “equally” (not a thing) to both individuals in the couple, to accommodate a predetermined list of rules set by the couple, and to “not rock the boat,” particularly by daring to communicate your OWN boundaries (gasp!). This is a hell of a lot to ask of someone who has a lot more to lose should the couple suddenly decide to break off ties. The couple has each other; meanwhile, the third loses connections with two distinct intimates.
• Couples who want a unicorn should deconstruct why unicorn hunting is often filled with entitlement and inappropriate expectations before seeking out a unicorn of their own.
• For everyone: Try the unicorn dating both individuals in the couple separately to see if everyone clicks. Confronting a potential third as a united front can come off as ganging up. Plus, we often show different sides of ourselves when we’re within a unit dynamic than we do when we’re a free agent, and allowing a unicorn access to all dimensions of each person may create a more authentic connection when all three come together.

7. Remember to carry honesty and transparency — as well as an open mind and lack of assumptions — into the actual dating process.

For real, though! If you put all of this effort into sculpting a non-monogamous dating profile, why self-sabotage it by losing your guiding light once you actually connect in person? If that isn’t enough to hold you accountable, consider this: non-monogamous lesbians, bisexuals, and queer women and folks are still a minority. Because of this, we communicate with each other. A LOT. Generally if one of us starts seeing a partner who doesn’t have a good track record with past relationships, it’s only a matter of time before our attention gets called to it. That kind of community solidarity and vigilance are — in my opinion — what truly differentiate non-monogamy from monogamy.

Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Gay Personals Ad and Finding Lesbian Love, Thanks to Herstory Personals

Big Gay Dreams. Gay 4 Rose. Punk Rock Literary Princess. Jock 4 Jock. Roller Derby Dyke Seeks Same. 40-ish, Butch-ish, Jew-ish. Punkhouse Dweller, Nervous Wreck. Plus Size Lesbians Unite. You: Light, Me: Moth. Lost Trans Dream Girl. Let’s Get Personal. 

The above fragments may read like poetry, but you won’t find them in a chapbook. They’re titles of modern queer personals, published on the incredibly popular @herstorypersonals Instagram account, and every bit as artful as an honest love poem. The titles introduce short blurbs filled with descriptions, desires, and of course, the instagram handle of the lesbian / bisexual / gay / queer human hoping to find true love, hot sex, or some really cute friends. In other words, they’re a new digital twist on old school personals – and they are so wonderful and fun to browse, whether you’re single and looking, happily partnered, or possibly even if you believe love is a lie.

via @herstorypersonals

The account, run by Kelly Rakowski (who also runs the epic @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y account on Instagram) boasts more than 19,000 followers and has published almost 600 personals to date. We wrote about the Instagram personals ad phenomenon when Kelly “beta tested” it on the @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y account back in 2016, and it was already a smashing success then. More than a year later, the project is thriving. Inspired by the personals written in the 80s and 90s in the back of lesbian erotica magazine On Our Backs, these modern personals offer up a vulnerable side of online dating often missing from Tinder and other swipe-based dating apps. When asked why she thinks this project is having such a moment now, almost three decades after the original On Our Backs personals were published, Kelly says that people are burnt out on the “quick swipe, Tinder-esque action of dating, linked to our ‘throwaway’ culture.” She muses that HerstoryPersonals “allows people to connect deeper than that, akin to slow dating.”

Whether you celebrate or care about Valentine’s Day or not, we thought it would be fun to learn more about the art of the gay-as-fuck personals ad together in celebration of the Hallmark holiday this week. We asked Kelly for some of the tips and tricks she’s gleaned about writing a good personals ad from playing matchmaker to the queer lonely hearts Instagram crowd, and she was happy to oblige. The next open call for submissions at HerstoryPersonals will be in March, so take notes now and you’ll be all set to submit the perfect personals ad next month!

via @herstorypersonals

AS: What makes a “good” personals ad?

KR: When people know who they are, and what they want and are able to describe this in endearing words usually make most popular ads. Direct or long-winded, so long as you describe yourself and your desires in a relatable way, many hearts and likes will be clicked.

What are your top five tips to make a personals ad shine?

1. A catchy headline. For example: SPOON ME HARD FORK ME HARD.

2. Avoid the negative. Usually saying ‘no’ to anyone ruffles the feathers. Example: “No Geminis” – Geminis will come haunt you.

3. Be descriptive: “I love currant scones and street cats of Istanbul.”

4. Be Sexy, Be Sweet.

5. Be Basic: age, gender identity, and location are key.

Do you have any other tips or observations from the project re: how people can write their best personal ad or generally put their best foot forward when going out into the terrifying world that is lesbian and queer dating?

Be friendly, be genuine, be open. Read through HerstoryPersonals to get an idea of what people are responding to, or better yet, check out the original inspiration to @herstorypersonals – #OnOurBacksPersonals of the 80s and 90s! The hashtag on Instagram links to personals written in the back of lesbian erotica magazine On Our Backs.

Do you know of any “meet cute” stories that have resulted from the HerstoryPersonals account?

I recently put a call out to hear people’s experiences on HerstoryPersonals and within minutes received many cute stories of lovers and friends meeting, of people connecting from other countries or locally. One couple, a year ago, met and got married.

What is the bravest personals ad you’ve ever published?

All personals are brave! Everyone who puts themselves out there, linking to their personal Instagram account for all the world to see, like, comment and interact with are brave people.

via @herstorypersonals

Back in the Saddle of Lesbian Online Dating with the Zoe App

This post is sponsored by Zoe.

The last time I was single and looking for a date, I had a flip phone.

I loved that tiny phone. It was blue and it fit snugly between my boobs when I needed to use my bra as a pocket. I used it to peck out text messages in T-9 to the women I wanted and wooed, one of whom I would spend the next decade with and eventually marry.

But, like mobile phone technology, the world moves and evolves, and we learn that what we think we know is dynamic and fleeting. Flip phones became Blackberries and iPhones, and were capable of more and more every time I looked up, and my wife and I grew into two different people. Our relationship stopped working and the marriage ended.

Instead of the life I’d thought I was headed toward, of marriage and children and knowing who my person is and would always be, I was facing down 2018 with a whole series of unanswered questions about my life.

Figuring out who I could now kiss was pretty high on my priority list once the cacophonous din of divorce calmed in my head. All of a sudden I was in a place I’d never been: single, and confident enough in my sexuality to know I could pursue women.

Still, I felt a level of uncertainty. Now what? I was 32, just getting out of nearly 11 years of monogamy. The last time I’d looked for a lady with whom I could make out and cuddle the best option, especially in Montana, was knowing other queer people and hoping they knew someone single.

If you wanted to get digital about it – I mean find people online, pervs – you had Craigslist, the w4w section, whose posts should be memorialized in a museum somewhere. Such vulnerability about what and who you wanted, even when the women were listed anonymously, was a wonder to me back then, before I’d learned to be comfortable in my own skin. I knew things were different now; I’d heard of dating apps, with Tinder and Grindr taking up most of the space in that particular part of my brain, but I hadn’t ever bothered to check out dating apps specifically geared toward queer women.

Which brings me to Zoe.

Whenever I open it, I think of younger me, high school and college me, who thought she was alone as a queer in Montana, that she’d never meet anyone who would accept her, let alone want to touch and kiss and nibble and all the tender things that young me wanted to do.

That version of me hung out at the local record shop for days trying to drum up the nerve to buy an Ani Difranco DVD, with the fear that the stoned, pierced bro behind the counter might pick up on the non-straightness I thought made me stand out like a beacon.

Those were the days of playing the odds on a haircut or a pair of Chuck Taylors, when you didn’t know if your advances would earn you a date or a punch in the mouth. It was life then, and I knew it felt like a struggle, but it also just felt like how it was.

Even my queer lady pals who used the big dating apps in their heyday said it was a gamble, telling tales of different-sex couples on unicorn hunts for a perfect third while all my friends wanted was a gal to with whom she could laze away the weekend.

The ubiquity of dating apps didn’t really prepare for actually using one. When I signed up with Zoe, the app greeted me with a cute logo and a picture of some cute folks.

“Cute!” I made myself say out loud to help quell the terror growing in my gut.

I signed in with Instagram, instead of with my email or Facebook, because Zoe is heavily based on photographs. Before you’re allowed to use it, for example, you are given a picture of a person – mine was a woman waving – and you have to mimic that pose in a picture and send it in to Zoe.

The app continued to ask me questions about myself, which I answered honestly but vaguely, and then it told me that when I was browsing for ladies, it would show me a triangle with our percentage match.

Eyes the size of dinner plates now, I continued on, freaking out about the very real potential of the kind of rejection I hadn’t felt since the early 2000s, and equally terrified of what could happen if I WASN’T rejected.

Then, like teaching a kid to swim by pushing her into the deep end, I was browsing.

HOLY SMOKES. Did you know there are queer women all over the place? Did you know there are queer women in Montana who I don’t already know? Wow. The first person who popped up was a mere mile away, and here I’d been feeling isolated in my rural queerness.

I accidentally liked the first woman who appeared on my browsing screen because swiping is weird and too easy; it all felt too easy.

The app centered my location in Kalispell, Montana (good job, app), but because I’d gotten a month of premium membership (which costs $15.99), I could change my location. This was a good idea for me, because the Zoe app is relatively new, and in Montana, even with the distance on the app set to 200 miles in all directions, there weren’t many options.

Instead, I kicked my location north to Calgary, where, SURPRISE, the Canadians are beautiful and kind and funny. The app let me pick if I wanted push notifications, which of course I did because I was still very nervous about the whole experience and those notifications were indications that I was doing it sort of correctly.

What I can tell you is that no matter how old you are, getting a message that says, “Someone likes you!” will always be thrilling, and being able to chat with that person pretty much immediately is akin to a miracle.

I swiped the correct direction on some total babes, and some total babes swiped in favor of me, and I met some nice gals. But it took a while for anyone to notice my profile, and as exciting as getting a notification about someone liking you is, no one liking you is as disappointing.

Dating apps are real life in fast forward; you don’t wonder for too long if someone thinks you’re hot, and you don’t meet eyes 16 times across the bar before one of you gets up the nerve to talk (or not). There’s an immediate vulnerability to the whole scenario that scared me, because if you want to do it right, you have to put your face on there. You have to be willing to say to anyone who downloads the app that yes, you are here, you are queer, and you’re looking for some lovin’.

Nothing much came of any of the matches I made, but that wasn’t necessarily the point. My ego boosted each time I got a like, and it started to dawn on me that maybe my divorce didn’t actually mean that I’d lost my only shot at being with a person who wanted to be with me.

It really is a brave new world for single queer people, especially those of us in rural areas, because we can find one another as easily as being able to remember the password you need to download a new app.

Online dating forced me to open myself up to potential again, to take advantage of new opportunities instead of mourning loss, and it helped me add a few bricks back to my demolished confidence.

So while Zoe didn’t lead me to my first relationship after my marriage ended, it did what I actually needed, which was force me to get back out there, and then helping me by being an excellent wingwoman. A wingperson is key, they help you feel less alone in your pursuit to not be alone anymore; if you’d like your own wingperson (I don’t want to tell you how to gender an app), you can download the app here.

Because really, there are few wounds that won’t feel just a little bit better after sparkling conversation with a cute queer human.

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The Day My Students Found My HER Profile

I had been aware of my bisexuality all throughout my entire time in college, but I was always uncertain about how to approach being with another woman, mainly due to the fact that I was smack dab in the middle of my transition from male to female. In later years, I realized that my reluctance to publicly acknowledge my attraction to women stemmed from some misguided notion that being attracted to women while being a trans woman somehow took away from my gender identity.

It wasn’t until I had graduated from college and had fully transitioned that I finally decided to act on my attraction to women, something that I had no idea how to do after so many years of only allowing myself to have sexual relations with men. Looking back, my fear of how to approach another woman was nothing short of sheer insecurity, but back then I felt that woman would have much rather been with a cisgender woman than with someone who was transgender, such as myself. For some reason, I felt more confident with men than I did with women. I rationalized thinking that in comparison to a man, I was far more feminine and he wouldn’t think twice about the fact that I was a woman, whereas, I felt that another woman would surely take note of what aspects of my body were more masculine than her own. Unfortunately due to the fact that I passed up four years of prime opportunity to explore my identity under the inclusive tribe of fellow LGBT individuals while in college, my options were fairly limited in the small North Carolina town that I had moved to in order to teach high school theatre arts.

Up until that point, I had regularly relied on Tinder to provide a steady stream of male suitors, and after nearly a year’s worth of frantic swiping in order to try to find a woman in the nearby area that shared the same inclinations such as myself, all I came up with were more men. The idea of trying to pick up someone at a bar seemed highly unlikely to me, and I didn’t know where else to turn so I called up my best friend from college, Nadine, who I had set up with an old friend of mine years earlier and someone who I considered to be the perfect lesbian. She was someone who I wanted to be like in each and every way. From the way in which she talked to other women at parties to the way she effortlessly rocked flannel button up shirts, she could do no wrong in my opinion, and she was just the person to turn to in a dire time of need. Nadine had several years’ worth of firsthand knowledge about how to find and retain the perfect woman, if she couldn’t help me, then no one could, I thought.

“Do you use HER?” she asked as though the three simple letters contained all of the answers to my romantic woes.

Her question greatly confused me. At the time, I had no idea about the dating app HER or the possibilities that it held. Nadine informed me that she frequently used the app when she and her girlfriend were on breaks in order to connect with other women, and that it was simply the best way to cut through all of the noise of social and dating apps that were initially designed for straight people.

After downloading the app, I uploaded several pictures that I thought highlighted my best assets, and crafted a simple personal statement. I was reluctant to broadcast my trans status right off the bat, and decided to do the same as I did when I hooked up with guys on Tinder, and simply disclose my trans status to the individual if I felt our conversations were headed in a promising direction. I had always been squeamish about including anything overly embarrassing in personal statement, mainly because I’ve always found blunt personal information to be tacky beyond belief, and thank goodness for my modesty considering what followed.

After less than a week of being on HER and a handful of pleasant conversations with women who lived in the closest metropolitan area, Greensboro, something concerning presented itself in one of my classes. The class mainly consisted of freshman and was the most rambunctious of the semester. On the particular day in question, I had the students circled around in the middle of the room while we were discussing Elizabethan theatre, specifically Christopher Marlowe, my favorite of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century European playwrights. For some reason, I found the life of the questionably bisexual young playwright to be far more interesting than the overexposed William Shakespeare.

Just as I was getting into all of the gritty details of how Marlowe was stabbed to death by a local businessman, I heard Taylor, a particularly high-strung student who loved to stir gossip, loudly whispering to several other students. At first I didn’t pay much attention to the content of her conversation. I simply urged her to stop talking and to focus on the passage at hand, and continued on with my lecture.

To my frustration, she only took my advice for roughly thirty seconds before returning to her previous state of gossip. I specifically decided to ignore her loud whisper instead of acknowledge it further, which I assumed would only ratchet up her defiance even more. As I tried to talk over her, I was able to make out some of the things she was eagerly telling to the other students around her. To my surprise, I heard her say, “Someone who works at the school is on HER.” My heart sank. I knew without a doubt that she was talking about me. She proceeded to inform the other students what HER was, specifically emphasizing the fact that it was predominantly a lesbian dating app.

Although in hindsight I probably tipped my hand by doing so, I quickly turned to her and asked, “Are you gossiping or listening to me?” As though the fact that she had something on me empowered her to do whatever she desired, she flashed a sinister look my way, and proceeded to pull out her phone and showed a screenshot of my profile to the students around her.

“Taylor,” I called out in my best rendition of an authoritative voice.

She then smiled at me with a knowing grin and said, “Oh I’m just telling them about a teacher that’s on a very interesting dating site.” I could tell she was trying to undercut me.

Unsure as to how to play the situation, I simply said, “Oh.” I tried to calculate the situation, taking into account my personal observations of her classroom behavior pertaining to a student who had come out as female to male trans earlier in the semester during a monologue assignment that I had given the class. The more I thought about it, I realized that she was fairly accepting towards other students based on all accounts that I could think of, but considering the fact that I was the individual in question, an authoritative figure who regularly had to call her out for her immature actions, I knew that she was out for blood.

“A lesbian dating site,” she added rather loudly, which garnered the attention of most of the class.

The last thing I wanted was for it to come out publicly in the middle of class that I was on a lesbian dating app, especially considering the state’s well-known track record of LGBT issues, most notably with HB2. Since starting teaching, I had managed to successfully conceal my trans status, and even though I thought the public knowledge of my attraction to women would have gone over far better than being outed as trans, I still feared that the relatively conservative town would have been up in arms over the fact that one of the teachers was a known lesbian, not to mention that she was actively pursuing a relationship. All I could think to do was come out swinging and to deflect.

“How do you know that someone who works at the school is on a lesbian dating app?” I asked her. “I guess that means that you spend a lot of time on lesbian dating apps yourself.”

The class erupted into a thunderous fit of laugher at Taylor’s expense. The minute the words slipped out of my mouth, I felt guilty for going after a student so strongly, but more importantly I felt horrible over the fact that I raised the notion that a lesbian dating app was something to take pause over, which of course they aren’t.

Feeling as though I had just managed to avoid a major catastrophe, I promptly took down my profile and decided to leave romance up to a chance encounter, which of course hasn’t yet happened despite all of the feel-good life lessons that my addiction to romantic comedies have engrained into my mind. Immediately following the class, I was terrified that I was going to receive a bunch of angry phone calls from parents or a visit from the overly religious principal as a result of word getting out that I didn’t fit the heteronormative cookie cutter mold that all of the other teachers at the school did.

Taylor and I didn’t dare mention our usage of HER or anything that didn’t directly relate to theatre for the rest of the semester. No one seemed to pick on her despite my snide remark. It was as though the whole class period had been one big nightmare because no one as much as whispered anything about HER in my classroom ever again.

Looking back, I now know that I should have taken a stand for both my identity and dating life. I shouldn’t have deflected away from myself only to out a student, instead I should have embraced the moment in the hopes that today’s youth aren’t nearly as judgmental as the people I went to high school with. I should have also kept my profile up, because who knows, if I had, I might have met just the right woman.

If You Show Me Yours I’ll Show You Mine: Autostraddle Staffers’ Tinder Profiles

feature image via Shutterstock

I just moved to LA, and one of the best things about living in a new city is being able to actually use Tinder. Back in Idaho there were, like, seven people on there. It was garbage. So now that I can actually meet people for fun dates, hook ups or even lifelong romantic partnerships, I decided that I needed to amp up my tinder profile. I turned to Archie Bongiovanni because they’re the first person I think of when I think of Tinder. So I can’t really take credit for mine, it was all Archie with a little bit of Cecelia, but my new profile is a HUGE HIT.

I hear a lot of people say that no one reads Tinder bios, but honestly if you don’t have one, I automatically swipe left (same if you say “just looking for friends” or you have a gun in your pictures). In my opinion, a good Tinder profile is more important than good hygiene. First impressions are important, and this is a digital first impression. There are plenty of stylish, hot people who are boring or terrible; I need way more than a picture to decide if I’m interested.

In the interests of sharing our collective knowledge, here are the tinder profiles of some of your favorite Autostraddle staffers along with our number one Tinder Tips. I’d swipe right on all of these.

Mey, Music and Trans Editor

“Always swipe right on a couple if the guy is good looking. Also, find out their social media so you know they’re not murderers.”

Alaina, Staff Writer

“Swipe left more often than you swipe right.”

Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor

“Check for lice first.”

Erin, Staff Writer

“Don’t ask if people want to give you money”

Raquel, Intern

“Firstly I’m sorry that I’m just here for friends BUT if you swipe right on everyone who seems smart and interesting, you may not get laid but you’re guaranteed a good conversation and isn’t that often better?? lol everyone’s going to hate me. Sorry I’m monogamous everyone I’m sorry.”

Nikki, Intern

“Good luck.”

Carmen, Straddleverse and Feminism Editor

“Don’t ghost because tinder karma appears real heard it from a friend jk it’s me I have bad tinder karma i hate this.”

Cee, Technical Director

“If you match, send them a message, because they probably won’t send you one.”

Kayla, Staff Writer

“Start the conversation by asking them to rank the Fast & Furious movies. This has a 100% success rate, I’m serious.”

(Kayla is so cool she gave me three different profiles from throughout the years)

Carolyn, NSFW Editor

“The less back and forth there is before asking to meet, the better.”

Cecelia, Staff Writer

“Be really bold. Don’t waste time with small talk. If you know you want to meet up, schedule a time within the first few messages.”

Archie, Cartoonist

“Tinder is the BEST when traveling! Use it to ask folks which queer party you should hit up, where the best food is and what you should see/do on your trip. Also when you’re traveling, you’re a hot new person in the city, so if you mention folks have to act fast to meet you, it makes people a lot more motivated to actually get out and greet you!

That and don’t let your expectations get too high.”

Public Personals: A Peek Inside the Queer Instagram Dating Experiment

^{feature image from @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y}

What a thrill it is to live in a time when the potential for instant human connection is literally at your fingertips. Not so long ago when you wanted to find that/those special someone(s) outside of your social circles for friendship, dating and everything in between, you had to: condense what you’re about and what you’re looking for in a partner into the length of a tweet, write or type that letter, send or take it directly to the post office along with cash, a check, or a money order, wait anywhere from one to three days, and then answer all of your landline phone calls/listen to all of your voicemails.

Possibly a man calls even though you’ve specifically titled your post W4W. Then a woman calls, but you’re still making small talk with a stranger over the phone as your first interaction. Then she goes, “Do you know where Cache is? We could meet there tomorrow night if you’re free.” You don’t know where Cache is, but try to play it cool for some reason, as if “knowing where something is” is cool at all, and say you do know where Cache is, and that you can’t wait to meet them there tomorrow at nine o’clock. Then when you’re hanging up you almost say “love you” because mostly you talk to your family on the phone and it’s a fast twitch muscle memory. You catch it before it comes out, but in stopping yourself so abruptly something like, “Eep” came out in the process, so then you round it out with solid, unforgiving “goodbye.” All this at what cost! It’s too much!

Now the internet simplifies this process into the press of a button. But who’s to say if this immediacy and interconnectedness mean it’s better, or even more successful! In fact, one could argue having such a wealth of options and still not feeling like there’s a person out there for you is worse than being unsuccessful with limited options. At least then there’s the potential to believe the lack of real connection in your life is because of factors beyond your control, instead of being presented quite thoroughly with the crushing reality that love is a lie.

Then there’s the question of how well each executes transparency. Does less room for describing yourself and what you want in someone mean there’s less room to project an image and therefore allows for real candor, or is it listing 30 book titles and 73 movies you enjoy that exposes the real you?

It’s a difficult call. But thanks to h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y, the Instagram account run by Kelly Rakowski and known for its archived lesbian culture content, we no longer have to speculate! In August, the account began what they called “beta testing” for a website dedicated to personals of hersteryear.

It would be an homage to all the unique ways queer women have marked themselves and dog-whistled each other throughout the decades, the witch bitch switches and the techno hippie hyperdykes from the queer classifieds of the 80s, only this time it’d be instant and without the anonymity. The personals would be tagged with the participants’ username and shared as a text image with its 60,000 followers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLBq-djBzdu/?taken-by=h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y&hl=en

Anyone could (and still can!) sign up, and since their call for submissions a little over ten personals have been posted. It’s been something else watching the DMs roll out in real time as comments and seeing people @ing their friends to come get their people. For every hundred likes each post has gotten there have been a thousand more views, and for some idea of the scope of this experiment, the other day Ilana Glazier liked someone’s personal.

I wanted to know more (more apparently than the heaps of information already available to me?), so I reached out to a handful of participants for an update. In particular I was interested in what motivated them to submit and how it’s been since their personal went up. Here’s what they had to say!

@babyegirl: “I love the idea of an old school style personal ad and I think I actually got a pretty good response. Most people don’t directly message and instead like a bunch of your pictures, which is kind of strange and passive but I did find a cool girl I’m now texting who lives nearby in New Orleans.” [editors note: @babyegirl would like me to let people know she’s still single wiiiink.]

@stale.kael: “The reason for posting was to just take part and have something to look back at 20 years later. As someone who’s introverted the attention was a bit intense. But I won’t lie, it was nice being on the receiving end of it. The responses were all so nice and I didn’t get a date out of the personal ad but I get some new people to follow, plus a pen pal and point of contact in San Fransisco.”

@andthen_shesaid: “I submitted mostly because I loved that they were bringing back the idea from On Our Backs and other old school methods for lesbian/queer community. I wasn’t looking for a date at the time, but was curious about what would happen if I posted for other like-minded people. I did get a lot of responses and reactions but very few IRL follow-through, except from some new followers. I’m guessing this is similar to dating sites, ha. It was a fun experience, I’d do it again. : )”

@ireland.ingrid: “I wrote my ad while celebrating femme day with my best friend. A faux holiday where every single part of the day has to be indulgent :) When I wrote it, with her by my side, I don’t think either of us expected it to get legitimate responses or let alone be posted on Instagram. But here I am weeks later having purchased a ticket to North Carolina. The comments on the post are the most special part of the whole experience to me. The way I present myself can often be so isolating in this community.. so to see other femmes rejoicing.. saying ‘this is so me!’ That made me so happy. Most of the responses were from andro babes in other cities saying the ad intrigued them etc but nothing went beyond small talk. But before my ad was posted, another was posted.. the ‘rare bird’ one. I read it and laughed, it’s basically a puzzle piece to my ad. And I almost exclusively wear clogs. After mine was posted she reached out.. texting turned into hand written letters and mailed gifts from nature which turned into FaceTime calls. And now I’m going to go see her. Wish me luck?”

@hello_its_kate: “This has all been a very funny experience. I didn’t think my ad would be posted. I wrote it because it was kind of cathartic. This summer I went through a couple of break ups that left me a bit wounded. When I saw the opportunity through her story to write an ad it got me thinking that I’d write one seeking my dream girl that I had yet to find in her entirety. I wrote it and sat on it several days. Writing it itself wasn’t the problem, actually submitting it was. So I sat and waited and when it was posted it definitely made me feel very flattered that it got any responses. I’ve had responses from literally all over the world, and even a few locally. I’ve had responses from literally all over the world, and even a few locally. Definitely have way more strangers following my Instagram account now. It’s almost better than OkCupid or Tinder really because it’s all focused around this funny, queer, vintage gay-loving Instagram account.

By far the most exciting thing that has happened is that after my ad was posted another ad was posted. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in our ads. She was looking for a “butch” to watch her out on makeup, while I was seeking a femme to watch. I messaged her immediately simply to point out the similarities. We’ve been talking every day since then and she just purchased a ticket to come meet me in a few weeks.”

A personal to personal match! What a ride. A big congrats to these two, and a big thanks to everyone who let me repost their story, making theirs an even more public public personal. Y’all are the heros.

Now it’s time for the rest of you to get out there and get your own pen pals, new followers, new friends, or budding cross country romance!

Be Your Best Self(ie): Tips From Our Faces To Yours

Every day I wake up and think: oh, to be blessed with another opportunity to take a selfie. It’s an empowering task to take selfies. They are a visual record of the days you work hard to feel your best. They are a collection that allows you to look back and remember what you felt, what you were afraid of, and what you were hopeful for, in the moment of growth that you took the picture. Selfies are a labor of self-love. But I don’t just love my selfies, I love everyone’s selfies. It’s important to see people who deserve to be celebrated — especially queer people and POC — using selfies to celebrate another day for themselves. We want to see your face out there, so we’ve put together some advice to help you be your best self(ie).

Cecelia’s Tips

The process behind a good selfie can take hours. Sometimes it takes years. For most of my life, I had really severe acne which made liking my face hard. When my skin cleared up, taking selfies was really healing and affirming. Learning how to take good selfies healed the part of myself that felt embarrassed to have people witness my face. It’s amazing now that people ask for my advice on how to take selfies, when just a year ago I didn’t have the strength to look at myself in the mirror.

When I decided to be a Selfie Queen, I studied other selfies and realized that a few solid makeup investments help the cause. If you’re going to invest in makeup, there are only three needs: good eyebrows, a good highlight, and matte lipstick. I’ve spent buckets of money attempting to perfect each category so that you don’t have to (you’re welcome and I’m sorry, wallet). These are the best options on the market right now in each category, all in different price ranges.

Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector in Moonstone

This highlighter is so good and easy it feels like cheating. You just swipe it across your face with a brush and then go about your day looking like a magical sparkling ray of light.

L’Oreal Paris True Match Lumi Powder Glow Illuminator in Rose

This is the best budget highlighter money can buy. It takes a few more taps of the brush to glide across your face smoothly, but it looks great in selfies.

NYX Honey Dew Me Up Primer

If you don’t like how shimmery highlight powders make your skin, this primer has a more natural, dewy look.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow powder Duo

Just buy this, it’s the way that people are getting their eyebrows to do that thing everyone is doing with their eyebrows in selfies. It’s pricey, but this tiny jar will probably last the rest of your life.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Mini Duo/Angled Spooley

You’ll also need an eyebrow brush to do that thing that everyone is doing with their eyebrows in selfies.

Glossier Boy Brow

This is the subtle version of the intense eyebrow. It makes your brows look full and soft, and it’s a good alternative if you’re looking for something more natural.

NYX Lip Lingerie

This is the dupe lipstick for the Kylie Jenner Lip Kit. They come in a million shades, and I bought five of them. I do not regret buying five. It does not matter which shades you choose. Seriously, I spent an hour in CVS deciding between just five, but I really think you could just walk in there and close your eyes and grab a handful and they would all look amazing. This is the cheap, good quality matte lipstick we’ve all been waiting for.

If makeup can’t do everything you want in selfies, don’t be ashamed to use photo editors. Even though my acne is gone, I still have pretty intense scarring from where it used to be. The app Facetune has a “smooth” feature that naturally smoothes over the scarring on my cheeks while still making my skin look natural. My friend also suggested an app called BeautyPlus, which is free and automatically does the skin perfecting work for you! For general photo editing, the most popular apps on the market — VSCO and Afterlight — work just fine for me.

Take selfies in natural light. The sun will catch any highlight on your face and make you look impossibly radiant. Also, try using your hands to frame your face. I’ve heard this trend is called “T-Rex Arms,” but I promise it feels elegant and regal in comparison to floppy dinosaur limbs.

Use the snapchat lenses. The puppy one makes everyone look cute.

Consider taking selfies without any of the fancy things and post them anyway! Sometimes I take selfies without makeup or after a sobbing marathon. It’s especially empowering to remind people that these selfies are just as authentically you as the selfies you take hours getting ready for.

Audrey’s Tips

There are a few elements that made this my most liked social media post in history. First, I had a hook. It was Halloween, so any holiday-related posts were sure gold. Second, I compensated for the shitty lighting in my kitchen by making it black and white and boosting the hell out of the contrast. Filters are your friends, they add drama. Third, apparently several of my friends thought this was actually a picture of the Biebs for several days. So, if you can make yourself look like a celebrity you’re SET.

This is what I like to call an assisted selfie. Did I actually take it? Obviously not, my arms are doing that thing. But I think it still falls into selfie category because don’t we all have a friend we can make take pictures of us? It still has other characteristics of a selfie: a deliberate expression (in this case mid-laughter), brows for days, and a hook — in this case I think it was my armpit hair.

THE MIRROR SELFIE. Y’all, I used to disdain the mirror selfie because I was rude and naive. In fact, it’s the ultimate selfie, the one you take when you know you look good and not even your chunky phone case can take that away. This is an especially worthwhile way to display an especially on-point ensemble or the weird or pretty room you’re in. The hook, by the way, is talking about my girlfriend in the caption. The caption can be at least half the selfie if you believe in yourself.

Raquel’s Tips

oops

Kayla’s Tips

The Looking Down/Closed Eyes Selfie

Why would you want to avert or close your eyes in a selfie? To show off your eye makeup of course! I intentionally close my eyes in about 70% of the selfies I take because, hey, those smoky shades and winged lines take a lot of work. Sometimes looking down and off to the side looks even better than just closing your eyes, because you end up looking the perfect combination of moody, thoughtful, and mysterious.

The Lying Down Selfie

I work from home, so I spend a lot of time in my bed. I know, I know. You’re supposed to have a designated work space in order to increase productivity. Well, my bed is my designated work space. And I recently discovered that taking bed selfies can be great and not necessarily thirst trappy (but hey, if that’s what you’re going for, more power to ya!). I usually opt for the lying down selfie when I want to look super chill. As with all selfies, it’s all about finding your angles. I usually fuss around with my hair a bit so that it falls in a way that looks good on camera. Just be careful not to drop your phone on your face. It hurts.

The Cat Selfie

The most important thing about taking a selfie with a cat is to make sure the cat is a more-or-less willing participant. Cats that like to be held and picked up are the best for selfies. Remember: It’s a cat. It’s not going to necessarily listen to your direction. But I’ve found most cats tend to automatically look at the screen when a phone is in front of them. It probably has something to do with light, but I choose to believe cats love to take selfies as much as we do. Cats lounging in sunny spots are totally selfie-ready with all that natural light. They might even end up upstaging you.

Be Your Best Self, With or Without Filters, and Make Instagram Your New Favorite Dating App

Here’s a crazy thing to think about: young people today were given zero tools to build meaningful relationships with each other in digital spaces. For generations before us, meeting people was pretty much the same. Step one: be in a place! Step two: talk to a person who is also in that place! Can you imagine this? Terrifying.

If you feel wildly confused about how to be your best self or meet people online, take a deep breath and remember that you are bravely living alongside the first group of humans who have ever had to deal with this completely new digital social landscape. Not only that, but you’re queer, and that makes the process of meeting someone via the Internet statistically harder! We’re all playing fast and loose and confused in this world, and you know what? You’re doing great, champ.

I’ve sort of figured out how to use all the anxiety-inducing dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid. It is, however, depressing to know that I have eighteen hundred Tinder matches and have found only two long-term partners through the app. Even with those, I’m pretty sure we would have met anyway given our social circles. I’ve found Tinder to be most useful if I wake up in a new city with no friends and want to have plans by the end of the night. The dates end up being fun and casual, and by that I mean the dates are mainly sexual and someone will ghost the other person afterwards!

I’ve made friends through OkCupid, but I haven’t found any romantic partners using it. OkCupid is slower than Tinder. I’ll plan a date on Monday for Friday night, and we’ll have dinner before we go dancing. There’s probably a piece in here about how these apps create a kind of psychological categorization. We all have agreed that Tinder is for sex, so that’s what we use it for. OkCupid is for getting to know someone, which can lead to either romantic relationships or genuine friendships.

The most success I’ve had in the world of online dating is actually through Instagram, the best unintentional dating app (especially for queer people). First of all, there’s a pretty big group of people who have deleted Tinder and OkCupid out of frustration but are still single and interested in starting a relationship. You know where these people are? Instagram. And unlike dating apps, which are loaded with expectations, the process of expressing interest in someone through Instagram is pretty simple. In fact, it’s the virtual equivalent of seeing someone in public space and saying, “Hey, you look familiar.”

Also, with Instagram you can search for photos based on places, so you can find someone who frequents the same coffee shops, bookstores and bars as you do. And when you find someone who you’d like to get to know IRL, you can simply like their photo — which, on the Internet scale of creepy things you could possibly do, is pretty harmless. Maybe they’ll like one of your photos, too. Then maybe you’ll play the photo-liking game for a week before you follow them and they follow you back. Soon you’ll be clear for creepy-free direct messaging, and the rest is a romantic tale told by your future child: “Mom met Mommy by sliding into the DMs.”

The best advantage of using Instagram as a queer dating app is that it gives you the opportunity to be your most authentic — or maybe most aspirational — self on there, and to find other people near you who appreciate it. It’s not easy to figure out your identity and find your niche. A year ago, I was in a rocky and tumultuous period of confusion as a soft butch gay-by. My social media strategy was to place myself in the presence of interesting scenery, where I felt it was okay to be self-indulgent enough to ask for a photo. Also, I didn’t like my face, so I usually found a way to hide it (here, I peel an orange).

Today I accept and embody that truly, I’m a glitter witch femme. This is a very specific brand, but it’s that level of specificity that lets other queer femmes know pretty instantly that I’m also a queer femme, which makes it easier to start conversations that could lead to relationships. Now, I’m living my best brand in photo shoots that I organize with other queer friends who also get my brand – and we’re releasing a zine together!

The magical thing is that when I digitally connect with the people I’ve been looking for, I am one hundred percent certain that they are the best people I could meet (out of all the possible people in the world). This is an amazing feeling. Figuring out how to use digital spaces is as powerful as living your best queer life, with certainty.

You can master this complicated digital world and find people to live your best life with. Is it hard? Is it an oddly specific process? Will you feel creepy or like you’re trying too hard sometimes, even though you’re just playing by entirely new social rules that everyone’s had only a few years to figure out? Yes! But is it worth it? For sure.

Here are some tips for living as your best online self:

• You have to get past the idea that caring about your social media presence makes you selfish or shallow. This idea was created by the generation before us and popularized in a million millennial thinkpieces. Ugh, get off my lawn (newsfeed).
• Don’t know your brand/style/niche/identity/special thing? That’s okay. A good way to figure out your brand is to ask: what is something that you enjoy doing in your daily life that you would enjoy doing more with someone else who also enjoyed doing that thing? For me, this includes eating colorful donuts, appreciating glitter, and reading Tarot cards. Posting pictures of these activities turned my brand into “donut-eating witchy glitter femme,” which is what I was aiming for. But if your brand turns out to be “dog-walking hiking beer-drinking tattoo’d gentle butch,” that’s okay too.
• Invest some time in purging your Instagram of photos that don’t reflect your chosen niche/new you. Screenshot photos, save them to your computer, and then delete them from Instagram. Here are three photos I deleted out of the five hundred from my purge:

The only brand this works for is: I recently graduated high school, how does that make you feel?

I think the caption for this one was “Soy milk is not a mixer.” Gross life hack, baby me.

Was it a mistake to delete this one y/n?

When you think about new content to post, it’s okay to post things that make it seem like you’re already living your best queer life. This is controversial, but I think that making your life seem interesting on social media can be positive depending on the intention that you have behind it. There’s this idea that people only use social media to hide behind an image or to lie about their lives. My goal with rebranding my self and my life on social media was to attract people who might relate to the way that I see the world.

This was the first photo I posted from my social media reboot last summer. It’s a good case study in how others respond when you live your best brand. We have the Stef Schwartz of No Filter fame acknowledging my new photo for its “Homer Simpson shit” level of authenticity, Abby noting what in emoji-speak I think translates to “bullseye with this color palette,” and a really hot queer from Berlin straight-up commenting, for everyone else to see, “let’s hang out.” Observe: these are just donuts!

In a way, there’s a fake it ‘til you make it aspect at play here that I didn’t know would happen when I chose to be more considerate of my image on social media. The braver I was in posting pictures of my (seemingly) interesting life, the more courageous I became in actually living that version of my life. I even started to believe I was the person that I looked like online. Turns out: I wasn’t lying! I am that person! At some point while I was making out with another glitter witch femme, I realized that my life was how it appeared on social media, and how I hoped it would be.

I think how we interact as queer people on social media is tangled up with how we relate to authenticity. We’ve all been forced to be an inauthentic version of ourselves at some point in our lives. Once we finally figure out who we are and pursue that entirely, we become skeptical of anything that fragments the new identity that we’ve worked hard to earn. Instagram can feel like at threat to that identity. It can feel like it asks us to fragment ourselves. But if you’re in the process of figuring out who you are, if you know who you want to be but you aren’t sure how to get there, social media can be a really empowering tool. Social media can be a positive challenge that helps us figure out how we hope to be seen, and help us make that a reality.

FlirtyQWERTY is the Inclusive, Sexy Emoji App You’ve Been Waiting For

We queers, as a collective unit, have a lot of demands for the people who create and release popular emoji keyboards. Those demands include the very general but always important “do better” and also “we like tacos.” We have crossed our fingers for lesbian emoji keyboards to save us all, awaited actual diversity in our mobile universe, and, when possible, created custom Slack emoji of our own faces in order to best communicate our emotions.

But friends, the day has come. Emoji sets that offer us more than white, straight, thin people and evil dancing twins have finally arrived! We’ve got Gaymoji, which offers rainbows in every shape and size; Stereojis, which gives us both the taco and the twerk; and, well, Lesbian Emoji, which lets us U-Haul and such.

But what if I told you there was a new app in town that made queer sexting easier than ever, and didn’t break us apart based on who we’re attracted to or who we are? What if I told you this app’s keyboard connected to all your other messaging apps and gave you diverse and realistic representations of bodies, fuzzy handcuffs, a fully loaded taco, a kitten, a unicorn, and even you biting your lip? What if I told you this app came to out of a process of feminist analysis of the emoji market and was custom-created with queers like you in mind? AND WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THE WHOLE SHEBANG (PUN INTENDED) WAS FREE?

Well, my dear reader. If I told you that, I’d be telling you about FlirtyQWERTY.

I met Amy Galland, founder of FlirtyQWERTY, at the Amber Rose Slutwalk, where she and some of her compatriots were encouraging all of us to download said app and send each other sexy messages immediately. I reached out to her afterward to ask her some questions about the app, why she created it, what it means, and where it’s going.

AUTOSTRADDLE: How did flirtyQWERTY come to be? What was your motivation in creating it?

AMY GALLAND: I was flirting with a guy on my cell phone and I wanted to give him the finger.  But there was no middle finger emoji.  He told me to draw one, so I did – and then he told me that my drawing sucked.  At this point, I really wanted to give him the finger!

I started looking online for a middle finger and went through all of the offerings for adult emojis.  I didn’t find anything that I thought was empowering to women – nothing that said: “I am fun, sexy, and I respect myself – respect me, too.”

So I did some research on emoji use (35% of Americans use emojis daily, 74% weekly) and the number of people who sext (88% of adults) and decided there was a need for sexy, respectful emojis and that I would create an app.

How do y’all at flirtyQWERTY approach inclusivity during the creative process? How have you prioritized it in your work, specifically for creating a keyboard that’s accessible and relatable to queer folks and people of color?

Inclusivity came naturally. Our world is made up of people of many races, sizes, ages, and sexualities.  And we fall in love, make love, and feel heartbreak whoever it is we are and whoever we are dating.  We all live together, and I made an app where we are all together.

When I started looking closely at my competition in the app space, I saw the degree to which apps are segregated. For example, there are apps with only white characters, only black emojis, lesbian apps, gay apps, heterosexual apps (which makes it difficult for people who would need to have twice or more the number of apps). Sometimes separate apps may be appropriate, but overall it is disconcerting to see so much segregation creep into technologies and products that are supposedly at the cutting edge of our popular culture.

On the process side – when we consider which images to create, we speak to people with different identifications about what emojis they would want so that there are emojis for everyone. When we put together the images for each version of the app, we pay attention to having balanced representation. You will see this focus consistently as we introduce additional images.

At the AR Slutwalk, you told me that your background in women’s studies and feminism was pivotal in making flirtyQWERTY happen. How did your social consciousness impact and shape this app?

I spent a lot of years looking at, reading and talking about representations of women and the impact of those images on how we are treated in society. I believe that the objectification we see in art, advertising, the media, and games informs how people treat us and contributes particularly to sexual aggression against women. I see flirtyQWERTY as an opportunity to create respectful images that – when lots of people see and use them regularly – can seep into their subconscious and give them a light-bulb moment of “what I’m doing doesn’t look like what I saw in the app.” I see my work as a chance to take what I learned contributes to the objectification of women, invert it, and create and share more empowering imagery.

What emoji would you love to add to the keyboard as the app grows?

As the founder, the ones I wanted most are in there. But I do find myself texting and wanting something we don’t have yet. I keep a list – and I am always asking people what emojis they want. We also ask people to either tweet what they want to us @myflirtyQWERTY or to write to us on the suggestions page of our website.

What’s your favorite flirtyQWERTY emoji?

I love all of them. But I most often use the peace sign, butterfly, heart, fingers crossed (I’ve got a start-up!) and champagne toast. And the two hands in the shape of a heart.

And, of course, the middle finger.

You can download FlirtyQWERTY for iPhone and sign up to be alerted when it’s released for Android. In the meantime, you can follow @MyFlirtyQWERTY on Twitter and Instagram.

Everybody F*cking Hates Tinder And We Are All Going To Die Alone

A couple of weeks ago, we — Brittani, Cara, Grace and I — received a terrifying demand from the Powers That Be (otherwise known as a polite email from Laneia) requesting single members of the team who might be interested in a unique challenge. We, the few, the proud, the unspoken-for, would boldly sign up for Tinder, the hot new dating app that all the kids were using, and learn about what such an app was like through a queer lens. I’d known a few straight women who swore by it, but from their stories it had always seemed sort of shallow — like a heterosexual version of Grindr, but without the oomph. I can’t say any of us were thrilled to sign up, but we knew what we had to do: we had to sign up for a dating app and prepare to meet a lot of ladies… for science.

Stef’s Story

Stef (Music Editor), 30, Los Angeles, CA

The others agreed to be a part of this Tinder project out of the goodness of their hearts, but for me it actually seemed to be a logical thing to do. I’d just moved to Los Angeles from New York City a few days prior, and I was brand new in a huge city filled with potential babes. I’ve been single for a couple of years, but I’m no stranger to online dating. I’ve met some really great people on OkCupid and was curious about what Tinder might look and feel like.

I learned the answer very quickly: Tinder feels shallow and ephemeral. Once you sign in, you’re swept into a veritable ocean of total strangers. The app attaches itself to your Facebook account and gathers profiles of people who presumably fall within your desired search parameters (mostly age and location). Although I had my app set to search for only women, a large percentage of my results were male, and I wasn’t sure if many of the women Tinder presented me with were actually interested in dating girls. When a profile comes up, you see only the picture, name and age of your potential match. You can swipe right to “like,” swipe left to reject, or if you’d like more information, you can click on the photo to view a brief profile. Each profile contains a short bio, any shared friends or interests you might have (based off your Facebook information), and usually a couple of extra photos. If you both “like” each other, you have the option to send a message, and what happens next is up to you.

There’s not much information to work with, so most of your reaction is based upon that one initial photo – and once you reject someone, there’s no way to reverse it. At times, I felt like I got trigger-happy clicking “nope” on so many faces, and I’d start to feel bad about myself. I found myself “liking” profiles of people who just seemed nice, purely out of solidarity. Instead of helping me meet interesting people and figure out my new west coast life, Tinder placed me in a downward spiral of Jewish guilt.

Although I date guys from time to time, I wasn’t super interested in meeting any off this app – but Tinder had other ideas, and continued to suggest them. After a couple of days, the only people I’d matched with were men I felt lukewarm about, and I was starting to doubt my ability to function in queer circles in Los Angeles. I tried changing my pictures around to photos where I was playing instruments or doing something that might spark a conversation with a cute new girl. Often after I’d clicked through just a few profiles, the app would inform me that there was nobody around, that I was all alone in this world, that I was going to die alone and I’d better get used to it.  Sometimes this would happen while I was sitting right next to Grace or Brittani, which was really confusing. I expanded my search parameters to include Brittani and Grace’s age range, but never found them (probably because we’re all Facebook friends). Grace even tried deleting me off Facebook, which didn’t help us find each other on Tinder, but did hurt my feelings.

And there never will be, sorry.

Learning the culture of a new city is always challenging, and I wondered how different Tinder might be if I could search for people with similar interests. When you walk into a room full of new people, it’s rare that you’ll meet even one person you share tons of common interests with, and Tinder was like an infinite room of totally random strangers. It could be days before I’d find a girl with an elaborate sleeve tattoo, or one who listened to Depeche Mode, or one who read the same kinds of morbid Russian novels I liked. The only way I could find these people was by rejecting dozens of others, and even though none of those people would ever know I’d placed an orange “NOPE” stamp across their foreheads, the action still took a toll on my heart every time. The one common interest I did seem to have with a lot of girls on Tinder was JWoww from Jersey Shore, and (while I unapologetically adore JWoww) that didn’t seem particularly encouraging as the basis for any kind of relationship.

At various times, all four of us encountered the insidious Tinder bot disguising itself as Zosia Mamet from HBO’S Girls, enthusiastically endorsing her own interview on Glamour Magazine’s website. I’d pay good money to have been a fly on the wall at whatever board meeting decided that Tinder was an appropriate social media marketing tool, and lament that Zosia and I will never meet and fall in love and feed each other rugelach by candlelight. The Zosia bot seemed like a rite of passage among the four of us, and none of us felt truly a part of the Tinder Project until each of us had been subjected to her wrath.

At long last, nearly a week into this experiment, I finally matched with an icy-looking blonde girl whose profile offered absolutely zero personal information. By this point, I was happy to match with a real live human being who wasn’t a robot or a bearded dude. She sent me a poorly spelled message, and when I didn’t respond immediately, she sent another, asking how my day was. This was my first actual correspondence with a girl on Tinder, and as I weighed my options, I received a notification that she’d sent a third message. By the time I’d opened the app to read it, she’d apparently swiped left and deleted herself from my matches. I’m not sure what the third message said, but it was very clear I’d been dumped by someone I had never communicated with in my whole life.

This is what Tinder feels like

The next day, I struck veritable Tinder gold – I matched up with a guy who actually worked for Tinder. The engineer declined to let me use his name for this interview, but did answer some of my questions. Namely, I was concerned with why so many men and straight women were showing up in my search for only women interested in women – in fact, why had he showed up in the first place?  My new Tinder boyfriend’s answers did little to comfort me. He insisted that the legions of straight girls must have listed themselves as also seeking women, and that perhaps they just couldn’t read the profile settings properly.

As for the men, he explained that personally he’d been messing with his settings to test out a technical change, but theorized that the men showing up in my search had listed themselves as women seeking women in order to meet some crrraaaazy open-minded bisexual chicks such as myself. I can’t say I was convinced (that seemed awfully discouraging), but that (gross) explanation might have some merit. To test his hypothesis,  I changed my settings to male seeking male. I found one woman in maybe sixty men. My Tinder employee seemed to be right, and this realization made me feel especially icky about any of the other guys I’d matched with. For the first time in a long time, I found myself aching for that brilliant OKCupid setting that blocks straight people from viewing your profile.

Next: Cara

Dattch: New Lady-Dating App That Could Change Everything Launches in US

I gotta be honest with you guys — it’s pretty hard out there for a single weirdo on the Internet.  When it comes to online dating, a queer lady’s options are limited in terms of what works and what doesn’t.  Autostraddle has written extensively about OKCupid’s triumphs and failures, and some of my fellow writers and I spent the last two weeks putting together an all-star post (coming soon!) about our collectively miserable experience using Tinder, the hot new mobile app all the kids are using. What we found using Tinder was that it was difficult to meet like-minded women no matter what, and while some people invariably do meet and form significant relationships from dating websites and apps, the system itself is still quite male-focused and alienating. There is infinite room for improvement.

With the advent of new dating app Dattch, it seems that our prayers may have been answered. Developed in the UK by actual human women, Dattch (pronounced like “catch,” presumably unrelated to funny straight person Rachel Dratch) exists specifically for queer women — which means less creepy messages from straight cis dudes, and more opportunities for gay ladies to build their own communities for themselves.

I spoke to CEO and co-creator Robyn Exton, who was in San Francisco preparing to unleash Dattch upon the American public. (Dattch had just won “Best Design” at the Launch Awards, and Exton was gearing up to demo the app at this weekend’s Lesbians Who Tech Conference.) Dattch was founded in 2012 by Exton, Emily Moulder and front-end developer Vesna Planko, and was intended to be the antithesis of every Internet dating program currently out there, in that it caters exclusively to women interested in women (While the app may expand to include trans men, genderqueer individuals and other non-binary folks, the current focus is on bisexual and lesbian women).

Exton explained that she initially worked for a branding agency who had an Internet dating service as a client, which piqued her interest in building a better service.  When a good friend broke up with her girlfriend, she and her other friends began the process of helping the newly single girl sign up for the most popular dating app in the UK at the time. Suddenly, it dawned on Exton: “I thought, this is terrible!  Why are we doing this?!  I use apps frequently, I use websites frequently, and this design was just horrific… so I decided to quit my job and start making it!” In September 2013, the app launched in the UK, and it’s about to make its stateside debut.

What a coincidence, I just happen to be in the market for some babes.

Upon downloading Dattch, the first thing that stood out to me was how different the profile pages were from any service I’d used before. While you’re still required to fill in typical information like your age, height and sexual orientation, Dattch also allows users to upload photos to explain the sorts of things they’re into, or fill out little text blurbs (some prompts are provided to get you started, but most are completely up to you). Exton explains:

“We were running this private test and we were looking at how girls used it.  We found that some things just weren’t working, and in all previous dating apps previously. Tech is a very male-led industry, and all the apps were being designed about how men behave, the triggers that men need, how men communicate, and what they need to see to send a message. We used to have really simple profile pages with just a picture, and every message would start with ‘Hey, you look nice…’ The reply rate was shit, because you’ve got nothing else to ask! I think generally girls are really bad at describing themselves; they always undersell. They want to manage expectations and don’t want to over-promise. So if they were describing themselves, they weren’t doing a great job of it. What we found was that everyone’s got an amazing library of photographs that really showcase who they are. If you ask someone to describe themselves, they’re like, ‘uh… I’m tall…? I like.. technology?’ If you share the images, you can show how you live your life and you can easily get a sense of who someone is, and it’s like, ‘yeah, we could go on a date!’  Like, ‘oh, you’re into pop-up restaurants, me too!’  ‘Oh, you like playing sport at the weekend and squash, yeah, I love squash.’ It’s a much easier way to explain who you are, but it’s also an easier way to start a conversation, because you have all these little hooks that make it easier to get talking.”

Eventually, Dattch will connect with other apps like Instagram and Pinterest to help round out one’s profile and showcase the user’s personality.

If you’re having trouble saying hi to girls or aren’t really sure where to start, Dattch offers a game called “Would You Rather?,” which pits random girls against activities, cute animals or food (a daring twist on “Hot or Not”). Gotta tell you, it didn’t matter how appealing the girl seemed, I always chose her over things like “squid” or “going to the gym,” but it’s a rare bird who would triumph over this:

Please don’t make me choose between girls and pizza.

If you both choose each other over the competition, the app will notify both of you, which ought to prompt a mutually flattering conversation. Frankly, if a cute girl chose me over pizza, I’d be gobsmacked (and honored).

After having spent the last two weeks flipping through cute girls on Tinder only to be met with an endless and confusing barrage of cis men and straight women’s profiles, I was relieved to learn about Dattch’s dedication to keeping their app free of such infiltrators. As of press time, users must apply for a membership, and they are screened largely by their Facebook account — not just the gender listed on the applicant’s Facebook profile, but through a set of other characteristics that help Dattch establish that said applicant is a real live human being and not a troll. In cases where Facebook is not available or the applicant’s gender remains unclear, Dattch will go as far as to call the applicant to discuss; while they have met an alarming multitude of men this way, they are dedicated to creating a safe space for the women who use their service.

“[It’s] possibly our most controversial thing, but we’re gonna stick with it for the moment,” Exton said. “It was always one of my biggest problems on other sites — just every couple of weeks, getting a message from someone who was a guy, or someone where it’s like, I JUST DON’T THINK YOU’RE REAL. We’ve just done the verification from the outset, so we don’t have a history of people to go through — everyone has been verified, which means you don’t have to ask the question, you just know that it’s real people there.”

I asked if Exton felt that such a screening process would be possible as the app grows in popularity. “If someone is determined enough, they’re going to get through it — we can’t 100% guarantee that there will never be a fake account, but we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that there isn’t.”

The greatest thing about having an app solely for queer women is that it doesn’t need to just be for dating; girls who are just beginning to figure out their sexuality can explore through the app, and others have met and become friends. Exton explained that it will hopefully soon be possible to set one’s profile on “girlfriend mode,” which will allow users to meet each other and access the app’s blogs while explicitly communicating that they’re only there for friends. Dattch is designed to get women talking to each other in any context, and it feels much friendlier than its rivals. Anything that helps bring women together without pressure or expectations is certainly welcome, and the app’s flexibility allows it to do exactly that.

Dattch is now available in the iTunes app store in the U.S., and it officially launches in San Francisco today.  Currently, Dattch is only available in San Francisco, but will be rolling out in other US cities quite soon.  Its release in other cities will largely be contingent upon how many people download the app in specific cities; the goal is to hit a critical mass of 2,000 interested applicants before Dattch can be fully available in that area.  If you would like to see Dattch in your city, shoot them an email.  The idea is that as Dattch’s creators become more familiar with the different kinds of queer women in different American cities, they can tailor the app to meet those women’s interests.  It’s a pleasure to see technology being created with women’s needs being considered so carefully, and I look forwards to meeting the girl of my dreams, one who (maybe) likes me more than pizza.

Couple.me App Is Co-Dependent, Also Wonderful: The Giant Group Review

When Carmen emailed us about Couple.me, I confess I’d heard about it before but dismissed it immediately as co-dependent and terrifying. I mean, just look at their product video.

But many, many of our staff members had strong positive feelings about the app. Which led me to think two things:

a) perhaps I am dead wrong about this app
b) this would be a great time to merge an app review with how adorable everyone is with their perfect humans because everyone who works here is a total critter.

We tried to get a bunch of different kinds of relationships, from the super new to the super long term to the super close and the super far away. Those humans are:

Carmen and Geneva
Carmen’s in DC and Geneva lives in the Great White North. Both of these cool cats work for Autostraddle.com and they met at A-Camp.

Carmen: I think I speak for both Geneva and myself when I say that Couple.me has provided us with a fun space to chat and interact with each other, and that we will definitely continue to use it. To be honest, I still can’t get over the whole “me and my girlfriend have a relationship so special we use an app” thing.

Kaitlyn and Camille
Kaitlyn is one of our newer contributing editors, based in Chicago, and her girlfriend lives in New York City. They’ve been together 7 months.

Kaitlyn: Camille and I have a pretty app-oriented relationship. Before we were dating, we may or may not have created a four-person GroupMe chat so we could hit on each other in a less intimidating space than, you know, real life, and GroupMe was our main mode of conversation in the months before she got an iPhone to replace her old, text message-hating phone.

Hansen and Maddie
Hansen is our DIY/Food editor and she met Maddie at this past A-Camp. Hansen lives in Colorado, Maddie’s all the way in Nevada.

Hansen: My girlfriend and I started using Couple first out of curiosity. We’re currently long-distance, with her in Vegas and me in Colorado, so in the weeks between our visits, we thought it’d be nice to have a different way to connect. We weren’t even officially in a relationship at the time, so we thought we could be the “control” pair, as in “Can new couples who aren’t super duper in love use this app without feeling creeped out?” And let me tell you, we were totally creeped out at first.

Yvonne and Gloria
Yvonne is our Associate Editor. She and Gloria have been together since college. They live together in Texas, but Gloria’s job recently took her to Philadelphia. Indefinitely.

Yvonne: We honestly were friends for that first year and nothing happened between us. She was the first person I came out to in college and I had no idea she was queer despite us going to gay clubs and watching “Loving Annabelle” and “Imagine Me and You” in her dorm and not thinking it was weird. It turns out she was queer too but she didn’t tell me that until the next fall semester. Well anyways, we realized we really liked, liked each other that turned into love and the rest is history. We’ve been together for more than 3 years.

Yvonne + Gloria

Ali and Abby
Hi! That’s me and my girlfriend! And right now we’re semi-nomadic in that we have our home base in NJ (mostly together) but we travel a ton because neither one of us can say no to opportunities/fun stuff. But we do that mostly together. Abby was next to me while I wrote my portion of this review.

Ali: For me ‘n Abby, this whole experience started with me texting her the Couple.me link and stating “we have to review this travesty of an app.” In short, we were prepared to hate it. And for a little while, we definitely did.

So without further ado, I give you the giant review of Couple.me, organized by app feature.

Chatting

Carmen: We moved a lot of our chatting over to Couple for a few reasons:

+ Because Google Hangouts fails to work on my phone every. damn. day. and makes me want to bang my head into the metrobus window when I’m on the go,

+ Because the beta web version of the app is amazing and lets your “wallet photo” (I know, right) be an omnipresent part of your online experience,

Stickers

Carmen: Geneva gave me the gift of Beaver Stickers That I Strongly Identify With and it was legitimately the most amazing act of love I’ve ever experienced. It’s really revolutionary.

Although I identify most with the heart-wielding Beavers, Geneva insists the Flirty Drunk Beaver speaks to my person. Considering how we met, this concerns me, but not enough to stop sending it to her every morning.

Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

Thumbkiss

Kaitlyn: You guys, we need to talk about Thumbkiss. This feature takes you out of the conversation screen to a blank white one, where you press your thumb to show your partner a fingerprint icon that they can then touch with their own thumb. If you hold your thumbs together for a few seconds, the screen turns red and the phone vibrates. You have just Thumbkissed. Like with actual kissing, it is awkward to initiate your first Thumbkiss, and if you go for it and your partner does not reciprocate, you will feel the same urge to run away, fake your death, change your name and start a new life on another continent, preferably with a tropical climate. Also like kissing, you get better at it the more you do it. Soon enough you’ll figure out what you like, who should lead, who prefers little pecks to long smooches, which one of you has better aim and how the whole thing gets old after 25 seconds or so. Wait, that last one only applies to Thumbkissing.

Steamy

Carmen:

Hansen: I thumbkissed her, and she said, “That’s weird.” Then, I don’t know what changed, but I found myself thumbkissing her under the table during class and grinning to myself.

Ali: The first time we thumbkissed, Abby sent back the message “ew, this is weird, I don’t like it.” But she also wants you to know that she’s a luddite who doesn’t like change and it takes her a while to warm up to new things. I’m not like that, though, and I still hated it. Because it felt co-dependent in a way we really aren’t.

And then I went to South Carolina for a week. To dog-sit my parents’ Greyhounds. And I was on that farm for a week. By myself.

All of a sudden the thumbkiss feature that we found so creepy was a cute way to know we were doing the same thing at the same time. Of course we could have both stared at the moon and realize we were staring at the same moon like Fievel, but this was definitely a more 21st century way to do that.

Yvonne: Me and Gloria practically thumbmakeout all the time.

New App Helps Overthinkers Get A Date

Welcome to Oh Gay Cupid! Autostraddle’s OkCupid series. We get lots of questions on Formspring regarding online dating, so we finally got a bunch of people together to talk about it. While OkCupid isn’t the only online dating site for queers, and maybe isn’t even the best, it does seem to be the one we use most often. We’ll be discussing all things OkC, including meeting friends, first dates, profiles, fuck-ups, letdowns and more. Even though it’s the ‘OkCupid Series,’ the advice given in this series could easily be applied to any online dating site.

 Oh Gay Cupid! illustrations by Rory Midhani

It’s Friday! Do you have a date tonight? Do you want a date tonight? Why don’t you get on your computer and find one? If you’re anything like my neurotic self, getting an online date requires two days of meticulously editing your profile, two months of cherry picking your city’s offerings, two weeks of nonchalantly bantering back and forth with your potential date and two hours of debating the merits of the city’s different beverage slingers. Which is all well and good if you want to meet someone before the end of 2013, but tonight is Date Night! You just don’t have time for that shit.

So what if you were to throw out all of your preconceptions of How to Properly Meet Someone and actually just met someone? Like saw a stranger across the internet and asked them out on a date without knowing their Google search history? A little more A/S/L and a little less “Will you teach your children to believe in Santa?” I’m a bit ashamed to admit how many profiles I’ve skipped when I saw they liked a movie I hated, were not as enthused by food as I was or were “too into” politics. You and I have an arbitrarily metered match compatibility of less than 98%? This shit’s never gonna work!

There’s something to be said for a bit of mystery and that’s exactly what Crazy Blind Date is trying to embrace. CBD is OkCupid’s foray into the world of instant mobile dating. Fuck crafting the perfect profile. See a person? Meet that person! While Grindr has the market cornered when it comes to gay male mobile hook up apps, there is always room for improvement when it comes to the ladies.

CBD was designed with women in mind, but what does that mean? Is it pink? Does it sparkle? Will it dispense chocolate and Kleenex if I get stood up? Well yes, there are parts of the app that are pink and there is a confetti-like motif on some pages, but sorry, it isn’t that perfect. It just takes a different approach which you’ll discover soon enough. As with all great things, you have to start somewhere.

Step 1. Craft that Profile

Four questions. You can handle four questions. Especially when one of them is, “What’s your name?” (Please don’t overthink that one.) Just like the OkC interface, it’ll respect if you’re only looking for ladies.

Step 2. Know your schedule.

 Are you scheduled to be bored tomorrow? Okay you could go on a date instead.

Step 3. Know Your Area

Pick your favourite venue and suggest a date there. You can also suggest dates in other cities if you’re going to be travelling in the upcoming week.

Step 4. Get a Date

The app’ll let other date-seekers in the area know that you’re available. Both of you feel like coffee on a Tuesday? Score! Start a chat an hour before you meet up to ensure neither of you will flake and you’re good to go.

Wait this app sets you up with a random stranger? That sound sketchy as fuck! 

Hold up unbeliever, let’s hear the app out for a second. When CBD keeps ladies in mind, it’s trying to think about safety. Even though you don’t know a lot about the person you’re going to go on a date with, you’ll know a bit about where you’re going. CBD utilizes FourSquare’s resources so you/they can only suggest dates at frequented locations. When you’re choosing your venue, simply click the > to access its FourSquare entry and verify that you are indeed going to a cafe and not Hal’s Back Alley Murder Emporium.

Pulling yet another page from FourSquare’s design, you get to review your date and the app when it’s over. Did you meet The One? Were they actually a fifty year old man? Were they worthy of a second date? You have an opportunity to give a monetary Kudos to the app for a successful or not-so-successful date. But just like your well-meaning great aunt gets offended when you won’t consider going on a date with the wonderful boy she met on the sidewalk, CBD gets in a bit of a huff if you ignore its offerings. Turn down too many dates? Refuse to acknowledge that it helped you find a winner? You’ll notice that the “Available Dates” gets less and less populated. However, if you treat it nicely it’ll keep setting you up and hopefully find a decent date.

In the spirit of getting things done, the app puts a lot of time limits on you. It will only let you schedule dates for the upcoming week. It’ll only let you chat for an hour leading up to your date.

In a weird feat of technology, this app actually manages to get people to meet offline. While that sounds like a lot of pressure, it’s a bit of a comfort to an overthinker. You simply don’t have the opportunity to psyche yourself out of a date. You can’t spend forty minutes a day crafting a witty yet thoughtful response to, “What’s your favourite colour?” You also can’t go into daydreaming overdrive and create ridiculously inflated expectations of them based off of their witty yet thoughtful responses. Y’all just get to be yourselves.

Given that it’s such a fussy app, will it work? Excuse me for a second while I put away my matchmaking crystal ball and pull out my fortune telling crystal ball instead. CBD has an advantage over mobile dating apps since it can piggyback off the success of OkCupid. You can skip the five steps you took in crafting your CBD profile and use your OkC one instead. The apps are connected to one another, allowing you to choose how you’d like to meet someone that day. Feel like a game of forty questions? Open up OkC. Just wanna share popcorn with a stranger? Open up CBD.

If the idea of meeting someone and talking to them one-on-one still sounds too weird, CBD may not be for you. If you’d rather head to a gay bar and hope you meet someone on the dance floor, you can still use technology to find that party. But either way, you’ll still have to suck it up and start talking to someone if you ever expect to find that date.

Hopefully that doesn’t sound too crazy.

I Seek, You Seek, SheSeek: Esther Zinn and her Girl-on-Girl Culture App

Esther Zinn is an app extraordinaire and freelance media professional who grew tired of googling for hours on end to find the queer events in every city she visited. So rather than doing what the rest of us might do (complaining to our friends while knitting in our favorite queer vegan coffee shop), she decided to make her own iPhone app to solve the problem (that way, we can have favorite queer vegan coffee shops in up to 25 major cities!). I caught up with Esther to ask about this new app magic, SheSeek. She had some fun tales to tell, from creative endeavors fueled by popcorn, to lesbian bars rated with gold stars to her motivation behind developing SheSeek (I’ll give you a hint: Esther is really big on building both local and national communities).

Can you tell me a little bit about what SheSeek does? How does it work?

SheSeek is a location-based app for LGBT-identified ladies which allows them to find the nearest clubs, bars, and fun events near to them in 25 major cities. It’ll also have daily news and pop culture articles that are delivered directly to their smartphone, which makes it easy to find something to check out and stay connected to current events.

What was your inspiration to make SheSeek?

So last year I went on a trip with some friends to Miami. Despite a rigorous Googling, I couldn’t seem to find any lesbian bars or club nights, so I found myself just walking through South Beach and asking people at places identifiable only with tiny rainbow flags in the window where the good places to go were. This happened again when I traveled to New Orleans and quickly found that all of the women’s bars listed in the guidebook I’d brought with me had closed down years ago, so I had to ask people on Bourbon Street where the events for women were. It felt like I was in the prohibition or something and I kept wondering, why isn’t there an easier and faster way to find events for women in other major cities? I remembered that when I came out 12 years ago, it was difficult to find out where to go unless you knew someone in the community, and it seemed a little silly that with the Internet and social media it isn’t easier. I thought it would be so much easier, with the technology we have now, to just turn on your phone, touch an app and figure out where to go, rather than googling things for hours or having to ask people. And then I began to think about how I subscribe to a a few newspapers and magazines digitally, how convenient it is to get news sent directly to my phone, and wouldn’t this be great if a resource like this could be available to queer women, too? I thought that a resource that would keep people effortlessly connected not only to their local communities, but to the national LGBT community as a whole on a device that they always have with them would be a great way to cooperate, stay united and work towards gaining equal rights.

What’s your favorite feature of your new app?

The other developers of SheSeek and I had a good laugh at some of the features over many brainstorming sessions (fueled by cupcakes and popcorn, of course.) If you search for something in your city that isn’t currently there (like, say, a ladies night on a Tuesday) it will take you to an error screen that shows a confused man in his underwear saying, “Oops. We couldn’t find what you were looking for!” Also, we had to come up with a system that shows users if a place is a lesbian bar all of the time, on certain nights, or if it’s just an awesome place to check out, so we used a star system—lesbian bars are, of course, marked as gold stars.

Also, I spent about two months researching places to go in the top 25 cities that have the highest LGBT populations, and I tried to include places that help bolster community in places like, say, the southern states. I included places like local PFLAG chapters, to help LGBT-identified people who might be afraid to come out to their family or friends, and other places that host city or state-themed equality campaigns. I also included places like tasty vegan restaurants, or cute, queer-friendly places to take a date. Basically, I am really excited about the potential for the app to be used not only as a way to find out where the latest party is, but to help strengthen communities locally…because if we can work on building our communities, educating our friends and family, and staying informed, it will make gaining equality that much easier for us!

Fill in the blank: if you found out _______ was using your app, you’d squee.

Oh my God. I would die if I found out Lady Gaga was using my app, because I find 90% of her sex appeal is in her ability to be a unique innovator, and that’s inspiring. Or Mila Kunis…my girlfriend is the hottest girl ever to me, but after her, I would say Mila is the second hottest.

On which platforms is SheSeek available?

Right now, the SheSeek app is only available for iPhone users, but if you have an Android, fear not! All of the same functionality (events listings, articles) will be available on Android phones via the official website.

What does the future of SheSeek look like? Anything you’re hoping to add?

I know people have been asking for a very long time for a lesbian Grindr. Depending on how many people download this version of SheSeek, I am absolutely willing to consider developing something similar: a location-based feature that provides a way to “find and meet new friends.” What other people define as “friends” will be up to them.

Tell me why Autostraddle readers will love SheSeek?

I’ve worked hard on making SheSeek really efficient, easy-to-use, and with a trendy look (because it’s clear that Autostraddle readers love good design!) This will definitely not be yet another lesbian website that looks like it’s a geocities page.

Is there a cost for all this magical appy goodness?

SheSeek is absolutely free! Enjoy.

Really like the idea of SheSeek? Isn’t Esther awesome/sexy/really smart? I was so intrigued by Esther’s interview that I went out and downloaded SheSeek – you guys, it’s beautiful! She wasn’t fucking around when she said it’s not another Geocities page-esque website. I’m big on user interface, and the app and website are both smooth and lovely. I live in New York City and the app recommended Bluestockings, a bookstore that I’m absolutely in love with! This app has good taste, if I do say so myself.

When I went to check out the cities offered, I was surprised/not at all surprised/really ecstatic to find Asbury Park on there, being a Jersey Girl by origin. You can also find bars and events in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Tucson and Washington D.C. Basically what I’m saying is that I am super impressed by the scope of this. Some of the spaces are missing photos that you probably happen to have – if you have a photo of one of the recommended spots, just email editor@sheseekonline.com. In fact, Esther says that if you have a recommendation for a venue or event, you can email it to there as well.

Everyone ready? App downloaded? Website visited? Well then, let’s go seek some she.

Listen, Gaymos, OkCupid Really Wants This to Work

OkCupid and the gays have had something pretty special going for a while now. Without relying too heavily on trite relationship metaphors, they love us for our potential for advertising dollars, not our sexual orientation, and that means a lot to us. OkCupid decided early on that unlike their online dating competitors, they were going to treat gay members like the regular old customers they were, and the effect has been that now roughly 99.9% of the gay women I know have accounts on OkCupid. And they’ve really followed through on that implicit promise, including us in their really kind of groundbreaking dating analytics projects. Remember when they proved with science that we aren’t sex-crazed psychos who want to convert straight people into similarly crazed homosexuals?

Now OkCupid is taking things to the next level – they’re not just treating us equally, they’re paying attention to the specific challenges we face. Now, those who identify themselves as gay or bi can opt to hide their profiles in searches from users identified as straight. OkCupid says this is for three reasons:

* maybe you’re not out to everyone yet
* maybe you don’t want straight dudes hitting on you
* maybe you enjoy clicking checkboxes on web pages

These are pretty astute observations! If you disagree, think about this: how many other people have come to the conclusion, all on their own, that you don’t want straight dudes hitting on you? That’s what I thought.

Maybe this isn’t a big deal, except to you personally as an individual who wants to keep the possibility open of meeting a cute girl with an appreciation for postcolonial literature and a great haircut but who also wants to avoid having your creepy dudebro cousin with the Tucker Max quotes in his Facebook profile out you. Maybe, though, this is something else? Maybe this is a (profit-driven, revenue-focused) company who is not only acknowledging that queers are potential consumers, not just deigning to include them in its conceptual market in a perfunctory sense, but is actively working to court them by providing features that they know they want?

In the short history of companies consciously marketing towards gay people, most companies have peaked at “recognizing our existence.” For instance, marketing gay travel by putting “Gay Travel!” on the top of your website, working on the assumption that queers will be so grateful that you remembered they exist that they will flock to you in droves. It’s harder to think of examples of what OkCupid is doing – looking at gays like any other segment of the market, trying to figure out what they might want in a product and then giving it to them. They didn’t have to do this – I’m pretty sure that every single gay girl I know would have kept their account even if OkCupid hadn’t come up with this. But they did, which is like saying hey, girl, I don’t want to rush things or whatever, but I think you’re pretty special, and I want to treat you right so that you stick around. And I mean, if we weren’t looking for someone to say that, would we be on OkCupid in the first place?