Being a young hopeless romantic queer, I have always pictured myself as the “main character” of my own novel — as mainstream media fails to represent us. I’ve written myself in every cookie-cutter narrative as I find my own version of a happy ending. But soon after, the sweet stories I have been writing took an unexpected turn. Another chapter opens, where we continue to write our stories through the four corners of our screens.
Swipe here, swipe there. Just like any young adult trapped in the pandemic, I also gave my shot on finding my happy ending in online dating platforms. Looking through profiles may be fun at first, like casting my perfect love interest, until I was welcomed with bios and messages saying “no to femmes” and “pass sa halata" — a hopeful romance quickly turned to a bitter tragedy.
Queers and honey-searching
Generally, online dating is not an entirely new concept. It's an expected trajectory of technology intertwining with every aspect of our daily lives. Before the social distancing brought the further normalization of online dating, these platforms have always been a space for queer people to interact and connect.
A 2020 data from Pew Research Center showed that the LGBTQIA+ community has the highest usage rate in online dating platforms — talk about the dedication in finding that sweet “honey.” This makes sense as such sites are user-targeted in terms of their preferences, hobbies, and likes to result in a compatible match-up. Such apps are also well equipped with security features that allow easy blocking and reporting.
This means that most of us queers use these features to our advantage. Beyond knowing the interests of our story’s possible co-lead, we use them in safely determining people in the same page. Those who belong in the community and are open to date, flirt, or hook-up — an information not all of us are privileged to disclose in real life as prejudice to queer folks is very much present.
As pointed out by Pew Research’s numbers, these online platforms may only be a secondary dating mode for straight people with only 28% of straight adults who found a partner online in contrast of the 55% of those of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. For most of us queers, online dating has been the most optimal way to find relationships, love, or simply flings — not your usual plots found in classic romantic literature.
How’s the hive?
“Application successfully installed,” my screen read after I downloaded Bumble, an online dating app, in pursuit of continuing my adventures in love. I decided to rewrite my questionable history of pretending to be someone I’m not during my earlier ventures from two years ago. Maybe that’s what I got wrong in my previous chapters of online dating. So this time around, as I shakingly hold my phone and set-up my profile, I made sure that the authentic and unapologetically queer me is present — loud, vibrant, and flamboyant as ever.
Below is how my profile looks. Pictures of me proudly sporting my halter tops, dresses, full make-up, and long hair are all visible. I typed in my love for fashion, art, drag, and K-pop, and even came-up with witty answers for their prompted questions.
I think my profile looks objectively good. Being the main character of the story I spun, I would even say it’s perfectly curated and it mirrors me. My point is that it’s a “swipe right-able” profile — or so I thought.
An anxiety-filled 30 minutes have passed, ending the free Spotlight feature for new-bees in Bumble wherein they make your profile more visible in the algorithm, and only four people liked me enough to swipe my profile right.
I just continued scouring through users' accounts on my little phone screen, swiping left and right until I reached maximum swipes in less than an hour. Tick tock, the day goes by with me waiting for the sweet sound of notification that I finally matched with someone. But alas, not even one on my first day in the hive. The first 24 hours concluded with me only having seven likes and zero matches.
It was only the second day that I finally matched with Jake*, but our story already ended before even reaching the rising action. Our conversation was slow-paced, energy seems to be not aligning. After all, I was the first one who messaged. To be fair, we shared a couple of interests and flirted back a few times but not enough to progress to another chapter. As a fast replier myself, I tend to blankly stare at the bright LED screen waiting for minutes or even hours until he finally replies. We even agreed to transfer platforms for easier communication but soon after, like a ghost, I never heard from Jake ever again.
This slow trend continued as I dreadfully opened my phone for a couple of minutes every day of the week. The pattern goes on and on: explore profiles, use all my swipes, reply to conversations on time, wait for minutes or hours for their replies, repeat. By the end of the week, I only got a total of eight matches, with only three of which having actual good constant conversation.
In total, my experience was not as good as I expected. It was underwhelming. I thought this time that if I’ve become vulnerable to show the “real me,” people will appreciate me more and willingly be part of my story, but that’s not the case.
A look at other bees’ hives
Based on the data I gathered from 26 queer users of the app, I was not alone feeling underwhelmed after I buzzed in on Bumble’s hive. Majority of the respondents answered “partly satisfied” when asked about their experience with the app. Responses of “not at all satisfied” and "satisfied” placed second. The partiality of numbers shows the variety of nuanced queer experiences.
Reading through the observations made by such users in their time in the hive, they commonly cited more negative reviews as the basis of their rating rather than of something good. In fact, only 2 out of 26 respondents have successfully found a relationship in the said platform.
For instance, most of the respondents talked about bad dating habits of most users, a thing I experienced first-hand in that one-week immersion in Bumble. This pertains to matches becoming exhaustingly unresponsive or treating the “relationship” they build as temporary ones due to the application’s virtual nature. People are literally one uninstall away from ghosting you, ending your short fairy tale.
Unfortunately, that’s not all the buzz. One of the most described issues that queer users faced on the platform is the rampant culture of toxic masculinity that leads to harassment and discrimination towards feminine-presenting individuals. Such is a narrative more familiar for individuals like me, a male assigned at birth who are very much in touch with their feminine and queer identity.
I’m quite fortunate that in my one-week in the hive, I did not experience this bitter turn to my attempt at an online romance tale. Although, I’m no stranger to the piercing stares and judging questions people direct towards my gender expression in real life and online. From someone demeaningly telling me how feminine I am in the middle of making-out, to rude comments on social media scolding me for my beautifully painted face, I have my fair share of haunting stories of intolerance and bigotry in my library of memories.
“A lot of cis gay men usually asks if ‘halata ka ba?’" Gab Algar, 21, explained as he pertained to the common pattern of questions he received about his supposed femininity in his time with the app.
“I would see profiles with 'not into femmes,' 'X Halata' and many other ways people would blatantly express how they are Masc4Masc,” Ganda*, 20, an androgynous non-binary, exposes the alienating preferences of some users in the app.
“Masc4Masc” is a gay subculture that talks about masculine gay men strictly dating or engaging with fellow masculine gay men. As pointed out in the article “Taking off the ‘Masc’: How Gay-Identifying Men Perceive and Navigate Hyper-Masculinity and “Mascing” Culture Online” by the gender studies sociology graduate Zander Granath, this culture heavily affects the dynamics of the gay dating scene. As their strong “preferences” commonly translates to completely writing out and ostracizing feminine gays, gay people tend to perform “mascing” or the exaggeration of masculine traits and suppression of femininity.
As Andy*, 22, described it, “I do feel that my choices are being limited and my chances of being matched with someone also becomes limited just because they have strong 'preferences' for masculine-looking people.”
'Mascing' the queen bee
In pursuit of investigating the underlying existence of Masc4Masc culture in Bumble, I decided to go back to the hive. But this time, I’ll play a role, starring as what society illustrates as a “masculine-looking” gay.
With this, here’s how my profile looks, quite the stark opposite of me. Nothing has changed in the details, bios, and interests I input, only in the pictures I shared. I went from rocking dresses, winged liner, and hair clips, to me in polos, shorter hair, and even a post workout selfie in a crop top trying to flex.
Not even reaching half an hour after I set-up my profile, I already have 12 likes, which are more than the first 24 hours as the “real me.” A day goes by and the number of likes is more than tripled on my previous experience, amounting to 23 likes. By the end of a dreadful week, I gathered a total of 24 matches, quadrupling the number I received in my feminine-presenting and loudly queer profile. It turns out that I’m more “swipe right-able” pretending to be someone I’m not.
To be honest, I quite expected the turnout of the audience favoring my “masculine” profile more. But what stings me hard is the amount of differences between these numbers. In fact, in the duration of me using the masculine-presenting profile, I always received new likes every single day compared to zeros of the previous account. I can’t help but feel unlovable, unlikeable, or even "undateable" for just being authentically me.
“When I first set up my profile I had pictures of me in dresses and crop tops and I would literally get 0 matches so I tried switching it up to pictures of me wearing polo shirts and other basic men's clothing and I noticed a lot more people swiping right,” Ganda recalled, which my experience perfectly mirrors.
No doubt, why I personally see confident feminine gays when I was younger later on turned to be more masculine-presenting and conform as they get more exposed with the cruel world. To be frank, the idea of rewriting my flamboyant character to conform with societal standards circles in my head from time to time. As exposed by Dr. Karen Blair, a psychologist, “If they [gay people] are perceived as more feminine, this may lead to greater rejection from the community.” Because the reality is, even in the community there is still unequal footing of queer identities.
Just as shown in my little social experiment, gay people who subscribe with the ideals of masculine beauty standards tend to be rewarded with sorts of happy endings within and even outside the community. On the other hand, queer deviants of the heteronormativity, like us, are highlighted with a vilified tone of attention — dismissive and derogatory.
Our commonly untold stories and struggles as queer people are as diverse and layered as the colors found in our pride flags. Even though we share a collective experience of oppression, there are still different degrees of how certain identities under the rainbow are affected by this. Some are latently impacted, some are more on the nose, while others can be the oppressors themselves.
Just as pervasive prejudice is, online dating is no different. Preference is one thing but if it enables the very system of oppression that victimizes the entire community we belong to, maybe it’s time to check on those preferences. As explained by Granath, these concepts are fueled by homophobia and misogyny itself — a preference disguised.
How can people like me write our own happy endings when the system has already written our tragic demise?
Editor’s Note: *Real names are hidden behind pseudonyms.
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