by Deantre Martin

Tinder is so Shady

So, let me tell you why tinder is shady af! On the dating app users are allowed to choose from a plethora of gender identities and even can customize their own identities (I think), but the real tea is that even after all that tinder still asks whether or not I would like to show up in among the men or the women – wtf! The whole point of me being non-binary is because sometimes I feel like both genders and sometimes one more than the other. So why, after like 15 long seconds of scrolling to find the choice Non-Binary femme would I conceded to either male or female? So, tinder you can piss off with your faux-inclusivity- ‘witcha shady ass’!

Like people be saying some rude shit

1. Are you’re a she-male? (Wtf is this the 1970’s)
2. Do you cross-dress? (Nah, nigga not for you)
3. Have you had “The Surgery”? (What surgery?? I had a cyst removed 5 years ago is that what your referring to? P.S It grew backL)
4. You’d be cute if you weren’t built like a linebacker. (Y’all I’m not about to lie that shit stung frfr)

I get this ‘bs’ all the time! I usually just clapback with some witty retort, but that last one stung a little too much for me to be witty. As, I have grown into a more feminine aspect of myself I’ve noticed how “masculine” my physique is. And I question myself all the time -Insert internalized femmephobia here- can I possess a body like mine and truly be femminine.

Why do I feel the need to out myself and what exactly am I outing?

So, recently I tried something new and I switched my tinder profile gender to show up among “women”. I did this as a start to explore this new femme part of myself. And surprisingly I got more matches among straight men compared to gay men on my tinder. But, the whole time I felt like I had to “out” myself. I’m already out everyone knows my gender identity and sexual orientation it’s not something I hide, but that wasn’t it. I felt like I had to hide the fact that I had a penis- it’s crazy that a simple piece of anatomy would disqualify me from femmehood- a status I have tried so hard to attain. I need explore what femininity could mean for me, but that’s story for another day.

How do I date? How do I hookup? Is dating and hookup culture only for people who abide by the gender binary?

So, the tea is that I don’t know how to navigate the dating world in a way that all of my identity is acknowledged. Everyone I meet wants something different other than me. For instance, some want me to be feminine and wear femme artifice at all times and others refuse to acknowledge my gender identity at all and pretend I’m cis. I just want to be seen as me- whatever me that is or will be.

End of Rant

As you can tell I’ve been ranting throughout this whole thing. I just wanna know if there is a place for me – a place for people like me. I’m tired of always having to deconstruct then oppressive modes of our society just to understand why something as simple as dating is hard for me. I hate always having to be hyper-aware about my situated place in society. The constant awareness of my blackness, my fatness, my femmeness, and my overall otherness and the awareness that none of these thing are “good” in a white supremacist society. I’m tired of my body being policed. I’m tired of being told I’m not good enough, thin enough, white enough, femme enough. I wanna be me and whatever the fuck that means.