Why Is It So Hard For Trans People To Find A Respectful Hookup Online?
Despite trying several times now, we have never successfully solicited a threesome or casual sex experience through Lex
When my partner and I decided we wanted to seek out casual sex partners, we were hopeful. On a trip to Los Angeles, feeling frisky, free and full of vacation vibes, we put up an ad on Lex, a text-based platform for queer people of all genders besides cis men.
The post, creatively titled “Vacation Hookup” and posted by my partner, read: “Come fuck my boy while I watch and maybe give you tips. T4T only.” We had tried a similar post when we were home in Boston and had no luck, so we hoped a change of scenery would help.
We got plenty of messages, but none were even close to what we were looking for. Most of them were young, under the age of 24. Both of us are in our mid- to late-30s, which made sex with someone who was practically a teenager unappealing. Several seemed more interested in riding my partner than fucking me. And then there was the one cishet man who didn’t seem to know where he was.
Lex, which started as a platform for queer dating mujeres americanas vs francesas and sex reminiscent of lesbian personal ads, just stripped the sex from its branding in a way many people find very problematic
In theory, there are plenty of apps where queer people can seek casual sexual connections. And while people of all genders have unsuccessful or upsetting experiences on those apps, trans people seem to struggle the most. As a trans person navigating these hookup apps, it too often feels like I’m making do with an app that wasn’t created for people like me in mind.
Grindr has historically been a hellhole for many trans people, though they’ve made massive leaps in the last year. For me, personally, Grindr (and Scruff) don’t feel geared towards me; I’m a transfag on tesosterone but I still read to most people as a woman and I have breasts. My partner, a trans man, would likely have a lot of success on those apps, but I just don’t feel comfortable navigating them.
“Transfemmes largely wind up on Grindr, and transmascs largely wind up on Scruff, so we’re being separated from one another there,” said Jack Gieseking, the author of ” A Queer New York” and a researcher who is launching a lesbian, bi, queer, trans and sapphic dating apps survey. “The people who are coding [these apps], the people who are taught to code, the people who are hired and listened to and trusted in the culture of tech, largely are white, cis, heterosexual men and so we’re seeing that in our everyday lives and in our dating apps.”
“If you’re looking on Tinder, it’s all cishets looking to be ‘spicy’ or cishet folks experimenting. Women there often unmatch when they figure out I’m trans,” said Tyra, a 47-year-old trans lesbian from Pennsylvania. “If you’re on Grindr, it’s all cis gays being shitty – or chasers for trans women. And who the fuck knows what Lex is anymore.”
Overall, the choices for T4T hookups are not great – either we are hypersexualised in ways that are incredibly dehumanising or we are stripped of our sexuality in order to assimilate and seem nonthreatening, which is infantilising. “I end up having to choose between whether I want to be seen and understood by a sexual partner as a whole person or whether I want a big variety of people to fool around with,” said Reed Eliot, a 30-something queer and trans person from Minneapolis.
