Tinder's New Update Is Transgender-Friendly, Allows Users 35 Identity Options

Have you ever felt unwelcome on Tinder? It might be time to give the popular dating app another shot. As of today, it's clear that the team at Tinder is trying to make sure the transgender community feels comfortable swiping right as heterosexual and homosexual users. The lifestyle and dating app just rolled out a new update that allows users to go way beyond the binary gender identities of "man" and "woman." Tinder is promoting the change with the hashtag #NoTypesAllSwipes. It's catchy, but how inclusive is it? As it turns out, the company consulted GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program to make sure that it's pretty darn good. Here's how the new feature works.

When creating a Tinder profile, you can now tap "I Am" and, instead of having to choose from the binary male or female options, users can select "More" to type a word that describes their gender identity. There are over 35 options for identifying, including terms like "trans" and "pangender." A blog post on Tinder's site explains that the update also allows users to appear in searches that best reflect their identity and to choose where their gender identity appears on their profile.

It's a big win for inclusivity, but will it be enough to make up for the way Tinder's turned off users in the past few years? The app first launched in 2012, so it's taken years for Tinder to respond to complaints from the users across the board. In the past, Tinder has been particularly unsafe for transgender users, who often found themselves unfairly reported and blocked after other users took issue with the way they identified their gender under the limited options of "woman" and "man." Dating is hard enough without being banned from an app for being yourself, so you can imagine how wary users are about hopping back into the Tinder-ing world.

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With this update, the company hopes to show that all users are welcome on the dating platform. Sean Rad, the company's CEO, tells TIME that "gender is not binary," continuing to explain that the Tinder team feels "it's really about how people see themselves and how they feel. And we want to be more inclusive. I hope as a society that we are more inclusive."

https://twitter.com/ourladyj/status/798579154102779905

In order to get to that place of understanding, Rad sought education and consultation for Tinder from both trans users and GLAAD's director of transgender media relations, Nick Adams. Adams does a great job of summarizing the importance of Tinder's update, tellingTIME that "it's important for a major company like Tinder, which has tens of millions of users around the world, to send this message that transgender people are welcome on the platform." Adams went on to make a point we all need to do a better job of understanding: "Transgender people are part of the fabric of our American culture. They are part of your dating pool. And that is just the modern world in which we live." Well said.

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