I Tried a Queer Dating App and Almost Got Scared Straight

Lipstick lesbians? Pillow princesses? Daddies?

These were all brand new terms I encountered when I downloaded a dating app designed specifically for queer women. HER (the app in question) allows women to place badges in their profiles with titles like the ones listed above to let other women know what kind of queer they are.

Badges like top, bottom, switch, dom, masc, femme were all ones that made sense to me. I had watched enough RuPaul’s Drag Race to be familiar with basic LGBTQ+ terminology. But considering that I had only just come to terms with my bisexuality and didn’t even know whether or not I was a bottom, top, or switch, the new labels did nothing but cause me anxiety.

Being on an app with other women who were clearly far more experienced than I was in the ways of queerdom, made me feel like the new kid at a far bigger school than I was used to. I pushed forward for awhile on the app, swiping right, but when the conversations started to center around things like coming out and past dating experiences, it seems like I started to take myself out of the running without even trying.

Having to admit to those I was interested in that, technically, I am still in the closet and that I’ve never actually dated or hooked up with or even kissed another woman before, proved to be a turnoff for more experienced queer women. One even asked me the question “how do I know this isn’t just an experiment to you?” And though the question is valid and now I can understand her concerns, at the time, it hurt.

It felt as though I wasn’t “queer enough" to find myself in a space like that. Just like how I often found myself having to prove myself in the straight world, I now found myself having to do the same thing in the queer world.

Being bisexual and having an attraction to men, has proven to be one of the biggest obstacles in my queer journey. For one thing, because I knew that I was attracted to the opposite sex from a young age, it made it easier for me to dismiss the idea that I might not be straight. And if anyone questioned it — myself included — I could just point to my past relationships and/or crushes as evidence.

And being that I have only been in relationships with men and have only just started embracing the label of bisexual in the past year and a half or so, it can make other queer women give me the side eye. Especially because in recent years, it has become more socially acceptable for straight women to have an experimental phase when it comes to their sexuality. And just like me, other queer women are just trying to protect themselves against people who see them as an experiment or something they fetishize.

Since coming to terms with my sexuality, it has been difficult for me to express it to straight men in my life, in particular. Because it opens the door to fetishization, cueing the fantasies of threesomes and the inappropriate questions about how far I’ve gone with a woman. And the even more annoying reality is that now they feel comfortable enough to explain their sexual conquests to me in vivid detail because now that I’m bisexual, they feel that I must also see women as sexual objects.

In some ways, my life was easier when I was still posing as straight. At least it certainly was when it came to dating. Unfortunately, opening myself up to more than one gender when it comes to romance, has not expanded my dating pool. In fact, it feels like it has decreased it. But that’s okay. Maybe this is just what I need to narrow the list down to finding my potential partner.

I guess we’ll call that bisexual selection.

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