It’s Pride Month in the US, and to celebrate, Tinder has partnered with GLAAD to launch a new feature: the ability to include your sexual orientation on your profile.
Pretty soon, users will be able to edit their profiles to include up to three terms that help describe their sexual orientations, with Tinder offering a variety of terms for you to choose from.
You’ll also be able to choose to be shown people of the same orientation first, which I imagine will be particularly helpful for groups like bi people who don’t want to waste their time with biphobic people.
Allow us to reorient ourselves ?. Introducing Sexual Orientation, now on Tinder. In partnership with @glaad ?. Get ready for better matches! pic.twitter.com/wgZLK9gLCJ
— Tinder (@Tinder) June 4, 2019
Tinder had previously introduced a wider range of ways to describe your gender in late 2016, allowing people who wanted to to go beyond the default options of ‘man’ and ‘woman’.
The 2016 changes, introduced in Australia last year, also allow users to choose which gender they show up in the results for, so if you’re non-binary but also a lesbian, you can choose to be shown to women looking for women while also being able to describe yourself precisely on your profile.
It’s a welcome change from Tinder, and one that I can’t believe wasn’t there from the start. Other, more niche dating apps, such as Her, have long had the option to include your orientation on your profile, so it’s great to see more mainstream apps introduce changes to become more inclusive.
My suggestion for their next update: a way to filter out the men who inevitably show up in search results even if your settings are women-only. Are they trying to trick queer women into swiping right on them? Is this approach successful? I have so many questions.