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I know I’m hardly alone — queer women and nonbinary folks have spent years puzzling over the men that somehow slip through our Tinder settings.

In the weeks since restarting my Tinder profile, I’ve swiped until there are no new matches to swipe several alovex.co sense of scarcity makes it all the more frustrating to encounter people you have no interest in dating.

Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners - then shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too.

Warning: Story contains strong language

"I've had someone saying they would rather kill me than Hitler," says year-old Jennie*.

"They said they would strangle me with a belt if they were in a room with me and Hitler. That was so bizarrely violent, just because I won't have sex with trans women."

Jennie is a lesbian woman. She says she is only sexually attracted to women who are biologically female and have vaginas. She therefore only has sex and relationships with women who are biologically female.

Jennie doesn't think this should be controversial, but not everyone agrees. She has been described as transphobic, a genital fetishist, a pervert and a "terf" - a trans exclusionary radical feminist.

"There's a common argument that they try and use that goes 'What if you met a woman in a bar and she's really beautiful and you got on really well and you went home and you discovered that she has a penis? Would you just not be interested?'" says Jennie, who lives in London and works in fashion.

"Yes, because even if someone seems attractive at first you can go off them. I just don't possess the capacity to be sexually attracted to people who are biologically male, regardless of how they identify."

I became aware of this particular issue after I wrote an article about sex, lies and legal consent.

Several people got in touch with me to say there was a "huge problem" for lesbians, who were being pressured to "accept the idea that a penis can be a female sex organ".

I knew this would be a hugely divisive subject, but I wanted to find out how widespread the issue was.

Ultimately, it has been difficult to determine the true scale of the problem because there has been little research on this topic - only one survey to my knowledge. However, those affected have told me the pressure comes from a minority of trans women, as well as activists who are not necessarily trans themselves.

They described being harassed and silenced if they tried to discuss the issue openly. I received online abuse myself when I tried to find interviewees using social media.

One of the lesbian women I spoke to, year-old Amy*, told me she experienced verbal abuse from her own girlfriend, a bisexual woman who wanted them to have a threesome with a trans woman.

When Amy explained her reasons for not wanting to, her girlfriend became angry.

"The first thing she called me was transphobic," Amy said. "She immediately jumped to make me feel guilty about not wanting to sleep with someone."

She said the trans woman in question had not undergone genital surgery, so still had a penis.

"I know there is zero possibility for me to be attracted to this person," said Amy, who lives in the south west of England and works in a small print and design studio.

"I can hear their male vocal cords. I can see their male jawline. I know, under their clothes, there is male genitalia. These are physical realities, that, as a woman who likes women, you can't just ignore."

Amy said she would feel this way even if a trans woman had undergone genital surgery - which some opt for, while many don't.

Soon afterwards Amy and her girlfriend split up.

"I remember she was extremely shocked and angry, and claimed my views were extremist propaganda and inciting violence towards the trans community, as well as comparing me to far-right groups," she said.

'I felt very bad for hating every moment'

Another lesbian woman, year-old Chloe*, said she felt so pressured she ended up having penetrative sex with a trans woman at university after repeatedly explaining she was not interested.

They lived near each other in halls of residence. Chloe had been drinking alcohol and does not think she could have given proper consent.

"I felt very bad for hating every moment, because the idea is we are attracted to gender rather than sex, and I did not feel that, and I felt bad for feeling like that," she said.

Ashamed and embarrassed, she decided not to tell anyone.

"The language at the time was very much 'trans women are women, they are always women, lesbians should date them'. And I was like, that's the reason I rejected this person. Does that make me bad? Am I not going to be allowed to be in the LGBT community anymore? Am I going to face repercussions for that instead?' So I didn't actually tell anyone."

Hearing about experiences like these led one lesbian activist to begin researching the topic. Angela C. Wild is co-founder of Get The L Out, whose members believe the rights of lesbians are being ignored by much of the current LGBT movement.

She and her fellow activists have demonstrated at Pride marches in the UK, where they have faced opposition. Pride in London accused the group of "bigotry, ignorance and hate".

"Lesbians are still extremely scared to speak because they think they won't be believed, because the trans ideology is so silencing everywhere," she said.

Angela created a questionnaire for lesbians and distributed it via social media, then published the results.

She said that of the 80 women who did respond, 56% reported being pressured or coerced to accept a trans woman as a sexual partner.

While acknowledging the sample may not be representative of the wider lesbian community, she believes it was important to capture their "points of view and stories".

As well as experiencing pressure to go on dates or engage in sexual activity with trans women, some of the respondents reported being successfully persuaded to do so.

"I thought I would be called a transphobe or that it would be wrong of me to turn down a trans woman who wanted to exchange nude pictures," one wrote. "Young women feel pressured to sleep with trans women 'to prove I am not a terf'."

One woman reported being targeted in an online group. "I was told that homosexuality doesn't exist and I owed it to my trans sisters to unlearn my 'genital confusion' so I can enjoy letting them penetrate me," she wrote.

One compared going on dates with trans women to so-called conversion therapy - the controversial practice of trying to change someone's sexual orientation.

"I knew I wasn't attracted to them but internalised the idea that it was because of my 'transmisogyny' and that if I dated them for long enough I could start to be attracted to them. It was DIY conversion therapy," she wrote.

Another reported a trans woman physically forcing her to have sex after they went on a date.

"[They] threatened to out me as a terf and risk my job if I refused to sleep with [them]," she wrote. "I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so [they were] a 'woman' even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout so I agreed to go home with [them]. [They] used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing [their] penis and raped me."

While welcomed by some in the LGBT community, Angela's report was described as transphobic by others.

"[People said] we are worse than rapists because we [supposedly] try to frame every trans woman as a rapist," said Angela.

"This is not the point. The point is that if it happens we need to speak about it. If it happens to one woman it's wrong. As it turns out it happens to more than one woman."

"This is something I've seen happen in real life to friends of mine. This was happening before I actually started my channel and it was one of the things that spurred it on," said Rose.

"What's happening is women who are attracted to biological females and female genitalia are finding themselves put in very awkward positions, where if for example on a dating website a trans woman approaches them and they say 'sorry I'm not into trans women', then they are labelled as transphobic."

Rose made the video in response to a series of tweets by trans athlete Veronica Ivy, then known as Rachel McKinnon, who wrote about hypothetical scenarios where trans people are rejected, and argued that "genital preferences" are transphobic.

I asked Veronica Ivy if she would speak to me but she did not want to.

Rose believes views like this are "incredibly toxic". She believes the idea that dating preferences are transphobic is being pushed by radical trans activists and their "self-proclaimed allies", who have extreme views which don't reflect the views of trans women she knows in real life.

"Certainly from my own friends group, the trans women I'm friends with, almost all of them agree lesbians are free to exclude trans women from their dating pool," she said.

However, she believes even trans people are afraid to talk openly about this for fear of abuse.

"People like me receive quite a lot of abuse from trans activists and their allies," she said.

"The trans activist side is incredibly rabid against people who they see as stepping out of line."

Debbie Hayton, a science teacher who transitioned in and writes about trans issues, worries some people transition without realising how hard it will be to form relationships.

Although there is currently little data on the sexual orientation of trans women, she believes most are female-attracted because they are biologically male and most males are attracted to women.

"So when they [trans women] are trying to find partners, when lesbian women say 'we want women', and heterosexual women say they want a heterosexual man, that leaves trans women isolated from relationships, and possibly feeling very let down by society, angry, upset and feeling that the world is out to get them," she said.

Debbie thinks it's fine if a lesbian woman does not want to date a trans woman, but is concerned some are being pressured to do so.

"The way that shaming is used is just horrific; it's emotional manipulation and warfare going on," she said.

"These women who want to form relationships with other biological women are feeling bad about that. How did we get here?"

Stonewall is the largest LGBT organisation in the UK and Europe. I asked the charity about these issues but it was unable to provide anyone for interview. However, in a statement, chief executive Nancy Kelley likened not wanting to date trans people to not wanting to date people of colour, fat people, or disabled people.

She said: "Sexuality is personal and something which is unique to each of us. There is no 'right' way to be a lesbian, and only we can know who we're attracted to.

"Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren't attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.

"We know that prejudice is still common in the LGBT+ community, and it's important that we can talk about that openly and honestly."

Stonewall was founded in by people opposed to what was known as Section 28 - legislation which stopped councils and schools from "promoting" homosexuality. The organisation originally focused on issues affecting lesbian, gay and bisexual people, then in announced it would campaign for "trans equality".

A new group - LGB Alliance - has been formed partly in response to Stonewall's change of focus, by people who believe the interests of LGB people are being left behind.

"It's fair to say that I didn't expect to have to fight for these rights again, the rights of people whose sexual orientation is towards people of the same sex," said co-founder Bev Jackson, who also co-founded the UK Gay Liberation Front in

"We sort of thought that battle had been won and it's quite frightening and quite horrifying that we have to fight that battle again."

LGB Alliance says it is particularly concerned about younger and therefore more vulnerable lesbians being pressured into relationships with trans women.

"It's very disturbing that you find people saying 'It doesn't happen, nobody pressures anybody to go to bed with anybody else', but we know this is not the case," said Ms Jackson.

"We know a minority, but still a sizeable minority of trans women, do pressure lesbians to go out with them and have sex with them and it's a very disturbing phenomenon."

I asked Ms Jackson how she knew a "sizeable minority" of trans women were doing this.

She said: "We don't have figures but we are frequently contacted by lesbians who relate their experience in LGBT groups and on dating sites."

'Shyest young women'

Why does she think there has been so little research?

"I certainly think research on this topic would be discouraged, presumably because it would be characterised as a deliberately discriminatory project," she said.

"But also, the girls and young women themselves, since it's likely the shyest and least experienced young women who are the victims of such encounters, would be loath to discuss them."

LGB Alliance has been described as a hate group, anti-trans and transphobic. However, Ms Jackson insists the group is none of these things, and includes trans people among its supporters.

"This word transphobia has been placed like a dragon in the path to stop discussion about really important issues," she said.

"It's hurtful to our trans supporters, it's hurtful to all our supporters, to be called a hate group when we're the least hateful people you can find."

The term "cotton ceiling" is sometimes used when discussing these issues, but it is controversial.

It stems from "glass ceiling", which refers to an invisible barrier preventing women from climbing to the top of the career ladder. Cotton is a reference to women's underwear, with the phrase intended to represent the difficulty some trans women feel they face when seeking relationships or sex. "Breaking the cotton ceiling" means being able to have sex with a woman.

The term is first thought to have been used in by a trans porn actress going by the name of Drew DeVeaux. She no longer works in the industry and I have not been able to contact her.

However, the concept of the cotton ceiling came to wider attention when it was used in the title of a workshop by Planned Parenthood Toronto.

The title of the workshop was: "Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women", and the description explained how participants would "work together to identify barriers, strategize ways to overcome them, and build community".

It was led by a trans writer and artist who later went to work for Stonewall (the organisation has asked the BBC not to name her because of safeguarding concerns).

The trans woman who led the workshop declined to speak to the BBC, but Planned Parenthood Toronto stood by its decision to hold the workshop.

In a statement sent to the BBC, executive director Sarah Hobbs said the workshop "was never intended to advocate or promote overcoming any individual woman's objections to sexual activity". Instead, she said the workshop explored "the ways in which ideologies of transphobia and transmisogyny impact sexual desire".

In addition to Veronica Ivy, I contacted several other high profile trans women who have either written or spoken about sex and relationships. None of them wanted to speak to me but my editors and I felt it was important to reflect some of their views in this piece.

In a video which has now been deleted, YouTuber Riley J Dennis argued that dating "preferences" are discriminatory.

She asked: "Would you date a trans person, honestly? Think about it for a second. OK, got your answer? Well if you said no, I'm sorry but that's pretty discriminatory."

She explained: "I think the main concern that people have in regards to dating a trans person is that they won't have the genitals that they expect. Because we associate penises with men and vaginas with women, some people think they could never date a trans man with a vagina or a trans woman with a penis.

"But I think that people are more than their genitals. I think you can feel attraction to someone without knowing what's between their legs. And if you were to say that you're only attracted to people with vaginas or people with penises it really feels like you are reducing people just to their genitals."

She said: "I want to talk about the idea that there are a number of people out there who say they're not attracted to trans people, and I think that that is transphobic because any time you're making a broad generalised statement about a group of people that's typically not coming from a good place."

However, she added: "If there is a trans woman who is pre-op and somebody doesn't want to date them because they don't have the genitals that match their preference, that's obviously understandable."

"What is always going on is an assumption that the person is the current status of their bits, and the history of their bits," she wrote in the first article.

"Which is about as reductive a model of sexual attraction as I can imagine."

While this debate was once seen as a fringe issue, most of the interviewees who spoke to me said it has become prominent in recent years because of social media.

Ani O'Brien, spokeswoman for a New Zealand group called Speak Up For Women, created a TikTok video aimed at younger lesbians.

Ani, who is 30, told the BBC she is concerned for the generation of lesbians who are now in their teens.

"What we are seeing is a regression where once again young lesbians are being told 'How do you know you don't like dick if you haven't tried it?'" she said.

"We get told we should be looking beyond genitals and should accept that someone says they are a woman, and that's not what homosexuality is.

"You don't see as many trans men interested in gay men so they don't get it [the pressure] as much, but you do see a lot of trans women who are interested in women, so we are disproportionately affected by it."

Ani believes these kind of messages are confusing for young lesbians.

"I remember being a teenager in the closet and trying desperately to be straight, and that was hard enough," she said.

"I can't imagine what it would have been like, if I'd finally come to terms with the fact I was gay, to then be faced with the idea that some male bodies are not male so they must be lesbian, and having to contend with that as well."

Ani says she gets contacted on Twitter by young lesbians who do not know how to exit a relationship with a trans woman.

"They tried to do the right thing and they gave them a chance, and realised that they are a lesbian and they didn't want to be with someone with a male body, and the concept of transphobia and bigotry is used as an emotional weapon, that you can't leave because otherwise you're a transphobe," she said.

Like others who have voiced their concerns, Ani has received abuse online.

"I've been incited to kill myself, I've had rape threats," she said. However, she says she is determined to keep speaking out.

"A really important thing for us to do is to be able to talk these things through. Shutting down these conversations and calling them bigotry is really unhelpful, and it shouldn't be beyond our ability to have hard conversations about some of these things."

*The BBC has changed the names of some of those featured in this article to protect their identities.

Update 4 November We have updated this article, published last week, to remove a contribution from one individual in light of comments she has published on blog posts in recent days, which we have been able to verify.

We acknowledge that an admission of inappropriate behaviour by the same contributor should have been included in the original article.

Would you like to share your views or experiences in relation to the issues raised in this article?

In some cases, your comments will be published, displaying your name, age and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published.

Please ensure you have read our terms & conditions and privacy policy.

Use this form to submit your comments:

If you are reading this page and can't see the form you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or send them via email to YourQuestions@alovex.co Please include your name, age and location with any question you send in.

If you are affected by issues raised in this article help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

Lucy Masoud (pictured), an ex firefighter turned barrister, 43, from London, has spoken out following claims that lesbians have faced accusations of transphobia and threats of violence if they admit they are not attracted to trans women.

Lucy (pictured) claimed she's seen first-hand people who identify as trans women 'essentially bully' vulnerable lesbian girls as young as years-old in clubs and bars into dating them

Lucy (pictured) said she finds it 'really sinister' and 'rapey' that if she doesn't sleep with people who are biological men, she's somehow labelled a 'bigot' or a mtf lesbians dating more of her personal experiences, Lucy noted how she was banned from Hinge after she said she was only interested in people who were 'biologically female.'

She set up her profile to 'women seeking women', and found every third or fourth match was a trans-woman.

Lucy altered her profile to read: 'All I ask is that you be on time, don’t moan about me getting overly involved in Love Island and that you’re a biological female.'

After declaring her preference, she was then permanently banned from the app for ‘transphobia’.  

'It was clear that a number of people had complained about my profile saying I was transphobic,' she said. 'You need to remember this is I'd been out of the closest since I was When I was 16 I could happily say I'm a lesbian and same-sex attracted and that I'd only sleep with women.

'Now, mtf lesbians dating, I can't say that and if I do, I'm accused of being a bigot and a transphobe which just seems crazy to me that as a year-old woman, I'm less safe now to say I'm same-sex attracted than I was when I was ' 

Lucy also says she's taken issue with some of the comments made on social media dating sites for 60 year olds and specifically referenced those written by journalists Owen Jones and Ash Sarkar (pictured) 

Lucy continued: 'If you're an "out" lesbian dating apps that want sex will sleep with a biological man, then you're not a lesbian, you're bisexual - and that's fine. But there are people, mtf lesbians dating, like myself, who are same-sex attracted, who don't sleep with people who have a penis.

'That doesn't make us a bigot, it doesn't make us transphobic, that makes us lesbians - same sex mtf lesbians dating also says she's taken issue with some of the comments made on social media - and specifically noted those written by journalists Owen Jones and Ash Sarkar.

In reference to the survey, Ash took to Twitter and penned: 'Nobody should be pressured into sex with anybody, for any reason.

'I wouldn't want someone to feel they had to have sex with me out of social pressure, but it'd be fair to ask whether racism plays a part in announcing every 5mins that they'd never sleep with a woman of colour.'

In response to Ash's comment, Owen Jones wrote: 'It's beyond belief that the BBC published such unbelievably appalling journalism, based on no reliable data and the testimonies of anti-trans activists. You'd expect to find this sort of conspiratorial hate on the darkest recesses of the internet, not on the BBC.'  

Lucy (pictured) branded the wide-spread criticism the survey has received as 'nonsense'

'They should be taking a step back and saying, "right, mtf lesbians dating, a big chunk of these 80 people have said this is happening and are essentially saying they're being coerced into having sex with people they don't want to - which is rape. What shall we do about that and how shall we protect these people?" said Lucy.

'But they're not doing that - they're too concerned with throwing the word transphobe about.' 

Lucy went on to recall one particularly memorable experience in a bar around three years ago when a trans woman was sexually touching herself inappropriately. 

'When it was raised with the staff they wouldn't do anything about it,' claimed Lucy. 'If that was a man or woman who was acting that way you would throw them out. So why is it OK for this trans woman to do it just because they're trans?

'Why is it OK for me as a lesbian, who wants to use a lesbian-only space, for various different reasons, to have to share that space with biological men?

She continued: 'Again, mtf lesbians dating, it's not anti-trans at all, mtf lesbians dating. Many of my trans friends absolutely agree with me. Trans people should absolutely be respected and protected in society and have exactly the same rights as we have - and I would march in the street to support that.

'However, biological man can not be a lesbian and I have absolutely the right not to include biological men in my dating circle, and I have the absolute right to say I would never date a trans woman because I never would. 

'That doesn't make me transphobic, it doesn't make me a bigot, it makes me a lesbian.'

BBC is accused of transphobia by more than 8, in open letter over 'propaganda' article about lesbians who said they felt 'pressured into sex by some trans women'

By Old school dating shows PATEL FOR MAILONLINE 

The BBC is facing a backlash after it published an article about lesbians who felt pressured into having sex with trans women over fears of being branded 'transphobic'.

More than 8, people signed an open letter to the broadcaster after journalist Caroline Lowbridge described the pressures three lesbian women had allegedly faced mtf lesbians dating trans women to have sex.

In the piece, mtf lesbians dating, Ms Lowbridge attempted to discover how 'widespread' the issue was across the country and said several people had contacted her about the pressures to 'accept the idea that a penis can be a female sex organ'.

The author acknowledged it was 'difficult to determine the true scale of the problem' and referred to a survey carried out by the campaigning group Get the L Out - which reported 56 per cent of respondents had felt pressured or been coerced into accepting a trans woman as a sexual partner.

Now, more than 8, mtf lesbians dating, people have signed an open letter condemning the 'propaganda' piece and accused the BBC of transphobia.

The BBC is facing a backlash after it published an article by Caroline Lowbridge which described the pressures three lesbian women had allegedly faced from their trans partners into having sex

In her article Ms Lowbridge spoke to three women, who used aliases, and said they had experienced a backlash after stating they would not want to have sex with a trans woman. 

Jennie, mtf lesbians dating, a mtf lesbians dating who is only attracted to women who are biologically female, mtf lesbians dating, said she has been described as transphobic, a genital fetishist, a pervert and a 'terf' - a trans exclusionary radical feminist.

She told the BBC: 'I've had someone saying they would rather kill me than Hitler.

'They said they would strangle me with a belt if they were in a room with me and Hitler. That was so bizarrely violent, just because I won't have sex with trans women.'

Another mtf lesbians dating, who used the name Chloe, told the BBC she felt so pressured she ended up having sex with a trans woman at university after repeatedly explaining she was not interested. 

She added: 'I felt very bad for hating every moment, mtf lesbians dating, because the idea is we are attracted to gender rather than sex, and I did not feel that, and I felt bad for feeling like that.' 

However thousands have now condemned the BBC for 'painting an entire group as potentially dangerous based on anecdotes'.  

The open letter read: 'Dear BBC Upper Management and Editorial Staff,

'The day this open letter is being written, you published an article on the BBC News website by Caroline Lowbridge titled ''We're being pressured into sex by some trans women''. 

More than 8, people have now signed an open letter condemning the article

'The article headline may use the word ''some'', but the clear implication of the article and its headline is that transgender women as the dating guy shrinking woody minority group pose a threat to cisgender lesbians, mtf lesbians dating, and should therefor have their rights restricted in the UK.

'The implications proposed by this article suggest that transgender women generally pose a risk to cisgender lesbians in great enough numbers that it is newsworthy, and something the general public should consider as a common occurrence rather than a matter of incredibly rare, isolated experiences.

'The article uses a deeply flawed study that doesn’t meet BBC guidelines, and anecdotal accounts from known transphobic hate groups who actively campaign for transgender people to lose their legal recognition as their gender.'

The letter goes on to say that the article 'dangerously frames this as a widespread issue' while acknowledging that there is' no actual evidence to that effect outside of isolated claims.'  

It adds: 'We do not dispute the claim that there are likely isolated cases of cisgender lesbians who have been pressured in the past into sex by transgender women who viewed their genital preference as transphobic, however to paint this as a widespread occurrence, mtf lesbians dating, or the norm, is incredibly dangerous. 

'It is obviously a tragedy any time any person is coerced into sex and their consent violated, but the answer to that is not to paint an entire minority group as potential rapists.'

The letter also criticised the recent survey carried out by Get the L Out and said the group surveyed had already believed transgender women are men.    

In response to criticism about their coverage earlier this week, a BBC spokesperson said: 'The article looks at a complex subject from different perspectives and acknowledges it is difficult to assess the extent of the issue.

'It includes testimony from a range of different sources and provides appropriate context. It went through our rigorous editorial processes.

'It is important that journalism looks at issues - even where there are strongly held positions.

'The BBC is here to ensure debate and to make sure a wide a range of voices are heard.'

MailOnline has contacted the BBC for comment.  

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I’ve been single since my last relationship ended in February, and like many single lesbians, that means I’m back on Tinder. The dating app provides a way to expand my dating pool beyond the usual crop of friends, exes and friends of exes. But I had forgotten what it’s like to be a lesbian on America’s most popular dating app; in order to find dates, I have to wade through a veritable thicket of opposite-sex couples and cisgender men.

But why do men pop up in my feed of potential matches when my account is set to see women-identified profiles only? Anecdotally, I know I’m hardly alone — queer women and non-binary folks have spent years puzzling over the men that somehow slip through our Tinder settings, mtf lesbians dating. Yes, there are other dating apps, but Tinder is the one I’ve used the most, and the only one where I’ve had this happen consistently.

And I want it to be very clear that my discomfort on Tinder isn’t based in any kind of TERF (trans exclusionary mtf lesbians dating feminist) ideology; I date trans and nonbinary people as well as cisgender women, mtf lesbians dating. But I don’t date straight, cisgender men or straight couples. To be honest, it creeps me out to know that men can see my profile (after all, Tinder is a two-way street). As a femme lesbian who is often mistaken for straight, I get enough unwanted attention from men. I shouldn’t have to market myself to them as a potential date when I very, very much don’t want to.

Being a generally curious journalist, I set out to solve the mystery. In July, mtf lesbians dating, I deleted my Tinder account and signed back up on the platform for an entirely fresh start. This was the only way to be absolutely sure I’d checked off all the settings properly, to rule out any mistakes on my end. While creating a new account, the app asked me to choose a gender (male or female were the only options and I chose female) and a sexual orientation (you could pick three; I went with lesbian, queer, and gay).

I reached mtf lesbians dating mildly confusing page that allowed me to pick a second gender identity (non-binary) and asked whether I wanted to be included in searches for men or women (I chose women). In settings, I was asked whether I wanted to be shown women, men, or everyone (I chose women, and clicked a button that said “show me people of the same orientation first” in order to hopefully weed out straight women and get right to my fellow queers). With all of these settings carefully selected, I figured I was in mtf lesbians dating clear.

I was wrong. I swiped left for days on opposite-sex couples preying on bisexual women and encountered numerous profiles for — you guessed it — straight, cisgender men. I would estimate that at least half of the profiles shown to me by the app were either couples or men: a shockingly high amount. Intrigued (and because I was working on this story), I began to swipe right on men and couples. I realized that most or all of these profiles had apparently already seen me; every time I swiped right on a cisgender man, it was an instant match. I was in their pool, mtf lesbians dating, like it or not. Creepy.

I’m in my 40s, which means I spent a good part of my youth in the lesbian bars of the U.S. that have largely disappeared. Encountering men and straight-ish couples in lesbian spaces is an all-too-familiar experience for me. Mtf lesbians dating in the bar days, men who hung around lesbian bars were referred to as “sharks” because of the way they seemed to circle drunk or lonely mtf lesbians dating. Though some bars refused to let them in, other lesbian bars simply charged male patrons high door fees to make them pay for the privilege of gawking and stalking.

As a young femme dyke with long hair and painted fingernails, I hated having to navigate these encounters in what were supposed to be rare safe spaces. Coming to the bar to flirt with girls and trans guys, I didn’t want to have to feel the eyes of a straight man on me all night. It’s bad enough that feminine-looking women are so often mistaken for straight women, mtf lesbians dating, a phenomenon known as femme invisibility. Lesbian bars were supposed to be the one place where, just by entering the room, my queerness was undeniable.

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Today, the lesbian bars of yore have mostly shut down, mtf lesbians dating. Queer women (and their adjacent populations: non-binary folks and trans men) now meet each other mostly through dating apps and other platforms like the wildly popular Instagram account Personals, mtf lesbians dating. While Personals is launching its own app (currently in Beta testing), the app for queer women that seems to have attracted the most mainstream traction is HER. With limited options, queer women tend to scatter seeds across multiple platforms; I’ve known friends to use Tinder, HER, Bumble, and OK Cupid all at once while perusing the Personals feed too.

The lesbian world can feel tiny; while there is no reliable data on the number of LGBTQ people in the U.S. (we aren’t counted by the U.S. Census), a Gallup poll estimated that about 4 percent of American women identified as either lesbian, mtf lesbians dating, gay, bisexual, or transgender — meaning the numbers in each sub-group are smaller. And many in my community consistently struggle to meet potential dates that don’t already overlap with their social circles.

A study conducted by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, Sapienza University of Rome and the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group found mtf lesbians dating while 12 percent of male Tinder profiles identified users as gay or bisexual, only percent of women’s profiles identified users as anything other than straight, mtf lesbians dating. Though three years have since passed, mtf lesbians dating, I’m not convinced the numbers have significantly increased, mtf lesbians dating. In the weeks since restarting my Tinder profile, I’ve swiped until there are no new matches to swipe several times (I used the app in different cities while traveling).This sense of scarcity makes it all the more frustrating to encounter people you have no interest in dating.

Matching with men and couples would normally be annoying, but it was useful for this article. I messaged several couples to ask why they marked the gender of their profile as “woman,” and whether they were aware that creating an account as a couple violates Tinder’s “One Person, One Account” rule, mtf lesbians dating, which says “Tinder accounts cannot have multiple owners, mtf lesbians dating, so don’t create an account with your friend or significant other.” Not a single one of the couples responded. But some of the men I matched with did offer helpful feedback. When I asked “Harry,” who declined to be quoted outright for this story, whether he’d mistakenly set his gender to female, brothahassan interracial dating said he had not, mtf lesbians dating. He claimed he was a straight man looking to date women and wasn’t sure why mtf lesbians dating shown up in my feed. But then he said something surprising: men also show up in his feed, mtf lesbians dating, even though his profile was set to seek women. Other men I matched with had clearly stated their gender as male right on their profile. To be clear, none of these men seemed to be transgender; in my experience as a person who has dated trans people, the majority of trans folks do identify themselves as such on dating apps.

I knew that most of my friends had encountered men and couples, but I also decided to ask my 16, Twitter followers in hopes of mtf lesbians dating a random sample. I got about 20 quotable responses from queer women, all of mtf lesbians dating said they’ve encountered straight cis men in their Tinder feed and had puzzled over it. Many — including bisexual women — also expressed annoyance at couples who use the app to fish for queer women for threesomes.

“I only set to women. mtf lesbians dating results are an easy 40 percent straight couples looking for a unicorn or whatever. It disgusts me,” said Sara Gregory in response to the Twitter prompt. “Also would estimate about 10 percent of profiles I see are cis men when set to only women.”

“My settings are set to only show me women, mtf lesbians dating, but I still see men almost every time I log in,” said Mari Brighe on Twitter. “Also, mtf lesbians dating, it seems like there are AT LEAST as many unicorn-hunting couples profiles as queer women’s profiles. It’s ridiculously frustrating.”

Conspiracy theories have proliferated, with some queer women guessing straight men are switching their genders to try to pick up lesbians. Or maybe some guys are just too dumb to properly set up a dating profile.

So was this the result of men misusing the platform? Was it a bug? Was it a feature? Over the course of three separate phone calls with Tinder representatives who spoke exclusively on background, I was repeatedly assured that what I described was nearly impossible. The conversations left me feeling even more confused and frustrated. Tinder wasn’t purposefully blocking me, but neither did it seem like the app understood why the onslaught of men and couples makes queer women so uncomfortable, mtf lesbians dating, or how the rampant sexualization of lesbians that can turn predatory and dangerous at times.

In the end, Tinder gave me a statement on the record that framed the whole thing as an inclusion issue.

"Tinder is the most used app by LGBTQ women and we are proud to serve this community. Inclusion is a core value and we are constantly working to optimize the user experience,” said a Tinder spokesperson. “We have identified that, sometimes, users may either purposely or inadvertently change their gender and consequently, mtf lesbians dating, are shown to users seeking other matches. The only way to prevent this from happening would be to restrict users from changing their gender, which is not a product change we are willing to make."

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At the end of the day, my Great Tinder Experiment mainly reinforced the frustrations queer women feel when attempting to find safe dating spaces. Despite bringing the issue to Tinder’s attention — a privilege I was able to attain through my platform as a journalist — there is still no foreseeable way to avoid cisgender men and couples on the app. The experience has made me all the more hungry for the forthcoming Personals app, which creator Kelly Rakowski said in a interview will allow queer women to filter matches according to the identifiers that are significant in our community.

Rakowski aims to create a dating app that will let users search, for example, mtf lesbians dating, for a "butch bottom" in the New England area or a "switchy trans femme" in Seattle. That kind of cultural sensitivity is what seems to be missing from most dating apps that weren’t created with queer users in mind, mtf lesbians dating. Perhaps the lesson is this: Until queers are at the helm of the companies that craft the tech tools we use every day, mtf lesbians dating, those tools won’t be able to fully serve our needs.

Mary Emily O'Hara

Mary Emily O'Hara is the rapid response manager at GLAAD. Previously, their news and culture writing has been published by Adweek, Into, mtf lesbians dating, Them, NBC News, mtf lesbians dating, MSNBC, Daily Dot and Vice, among others.

My Transsexual Date

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Forget mtf lesbians dating apps built for straight people, and join millions of other lesbians, bisexuals, and queer women on HER.

Become a part of our welcoming and safe community where you can join smaller community group chats, find single queer women in your area, make friends, go on a date, or just have fun. With an ever-growing, authentic, safe, and active community, HER is one of the best dating apps for queer women looking to make a connection and find their community.

HER also has all the latest LGBTQ+ news and content so you can stay up to date with everything happening in the LGBTQ+ world. The app makes it easy to find fun and educational HER-sponsored events in your area – events that are built by and for queer people, whether you’re lesbian, bi, queer, non-binary, a transgender woman, a transgender man, or gender non-conforming.

By bringing together our community both IRL and virtually, HER gives you a space to date, meet, and connect online and offline.

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Lesbians are being called "transphobic bigots" for daring to define who we are - and who we are attracted to

Angela Wild is a lesbian feminist activist, mtf lesbians dating, researcher and co-founder of Get The L Out, lesbian activist group.

When a few of my lesbian friends and I decided to march uninvited in front of the Pride march in London last year to promote lesbian visibility within an increasingly misogynistic and anti-lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (GBT) movement, we had no idea this would cause such a huge backlash from the GBT community itself.

We had no idea that we would be attacked by officials of GBT organisations as well as by most of the British press.

From being called “transphobic bigots”, mtf lesbians dating, “hateful” and “Nazis” who should be “dragged out by our saggy tits”, to having our personal details published on social media and receiving rape and death threats, the supposedly progressive mainstream seemed to have slightly overreacted to the fact that a small group of lesbians were simply marching at Pride in London.

___________________________________________________

OPINION: The L must stand with the T and support trans rights

OPINION: Prejudice in the guise of academic research is just prejudice

OPINION: A new wing of the anti-gender movement

___________________________________________________

Our crime? We simply dared to reclaim the right to define what a lesbian is.

The definition is – and should remain – “a woman – in the biological sense of the word – exclusively emotionally and sexually attracted to women&rdquo.

As lesbians we retain the right to say what we find sexually attractive, mtf lesbians dating, irrespective of gender identity, thank you very much.

The fact that such a statement is now labelled hateful says much about the misogyny of those who condemned us.

Lesbians in are constantly vilified and excluded from the GBT community for stating their exclusive sexual preference.

Interestingly, we are routinely told there is no research to support our stance by a GBT movement that is funded precisely to do this research and stand up for us, but is clearly too busy looking the other way or burying its head in the sand to care.

To confront this bias, Get The L Out has just published research on what we have termed the "cotton ceiling".

If you have never heard the term, you can just translate it into “the first research on the sexual pressure and sexual violence experienced by lesbians at the hands of what we define as ‘transwomen’&rdquo.

Our research findings show that lesbians are under huge pressure within their LGBT+ groups to accept transwomen as sexual partners so as not to be labelled as trans-exclusionary radical feminists – or Terfs – and subsequently excluded by their GBT groups.

Our research shows the invasion mtf lesbians dating lesbian dating sites by men (whether they identify as women or not); women’s fear of going on a date with a person who could potentially turn out to be biologically male; and the complete disappearance of lesbian-only spaces leading to difficulties in meeting like-minded women.

Lesbians who responded to our survey also reported experiencing sexual violence from transwomen ranging from online grooming, domestic and sexual violence as part of a relationship, sexual harassment, sexual assault (including in women’s toilets), coercion and rape.

Women who are critical of gender ideology are routinely accused of being on the “wrong side of history&rdquo.

However, our findings throw up several questions:

• Who is on the wrong side of history when the GBT community operates a large-scale gaslighting of lesbians to accept the mantra that “trans women are women”; penises are deemed to be a female organ; and heterosexual intercourse is now redefined as a lesbian sexual practice?
• Who is on the wrong side of history when the GBT community uncritically supports a population of transwomen who identify as lesbians to coerce lesbians into having sex with transwomen against their will?
• Who is on the wrong side of history when lesbians’ sexual boundaries are disrespected and publicly demonised as hateful by the very charities whose purpose it is to defend them?
• Who are the GBT organisations protecting by refusing to engage with lesbians’ very serious concerns?

Major gay, bisexual and trans organisations such as Stonewall and Pride in London should hang their heads in shame for ignoring our rights.

They do not represent us.

The Cotton Ceiling Report: alovex.co

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BBC News

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