A few weeks ago, I was sitting next to my friend as she swiped through Tinder. Her settings were clear: she’s a woman looking for other women. Yet, as she swiped, an endless parade of straight, fish-holding men appeared on her screen — men she explicitly set that she didn’t want to see.
As a queer woman, I’ve heard this complaint too many times from my lesbian friends: straight men manipulating their Tinder identity settings to show up on queer women’s feeds. What’s worse is that this isn’t just about annoyance, it’s about safety. Lesbians already deal with the sexualization and fetishization of their identities in everyday life. Dating apps, which should serve as safe spaces to find connection, are now extending that experience into the digital world.
Tinder, as the largest and most widely used dating app among queer women in Canada, should know better. But here we are.
Although I’ve never used dating apps myself — I’ve been with my girlfriend for nearly five years — I decided to test this problem firsthand. With a friend’s permission, I created a fake profile using her photos and changed all identifying information. I set my gender as “woman,” sexual orientation as “lesbian,” and selected “women only” for partner preferences. Within my first five swipes, two were straight men.
As I kept swiping, it became clear how these men were bypassing Tinder’s filters: they were setting their gender to “woman” while keeping their orientation as “straight.” So much for matching “based on gender and orientation.”
Tinder, like most dating apps, is designed for engagement. The more profiles you see, the more you swipe. The more you swipe, the more likely you are to pay for boosts, upgrades, and visibility. If Tinder strictly filtered profiles to show only what users asked for, people might see fewer matches, especially if they’re in smaller dating pools like queer women. Less matches means less time spent swiping. From a business standpoint, keeping options wide — even if they’re wrong — keeps users hooked.
That said, this kind of speculation is only hypothetical. And I don’t think fixing this issue would shrink Tinder’s user base. In fact, it could do the opposite. If queer women actually felt safe and seen on Tinder, more would join — growing the dating pool for everyone and creating a more loyal, engaged user base. But to make this happen, Tinder would need to commit to a few simple, yet powerful changes.
First, match people based on both gender and sexual orientation — together. Right now, Tinder lets users select these categories, but they are clearly not being honoured. Adding a filter that allows LGBTQ+ users to screen for both criteria would go a long way toward preventing men pretending to be “straight women” from appearing in lesbian users’ feeds.
Second, make better use of the Explore page. For those who don’t know, Tinder has a feature that lets users join groups based on dating goals, interests, and identities, including groups for LGBTQ+ folks. The only problem: these groups are buried and underused. A simple fix would be to prompt LGBTQ+ users to join relevant groups when they sign up — a pop-up that invites queer women to join the “Lesbian” group, for example.
And finally, Tinder needs a way to report people who are gaming the system. When I tried to report the straight men showing up in my lesbian profile, the closest option was “fake profile, scammer, not one person.” There wasn’t even an “Other” box to explain what was going on. Adding a “misrepresentation” option would not only let users flag this problem, but also help Tinder identify patterns — and fix them.
The truth is, dating apps are a lifeline for many queer people. In a world that still makes it hard to find safe, real-life connections, apps like Tinder have become one of the only ways to meet partners. So when queer women are left unprotected on the app that’s supposed to be for everyone, it’s not just a tech problem. It’s a community problem.
Tinder’s website is filled with language about inclusion, diversity, and safe spaces. But when straight men can flood lesbian feeds with no way to stop them, those promises ring hollow.
I’m not asking Tinder to do anything revolutionary. I’m asking them to do the bare minimum: protect the people who use their platform. If Tinder really wants to be inclusive, then building tools that make queer women feel safe isn’t just an extra feature, it’s the least they can do.
And if Tinder takes that step, I can guarantee that queer women will notice, and they’ll finally feel like this app is made for them too.