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Hook up app Grindr has removed its ‘ethnicity filter’

Fluffybiscuits writes:

Grindr yesterday announced it would remove an ethnicity filter from their app. Is it racist to be not attracted to certain ethnicities or have a preference for a particular ethnicity or are we over thinking this and attraction is just attraction?

Anyone?

Grindr dating app removes ethnicity filter to support Black Lives Matter (The Guardian)

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28 thoughts on “Ask A Broadsheet Reader

  1. Clampers Outside

    No Fluffy, having personal preferences is not racist, no more than having a preference for height or body type would be.

    This is Orwellian thought policing likely derived from some marketing knobs ridiculous desire to virtue signal.

    I say again, sexual desire preferences are not racist, no.

    1. george

      Poor reading of the situation. Grindr aren’t forcing anyone to be attracted to anyone else. They are just deciding not to provide a feature in their privately owned app that allows automated selection based on race. That brings it into line with just about every other app in the world.

      1. Clampers Outside

        I hear you, but you seem to have missed that I was answering the question posed, not addressing the technical aspects of selection in dating app(s).

        1. Clampers Outside

          I’d like to correct that, I did address the app bit in the middle there… Head like a sieve.

          Point taken George, my bad…

          (I miss using a PC instead of a phone for commenting)

      2. Rob_G

        In the interests of equality, all apps should get rid of the age selection also, in the interests of combating ageism – surely it’s not right that girls in their early 20s would discount men in their 70s from their pool of potential dating partners purely on the basis of age?

  2. class wario

    Yes, it’s pretty suspect at best and racist at worst to exclude entire races of people on the basis of blanket finding them unattractive. I honestly struggle to get my head around it. There is absolutely a lot of racism in dating apps of all types, though, so I don’t think this will curb it.

    1. Rob_G

      Hardly – some people like short people, some people like tall people. Some people like blondes, some like bearded, some like black, some like black and white, but not especially asian, etc.

      For example, some people exclude an entire gender, a full 50% of the world’s population from their sexual preferences; if you were bring this to its logical conclusion, there would be no separate categories for men or women, everyone would just have to spend time swiping through a load of members of a gender that they have no desire to sleep with.

      1. class wario

        This is a very disingenuous comparison. Sexual orientation has never been defined by reference to race. If somebody tried to self-identity as caucasexual you could probably deride them as a loony SJW or whatever. Until that is established as thing, this gotcha falls at the first hurdle.

        If you think an entire race of people are collectively unattractive, you likely have some sort of conscious or unconscious racial bias.

        1. Rob_G

          You are really making a mountain out of a molehill; if someone had a significant preference for either blondes or redheads, that would by-and-large rule out people who don’t have fair skin.

          Maybe someone could enjoy United Colors of Benetton-style orgies with all races of the world, but on one particular occasion wanted some blonde, herrenvolk-looking partner of an evening; if Grindr possesses the technology to filter for these preferences, but decided to withhold it in some empty virtue-signalling gesture, it strikes me as stupid.

          Do you think dyed-in-the-wool racist gays are going to start having bridge-building hook-ups with black guys, just because Grindr cleverly removed the ‘race’ field from their search tool?

  3. Janet, I ate my avatar

    personally I do have a few basic preferences, isn’t the whole point of this app so that you can narrow it down out of what’s on offer do to speak, hearts in the right place but we are not talking personality here it’s initially a physical attraction isn’t it ? Call me old fashioned,
    I’m gonna get shot here, but I am not interested in someone who is very physically unfit for example or frekles, while I find attractive on ladies on men they aren’t my cup of tea,
    anyway to a certain extent we all have a set of preferences

    1. Paulus

      Janet passes on men who are freckled!
      She might find it’s her turn to get heckled.
      Just to reciprocate
      There are men who won’t date
      Any woman who’d leave them hen-peckled.

      1. Bertie Theodore Alphege Blenkinsop

        At the risk of perhaps sounding silly,
        I have a type and it’s Millie,
        She’s my internet wife,
        And the love of my life,
        And i don’t give my heart willy-nilly.

      2. Janet, I ate my avatar

        :)
        some lads don’t do blonds with long noses,
        who having runners toes,
        try as she might, they just won’t bite,
        her dangling string of proposals…

        I’m no poet

        1. Paulus

          Ah there’s nothing wrong with your poetry, it’s just that the limerick has its own specific form. Not as rigid as a haiku…but not far behind.

  4. SOQ

    This is just silly- why not go the whole hog and remove age limits and height or weight? And, I am not sure how it rolls in the US but here, black lads have a ball (or two). And, nobody throws the toys out of the pram if a black guy says black only or occasionally, white only- like wise Asians.

    But the one group I would filter the hell out of myself is pre-op trans men. Yes that is right, heterosexual young women who identify was gay men are now on Grindr- who then take offence when their offers are declined. Well duh- genital preference is NOT transphobic.

    1. Clampers Outside

      This is not right-on! So I’m sure Nigel will take issue with your… your… your… mean spirited transphobia!

      s/

      Must be some laugh… I can hear the screams… “validate my feelz!”

  5. scottser

    i’m getting a lot of ads on here for dating arab women. i had no idea the internet thought i was that flathúlach.

  6. Scundered

    Well, there you have it, identity politics says you have to be sexually attracted equally now, is there anyone who still thinks identity politics is a good idea? It’s attractive on the surface but a can of worms in disguise.

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