Dating websites are a fascinating example of technology mediating an intimate area of our lives. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2010 20% of all heterosexual couples and 60% of all same-sex couples met online. In this blog, I’ve done a review of a number of major dating sites and I’d like to point out a common “oversight” which may serve as an example of how values get encoded in technology. Namely, it is very difficult to be bisexual on a dating site.
Only one of these popular dating websites acknowledges bisexuality.
A bisexual woman (for example) might be interested in one of the following combinations of gender (the binary representation of gender is also a design decision, but I won’t discuss that in this post) and orientation: a lesbian woman, a straight man, a bisexual woman, or a bisexual man. However, Match.com, eHarmony, Chemistry.com, Plenty of Fish, and Lavalife all share one common characteristic — one can only “seek” one gender at a time! In other words, as a bisexual woman, you have to choose to either look for lesbian/bi women or for straight/bi men, excluding half of the relevant combinations. There is a website targeted explicitly to bisexual people, called bicupid.com, but this site only allows you to search for other bisexual individuals (again, excluding half of the relevant combinations). I would also like to point out that even just the front page of bicupid.com perpetuates a number of stereotypes of bisexual people, particularly that they are not interested in having a serious relationship with one person.
This website only allows searching for other bisexual partners and seems to perpetuate some popular myths about bisexuality.
The only popular dating website that acknowledges bisexuality is okcupid.com, which lets you specify that the seeker is “bisexual.” This may not be surprising, since okcupid has always been fairly progressive thinking and interested in ideas of orientation, gender, etc. However, selecting “I am bisexual” also highlights the option “I do not want to be seen by straight people.” This option is presumably there to prevent accidentally coming out to anybody who is not queer, but may not be relevant to bisexuals, who may in fact be considering straight partners. From personal experience, it might be more relevant to also provide an option “I do not want to be seen by people who are currently in a couple.” But, I don’t really want to get too far into implications for design here…
Why is this actually important? It’s not really about finding a date. Websites that exclude same-sex couples have gotten negative press, but as far as I know, nobody has raised a cry about the lack of support for bisexuality. This is an example of something called “bisexual erasure,” which is “the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality in history, academia, news media and other primary sources.” This is just another way of marginalizing people and is one that is practiced by both the heterosexual and the LGBT community. Now, it is explicitly encoded in the design of the vast majority of popular dating websites, and that’s not cool.
Annoyingly, most people I know who have tried online dating get the impression that OKCupid members are more interested in hook-ups (as opposed to long-term relationships) than on other sites–perhaps because OKCupid is free. It’s a conspiracy to screw over bi people!
I get the impression from some bi women that the “I do not want to be seen by straight people” option is helpful not because they want to avoid coming out, but because they find that the straight men on OKCupid just aren’t that appealing. In a lot of cases, they’re either looking to cheat (and think that bisexual women would for some reason be more okay with that) or they’re only looking to set up an M-F-F encounter. Bi men understand bisexuality without stereotyping it.
I agree with you about that perception of OKCupid. And extra agree with what I call “the threesome” problem with declaring bisexuality on that site. I had a lot of that, but I wouldn’t want to rule out all straight men based on the behavior of a few. The majority of straight men on OKCupid who contacted me were not looking to cheat or start a threesome.
OkCupid also has the best designed homepage of all those sites. Five or fewer decisions/clicks before you move on. The other sites think they’re making it “easy” by using drop-downs, but there are so many decisions. OkCupid shows again that by consciously being inclusive you can improve the experience for everyone.
Yes, it’s funny that it is both the best and the cheapest (free) site and yet people hesitate to use it because of its “hookup”-based reputation. I wonder if that reputation if going to change as the population that uses okcupid gets older?
According to OKCupid’s blogs, women in their thirties are actually more into hookups than younger women.
I’m not arguing either way, but OKCupid’s blogs (as well as this blog post, honestly) are fairly outdated at this point. I also don’t have anything against hookups, if that’s what people are looking for.
Also, transferring discussion from Facebook:
Nick Black: probably because it’s too small a market to be profitable considering the developer investment required?
Lana Yarosh: I don’t think that it would actually require considerable development. I think it would require very few lines of code. The systems are already built to only recommend people that are interested in you (e.g., it won’t recommend gay men to straight women). It’s really just the matter of adding an extra drop down choice (“seeking either”) and a couple of if statements.
Nick Black: what development experience do you base that on?
Nick Black: I mean I’m sure these companies have studied the question from a cost to benefits perspective. it’s not like they’re unaware of the e,xistence of bisexuals. i’d like a service that limited itself to me and big-breasted girls with professional degrees and tall shoes. alas, it is in no one’s interest to provide it. same with bisexuals, it would appear.
Lana Yarosh: What experience of how dating sites study questions of costs/benefits do you base that on?
Jill Dimond: Love this post Lana!
Lana Yarosh: Thanks, Jill 🙂
Jenay Beer: Good post!
Melanie St. Ours: yes. yes. yes.
Laura White: Very true. And of course beyond that, the simple math on the pool of available same vs opposite sex partners interested in dating bi men or women makes bisexual visibility an inside-the-tent problem, too…
ur gay lol
I was going to spam this comment, but I think it’s nice to leave things like this up as evidence.
This is FASCINATING as it indicates something that I recently heard that Match.com claims …. that they function according to ” their definition of the person’s relationship” and of “what is an acceptable relationship” …
This is what makes me the most mad about Plenty of fish. I find the quality of people on there to be better, but I can’t list my sexual orientation anywhere, so men assume I’m straight, and women I message assume I’m gay. I’d love to say I’m looking for both, not just one or the other.
Thanks for you comment. I agree, it’s not just a small inconvenience. It can be a big problem for people like us!
Adding this excellent report from the SF HRC to the discussion: http://sf-hrc.org/sites/sf-hrc.org/files/migrated/FileCenter/Documents/HRC_Publications/Articles/Bisexual_Invisiblity_Impacts_and_Recommendations_March_2011.pdf
Hi Lana, I have used Bicupid for some time and I like their site though it is not of top quality it serves my purpose. Hope it helps others.
Plenty Of Fish looks from it’s screen shot like it was letting you search for ‘Anything’.
It lets you search for “Anything” in terms of intent, type of relationship, etc. But the “Seeking a” menu was hard-coded to “Male” and “Female.”
So okcupid is a better site than bicupid is okcupid a real website I’m trying to find out which is real and which is the best one for my bucks
Even there are many people can’t accept our exist, we are very happy to enjoy the bisexual life, and we can go out with our bisexual friends who we met by some bisexual dating sites, such as http://www.bicoupledating.com, I think it’s a happy thing! How about you?
i think so. we are new and we serched online for the best bisexual dating websites. and find some http://www.bisexualdatingwebsites.us/. gonna try one
Hi Lana, fantastic job on your site, fantastic job on the comments, wish you all the best in life, I was inspired reading your replies to comments. Thanks, Ben.