Dating apps, while intended to be fun and positive, can be perilous spaces for marginalised groups.
Transgender people particularly, who may feel they have few options when it comes to online dating, are often subject to abuse.
So one app hopes to censor out transphobic messages.
Butterfly, started by engineer David Ronald Minns, is the app with a new auto-correction tool within messages that stops offensive terms being used.
David, 46, wanted to educate cisgender people about the ways they can be rude without meaning to.
After working on developing dating websites and apps for 13 years, David wanted to serve an underrepresented group when it comes to dating.
‘It wasn’t sufficient to simply add transgender as a gender option,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Trans people on other dating apps either have to send a lot of messages and expect high rejection rates or sit back and wait to be contacted, either scenario is far from ideal.
‘On Butterfly, transgender folk can take the lead.’
Butterfly was launched in October 2019 and currently has 45,471 users.
All genders and sexualities can use the app and anyone who is interested in a relationship with a transgender person is welcome.
It is possible that two cisgender people end up in a relationship but the majority of romantically connected couples tend to be with a transgender person.
Users can select from a comprehensive array of gender definitions and sexuality options.
These are not constrained, allowing users to select any combination that they feel defines them.
Users can change these at any time too.
David adds: ‘This freedom of gender identity adds complexity to search which went through many design iterations.
‘Users can select every gender of interest for potential matches and once set, can pick other preferences such as distance away, age and activity.’
The engineer wanted to create a space where users can feel comfortable that they would not be exposed to triggering language.
He’s even written an open letter to Apple and Google as he says that some of the apps in their stores use transphobic language.
You can read it and learn more about it on his Linkedin page.
We have contacted Apple and Google and will update this article if they respond.
MORE: Woman tells date she’s transgender and he assures her it doesn’t matter
MORE: Is facial recognition software transphobic? Controversial tech ‘has a gender problem’
source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/03/transgender-dating-app-butterfly-autocorrects-transphobic-language-12153772/
0 Comments