Oh Gay Cupid! True Life: I’m an Equal Opportunity Makeout Artist | Autostraddle

This is

Oh Gay Cupid!

Autostraddle’s OkCupid show. We get plenty concerns on Formspring concerning online dating sites, so we ultimately had gotten a number of people with each other to share it.


While OkCupid is not the only online dating site for queers, and maybe isn’t really also the most readily useful, it does seem to be one we utilize most often. We’re going to be talking about everything OkC, including meeting pals, very first times, users, fuck-ups, letdowns and more. Though it’s the ‘OkCupid Series,’ the recommendations given in this collection can potentially be employed to almost any online dating site.

Oh Gay Cupid! pictures by
Rory Midhani

Whenever filling in my OKCupid profile, I becamen’t exactly sure the thing I needed. I understood that I happened to be painfully timid about meeting strangers, and this I wanted to force my self to step outside my comfort zone a little bit. I opted “bisexual” as my personal intimate direction since there were merely three options, and therefore was the nearest i really could arrived at explaining our inclination.
Although occasionally the pendulum swings one way or any other
, Im generally speaking ready to accept meeting individuals of any sex, provided that they can be smart and sincere. We ensured to note just as much in my profile.  As perfectly obvious, Really don’t always contribute to the notion that gender is digital, nor have I found that the multitude of terms regularly describe some body with my predilections — “bisexual,” “pansexual,” “gender-blind,” even catch-all “queer” — ever actually felt like words that fit me completely. Nevertheless, I was bashful and solitary plus in the business to visit for some embarrassing products with foxy strangers, thus I clicked the box that made many sense and shifted with my life.

So far as online dating sites, OKCupid is absolutely probably the most bi friends of the major leaguers regarding the manner in which you’re allowed to define your self. A lot of the bigger sites disappointingly is only going to allow people to record by themselves as looking for solely men or women, that may be inconvenient, insulting and annoying (really JDate, my Jewish grandma is quite dissatisfied in you). Undoubtedly, OKCupid’s users identify throughout the map with respect to sex identity and sexual positioning, but it is energizing for a recognizable area between homosexual and directly to also occur in. I can’t believe its taken this long for ONE site to offer this easy choice.

Just what does it indicate to list your self as bisexual on OKCupid? Really, for beginners you are probably going to get some emails from weird guys just who believe you are a novelty, and this messaging the

craaaaazy

, free-spirited self may be the initial step to writing their particular letter to Penthouse. As flattering as it’s as fetishized by random creepsters (read: not so), those communications are really easy to weed out and disregard. Additionally, when this extends to end up being extreme it is very likely to change your OKC options so you can cover your own profile from straight men and women.

Based on
this very strange post on OKTrends
from 2010, although about 12% of females under 35 on OKCupid were listed as bisexual, a surprisingly tiny portion of the women were positively messaging men and women on the site. Whilst works out, approximately 80% of surveyed customers messaged either women or men specifically. The somewhat confusing graph below seems to declare that younger bisexual-identifying women can be very likely to address men and women, even though this behavior seems to drop as we grow old. OKTrends theorized this data generally seems to declare that bisexuality is actually a farce — “that bisexuality is usually either a hedge for homosexual people or a label followed by straights to seem a lot more intimately adventurous with their (straight) fits.”  This realization rests in assumption that most people noted as bisexual on OKCupid are trying to find associates predicated on an equal destination to men and women, and that is certainly not precise — this is why the Kinsey size is out there.  OKTrends’ reason looks tricky at the best. Even though data presented is actually surprising, the actual restricting language accessible to describe an individual’s intimate fluidity on OKCupid causes it to be tough to assess any type of reliability.

Directly, I happened to be on the website because I would found turning through users far less challenging than fulfilling visitors at a bar. I understand exactly what my type is up to a certain point, but I’m positively awful at nearing folks in individual (sober). I messaged with plus outdated a couple of dudes off the site, but had great difficulty locating some one with who We thought a proper link (genuine story: I broke things down with a very sweet, well-read graphic designer because after a few weeks it had been painfully clear that just thing we undoubtedly had in accordance was actually a mutual passion for

The Muppets Simply Take Manhattan

). I can’t state I went in interested in one gender over another, but I did have a much easier time locating women just who felt up my personal alley.

Over the years, I’ve maintained a love-hate union with my OKCupid profile, occasionally abandoning it as I was in a monogamous union or believed overrun by fulfilling complete strangers off of the internet. Sometimes it is tough to measure the chemistry you will have with another individual by simply reading a list of their own favorite foods and films. That said, I happened to be fulfilled repeatedly with communications from a certain pair of folks I realized for a well known fact I happened to be

not

looking: partners.

First of all, I’m 100per cent extremely OK with threesomes and sometimes even triad interactions — they can be fun. I completed both once or twice and that can really point out that when they had been good they certainly were the

most

beautiful, nevertheless when they were bad, had been volatile and harmful. While I applaud those people who are able to make most of these arrangements work, I’ve chosen after lots of crying/feelings/therapy that the is an activity personally don’t want to follow. I said as much in the bottom of my personal profile — “For the last drilling time, my sexual orientation does not mean I would like to end up being your ‘third.'” It’s maybe not ceased numerous variations on HotCoupleForU69 giving me personally messages precisely how such-and-such’s girlfriend believes i am cute and would I like to come over for a container of drink sometime? This weirds me out each time, especially since these people Im presumably supposed to be connecting with in somehow have demonstrably NOT taken the time to see my personal profile to see the thing I was emphatically uncomfortable with.  From the things I’ve heard from buddies, this is super-common for many ladies noted as bisexual across-the-board, in fact it is a strange and kind of unpleasant phenomenon.

There’s undoubtedly a stigma encompassing bisexual and otherwise-inclined women within lesbian area, though I can’t say that I experienced it myself personally in relation to online dating sites.  Regrettably, becoming the same chance makeout singer includes some disturbing myths – that people’re faking it for interest, that we’re actually gay or straight and just haven’t selected a side however, that individuals’re slutty, we’re incompetent at monogamy, that we’ll undoubtedly leave our very own sweetheart for a boy or the other way around, that people are all insatiable, money grubbing, sex-crazed lunatics. As far as I can tell, the easiest way to disprove that thought is to… not be that. And I also mean, if you

tend to be

one or all those situations, analysis partner(s) a favor and be mega-up front side about any of it.

Online is full of weirdos, and presently once you list yourself as bisexual you are in essence signing your self as much as satisfy twice as a lot of those weirdos. Although OKCupid’s system certainly is not great, its nourishing observe at least one dating site notice that a grey location between directly and homosexual does exist — which some people are lookin’ for lovable visitors.