It's a cool Saturday night in my East Village apartment, and Alok Vaid-Menon has just created a Tinder account for me, while Jacob Tobia bats their eyelashes in the background.
Alok and Jacob are two of the most publicly visible gender nonconforming femmes I know. As a performance poet, Alok has just gone solo after touring in dozens of cities in the US and abroad as one half of the poetry duo Darkmatter. Jacob was named to 2016's OUT 100, has made a web series for NBC, and been the subject of a GLAAD-nominated episode of MTV's True Life. Both are trans-identified, but belong somewhere in between genders.... They've become celebrities in their own right, with Jacob regularly walking down the red carpet at LGBTQ galas and Alok featuring in the Janet Mock–narrated HBO documentary The Trans List.
But if you think all that would land them a date, you'd be wrong. And nobody is more puzzled than me as to why such obvious catches are having dating problems when so many clamor for their attention.
It's a reliable source of ennui in our group chats, and as the elder among my nonbinary pals, I've been giving Jacob and Alok dating advice for weeks. Trans dating is tricky, because you have to deal with prejudice on top of all the usual insecurities around wanting to be as attractive as possible for a potential mate. Dating among nonbinary femmes is even trickier, as the vast majority of people, even queer ones, imagine themselves as dating men or women exclusively, so nonbinary folks can complicate how others view one's sexuality....
I'm partnered and not really looking, but since my relationship isn't exclusive, Alok and Jacob convinced me to open a Tinder account so I could demonstrate IRL the maneuvers I'd long touted. I intended to show them something I've learned over time—that if you treat being trans like it's a source of shame, then that's how your date will feel, too....
Instead, what I learned during the social experiment that followed is that Jacob and Alok, like many gender nonconforming femmes, live in a world where admirers applaud them for their radical politics on social media, and people they're attracted to associate with them because of their slayworthiness and social capital, but refuse to make love to them....
As Alok set up my Tinder account, I became confused when they asked whether I wanted to set my gender as "man" or "woman." This all happened in those dark days of autumn 2016, before Tinder added 37 new gender options to the app. Since I'm on the femme side of nonbinary, I thought it would be obvious that I wouldn't label myself a man. Alok then added pictures of me from Facebook. In each of them, I was androgynous and without makeup—except for one...
"OMG, I'm going to switch my gender to 'woman' too so I can look at straight guys!" Alok exclaimed as they picked up their phone, and Jacob followed suit. I'd vaguely known that most of their prospects had been gay-identified men, but it didn't even occur to me that if given only two gender choices, they would need to pick "man" on Tinder so they would get gay instead of straight matches, along with the rare bi and pan guys.
I personally felt that dating straight-identified men was the right choice. My experience has been that straight guys are more willing to experiment with GNC folk than gay guys, because their attractions aren't as socially defined and don't come with a lifestyle attached. Also, there are a lot more of them. This was my experience, anyway.
"Straight boys are soooo cuuuute," Alok said as they and Jacob started swiping, their exaggerated intonation managing to feel both sincere and ironic. "Maybe we should get electrolysis and take hormones," Jacob added in jest, perking up at the bevy of new options.