Hunt's up: Why Unicorn Hunters on Queer Tinder should GTFO

21/5/2019

Issue 11, Semester 1, 2019

LARA

Editor's note: The version of this article published here on this site contains revisions, and differs to the version released in print on Tuesday 21 May 2019.

For those not in the know, “unicorn hunters” are straight couples who create Tinder profiles to look for women for threesomes, and they are increasingly omnipresent in the modern queer dating landscape. Even people from this very law school make these profiles! I have seen them with my own deeply homosexual eyes. Virtually every queer millennial woman I know is familiar with this phenomenon, and I have yet to meet one who isn’t deeply annoyed by it. But are queer women justified in our negative feelings towards these people? Or are we sex-negative prudes, NIMBYs of the lesbian-internet-dating-world, narrow-mindedly pooh-poohing the expansion of sexual diversity and exploration? Friends: let’s discuss.

For me, the unicorn-hunter phenomenon is irritating because queer women are a marginalised group, and spaces created specifically for us to meet each other are under pressure or non-existent as a result of the marginalisation we face. Straight people coming into the few spaces that we have for ourselves—like the women-looking-for-women section of Tinder—feels deeply disrespectful.

There are limited spaces for queer women to meet each other in meatspace. While we’re fortunate to have a variety of queer events in Melbourne, no full-time venues exist for us, nocturnal or otherwise. This stems in large part from the intersection of homophobia and sexism: queer women tend to earn much less than a lot of other people, including gay men, which means we have less money to create, maintain and support such spaces. (And this is without even considering how other factors, like race or disability, can further exacerbate marginalisation.) While there are other ways to meet queers, these are usually restricted to specific interests, like queer-friendly sports clubs or queer book clubs.

Meeting queers online, outside of apps, is possible—but, again, it’s limited. There are Instagram pages and Facebook groups for this purpose, although these are usually limited to niche sub-sections of LGBTQ+ community. The comment sections of queer media are also good places for meet-cutes, but the existence of such media is constantly under threat. Multiple queer publications have folded over the past few years, including The Toast and The Establishment, as a result of not being able to monetise, partially because of advertisers’ unwillingness to sponsor queer female media. If they haven’t folded yet, they’re constantly on the brink of it, like Autostraddle. Most other queer publications have been severely cut back, like INTO and AfterEllen; are primarily print-based media, which don’t create the same opportunity for interpersonal connection; or have no comments sections. (Comments sections are often eliminated because they take a lot of resources to maintain and, again, we’re an under-resourced community.)

Naturally, we sometimes meet people outside of these situations—we connect in non-queer spaces, our friends set us up with each other, we anonymously comment on De Minimis articles. But we are still marginalised, and we are still a minority, which makes serendipitous encounters a lot more rare and difficult. Spaces that enable queer-specific connections, like WLW Tinder, are extremely important. (Nota bene: yes, there are dating apps specifically for queer female dating but they tend to have much fewer people, as they’re less well-known.)

There are other reasons to dislike unicorn hunters, including the fact that they sometimes perpetuate the long tradition of viewing queer female sexuality as existing purely for male gratification. Film and TV often portray our sexuality as being titillating and salacious: a classic example of this is the marketing that promoted the music group T.A.T.u. The pervasive desire for FFM threesomes perpetuates this idea: it seems (from these couples’ Tinder bios) that these threesomes are sometimes pursued because the man would find it hot to watch his girlfriend hook up with another woman. This is not very nice for queer women! We exist in our own right, not for your viewing pleasure.

If nothing else, these profiles are annoying because they engage in what is essentially misleading and deceptive conduct. Their profiles list them as a ‘woman looking for women’; often, it’s the woman alone in the photos, or at least in the first few; or only the very last line of the profile mentions they’re a couple. All of these things create an impression that is extremely untrue! You are not a woman. You are a woman and a man. At the absolute very least you could be upfront about this.

Of course straight couples can have FFM threesomes; of course queer women can partake in them. But why do you have to take this space from us, when we have so little to begin with? Just use threesome apps instead (like Feeld or 3Somer), be respectful of everyone involved, and, in the words of this reputable publication’s Managing Editor, stay the hell off my lawn.

Lara is a Third Year JD Student.

Bi the way

21/5/2019 04:36:58 pm

This topic is one that makes me feel pretty torn, because I can see it from both sides. It also makes me feel super anxious because I worry that there is a suspicion of queer/bi/pan women in relationships with men or an assumption that they're doing their boyfriend/husband/partner's bidding rather than pursuing their own desires.

On the one hand, queer women are absolutely fetishised and seen to exist for heterosexual men's pleasure. I share your discomfort with heterosexual men feeling entitled to threesomes. On the other hand, some queer/bi/pan women in relationships with men (and women who may identify as straight but are nevertheless attracted to other women) want FFM threesomes. Women in relationships with men and queer women are overlapping (not mutually exclusive) categories. Queer/bi/pan men in relationships with women might also want various kinds of threesomes, including ones of the FFM variety. So the assumption that different-sex couples = straight people makes me super uncomfortable.

And even if a woman doesn't see herself as queer, she may have an attraction to other women that she can only imagine expressing through an FFM threesome because it is comparatively socially acceptable/normalised. I think it's common for our fantasies/attractions to be constrained by our overwhelmingly heteronormative socialisation.

Overall, I agree that people should be upfront, honest, and never feel entitled. But it's worth remembering that among the women in the 'straight' couples seeking FFM threesomes, there are almost certainly some queer/bi/pan women!

But thanks for raising the topic!

Ellie

21/5/2019 04:57:40 pm

Omg yes!!!! Thank you commenter!! This makes me feel so uncomfortable too as a very queer woman in a "straight appearing" relationship, I often feel judged as an outsider in queer spaces and it's so awful and anxiety inducing. I hate to think how this article would sound to queer women in straight appearing relationships who might be nervously dipping their toes in the queer lady world through threesomes with their boyfriends, as an agreed way to explore their queerness within the bounds of their relationship. I think that you can't really fairly write someone off as part of the shitty unicorn couples the author describes without the women expressly telling you that they're straight, which in my experience in these spaces often doesn't happen. Totally hear where the author is coming from, but I really feel uncomfortable about the snap judgements demonizing unicorns requires about the sexuality of the women involved - as if bi/pan/not "gold star" queer women don't already feel excluded enough from the queer community!!

Well said

21/5/2019 05:07:07 pm

Bisexual heteroamorous

https://www.elitedaily.com/dating/bisexual-but-heteroamorous/1132053

21/5/2019 05:07:16 pm

Thanks Ellie! It's kind of ironic that I'm fighting the bi/pan-visibility fight when I've never actually summoned up the courage to come out, but De Minimis' anonymous commenting policy is good for something I guess :)

Also, I remember being super annoyed at being propositioned for a FFM threesome (ironically when I pretty much saw myself as straight) because I unthinkingly assumed it was the man who was initiating it. In hindsight, I'm not so sure. I do totally get Lara's perspective and think it will lead to some thought-provoking discussion. So hugs to everyone <3

Lara

21/5/2019 05:55:36 pm

Hi!

Thank you both for your thoughtful and smart comments! This was actually an issue I was quite anxious about when writing this piece, and was something I discussed with a few different friends while writing it, so I’m really glad that you raised it and that we can discuss it. (An earlier draft of this article discussed this but I had to cut it out because of word count — which isn’t an excuse, I’m aware).

I really appreciate you emphasising the point that women in these couples are not always/necessarily queer, because that’s absolutely true. :) honestly, I don’t feel weird about referring to heterosexual couples as straight couples, because that’s …what they are. But I don’t think of the two people who form a straight couple as being straight people? I think I have one reference to straight people (instead of straight couples) in the article, so I apologise for that careless wording.

More broadly though, I think it’s still valid to be irritated at these couples, regardless of whether the woman is queer. My irritation doesn’t really stem from my perception of both of them as straight, but more from their collective presence as a heterosexual couple in a space that is not for them. And I think that’s different from, say, straight(-passing) couples being excluded at Pride (which is so mean! and not cool! ugh), because Pride is a space for everyone to express their queerness! Whereas WLW Tinder is specifically a place for queer women to meet other queer women to date, rather than a space for queer women to meet a-woman-and-a-man to date—again, regardless of whether those women in relationships with men are queer.

And I definitely am not assuming that women in these couples are just following their male partner’s bidding—I *have* seen multiple bios on tinder where the phrasing is very much along the lines of “this is a treat for my man” which obviously implies that line of thinking, and also I think the cultural context around queer female sexuality and FFM threesomes as being for male pleasure is so pervasive that it felt appropriate to include. But my intention was definitely not to imply that that’s the case for all couples! And I apologise if my wording created that impression.

21/5/2019 06:46:36 pm

Thanks for your response Lara! I'm loving the unusually respectful and kind de min comments vibe on here (how good are queers?)

I totally hear where you're coming from on your frustration about heterosexual couples being on WLW tinder - thanks for clarifying that it wasn't about the sexual orientation of the women. :)

However, I don't really agree with your comment that heterosexual couples are always necessarily straight couples. "Heterosexual" is obviously a technical term about the gender of people in a relationship so I think it's fair to descriptively call the unicorn relationships that, but I don't think that calling them "straight" is the same thing. To me, "straight" and "queer" are words that describe your orientation and identity and how you personally would describe your relationship. They're about experience and feeling and attraction and community and lots of other stuff. For example, if a hetero couple is made up of two pan-sexual people who met at a queer club, their social networks are all queer ppl and the majority of what they have in common is queer experience, then I think it's totally valid that they might technically be described as a "heterosexual couple" but that they might describe their relationship - not just their individual sexual orientations - as a queer relationship. So yeah, totally fair enough to call straight-appearing relationships "heterosexual," but I'm not so sure about calling them "straight" relationships.

21/5/2019 09:20:21 pm

@ Ellie:

I really like how you articulated the distinction between the labels of heterosexuality and straightness: that’s super interesting to me, and are things I had not fully thought of before. Thank you for sharing-- you're totally right!

21/5/2019 09:27:54 pm

Also, something not directly-directly relevant to this conversation, but worth noting generally that I didn't emphasise in this article, and that I'm happy to call myself out on, is -- another reason why it's important not to exclude straight-passing couples from queer spaces is that, in addition to their sexual identity being queer or not, one (or both!) of them might be gender-non-conforming or trans.

(That can look like many different things, including--one or both of the people are trans and have transitioned and are cis-passing; one or both of the people are cis-passing and identify as non-binary; and one or both of the people and identify as trans and have not transitioned.)

Btw

21/5/2019 10:58:35 pm

Thanks for all your thoughtful answers, Lara - you made some great points!

24/5/2019 11:02:42 am

@ BTW: I'm so happy + grateful that all the commenters have been so respectful and kind! it's so dreamy and lovely to be building a sweet little pocket of queer space right here in the de minimis comments section ✨

Bi the Bi

21/5/2019 04:58:31 pm

Thank you for a terrific article.
Obviously, spaces that enable queer-specific connections are extremely important, and shouldn’t be exploited or disrespected by others.

I agree also that the “misleading or deceptive conduct” engaged in by hetero-apppearing couples on Tinder is not on. I think largely the same could be said about lots of people on dating apps; being dishonest or otherwise misleading is really uncool, whether its about your relationship status, preparedness for commitment, whatever. (However, in considering the experience of trans people, I can imagine there are limits to/differing views on what level of transparency is appropriate when on dating apps.) But when it comes to couples on WLW tinder, I appreciate that what would otherwise be run of the mill dating app inconsiderateness rises to the level of being disrespectful to that important queer space and the people there.

Your article echoes the views expressed by Emma Lindsay in this Medium article: https://medium.com/@emmalindsay/fuck-all-you-straight-tinder-couples-looking-for-threesomes-922334a27de0

Rightly, both articles are critical of those couples who: are dishonest/misleading (as discussed above); use FFM experiences just to satisfy the M; who use FFM experiences to ‘spice things up’; who are otherwise behaving in a manner that is just the grossest reflection and manifestation of shitty fucking patriarchy.

Every FFM experience that is really a gross expression of patriarchy, and really a FMF in disguise, shouldn’t be happening. There’s no place for that on on WLW tinder, or anywhere. It disrespects the so-called ‘unicorns’, and, perhaps even more concerning, it must surely be disrespecting (or worse) the F in those FM relations.

I’m concerned though about what this article, and what much of the pervading sentiment about FFM sexual experiences (e.g. Lindsay’s article), impliedly says to bi women currently in straight relationships, and single bi women, on tinder. Your sexuality isn’t real? Your sexuality is really just defined by its relation to male gratification? Your sexuality really only exists to satisfy a male partner? I’m concerned that in expressing an important experience, this articles risks erasing the legitimacy and experiences of bi women.

I recognise that likely wasn’t the intention, and note that the use of ‘sometimes’ in the third-last-paragraph of the article leaves room for some inoffensive couples, and for the legitimacy of some bi women engaging in threesomes.

But you’ve acknowledged that platforms specifically for queer female dating are non-starters because they’re too underpopulated. The same is generally true for the threesome apps you insist bi women use. If those threesomes apps - like ones for queer female dating - are so underpopulated that they aren’t feasible platforms for bi women to express their sexuality, should bi women just be left with no feasible outlet to express their sexuality?

I wonder whether the middle ground that respects the importance of WLW tinder, and respects the legitimacy and experiences of bisexual women, is to permit their sexuality to exist alongside that of the diverse range of other people/genders and relationship/sexual preferences/desires on WLW tinder, but to insist on total transparency and honesty?

21/5/2019 06:08:42 pm

Hi! Thanks for your comment :)

Re: your first point about what the article impliedly says to bi women in straight relationships, and single bi women — I feel like I’ve answered this mostly in my response to the comment thread above this one, but do let me know if there are additional concerns you think I haven’t addressed.

Re: your second point about feasible platforms - this is a really good question! (I’m assuming that when you say “bi women”, you mean bi women in straight relationships, since I’ve generally used the term “queer women” instead of “lesbians” or “gay women”, and bi women fall under the umbrella term of queer women.) One of the articles I linked in this piece discusses allowing “couple” as an option on Tinder, which I think is a pretty neat solution: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/opinion/how-to-tinder.html

22/5/2019 12:10:30 am

Thanks for your considered response!
I think it would have been preferable to conclude the article with the proposal that tinder create a space for bi women in heterosexual relationships, rather than, as the headline suggests, the seemingly bi-erasive statement that bi women should “GTFO”.

GTFO to where? As mentioned previously, those other platforms you’ve recommended don’t accomodate bi-women (in couples or single), and therefore the article reads as impliedly saying bi-women in straight relationships should GTFO and go... nowhere. Since there’s currently nowhere else adequately populated for them to go.

Again, thanks for a thoughtful article and contributions to the comments. :)

Daniel

21/5/2019 06:00:53 pm

As with most things, I think this can be simply fixed by queering up the underlying establishment - in this case, Tinder.

Tinder have never been very keen to accommodate queer relationships in my mind, but an easy option could be for a 'Couples' category in accounts, so couples know they're matching with people interested in unicorning, willing unicorns get a sprinkling of couples among their usual matches, and people not interested in being a unicorn can avoid it altogether.

It's really important to ensure bi/pan/queer people are able to legitimately express their queerness in whatever way they wish so I echo some of the concerns above, but I definitely also sympathise with the wider themes of the article, re: the importance of queer women-specific spaces, and the de-queering of queer spaces more generally.

21/5/2019 06:09:05 pm

Yes love this idea Daniel!!

21/5/2019 06:13:57 pm

jajaja synchronicity! I didn't see this comment while I was replying to the one above.

Yes, I totally agree! I think Tinder could queer itself by moving away from the idea that all of its profiles are solo people looking for other solo people -- monogamy is a deeply heteronormative assumption, so.

Anon

21/5/2019 07:16:27 pm

I wonder why there is such a disparity in the sexuality pay gap between Australia and some of the other countries mentioned in the studies discussed in the link below. In the US, Germany, Canada and the UK it seems that queer women significantly out-earn their straight counterparts, whereas in Australia queer women earn approx. 28% less.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/gender-pay-gap-lesbian-premium/

Lizz

21/5/2019 08:19:11 pm

Not sure if I’m over-simplifying (please correct me if I am), but I agree with a lot of what was said in this article whilst also being cognisant of the fact that bi-erasure is real and queer women do need a safe space to dip their toes in etc etc.

So here’s my solution: create the couple profile from the man’s account, ergo it will be seen by other bi women or women who are interested in a threesome but won’t invade the space of WLW who have no interest in cishet men, may experience trauma around sex w men & don’t want to see men when safely perusing women etc etc. I think that’s my main annoyance — cishet men taking up space and feeling entitled to be there

21/5/2019 08:35:50 pm

Yes love that idea Lizz! 💗

21/5/2019 08:48:54 pm

ooooooof, yes! thanks for articulating that annoyance so well - "cishet men taking up space and feeling entitled to be there".

and your suggestion is really good!

21/5/2019 08:57:00 pm

oops, that published before i finished writing it, but basically - your suggestion is really good! anecdotally i hear from my straight female friends that those profiles are a lot less common in their tinder experiences (although to be fair, the pool of str8 dudes is a lot bigger than the pool of queer women) so, yes, a suggestion worth taking up while we wait for tinder to queer its underlying structure

Question

21/5/2019 11:25:06 pm

This is an interesting suggestion! I’m worried a male-account couple profile risks disempowering the female in the relationship, and might only encourage the toxic, male-led, unicorn hunting couples?
And have we avoided the bi erasure when we’ve said the F in the FM shouldn’t take charge of a Tinder account? Or that she has to hide behind her man’s account?

22/5/2019 02:09:52 pm

Not sure if having the couple account exist on the male profile would disempower women. In both scenarios, there’s a couple messaging people as a unit. The only difference is that with one option, gay women who have no interest in men and want a safe space are able to filter out the profile by gender. The woman in the relationship could still be in charge of the account, and handle all the interactions, still have autonomy, still have the app on her phone etc. but would have to use a profile labeled as male — a profile that’d still be accessible to bi women. And of course, women would still be free to use their own female-identifying profile if that wanted to have a same-sex only experience etc.

Obviously the ideal solution would just be for tinder to introduce a ‘couple’s profile’ option - but until then!

23/5/2019 08:36:25 pm

Hey! Thanks for your considered response.
Generally I’m still apprehensive.
What would be the recommendation for a “straight appearing” couple, with a bi woman, and a trans man? Are they allowed on WLW tinder? Or are they relegated/segregated to MLW tinder?

Or... could everybody just cultivate more tolerance, and less GTFO-ishness?

24/5/2019 10:53:07 am

@ QUESTION: that's a really interesting question, and it touches on another point that I would have liked to bring up in this article. I’m glad you raised it :)

Something I struggled a lot with while writing this was the very binary language I was using—I personally identify as non-binary, and usually date other people who are also along the gender-non-conforming spectrum. But also there were only so many things I could touch on in one, relatively short, piece (and my primary audience was the het couples using tinder, not other queers, so I was trying to keep my language relatively simple and accessible rather than using lots of queer-hivemind-specific lingo). So: yay!!, I get to talk about them now instead.

Broadly, one of the (many, many) ways in which Tinder fails us is that it has relatively limited gender options—while you can choose whatever gender identity label you want, you still have to choose if you want to come up in the matches for people looking for men or for women, so it ultimately functions on a binary basis. A lot of people choose to come up in the WLW stacks, despite not identifying as women, because there are only two options and they don’t want to come up in the stacks for men. I limited the scope of my article to the experiences of queer women on tinder, but there are a lot of other gender-diverse people on there as well, who may have similar or overlapping experiences.

I’ve seen a lot of trans men and transmasculine people who come up in the WLW tinder stacks, which to me seems totally valid—there are so many reasons why they might prefer that category, within the context of the very binary and limited structure that Tinder offers. For example: I know a lot of queers who are open to dating most genders except for cis men, and there’s no filter that allows you to see everyone except cis dudes. So, in practice, it seems like cis men choose to be filtered in the “men” stacks, while literally everyone else tends to choose to be filtered into the “women” stacks. It’s deeply imperfect, but it’s the way it currently works. Also, there are a lot of (although obviously not all, etc) trans men who don’t identify only as being a man in a strictly binary sense, but identify as that along with being non-binary, and so they might feel more comfortable in the WLW stacks for that reason.

Given that, I do not think it would be an issue for a bi woman/trans man couple to use WLW Tinder, because none of the arguments I raised in my article apply to them — (1) a couple like that is similarly impacted by the decreases in queer space (since trans people are part of the queer community); (2) the fetishisation of queer female sexuality/FFM threesomes is something deeply rooted in hegemonic cisgender masculinity; (3) given the informal norms around how queers use WLW tinder (i.e. WLW tinder is for everyone except for cis men), it’s not really ~misleading and deceptive~ in the same way.

I do appreciate where you’re coming from with your “more tolerance/less GTFO-ishness” position, but I also feel that against the backdrop of everything outlined in the article—the double marginalisation of queer women leading to a lack of queer spaces, the fetishisation of queer female sexuality and FFM threesomes, the fact that it’s a man + a woman rather just a woman, etc—I have a lot of hesitation about an automatic blanket position of total tolerance for all profiles all the time. I kind of disagree with what you seem to be implying of “this is all too complicated so let’s just accept everyone all the time”, because I think there are other solutions out there that are worth taking the time and effort to figure out (or at the very least consider and discuss, as we are doing so cutely and kindly in this comments section!), given the context this phenomenon is taking place in.

PS: I’m not necessarily saying that you’re saying this, but the phrasing in your comment isn’t super clear, so just to clarify: trans men are men! So, a bi woman and a trans man can identify as a heterosexual couple (although potentially not a "straight" one, as per Ellie's discussion of the het/str8 distinction above).

PPS: if there are any trans man/bi woman couples out there looking for a third, hmu xoxoxox

24/5/2019 10:57:34 am

re: "my primary audience was the het couples using tinder, not other queers" -- not that the two are exclusive, obvi (!!)

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Hunt's up: Why Unicorn Hunters on Queer Tinder should GTFO

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