Traswomen shouldnt be allowed on her dating app

Pretending to be someone you're not with the aid of the anonymous mask of the internet is nothing new. For as long as we've been plugged into the world wide web, people have been obscuring their true identities for a variety of purposes; from hacking and scamming to trolling and pranking. But what about using the internet to try and get close to a section of society who aren't romantically or sexually interested in not just you, but your entire gender, is a decidedly strange one.

Yet this is something Robyn Exton and Emily Moulder deal with every day. They're part of the three woman team, including front-end developer Vesna Planko, behind Dattch, a dating app designed to cater for lesbian, bisexual and bi-curious women. CEO Robyn founded Dattch in 2012 after working for several years at a branding agency, where one of her clients was one of the largest dating businesses. Inspired by the plight of a friend who'd dumped her girlfriend and was depressed at the notion of finding a new partner in a club, Robyn came to the conclusion dating sites in their current form were "pretty shit for women".

The Dattch team: Robyn Exton, Vesna Planko and

“Dating is a very male-led space, and tech is a very male-led space. When the two come together, it’s not intentional, it’s just inherent," she says. "Something we realised very early on when we were testing the app in private beta was that women aren't interested in being alerted to the nearest person nearby also using the app. It’s just the differences in how men and women behave; for guys it’s great because they’re happy to take that risk a lot quicker and say ‘Fine, let’s meet up’. Women just don't ever do it that way."

The app features Pinterest-style image boards to indicate the user's interests, such as cats, their dream holiday or the book they're currently reading. It's a step away from the linear section format favoured by other popular apps like OKCupid, when users are given the option to list their interests under favourite films, books, TV programmes etc. Community manager Emily says Dattch chose a visual-heavy approach to inspire more creative, engaging female-friendly profiles. “On traditional sites people will always put the same things - going out clubbing, going to the cinema, reading books’ - if you put a picture of the book you’re reading, it's much easier to click instantly whether you’ll get along. It’s more proof."

The pair felt traditional dating apps and sites weren't catering for women and the way the female mind prefers to digest information, and researched editorial, fashion and travel sites to create the app they felt best reflected the female user journey. “It’s much easier to upload a picture than write about yourself - we think you can get a better sense of looking at someone’s Instagram feed than reading about them. You can digest it in a matter of seconds," adds Robyn.

Another mainstay of the conventional dating app, the user name, has also been done away with. “To us, having a user name on a dating site makes no sense," says Robyn. "You’re not hotchick123, you’re Sarah and we’re going to meet up in a couple of days, so you may as well be upfront about what your name is!"
Given the internet's shady past in anonymity and identity obscurity, she places great importance in grounding the app in a sense of reality.
"Having a username is on a basic level an illusion, and a dating app is supposed to be about meeting people, so you have to be yourself."

Women are obviously the driving force behind and the target market for Dattch, but it's not just females who attempt to sign up. Robyn and Emily receive an average of three to five applications a day from men seeking to meet lesbian women. "There are two ways males approach joining," Robyn explains. "The first is they’re obviously a man and upload pictures of themselves, obviously male, wanting to meet lesbians. Then you get those uploading pictures of women to create fake profiles, and then when we do our checks we’ll find out they’re actually Dave from Birmingham."

Due to the lesbian and bi audience, the pair take the user verification process extremely seriously. Users are required to verify their identity through either sharing their Facebook profile, email address, or agreeing to speak over the phone. "When someone comes through the system they’ll receive a message saying you can either give us your number and we’ll call you, or you can send us a private message on Facebook. Although that doesn’t sync with your account, we’ll be able to see if you look legit or not. The men who are obviously men will fail that test, and some will fall off the system and we'll never hear from them again."

Some of the men attempting to join Dattch are more obvious than others

Dattch also check supplied email addresses against a third-party supplied data base to see if it's been used to create accounts elsewhere on Twitter, LinkedIn or Foursquare and provide a likelihood of the user being a real person, and also a woman. There is, Robyn concedes, an amount of human judgement made over who they let join, but the team are more likely to err on the side of caution rather than acceptance.

“Whenever I call someone who’s emailed through their number, they always tell me ‘I’m really glad you do this, it makes me feel a lot more safe online’", says Emily. "When you think back to how many dates you’ve had on OKCupid or Plenty of Fish or wherever, unless you’ve made the effort to speak to them on the phone or SnapChat them or whatever, you have no faith in OKCupid’s ability to say ‘That’s not a real person, that’s not a man or a woman’. I feel a lot safer, when I first signed up to Dattch as a user before I joined the team, Robyn validated me and it made me realise ‘Oh, how unsafe have I actually been? How reckless may I have been with my online safety’, I hadn’t thought about that."

“I don’t doubt some bad eggs will break through the system; there are ways to do it if they try hard enough. But I think we give it the most attention out of anyone out there to try and minimise as much as possible the amount of men who do come through," says Robyn. "We shouldn’t have to waste our time looking at these men’s profiles, because it is a waste of time and it’s frustrating. But there are these idiots who persist in doing it. After Emily rang one man, he rang back and asked if she wanted to go on a date. She's a lesbian!"

There is however a blurred line when it comes to transgender users, acknowledges Robyn. "When we call, we ask ‘do you identify as male or female?’, because transgender women are welcome on the app. But the guys who try and apply aren’t smart enough to register as transgender. If someone has failed Facebook, they might identify as female and that’s when we need to have a conversation with them to understand that. Many men will say they identify as male, leaving us to say ‘When did you realise you were a lesbian then?’"

The app is undoubtedly a valuable tool for the lesbian and bi community, created by women for women to meet women (phew) in a safe and straightforward way. A man who recently created an online dating profile as a woman on OKCupid as an experiment to see if it was easier to attract dates as a woman said he was shocked by the crude and "needlessly sexual" messages he received. Given the efforts the Dattch team go to to keep their user base as relevant as possible, the sooner the men trying to infiltrate it get the message the better. It is Valentine's Day, after all.

Phonecalls the Dattch team have had screened from men

Robyn: Hi this is Robyn from Dattch calling to confirm your account registration. Is now a good time to talk?

Voice1: Yeah now’s fine.

Robyn: OK, great, we just a have a few standard questions to get you verified. Do you identify as male or female?

Voice1: I identify as male.

Robyn: OK Dattch is actually a dating app for lesbian and bisexual women, can I ask why you’re trying to sign up?

Voice 1: I want to meet women.

Robyn: Right well as a lesbian app, we’re not actually able to accept male identified users at this time.

Voice 1: So uh, do you work for Dattch?

Robyn: Yes I work for Dattch.

Voice 1: What are you doing at the moment?

Robyn: I’m working, I’m at work.

Voice 1: Do you go on dates?

Robyn: Not with you, thanks bye.

_____________________________________________________

Emily: Hi this is Emily calling from Dattch to continue your registration.

Emily: Can I confirm that I’m I speaking to Amanda?

Voice 2: She’s my sister, she just went to the toilet.

Emily: OK well, I’ll call back when she’s available then.

Voice 2: No you can talk to me, I want to sign up.

Emily: Right. I’m actually calling to deal with Amanda’s account right now, maybe I can speak with you about joining afterwards?

Voice 2: But the account is for me.

Emily: So you wanted to sign up for Dattch through your sister?

Emily: OK. I’m afraid we don’t allow users to join under someone else’s name or identity. If you want to join, you would need to apply yourself. So can you please confirm for us if you identify as male or female?