Is there a swipe dating app with boob pics

The first time, I was flattered. A raised knitted top revealing a dusty pink bra with the lamplight in the background adding a kind of halo effect. It wasn’t erotica but it did the trick – I was tantalised and intrigued. A girl I’d met on Tinder, met up with once for a drink and since exchanged numbers with was sending me ‘tit pics’, completely unprovoked. Covered, yes. Yet still, they were breasts. I felt like a teenager for the first time in years.

The next day I received another, then another and another… each time revealing a little bit more – a coffee-coloured areola, a pert nipple. But always just the breasts, never any thing else.

Eventually, I stopped replying. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the images – what man doesn’t like being woken up with a pair of breasts each morning? – but there are only so many adjectives one can use to describe breasts and I was running dry: ‘Lovely.’ ‘Charming’. ‘Hot.’ By the time I’d reached ‘Tremendous’ I knew something had to give.

Soon enough, the ‘Did you get the picture I sent you? x’ messages started coming through. I explained that I’d been busy and soon enough, my phone was chocca, once again, with boobs. This time around, I didn’t reply and eventually, after a few weeks, the text tones stopped and the breasts were no more, disappearing to the sext-snap inbox in the sky.

Did she feel rejected? Hurt, even? I didn’t know. She could’ve been sending ‘tit pics’ to every Tom, Dick and Harry within a 160km radius. But maybe the question I should’ve been asking myself was: ‘Did I feel harassed?’ Isn’t that what I would’ve felt if I was a woman with an inbox full of erect, veiny cocks?

Perhaps. But the truth was, I didn’t. And even if I had, would anyone have believed me? I’m a bloke and I’m being sent naked pictures – what’s to complain about? And if I did complain, surely there’s something seriously wrong with me? These are free breasts, right?

Tales of over-sharing, inappropriate behaviour, Neanderthal attitudes and blatant harassment on Tinder always cast a man as the antagonist. A quick look online and you’ll see a litany of articles regarding requests for threesomes without even a ‘Hello’ and a graveyard of cock pics – all sent from guys to girls. It’s a trend which has brought about a wave of Tinder vigilantes and Tinder shaming (some justified, some less so.)

One look at the comments below a piece on artist Anna Gensler’s revenge drawings taking a pop at pervy ‘jerks’ on Tinder, such as ‘Bet your tight’ (no time for grammar when you’re on Tinder, eh?), and you can see that the general consensus from the male readers is: ‘What did she expect; it’s Tinder?’

One female commentator however, propositions one of the male readers with the following: ‘Would you be cool with women constantly texting you "10+ inches?"’

And she’s got a good point. Being sent pictures of breasts by someone I kind of fancied was one thing, but being plied with lewd and pretty sexually explicit messages straight off the bat is quite another – especially if that someone is the result of an ‘accidental’ match after a swipe-happy session fuelled by loneliness and gin.

So have Tinder themselves been contacted by men who’ve felt harassed? 'It is not very common, but it does happen,' Rosette Pambakian, Tinder’s Director of Communications reveals when I ask her if they’ve received complaints from men about harassment. But she also adds: 'All users are able to block and report any user who engages in inappropriate activities on Tinder.'

She’s right, of course – the block button is there for a reason. But sometimes the speed at which things happen mean that WhatsApp numbers and Facebook ids have been exchanged quicker than you can say 'is that tiger real or just sedated?'

'I met a girl on Tinder who seemed really nice, so we arranged to meet up for a quick drink one afternoon,' my friend Terry tells me. 'She called me the night before at 10pm and could barely speak on the phone she was that drunk. Her friends had left her and she wanted me to meet her in town. I politely declined and said I'd call her tomorrow. She proceeded to ring me again to apologise for being drunk. Then again for apologising. After that she called maybe seven more times… Moral of the story – don’t give out your number of Tinder. I honestly think if she knew where I lived that night she would have come knocking.'

As anyone who has used the dating app knows, thanks to Tinder, the boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour within seconds of ‘meeting’ someone have become blurred. Flashers and stag dos aside, who goes up to a stranger in the street and says, ‘Hey, you! Look at my cock!’ Or breasts for that matter. On Tinder, though, the rules have changed. Relaxed inhibitions in communication have lead to explicit exchanges where they’re simply not warranted.

But do gender stereotypes play a part as well? One of the problems for men on Tinder is the completely unreasonable question mark over their motives. We’re all just looking to get laid, right? Or, at the very least, be sent some nudey pics. So much has been written about Tinder being solely a hook-up app that there’s a feeling that any man on there for any other reason – such as, I don’t know, actually looking to meet a potential girlfriend – simply must be either a phoney or a liar.

'I think that's the common misconception,' Eamon, 28, tells me. 'Most of my mates literally just use Tinder to meet new girls that they might actually like. Not just bone and leave.'

Eamon also believes that misconception is one of the reasons he got harassed via the app – something he insists he didn’t provoke. ‘Only in the sense that I chatted to her , which wasn't really an invite for all those mental pictures of herself naked and graphic descriptions of what she wanted to do to me.’

Ignoring the images, Eamon quit Tinder and went back to his ex. But then things went from bad to worse. 'I told her to stop messaging me on WhatsApp but she wouldn't. Every night it was offers to have sex, pictures of her masturbating. It caused massive problems for me and my ex.' Eventually, after some weeks, the texts stopped but Eamon adds: 'It does annoy me that so much is made of men harassing women. If I did what she was doing, someone would have phoned the police.'

Others agree with Eamon that the common consensus that women bear the brunt of harassment on Tinder isn’t always true. 'Women are definitely worse than the men once you've matched,' Andy, 26, tells me. 'Yes, some guys have dick shots as their profile pictures, but I've been sent a lot of naked pictures from women, which is fine when you fancy the person but actually kind of creepy from girls who haven't even bothered to say "Hello" first.'

Andy also says that when he refused to play ball with one match, the messages turned nasty. 'One girl told me she was fingering herself and asked if I wanted to give her a hand, and when I didn't respond she sent me a string of abusive messages calling me "faggot’ and ‘limp dick".'

Personally, I’ve found that honesty is the best policy. If you make your motives clear in the bio box – or, at the very least, once the conversation has gone back and forth a bit – nobody is going to get too involved, too hurt, or indeed, an inbox full of tit pics.

Because when it comes to that question about Tinder that some might pose: ‘What did you expect?’ Is it too much to simply reply: ‘Respect’?

Follow Gareth on Twitter @garethmay

Picture: Rory DCS

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.