I got called out for being toxic and hypocritical on Grindr — but not for reasons you’d think.
I’ll preface this by saying that I think Grindr can be a toxic wasteland of hole pics, fragile egos and not-so-casual racism and prejudice. But I also think Grindr is what you make of it. And for as many times as I’ve abhorred the behavior I’ve seen on Grindr, I’ve also had some really interesting interactions, met some genuine friends and gotten more than my fair share of good ass from it. All this to say I do not turn on Grindr with the expectation of encountering some sort of gay sex utopia. Nor do I think it’s an appropriate platform to iron out the plethora of issues plaguing the gay community (I specify gay here because Grindr is primarily used by gay men). It’s a fucking sex app. Plain and simple.
That said, I do believe we all could get better at practicing a bit more proper decorum and decency on the app. And I appreciate that when we start throwing civility out the window and start thinking only with our cocks, it leaves us open to feeding the dirty underbelly of toxicity in the gay community. And I’d like to think that while I’m not perfect, I am at least generally cognizant of my behavior on the app and how it might make others feel.
Which is why I was so taken back by a recent conversation I had with a guy on Grindr. Some context: I woke up at 6am and turned on Grindr to grab one of the horny boys in Amsterdam who had been up all night and were sure to be looking to score some easy sex before their walk of shame back home. Soon after, I started a conversation with a guy that began pretty mundane and quickly turned into him asking me what I was into. (For the uninitiated this is Grindr speak for what kind of sex stuff do you want to get into) We exchanged some sex chatter and swapped more pictures. It was only then that I first saw the guy’s face because all his profile photos were faceless. I’ll admit that I wasn’t overly interested in him. At the same time another guy that I was far more sexually into said he wanted to fuck, so I invited him over. From here I dropped the conversation with the first guy and jumped into the shower to get ready for the second.
The conversation proceeded as follows:
I walked away from this altercation feeling genuinely bothered and ashamed. As someone who prides themselves on being relatively inclusive and as the type of person who challenges the norms of toxic masculinity on a daily basis just by getting out of bed, I questioned where I went so wrong and what I could have done better in this situation. So I took a step back and had some discussions about this with others. And I came to the conclusion that there definitely was some toxicity and hypocrisy on display here. But maybe it wasn’t just coming from me.
My not-so-insightful but maybe you’ll find them interesting takeaways:
Politely turning guys down instead of ignoring them goes a long way. But not every guy will react the same.
Could I have been more couth and forthcoming in my interest towards guy #2 at the expense of guy #1? Of course. And in this instance that honesty would have made the first guy feel more at ease. Because when you just drop someone or ignore him it leaves him open to feeding his feelings of not being good enough. But not every guy is the same. And for as many times as a polite Grindr turn down goes well, I’ve had just as many guys respond with hostility, name calling and aggressively sending more sex pics to try and get me to change my mind. You can’t fucking win on Grindr. And sometimes…selfishly, it’s just easier to not respond at all because it’s less risk and takes less energy. It’s not something I’m necessarily proud of but sometimes it’s about my own self-preservation.
We all have insecurities. But that doesn’t give any of us permission to turn them into a weapon.
This guy came loaded with insecurities around acceptance and rejection that 100 guys before me chipped away at. I wasn’t actually the cause of those insecurities — at least not in the way he accused me. But in that moment he was looking to make someone an enemy. To make someone responsible for his pain. And I was the easy target. He knew by calling me out for being toxic and non-inclusive that it would hurt me. Because he had supposedly gathered as much from what he had seen from me and my heels on Instagram. He also knew I was probably too nice to fight back. So I was also the safe target to unleash on, allowing him to walk away feeling validated without repercussion. The way he made me the face of his insecurities was manipulative and toxic in its own right. And the irony is that I was probably more open and better equipped to have that conversation in a proactive way compared to others he had met on Grindr. But his own insecure toxicity prevented him from having any meaningful dialogue with me.
Don’t be so eager to call people out on their hypocrisy if you can’t first acknowledge it within yourself.
The irony of this guy calling me hypocritical and “preaching to the choir” is not lost. He chastised me for not being as open-minded or welcoming as I thought. That he’s seen me on Instagram and expects better. This, though, coming from a guy who I have never interacted with before. Have no idea who he is on Instagram. And who made it a point to cover his face in his photos — quite literally with his hand. There was nothing open or welcoming about the way he spoke to me or the way he portrayed himself in his profile. By all means he has the right to protect his identity or hide parts of him. But in doing so it takes away his credibility to call me closed-off. Because it turned him into an anonymous entity using my personal details against me when I wasn’t afforded the benefit of knowing any personal details about him. The context of the interaction was one in which I was vulnerable and exposed and he was hidden.
Listen. I know I can be a sloppy slag on Grindr and in real life. I am not without fault in the above conversation. At the very least I sometimes need to learn to act more like an adult on Grindr. I think that’s probably true of a lot of us. But when we start using our personal insecurities as an excuse to brand the community as toxic for interactions that aren’t actually that, it makes us look bad, it takes away from the situations that truly are toxic, and it prevents us from making any real progress. We DO have a toxicity issue in the LGBTQ+ community. But let’s make sure we’re picking the right battles to address it.
