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When did you start using dating apps?

 

In high school, and I want to say sophomore year of high school. At that point it was on Tinder. And it was both men and women.

 

How did you want other people on these apps to perceive you?

 

I don’t know, I would say I have always wanted to just seem cool, like I’m always a bit of a try-hard, you know, I’m really focused on how I look, in terms of, if I look like I’m not trying hard. I

 

try really hard to look like I’m not trying hard.

 

I would say I try not to look ‘basic’ because I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of someone that could really look like a straight woman who is just, like, experimenting. And being annoying about it or whatever. And I think that is something that — I want to look like I have an edge to me so people will take me seriously as a queer woman. That’s a big thing, like, I do go with the

pictures in which I look a little artsy, a little edgy, a little bit like I’m not a girly girl.

 

I dress really girly sometimes and there’s times where I dress a little more, like, I’ll have a flannel on or be, like, a little cooler. You know what I mean.

 

And it’s a little too stereotypical but, like, I do go with all the pictures in which I look a little artsy, a little edgy, a little bit like I’m not a girly girl. Because it often feels like when I’m on dating apps, if I see someone who looks too girly, ‘put-together’ — ‘basic’ is the word that keeps coming to mind but I don’t like that word — then I’m like, ‘oh, they’re not really queer, they’re just, you know, on this for kicks, or they’re bi, but only would ever go out with a guy.’

 

And so I noticed myself judging people like that, so I just try not to. So then I preemptively try to make people not judge me the same way by presenting in the edgy way.

 

Do you think a lot of people on these apps judge you in this way?

 

I have absolutely no idea. I don’t know if that’s all in my own head. But if people think like me, then yes — and I’m sure there are people who think like me.

 

I‘ve been with women, obviously, but then every time I like a guy I’m like, ‘oh my god, am I actually — do I like women?’ And then I feel that judgment from other people that they’ll forget that that’s a possibility, that I would date a girl. And I always bring up guys, and I feel like that’s partly because I hang out with really straight people. And so sometimes I feel a need to, like, overproject that on dating apps.

 

It’s something I’m conscious of, and it’s something that freaks me out sometimes.​

 

I feel, like, people forget about that part of me. And then I feel, like, weird about it.