Creepy Things Men Think It's OK to Say to Lesbians on Dating Apps

By Kat Callahan | April 1, 2014 | 10:30pm

In Depth

Just what are men thinking when they message lesbians on dating apps, especially when those dating apps have a good chance of being for lesbians only? One lesbian woman decided to find out and blog her experiences on her tumblr account. Here are her conclusions.

You know how sometimes the things that give you the greatest entertainment can without a moments notice fill you with murderous rage? …I’ve been keeping a blog of my more… interesting messages over the past year. They often follow themes that I feel are based in such a wallowing level of pure ignorance about lesbianism and women in general that I feel need to share my experiences with others.

LUDA-Sensei (as she likes to be known to maintain anonymity, LUDA being Lesbian Using Dating Apps) uses a variety of dating apps, such as Skout, Brenda, Blendr, and Hi5. Her tumblr has about 180 different messages, and she says the vast majority of them come from Skout. It’s worth noting, I tested this myself, and I can attest, the messages on Skout are particularly vile.

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She uses two responses to reply to the messages she gets: “I’m a lesbian, women only,” and “I’m not interested in men, stop messaging me.” She will then wait around to see whether the person messaging her actually feels like responding. Although it seems that she doesn’t get a high percentage of responses, she is messaged so often the number of creepy responses is still pretty high.

Usually, I get no response and we’re done. Other times, things get more interesting and I let the conversation continue until I’m bored, uncomfortable, or feel like I may be putting myself in danger, after which I block them.

She examines a few different themes which runs through the various messages she gets:

I would say 99% of my messages come from cis straight men with varying levels of English (I live in Japan, which makes for some amazing English). This specific screenshot is from the lesbian only dating app Brenda:

LUDA-Sensei feels she doesn’t need programs to detect which men are lying about being men. It’s pretty obvious. Why even bother? It doesn’t even seem to occur to many of the men on lesbian dating apps to ask themselves the question. It’s like they just can’t fathom why they might not be welcome. Yet, there “is plenty of information on gendered typing patterns.”

There are also men who seem to think that oral sex is the only thing that makes a lesbian, well, a lesbian. And if a man does it particularly well, then… uh… lesbians don’t care who does it? “Because… uh…I don’t know, maybe because we can just shut our eyes and pretend they’re not men?”

Some men think that if they show me a picture of a vagina, I’ll suddenly be overcome by lustful emotions and will send a pic of my vag back. (Men, if this has ever worked for you, you were actually messaging back and forth with another man. Yes, you have most likely cybered with another man pretending to be a woman. Don’t worry, I’m sure most lesbians have, too. It doesn’t make us anymore straight than it makes you gay.) There’s also guys that don’t even bother and just show a peen pic.

As probably expected plenty of the guys who message her think that she would be up for a threesome, and of course, she is most definitely not. Just because she likes sleeping with women does not mean she will sleep with women under any circumstances. Just because another woman is present doesn’t somehow erase the presence of the man/men in the sexual activity. And there are apparently men who have slept with lesbians before, so you, they just know LUDA will also be up for it. It just takes the right man, y’know?

One favorite with Japanese speakers is “mottainai”, which means “such a waste”. Me not wanting to have sex with men is “such a waste”. Like my vagina existing without a penis in it is a “waste” of a vagina.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of the responses seem half way decent. I mean, I think maybe LUDA is giving George here a bit more credit than I would. I mean, he still messaged someone with “lesbian” in their profile, and that’s pretty shitty. Either he didn’t read and then tried to cover it up, or he ignored it and then asked LUDA if she was willing to “explore.” Either way, I am not sure I would really consider George to be that nice. Just significantly less creepy in the fact he goes away when asked to do so:

But please remember, I do get a fair number of George’s, and their messages warm my heart. Yes… some men DO understand. I’d say there is about 1 George for every 2 iPhone John’s. But their simple and quick messages aren’t nearly interesting enough to post on my blog.

Still that means, you know, two thirds totally terrible and one third only mildly creepy. Not exactly fun times either way. And what’s the point of doing this anyway? With the percentages of women she gets from many of these apps, why bother even keeping the apps in question?

What is the point of keeping these apps around? Well, I do love to hate read them for one thing. I’ve also met a few girls from these apps, so there is the hope that maybe I’ll find someone that I can meet again. But for right now, I’ll just continue as I have been, and hoping people at least can enjoy this masochistic ride with me.

Well, I know I certainly am.

Images via Lesbian Using Dating Apps.