Last Autumn Bi Community News magazine highlighted the challenges faced by bi people on many dating websites, which insist on users picking exclusively male or female as the gender of partner they are looking for.
This has since been picked up by other sections of the LGBT media and one of the sites involved, Match.com, has announced a new policy – that bisexual users will no longer have to pay double if they want to be found by both male and female prospective partners. Bis will just have to contact customer services and have a second profile set up for free.
Bi Community News editor Jen Yockney told BiMedia, “This is a terrible bodge to try and fix the problem.
“While it’s welcome that bi users of the Match dating website will no longer be paying double, they will be expected to maintain two user profiles and flick between them. Better to let users identify as gay, bi or straight and search on potential partners based on that attribute too – so bisexual singles don’t find themselves on dates with biphobes, and they don’t have to come out part way through the dating process – quite possibly when confronted with their “secret” other profile.
“It all highlights how Match’s model fails genderqueer and intersex users too, with its quaint binary dating model.
“The call to ‘just’ contact customer services and come out to them in order to have a second profile set up is a weird extra bar to participation for bi people.”
