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Opinion: Suing Grindr for Racism Doesn't Address the Real Problem

How do we truly tackle the pervasive problem of sexual racism?

Attempting to date, or what have you, on an app like Grindr as a gay man of color is an exercise in one's own moral degradation. Being black and queer and uncomfortable placing myself in any specific label or category, I've all but given up on digital love—though analog isn't going so well either. Therefore, I have an almost zen-like approach to the whole thing: Some gay men, if you allow them by virtue of simply using these apps, will treat me like garbage...so why allow them?

That doesn't make it right, or make me feel better, necessarily, but that does place the toxic atmosphere usually associated with queer dating apps firmly in the scope of (the worst of) human behavior. A minority within one maligned minority is further maligned. It benefits the social hierarchy already in place. That's also not to say there's nothing one can do about it. The question is, not so simply, what?

Sinakhone Keodara, the 44-year-old founder and CEO of Asian Entertainment Television, is attempting to sue Grindr for racism. Keodara's experiences on the app, which he calls "harrowing," are familiar to me in their callousness—he received a recent message, seemingly unprompted, asking, “How hung can an Asian be?”

“That really hurt, I’ve never forgotten that,” Keodara told PinkNews. “It wouldn’t leave my mind that I’m paying $14.99 for this service and why do I have to pay for my own oppression and Grindr is complicit in being a breeding ground that perpetuates racism against gay Asian men?”

First of all, $14.99? That's more than Netflix, Hulu, or Spotify. And Grindr's not giving me Golden Girls reruns (if anything, they're giving me Catfish). Second, Keodara has a point. Grindr is complicit in a sense because it offers users the option to filter other users by race, as do competing apps like Scruff and Jack'd. There are still other gay dating apps that don't have that feature, but that doesn't completely eliminate the specter of racism. Apps don't make people racist, they simply facilitate racism because of the anonymity they provide and just through the grind (pun intended) of scrolling through dozens or hundreds (for $14-goddamn-99) of men who somehow lose their humanity in their photographed and filtered forms.

Regardless, Keodara plans to take his Grindr grievance to court:

"I’m suing Grindr because they’ve been a breeding ground, perpetuating racism against Asian people, against black people, against Latino, against Native American—you name it. It’s got to stop. They’ve been allowing this to happen, they’ve been turning the other cheek, for as long as they’ve been in existence. I hope the court will order Grindr to redesign their app to eliminate the ethnicity filter on their app that gives users the ability to exclude people based on race."

Now, don't think for a second that I haven't wished I was Mariah Carey and could sue (successfully, thank you) someone for wasting my precious time. These hours, after all, are finite and billable. However, not all of us are Mariah Carey—hell, Mariah Carey's barely Mariah Carey—and whether or not you agree with his argument, Keodara's case might not even hold legal water.

"I have deep sympathy for Mr. Keodara," says Ari Ezra Waldman, Professor and Director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School. "But the law is stacked against him, even though Grindr absolutely should be doing more to protect its users." Waldman continues:

"There is a federal law called Communications Decency Act Section 230 that completely immunizes platforms like Grindr from lawsuits based on the actions of third party users. So, one of the reasons why Grindr rarely does anything about hateful and racist profiles on its platform is because the law doesn’t require it to. It is completely immune from any punishment for letting these things persist. My recommendation: stop using Grindr. Other platforms have a far better track record at creating a safe environment for its diverse community of queer users."

Though unlikely to result in a landmark ruling, Keodara's case could instead serve as a statement to Grindr and the community it represents, that they can't take queer men of color for granted then expect us to dolefully hand over our $14.99, or to fall in line and support a community that ostracizes us. Grindr, at least, is trying to get with the inclusive program, hinting at the launch next month of an initiative, Kindr, "built around education, awareness and specific policy changes in the Grindr app, [which] will serve as the first step of many Grindr will be taking to help foster a more inclusive and respectful community on our platform."

Well, we'll see how that goes. Dating apps are probably not going anywhere, but being a relatively new innovation, they require a learning curve. People have to learn not to be assholes while using them. Or, at the very least, be less of an asshole, making their assholery less obvious because it's unattractive and beneath what we like to believe we live in—a civilized society. It's up to the community using these dating apps to regulate itself. It always heartens me, no matter how little, whenever I see a profile calling out racism or body shaming or ageism, especially when that profile belongs to a white man who is otherwise unaffected by those things. As the de facto "leaders" of the dating app community (because, A. white supremacy and, B. overall desirability), the majority of the onus should fall on cis gay white men to affect change.It's called using your privilege to benefit the underprivileged. That being said, it really is up to all of us to improve how we treat one another, whether or not an app is involved.

So I'm going to tell gay men who use dating apps what Michelle Obama told me/Oprah in the halcyon days of 2016: "Be better."

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