https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/06/this-new-dating-app-will-use-facial-recognition-technology-to-exclude-trans-women/
The founder of the app is an anti-trans activist who keeps getting kicked off other apps for her anti-trans comments.
Not once have I encountered a trans person on a dating app who wasn't 100% transparent about it. Some even asked me after matching, "you're aware that I'm trans, right?" just to be sure.
There's no logical reason to falsely pretend to be cis on a dating app to get matches. If someone's cool about it then it's better to know up front, right? And if they're not, then you probably don't want to waste your time on them.
The "justification" for this app is just bigotry, plain and simple. Fuck TERFs.
This is a great point.
The technology that excludes transwomen from the app is the clear warning that the app is populated exclusively for transphobes. It's obviously wildly dangerous for a transwoman to be on the app.
The notion that AI is going to clock them is absurd AI hype. There's no reason to expect AI to be capable of this kind of discernment, and that assumes you even had a training set. Where in the absolute fuck would someone find a training set like that?
Edit: I didn't read the article. It seems it's a lesbian dating app. Well, probably less dangerous for transwomen, but still not technically sound.
We sometimes have to clarify that LGBT+ folk aren't particularly virtuous, just people, and like the rest of the population suffers from its own share of internal bigotry. The lesbian community is no exception.
Lesbians range from really rather bisexual to staunchly misandrist and there are different gatekeeping checkpoints, where some don't count trans women as lesbians to others that don't want to date a woman who's ever been with a man (which makes for a really small dating pool).
But this kind of exclusion is not about who these women date, rather who they allow into their community and are allowed to come to their potlucks and tea parties. Generally communities that are progressive and have experienced external oppression and dehumanization are glad to be welcoming and inclusive. Mostly. And I think this includes the lesbian community.
From my experience. I'll get to how that's tricky.
I've found the lesbian circles I've engaged with have been even more inclusive than the general LGBT+ community. They're actually really good about including bisexuals and trans women that are into women. However, this is partly due to the anthropic principle: Even though I'm enby I still have [M] on my state ID, look like a dude and have male parts, and have been completely forthright about this even in online circles (e.g. r/actuallesbians) where no-one would ever know I was really a cat. But this means that I don't get invites to circles that are more restrictive, since I'd be high on the no-admittance list.
But inclusive lesbians are not super fond of less inclusive ones, especially since human sexuality can change over time. The closet has multiple doors, and when your best friend who invites you to all the get-togethers is a women-only transphobe second-wave feminist (this was a thing), and suddenly you've been taking an interest in a special guy, you're going to keep your bi-curiosity hidden from your friend (or stop being friends). And as per the whole thing of coming out, the point of the LGBT+ community is being able to be who you are, and being accepted and validated.
So when I see a lesbians dating app that is intentionally looking to draw transphobes, it reminds me of those conservative dating apps to hook up men in the white power movement with trad-wife minded women, which is to say it's good they're over there and not trying to date people over here that they're ultimately going to disappoint and hurt.
Good point. I don't want to date trans people, but I wouldn't want to use an app that purposely excluded them. I'd rather occasionally have to go "oh sorry thanks for telling me" than restrict my dating pool to bigots.
Facebook couldn’t build a model that has 100% accuracy on if something is a dog or a cat, let alone if a woman is trans.
Especially since you oftentimes can't tell at all from just a picture. There's cis woman that look more like a man than some trans women.
Why do you guarantee that? It seems obviously wrong, on a technical level.
The point I'm making is that even if we take it as a given that a shrewd enough AI could correctly distinguish sex at birth -- which I think is obviously impossible based on the appearances of many ciswomen and the nature of statistical prediction -- you'd still need a training data set.
If the dataset has any erroneous input, that corrupts its ability, and the whole point of this exercise is trying to find passing transwomen. Why would anyone expect that training set of hundreds of thousands of supposed cis women wouldn't have a few transwomen in it?
Because Facebook's data practices, and how much was volunteered by users on there, means that for some percentage of trans users Facebook knows that they're trans. And you also have a percentage of pregnancy photos uploaded, if someone identifies as a woman on Facebook, and has uploaded photos with a baby bump, she's cis (or at least a pre-hatching trans person). And at one point in time, a lot of people just volunteered that info to Facebook.
Yeah, but the training set is nowhere near clean. That's my point. "Close" is no where near good enough within this context,
Not once have I encountered a trans person on a dating app who wasn’t 100% transparent about it.
...that you know of. not defending bigots or bullying, but that statement doesn't make sense.
I mean, isn't that also just true of anyone you've interacted with? Their point was that they never "found out" someone they were dating on there was trans, and everyone that dated from those apps who oc every discovered were trans were straightforward about it.
Why would you need or want to be that precise about your language?
Their point
oh geez, thank you for explaining someone else's point, you must be quite an insider into their thoughts 😂
was that they never “found out”
that is not what was said
why would you need or want to be that precise about your language
you need to be precise with your language because that is what allows us to communicate ideas to each other and logic through arguments, eventually accepting or refuting them.
for example you can call these two strawberry, and nuclear submarine, but it is going to seriously hinder your communication with others, because that is now what is commonly understood under these terms.
you can see it in the comment we are discussing. because i read the implication original commenter tried to make as it never happened to me => it is not a problem that needs to be addressed.
which is incorrect implication in itself, but more importantly, as i pointed out, the premise of the implication is flawed.
It's absolutely happened to me. I also don't understand. Maybe the reasoning is, if they get me to invest enough time then maybe I'll suddenly be sexually attracted to penises? I don't know.
Having known multiple trans people and heard them talk about the arguments for and against early disclosure: Fear.
They may not be public about their status, and fear exposure to family or coworkers seeing their public profile.
They may fear harassment from transphobes. This could range from DM accusations of pedophilia to religious screeds to doxxing to death threats.
They may be trying to avoid "chasers." There are some people for whom a trans body (particularly a transfem body) is a fetish, who don't actually care about the person inside. Plenty of transpeople don't appreciate that kind of attention.
Fear of rejection. They may believe that nobody will respond if they're open about not being cis.
Also two less fear-related (and less common) possibilities:
Ideology. To some people, specifying "transman" or "transwoman" reinforces a social distinction they find invalidating or don't accept. How many profiles have you seen that specify themselves as "cisman" or "ciswoman"? For these people, it's a way of rejecting cisgender normativity.
Maybe they just aren't ready to talk about their genitals yet, or have their first conversation be about their surgical plans or history. Not only can get really repetitive having that be the first conversation with every single match, it means they don't get any of the information they're looking for about a potential partner until much later in the process and have to invest a lot of their own time up front. Just like you want the salient information you care about early on, so do they.
#1
If you're not openly trans, then you really shouldn't be dating online because that's a risk.
#3
My sister was open about it and she got creepy Neo Nazis looking for Russian girlfriends.
Whaaat, an app created to enforce sexist norms regarding who counts as a woman did just that?? 😲
oh my god, this is delicious
edit: is this actually her tool, or just some random online test? because the actual app is still described as in making.
The entire thread of the OG post is gold.
If this AI was so fucking smart why doesn't it just use facial recognition of celebs like RuPaul to wipe out a bunch of false positives?
The woman who launched the site gets clocked as trans by gender prediction systems. It's already happened.
First, from a purely technical perspective, there is absolutely no way this works properly, you just can’t recognize a trans person just by looking at his/her face, even if this was ethically okay (and this isn’t), it couldn’t work at all.
Second, the privacy nightmare that would be, every picture of everyone would be processed (and certainly stored forever for training the program) without the possibility to disable it ?
And finally, the obvious discrimination against trans people (I never encountered a trans person that wasn’t honest about it, so it’s even pointless to "detect" them)
To be honest I’m not in the LGBT community or anything, but this goes to far
I never encountered a trans person that wasn’t honest about it
I guess you're not on dating apps?
Happened to me a lot. For some reason, especially while I was on my way to meet them. "Hey, by the way, is it okay if I have a penis?*
Look, I'm sorry, I'm not attracted to penises. So far I've only had one attempt to say it's transphobic to not want to have sex with them, but even for the others it's really shitty to lead someone on like that.
The consensus in the trans community is to let a potential partner know earlier, rather than later. It avoids the situation you've encountered. Some men also can react violently, when they find out, so it's quite a critical dilemma to them.
Unfortunately, not all follow that mindset. They also tend to bust out a lot, and so lead a lot of men on.
It's a bit like the scumbag dilemma women face. Very few men are scumbags, yet women encounter them regularly when dating. Most men try not to annoy the women they find attractive. They are careful in their approach mentality. This means they only make a few approaches (relatively). They also tend to pair off, and so exit the pool. Scumbags cast a wide net, and don't hang on to women for long. This means they make a LOT of approaches, and so annoy a vastly disproportionate number of women.
Basically most trans people try to be as polite and careful about it as possible. A few, unfortunately, can destroy the reputation of the rest by being scumbags about it, at least locally.
conscientious
I think you mean consensus, general agreement.
Conscientious is an adjective applying to people, and it's a personality trait associated with acting responsibly and following one's conscience.
I just keep thinking of my soon to be sister-in-law who is trans and we just have never discussed it. There is zero need to. She is marrying my brother-in-law not marrying me. Also I just really don't care what she has going on down there. That goes in the big pile of "not my concern".
In any case my kids call her aunt and she is the fun aunt so that works out.
That's an excellent point, I say it happens to me "a lot" but that's only after intentionally filtering out those who are upfront about it.
Oh trust me I was, I tested pretty much all of them 😂
the majority it was displayed directly in the bio, and the rest told me in the first or second message
I trust you but I can’t relate to your experience, I always encountered honest people (at least with this subject)
Were they actually being dishonest about it, or were they not disclosing it? There are a lot of things people don't disclose before meeting up. Outside of a romantic relationship context, cis people tend to be more accepting of trans people in general if the cis people don't know right away that the person is trans and find out later.
But for sexual/romantic relationships it's different because most people want to know the genitals of their potential partners up front. This makes it difficult for trans people, who are stuck deciding at what point they should disclose the state of their genitals, in a way that is considered honest, keeps them safe, and maintains some privacy.
Were they actually being dishonest about it, or were they not disclosing it?
Kind of both? They didn't explicitly lie. They could pass, at least in photos (I never actually met any of them after this point). So it was more of a lie by omission.
And this was dating apps, so obviously it was a sexual/romantic situation.
Yes it does suck on your end but on the other side of the phone your perspective date is probably having a whole mental breakdown about it. For a lot of trans folk disclosure is absolutely nessisary as early as possible and preferably for safety reasons not when you are face to face...
Buuuut they also are very likely to get really vile transphobic backlash from a perspective date as much as they are honest rejections based on genital preference which sucks to be rejected for but is nobody's fault. There's a lot of trans people out there who feel like they are never going to be given a chance. Either way steeling themselves for one form of rejection or a vile reminder of the awful people out there who think you are subhuman and are offered up a nice juicy target on which to let loose their bigotry does tend to make for disordered social niceties. Once someone has been burned enough they get pretty damn shy and the procrastination is more of a case of battling personal traumas until the last possible second where one absolutely must do the right thing.
I would advise not taking it too personally.
My sister is trans and she had to deal with that. She also made it extremely obvious that she was trans but she still got Neo Nazis.
She also got banned from a dating site for saying that she was only attracted to cis women.
It's marketing bullshit, in announcement they also said they used "heat signatures" from the photo to help determine if the person was trans lol
I don't think this goes too far morally, but technically - what you said, this doesn't work. It definitely won't for those of trans people who had their hormone balance sufficiently off since birth. Well, I don't know anything about hormones or human development, but I've read that the transition itself is usually a smaller part in addition to what has been already dealt by nature. And I've met a person once by whom I wouldn't tell (from appearance).
I’ve read that the transition itself is usually a smaller part in addition to what has been already dealt by nature
This is unfortunately not the case for most trans people. I think it's quite rare that a trans person would consistently be able to pass (=blend in) before HRT.
There are some trans people who are also intersex, which is the condition when one's biological sex (without medical intervention) doesn't fit neatly in either the male or female boxes. But most trans people aren't intersex and about half of intersex people aren't trans.
Edit: But I do agree with your main point, there's simply no way an app like this could identify trans people with the vast range of facial features humans have. It will both exclude many cis women and allow many trans women, as Giggle did a few years ago.
isn't this solving a problem that doesn't really exist? I'd have thought most trans people on dating apps would be fairly up front about it... you know for safety or even just expectations management? I can't speak from experience, my dating life predates the rise of dating apps
Yes, trans folks tend to be pretty upfront for the reasons you mentioned.
This is just some hateful, bullshit, trans panic nonsense. Some people can't even handle the idea that they might as a matter of course be attracted to a trans person given the opportunity.
This tech will inevitably also exclude some slightly less normative appearing cis folks too, but they don't care because they just hate trans people.
It actually won't, it will incorrectly attempt to identify and exclude people, but it won't work, because this is all snake oil horseshit perpetrated by attention seeking grifters.
It'll exclude plenty of people, it just won't do a good job of selectively excluding trans people.
The best part: The creator (a woman) couldn't even pass her own app's test; it said she was a man with 97% certainty. 🤣 TERF didn't check herself, and thus wrecked herself.
Plot twist: she only wanted to come out as trans so she cooked up this ridiculous idea to out herdelh
funny enough terfs already tried this once before and ran into literally the same problems.
It already did, I'm struggling to find the link (E: found it ), but Jenny Watson the woman who launched this shit was found to be like 98% likely to be "a man" by her own software (someone ran the photo of herself she used in the launch tweet)..
Yeah... If anyone starts talking too much about the shape of the human skull as if that means anything whatever they are selling ain't worth the pitch
Hmm well I admit I haven't seen many people willing to tell your fortune by cutting open an animal then reading the guts inside. Someone should contact Y-combinator. Maybe work block chain into it somehow.
I don't think atrificial intelligence will be needed, trans people will just use intelligence and not use this app.
Meanwhile, the AI will be handing out false positives to TERFs and hilarity ensues. I see no downside here.
I am not in the dating pool but I don't think I would try my luck on a dating app that exists solely to be bigoted.
Oh well I guess we both agree that selecting a romantic partner solely on the basis of what minority they hate is not a wise decision.
I fear this might be controversial
Some daughters have the same face as their fathers, some sons have the same face as their mothers. How could this possibly work?
It's like claiming that you can identify homosexuality through facial recognition. There's no such thing as a "trans face". It's just a silly idea.
They said the same thing about gaydar but I already subscribe $9.95/month for the AI addon package for that. I already preorded the trantenna (trans antenna 🤣 ) for a cool $500 down. No price is too much to keep children safe... on dating service networks? Wait, I thought we hated trans people to save the children? There shouldn't be children on these sites anyways.
You know, TECHNICALLY, everybody is someone’s child. Mental gymnastics are an art form to these nutcases.
What about making different classifications for cis and trans males and females? There are people who are not dating someone trans or who only date trans people.
Saving them the weird moment of realizing it seems good.
You'd be better suited just having a user select that they are comfortable dating a trans individual because it will likely come up very early in the dating process anyway.
Forcing someone to identify as a gender that doesn't make them comfortable is just going to result in them not using your app and is frankly kind of a dick move overall. Your suggestion would just create an app that was suited for chasers, not trans users.
Yeah it seems ridiculous this isnt the standard way to do online dating. Many people dont want a trans partner, and many people only want a trans partner. Not being clear and upfront about these things only causes future heartbreak and rejection issues.
I don't think it's really that simple from many trans peoples' perspective, as it places an obligation on them to out themselves before they even talk to a person. Many trans people's goal with transition is not to live as "trans" it's to live as their target gender, not some "other". Being trans is not a sexuality.
A better solution would be to have people who don't want to have the possibility of ever dating any trans person put that as part of their profile.
If people have an issue with doing that then it kind of reveals the truth of the issue for what it is.
I dont think suggesting transphobia when it comes to sexual preferences is appropriate, people can't choose those any more than they can choose to be black or white. There are also simple biological facts, perhaps a person wishes to have biological children with their partner. Or any other reason really, romantic preferences are entirely subjective and often not even a conscious preference.
That being said, i think a good compromise would be for people to be able to give these kinds of personal preferences to the dating site, similar to the age ranges they want to encounter. Then the system would automatically prevent incompatible preferences from getting matched, and nobody has to out themselves.
Perhaps they were not suggesting deep end transphobia (hate) but just low end aversion? You should have the right to not date a trans person, or a person with different skin color, but we could ask would it be better if none of us cared about that?
If we look for the source of people's choices one may find the answer to also be biology, with the rest being enviroment. The conventional wisdom of blaming people for their choices is not supported by evidence. Even the most evil people in history didn't choose to have a psychopathic personality, or choose their bad parents, or their hateful beliefs.
Your second paragraph is just the point I am trying to make no? People can't choose who they love or are attracted (or not attracted) to.
So I am uncomfortable with the suggestion that any cis person who doesnt want to date a trans person should set up a disclaimer on their profile, with the afterthought insinuating that they shouldn't have an issue with that unless they are secretly transphobic, or trans averse as you put it.
Personally I (as a straight cis dude) am very supportive of equal rights for non straight people, and think they are a beautiful facet of mankind. I would be fully supporting most of their causes, but that doesnt mean I am suddenly attracted to, broadly speaking, not cis women. I can't change that, or make an exception for someone, that's simply not how I was wired. Would you consider that trans averse? Honest question.
Almost like instead of relying on faulty AI predictions, they can just include that as a bio and search option. No bullshit AI necessary.
Seems like wasted effort & resources....
The people on the apps should be able to manage their own activity.
As long as the greater society continues to conflate sex(ual)/genitalia[male, female, intersex/hermaphrodite] with gender(man, woman, trans man, trans woman, non-binary, etcetera) nothing will reach a mutal level of comprehension.
The plethora of false positives makes this technology flawed - the number of females who will be flagged as trans 😅..... the plethora of trans woman who will not get flagged....😅....
What a time to be alive.....
These apps are not created to make meaningful connections. It's to increase their profits and engagement. Apps have been around how long now, and we see a DECLINE in the quality of relationships not their improvement..
They literally tried this exact thing already and it accepted many trans women and refused many cis women.
This already happened a few years ago. Transphobic ciswomen got mad when the app identified them as trans.
Ok fine then I am out of ideas.
Also do you really want this? I mean I am glad me and my wife basically agree on politics but that is a really tiny part of our relationship. I can't imagine sitting on some app using selection bubbles to find girls who are perfectly aligned with my stance on every issue, knowing that this was the biggest reason why they are also there.
Me, personally? I have no horse in this race. I was just saying it’s inaccurate to imply that only under 25s are not conservative
lots (not all!) of 20-30 year old men with shitty opinions these days thanks to gamergate and joe rogan....
shhh let them all splinter between this, the right stuff, and christian mingle so they never procreate