New queer dating site LGBTQutie offers a more inclusive experience.
For those of us less outgoing individuals, who look upon heaving nightclubs as a kind of torture, online dating is a wonderful thing. If you live in an area that doesn’t have much of an LGBTQ scene, it can be your only access to our community. However, the increasing trend towards hook-up culture, with apps like Tindr and Grindr using very shallow criteria to allow people to have no-strings fun at the tap of an iPhone screen, it can feel like good old fashioned dating is going out of style. There are of course some websites that aim for more long-lasting connections, such as Match.com and OKCupid, veterans of the online dating scene, but while they do have increasing diversity, members are mostly straight or of more traditional queer representations. Less visible identities like intersex and pansexual may struggle to find true love in the current online dating world. Enter LGBTQutie—the relationship site.
Founded last November by New Yorkers Jordan Weiss and Rachel Kimelman, LGBTQutie.com already has hundreds of users. With the tagline “find someone as unique as you”, the website aims to create an inclusive online environment in which people from our community can find meaningful and lasting relationships. Members can enjoy a wide range of gender and sexual identity options and a heavy focus on the romantic side of dating, with a free basic membership that actually allows you to do something more than browse. You can add photos, message other members, post comments and create events, all for absolutely no fee. They do offer a premium membership, with shiny features such as video chat, advanced searching and games, for a monthly fee, but the basic membership has all the key elements covered.
A free and inclusive queer dating site, focused on romantic relationships, already seems too good to be true—but LGBTQutie is more than a dating site. It is also set up to resemble a social networking platform, with an events section that features additions from both the founders and other members, plus a blog providing tips on relationships, queer life and more. Currently LGBTQutie is only available to users in select states but will eventually be rolled out to the entire country. Whether it will be extended to include international users will likely depend upon its success, so non-US queer communities will have to wait.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about LGBTQutie is Weiss and Kimelman’s choice to eschew the matching algorithms used by most dating sites, offering instead a pair of detailed questionnaires that members can view and consider for themselves. They say they believe the typical “matching” system of other sites ignores physical and emotional attraction and tries to “box” people in based on a percentage system as it does not take all aspects of a person’s qualities into account. Ultimately, you are a far better judge of your potential match than a computerized system could ever be.” We couldn’t agree more!
Info: www.LGBTQutie.com