Transgender woman sues Tinder after claiming her account was deleted

‘I don't think the company understands trans people’

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A transgender woman from Portland, Oregon has allegedly sued Tinder, claiming the dating app deleted her account just hours after she edited her profile to show that she identified as transgender.

Ariel Hawkins said she was notified via email that her account had violated the app’s terms of service and subsequently been deleted after she added the phrase “camgirl on the side. Pre-op trans woman” to her bio.

She has since filed a lawsuit against the US dating app in Multnomah County Circuit Court, calling for an order that would prohibit Tinder from discriminating against transgender users in the state of Oregon, TMZ reports.

“I wanted to just find love like everybody else," Hawkins told Willamette Week.

"I'm just looking to date. I was trying to find a boyfriend."

She added that all of the photos on her profile were completely appropriate and abided by Tinder’s guidelines.

"I've never had this happen with another dating app before," she said, explaining that she always discloses her transgender identity on dating apps in order to avoid any potentially “harmful situations”.

Hawkins’ claim seems at odds with policy changes made by Tinder in 2016, which enabled users to identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming in their profiles.

In a bid to combat reports that transgender users were being harassed, the dating app launched a campaign fronted by transgender activist Munroe Bergdorf titled #AllTypesAllSwipes, which marked the release of a new feature that allows users to choose their gender from a list of almost 40 options, including non-binary, two-spirit and neutrois.

“For us it’s very important to come in and particularly now given what’s going on in the world,” Tinder’s chief executive Sean Read told the New York Times at the time.

“With all the division in the world, it’s particularly important to step in and make a statement of inclusivity and acceptance.”

When contacted by The Independent for comment, a Tinder spokesperson provided the following comment:

“While we do not comment on pending litigation, we can say, categorically, that we do not ban users from Tinder due to gender identity. At Tinder, we fundamentally believe that gender is not binary and we support inclusivity and acceptance of all people, which is why we offer more than 37 gender identity options for our users in the United States.”