“I got over 100 messages in the first week,” he says, admitting the attention was nice but “didn’t really fill the void.” That’s because around 95 of them were from guys, four were crossdressers and only two were actual trans women. He knew Grindr was popular - the “gay Tinder,” as he puts it - so when he learned it included a “trans” category he quietly downloaded the orange-and-black mask onto his iPhone. Living alone as a caretaker for his grandmother with dementia, Jeremy tells me he’s “pretty lonely IRL.” His father recently passed away six weeks later his girlfriend dumped him. The 27-year-old personal trainer from Northern California is only interested in meeting trans women.Įarlier this month, he left Tinder, the go-to hetero dating app, after averaging a measly two matches a week and meeting only four people in six months. Like most of them, however, Jeremy’s profile includes a perplexing caveat: “No Guys,” it reads, adding that any messages from men will be deleted. Jeremy is one of an increasing number of straight men on Grindr, the hookup app created in 2009 for men who have sex with men.
