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.
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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
TERFs are obsessed with the idea that you can always tell.
I can always tell it is a toupee... except when I can't.
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.
My phone autocorrect has been ducking annoying recently.
Thanks for the heads up.
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
Well to be fair trans people are extra hot ;)
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.
