Lesbian dating app HER tells all transphobic users to delete their accounts
Lesbian dating app HER has told transphobic users to delete their accounts. (Credit: Getty)
A lesbian dating app has told all transphobic users to delete it from their phones, after a pile-on resulted in the app’s Twitter account being temporarily suspended.
HER, an inclusive dating app which has a user base of more than 10 million, was deplatformed on Twitter on Lesbian Visibility Day for hitting back at transphobes.
Throughout the day, the app’s social media team had been responding to an onslaught of “violent messages” from anti-trans activists, who took issue with the fact HER welcomes trans and non-binary lesbians.
Anti-trans bigots reported the app’s Twitter account in droves and Twitter issued a temporary suspension.
HER’s Twitter account has now been restored.
The pile-on came after the app released a blog post in celebration of Lesbian Visibility Day, describing how it is “reclaiming ‘lesbian’” from “the clutches of TERFs and bigots who’ve tried to hijack it to fuel their transphobia and hatred”.
After returning to social media, the app sent a push-notification to all its users telling transphobia to delete the app, adding: “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Speaking with PinkNews, HER CEO Robyn Exton explained the app being an inclusive space is “nothing new”.
“HER has always been a platform that is for trans women, for non-binary people and anyone who identifies as a woman,” she said.
“So it’s kind of absurd that we’re now getting this like vitriol coming back, saying that we’re a lesbian app that is now ‘promoting’ inclusion of trans women. It has always been since day one.”
The CEO said the team at HER are “so sick” at the levels of “aggression and violence” so-called gender critical activists aim at the app and its users, when “all trans women want to do on our app is meet someone to fall in love with”.
HER ‘doubling down’ on trans support
Despite the heightened attention on social media, Exton said HER is not slowing down in its support of its trans users and the wider community.
“We’re certainly not slowing down. I’d say we’re probably doubling down,” she told PinkNews.
“As TERFs want to pick up and try and question our position, I think we’re using this time to make our position exceptionally clear.”
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the platform has seen a rise in hate speech.
Earlier in April, the social media platform quietly dropped longstanding policy protecting transgender people from deadnaming and misgendering.
The move to remove the policy was described by by LGBTQ+ nonprofit GLAAD as “the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike”.
Under the tech billionaire’s ownership of Twitter, the ‘groomer’ conspiracy theory – which pushes the idea that LGBTQ+ are inherently out to harm children – has also soared by 119 per cent.
Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified 1,714,504 tweets and retweets since the start of 2022 that mention the LGBTQ+ community via keywords such as “LGBT”, “gay”, “homosexual” or “trans” alongside slurs including “groomer”, “predator” and “pedophile”.
Prior to Musk’s take over, there were around 3,000 tweets a day mentioning the ‘groomer’ conspiracy theory but this grew to more than 6,500 in the four months after Musk became owner.
