Compulsive Heterosexuality with a Dash of Privilege

So I was looking at http://contexts.org/socimages/, another site that I frequent, and one of the recent posts was about internet usage.

This post was based on polls taken about what it is used for, if you could live without it, etc.

30% of users said that the internet is a good place to find a boyfriend/girlfriend.

This got me thinking about all of the online dating sites out there.

I checked 4 different sites out: www.Match.com, www.eharmony.com, www.okcupid.com, and www.chemistry.com.

When you go to the homepage of any of these sites, there is always a section to sign up for the site. When I first saw this, a couple things popped out to me.

The first thing was that at each of these sites, the defaults were automatically set to "Female". Are they implying that women tend to use these sites more often than men? (I will note, however, that statistically, this may be the case, I am not sure). Maybe the implication is that women almost need to use these sites whereas men do not.

The second thing I noticed is that there privilege at work. These sites are set up in binaries. When you sign up, you either have to put female, or male. There is no option for the trans individuals out there who also would like their chance at love.

Chemistry.com is the extreme example of these. Match, eHarmony, and OkCupid all contain pull-down menus (which are still defaulted to female), but Chemistry has the (not sure what to call it) circle option.

The third thing that I noticed is compulsory heterosexuality at work. Each site, regardless of format, is set to "I am Female seeking a Male" or some variation thereof. The most extreme example of this is for eHarmony. While they now have the option for same-sex interests (initially, since they are a Christian based organization, they only had heterosexual interests in mind (they also argued that same-sex relationships do not follow their 29 compatible dimensions)), if you change the "I am a _____" from female to male, the "seeking" menu also changes from male to female.

Next, since we're still looking at privilege. On three of these sites (OkCupid being the exception), bisexuality is not even an option. Here, both hetero- and homosexuality are privileged.

And finally, three of these sites (again with OkCupid being the exception) all require monthly payments to receive their services. Now it is those with expendable income that are privileged.

Just some food for thought on how Adrianne Rich graces us once again with her ideas of Compulsive Heterosexuality.