【Chilli and Banana】

Tinder is Chilli and Bananarolling out new features to help its transgender users have a better experience in the app.

Beginning Tuesday, the dating app will allow users to identify as genders other than male or female on their profile and choose whether they want their gender displayed on their profile. The company says the update will make it easier for transgender people to make connections within the app.

Tinder is also taking new steps to tamp down on harassment on its platform, particularly harassment that targets the transgender community.

---

You May Also Like

---

---

SEE ALSO: How transgender people can get free legal help before Trump takes office

With the update, launching Tuesday in the United States, Canada and UK, Tinder users are able to identify their gender using terms from the app's settings.

Previously, the app limited users to selecting man or woman, operating under the assumption that all users are cisgender, or identify with their sex at birth. This often complicated their experience using the app, says Tinder CEO Sean Rad. Now, Rad says, trans users should see better matches.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

"We can help you match with people that acknowledge that you're transgender and want to meet you versus people who end up harassing you as a result," Rad tells Mashable.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Rad had previously discussed the company's plans to make the dating app more inclusive to the trans community. The company spent the last six months working with GLADD on the update. He says the issue first came to his attention when he learned that Tinder's transgender users were often targeted by harassment and temporarily banned from the app after other users reported them.

The CEO says the company retrained its moderators and algorithms to better detect this type of harassment and that the company will now have a "far more aggressive" policy for banning users that violate its harassment policies.

"At the end of the day, as a trans user, what you would experience is higher quality matches. The users who were harassing probably won't be there because we would have banned them."

Whether the trans-inclusive gender options will positively impact the trans community remains to be seen. 

Identifying yourself as transgender on a platform known to some extent for gender-based harassment, after all, still comes with risk. And some transgender users may still want to identify themselves as male or female without specifying they are transgender.

Topics Tinder

• Games
• Life
• Deals
• Digital Culture
• Science
• Social Good
• Tech
• Entertainment

• Sex, Lies, and Videotape
• Fitbit loses more functionality as web app ditched
• China’s Zeekr unveils refreshed models in advanced driver
• Billions of snow crabs disappeared, and scientists have a good clue why
• Sucking Up to the Saudis
• Italy vs. Albania 2024 livestream: Watch Euro 2024 for free
• Apple Watch Series 9 on sale: Score $100 off
• Fitbit loses more functionality as web app ditched
• Labor History in Real Time
• NASA flew over Jupiter's ocean moon Europa and captured stunning footage

• Volkswagen's all
• Aerie refused to photoshop its ads for two years and sales spiked
• Lady Gaga calls Dr. Luke 'Ursula' for holding Kesha's voice captive
• Barbie has a brand
• Beyoncé's 'APESH*T' dance inspires the best meme of fans dancing
• Deepfakes are about to make revenge porn so much worse
• Hands on with Apple macOS Mojave: It’s getting dark in here
• Why we could be watching 'The Simpsons' for another 30 seasons
• Woman's hair is so long it would make Rapunzel jealous
• Unabomber emerges on Twitter after 20 years to speak to the media

• What Comes After Resistance?
• Apple and Meta face EU charges for failing to allow marketplace competition
• NASA Artemis megarocket engineers are waiting to eat 50 gallons of beans
• NASA slammed DART spacecraft into an asteroid and filmed the crash
• The Long View in Granada
• Elon Musk is tied to Tesla, for better or worse.
• Scientists taught brain cells to play legendary 'Pong' game
• Dongfeng’s refreshed MPV makes debut featuring Huawei’s assisted driving tech · TechNode
• Alliance Against Progress
• Best speaker deal: Get an Apple HomePod Mini for $79.99 at Best Buy

• This Could Revolutionize That
• Fat Bear Week 2022: How many fish do the fat bears eat?
• Best game deal: Get 'Super Mario RPG' for 33% off at Amazon
• NASA's about to test Martian landing gear in space thanks to this visionary
• The Thou of Zadie Smith
• Honor secures new round of investment from China Mobile · TechNode
• Artemis 1 launch: Meet the badass woman running NASA's new moonshot
• NASA's surprising reason for crashing into an asteroid's moon
• Two Poems
• NASA's surprising reason for crashing into an asteroid's moon