The first dating app for lesbians is set to launch – using sex-recognition technology to exclude trans women and ensure only biological females can sign up.
It is the brainchild of feminist campaigner Jenny Watson, who says there are currently no dating apps which cater purely for women who want same-sex relationships.
The current crop of dating apps, she says, are increasingly being used by males who identify as female and who say they too are lesbian.
L’App will use facial recognition technology to verify a person as a biological female.
Ms Watson said would-be users will have to go through a process when they sign up where the app scans their face via their smartphone.
The software, which Ms Watson claims is 99 per cent accurate, analyses features including bone structure, the shape and positioning of an individual’s eyes, eyebrows and nose shape or size. It will also be able to detect if a person is presenting a live image rather than just putting a photo of a woman up to the camera by detecting movement, blinking motions and heat emissions.
Tests have revealed that if someone tries to disguise themselves as a woman by putting on a wig or make-up, the technology will spot the deception.
Ms Watson, 32, a town planner, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no female-only dating apps at the moment. Lesbians need an app which they can use without being messaged by trans-identifying males.’
She said L’App had also been developed in response to many lesbians finding that they were being banned from existing apps if they dared to specify that they wanted to date only natal females. Speaking about her own personal experience, she said: ‘Any time I’ve joined a lesbian dating app or any other dating app myself, I get banned.
‘To avoid trans-identified males, I will always write a little blurb, nothing disrespectful, saying my preference is for women and please respect my boundaries.
‘And every time I do that I get banned. On one app I was asked to put down my most controversial opinion, so I wrote that J. K. Rowling was right and was banned for that. It’s insane.’
Ms Watson has previously campaigned to protect lesbian spaces, by hosting female-only speed dating nights. She plans to open UK’s first single-sex lesbian bar.
She has been criticised as transphobic for excluding transgender women – which she rejects. Her launch comes as a court case is being heard in over whether a trans woman can be lawfully excluded from a female-only social networking app called Giggle.