OkCupid Says OK to Trans, Genderqueer and 'Sapiosexuals'

The online dating site OkCupid has expanded its gender and sexuality users for users of its desktop site, and some of the options have users scratching their heads.

Gay Star News reports that while the site previously only allowed users to identify as either male or female as their gender, and gay, straight, or bisexual as their sexual orientation, they are now offer a dazzling array of options.

The gender options now include woman, man, agender, adrogynous, bigender, cis man, cis woman, genderfluid, genderqueer, hijra, intersex, non-binary, other, pangender, transfeminine, transgender, transmasculine, transsexual, trans man, trans woman and two-spirit.

The sexuality options are straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, demisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible, lesbian, pansexual, queer, questioning and sapiosexual (being attracted to intelligence).

OkCupid users randomly selected to take part in the first wave of change were sent a message notifying them they can now better identify themselves.

"You're part of a select group with access to this feature," it read. "Keep in mind as we continue to work on this feature: For now, editing your gender and orientation is only supported on the desktop site."

PBS.org reports that the move could bring back a lot of previous OkCupid users that left because the site couldn't accurately describe their gender or sexual identity.

Benn Kessler, one such user, said he left OkCupid because it did not give him the option to properly describe his gender as transmasculine.

"A lot of people would make assumptions about me, if I listed myself as a man, that were incorrect," he said. "The first line of my profile would basically say 'Hi, I'm a trans guy,' but people would just completely ignore that."

Jamie Flez, who identifies as fluid agender and uses the pronoun "they," said they were discouraged from using the site for the same reason. "This is the number one reason I disabled my account," they said in a Facebook message. "It's frustrating looking at my profile each time I log in and seeing that I'm a 'man.' according to OkCupid."

The new options will "greatly improve the online dating experience for many," they said.