Photo Unsplash/Honey Fangs Text Julia van der Westhuyzen
Whilst wandering around campus this week, you may have encountered the little white flyers entitled “CUFFED.” Before puzzling about what funky innuendo it might be referring to, Resource spoke to one of the students behind Cuffed – a new ‘grassroots, blind date, matchmaking platform for queer men in Wageningen’.
The three founders prefer to remain anonymous as Wageningen is small, and they don’t want people to feel awkward in reaching out. ‘Cuffed actually refers to Cuffing Season,’ says the student-founder. ‘It’s a colloquial term for this time of year when people try to get locked into relationships for the winter. We admit the name is a bit tongue-in-cheek.’
Men
Why a platform exclusively for queer men? Studies have shown that members of the LGBTQ+ community are a lot more likely to use online dating apps than their straight counterparts. The creators of Cuffed describe online dating for queer men as ‘soul-crushing’. ‘With a huge focus on sex and visual appearance, little room is left for genuine human connection.’ The platform’s manifesto describes current online dating sites as capitalist playgrounds: the commercially driven platforms promote ‘the consumption of bodies’, ‘keep connections fleeting and shallow’, ‘glorify hypermasculinity’ and have ‘stifling body standards’.
No pictures
The creators of Cuffed hope to focus on meaningful connections, which is why there are no profile pictures. Instead, they ask about someone’s love language and what you are actually looking for and admire in others. ‘There’s three of us in the matchmaking process. We look at the answers and the overall energy. I think a challenge will be matching people that don’t already know each other.’
Cuffed is to become a truly local platform. ‘Most dating apps don’t focus on the local, but we want to keep it within Wageningen. That makes it easier to meet each other and really build something.’ Do the founders intend to make their app available for other social groups? ‘Perhaps,’ says one of the founders, ‘but let’s first see how this goes.’
