We’re Coming Out

In 2009 when I first heard about Grindr, I was a grad student and I didn’t have a smartphone yet, but I was deeply intrigued by the idea that anywhere I went—any new city, new school, or even just a conference—could be less isolating for me as a queer person. Before the end of the year, I had purchased my first iPhone, and Grindr was the first app I downloaded. Today, it’s thirteen years later, and in the meantime I haven’t just used the app—Grindr has become the core element of my career in global LGBTQ social justice.

Today’s news of our expansion as a company makes me so proud to have been a part of this unique community project, and I also hold so much gratitude in my heart for the work LGBTQ activists all over the world have done to create the possibilities we have as queer people today, including the possibility to have a company like this.

My work for Grindr has taken me to more than a third of the world’s countries, and I’ve seen how much it means for our community to have access to connection technology in these incredibly diverse contexts. Of course, I think of all the couples I’ve met who have found love and partnership in some of the most challenging and repressive political environments. But I also think of all the people who have told me about other kinds of joys in connection they’ve found on the app—the friendships, the supportive gym buddies, and, of course, the on-the-fly hookups.

Most LGBTQ people in the world live in a place where there are no gay bars, no social groups, no way to even find each other except for online. In these cases particularly, Grindr has meant a sea change for accessing the community and ultimately accessing our own humanity as queer people in a world where we grow up being told over and over again that who we are and who we love are wrong. And adding on top of that the connections to LGBTQ activists who help to promote safety, health, and human rights in their local context via the app has meant taking a powerful tool and making it even more powerful.

I think of the case of Lebanon, where queers of my same age cohort have lived through so much in their lives that I have not—civil war; total economic collapse; and disasters, both natural and man-made. Yet the movement there has been strong, and, over the years, I’ve had the honor of being able to collaborate with their LGBTQ organizations to bring sexual health services, psychosocial support, and refugee services to the queer communities that come onto Grindr to connect, despite living in a country where gay sex is illegal.

There is more work to do, and we’ll be even better able to do it as we move to become a public company. I look forward to continuing our journey of service to our people.

-Jack Harrison-Quintana, Director of Grindr for Equality | LinkedIn