LGBTQ+ athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are being outed and potentially endangered, as Insider reports.
A Tuesday report identified several videos on TikTok and Twitter in which users used Grindr’s “Explore” feature, which allows the app’s users to see and interact with other users in faraway locations, to view profiles of athletes located in the Olympic Village. The users then shared those profiles, which contained photos and identifying information, on social media.
One video showed at least 30 Grindr users’ faces, several of whom identified themselves as Olympians. Several were from countries where homosexuality is restricted or criminalized.
“I used Grindr’s explore feature to find myself an Olympian boyfriend,” the creator of one video jokes in its caption.
The 2020 Olympics is hosting delegations from multiple countries that have taken hostile stances towards LGBTQ+ people, including 11 nations in which homosexuality is potentially punishable by death, according to the Human Diginity Trust. These include Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Japan also drew criticism for its lack of federal LGBTQ+ protections ahead of hosting this year’s games. The nation has yet to legalize same-sex marriage, although a court called on Japan to strike down its ban on same-sex marriage in March.
Insider counted at least 10 Twitter posts and at least four TikTok videos in which Olympic village Grindr profiles were exposed, one of which had gained over 140,000 views. The social media platforms have since removed most of the videos, although one reportedly remained live as of Wednesday morning.
A Grindr spokesperson told Insider the users who made the posts were in breach of the app’s terms of service and demanded that the posts be removed.
There is unfortunately quite a bit of precedent when it comes to people using dating and hookup apps to out LGBTQ+ people. And this isn’t even the first such incident to take place at the Olympics: During the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, a Daily Beast journalist used Grindr to locate LGBTQ+ athletes at the games. The reporter, Nico Hines, claimed that he was investigating whether the Games were a “hotbed of partying athletes, hookups, and sex, sex, sex.”
Hines was widely criticized for including identifying details in the piece that effectively outed several athletes from countries with strong anti-LGBTQ+ climates. After facing backlash, he apologized and was temporarily suspended from his job but remains World Editor at the Beast.
In the past, human rights advocates called for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to bar countries that criminalize homosexuality from competition. If enacted, that policy could result in over a quarter of participating countries being banned.
And while the IOC hasn’t offered a public statement on whether it intends to take action, the Olympics’ governing body does have a legacy of reprimanding countries for human rights violations. In the 1964, the IOC prohibited South Africa from competing due to Apartheid — a policy of systemic racial segregation that was partially discontinued in 1991 — and the country was not allowed to participate again until 1992.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics have made headlines for being the queerest ever, with a record 163 openly LGBTQ+ athletes competing. This Olympics also marks the first out trans and nonbinary Olympians, including Canadian soccer star Quinn and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.
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