![]() ![]() ![]() Their marketing teams would have us believe that everybody who swipes is about to walk off into the sunset with a soulmate. Bumble, for example, which calls itself a feminist app, has had a number of reported cases of stalking, sexual assault and rape, and users have been quoted as saying that the company has failed to address their concerns as they would have hoped.Īnd then there are Big Dating’s faulty promises of long-term relationships. How, I’ve wondered, in the #MeToo era, are these companies still able to get away with this outrageous lack of accountability?ĭating platforms which market themselves as female-friendly aren’t always any better in dealing with the problems of harassment and sexual assault on their sites. But these same women say that when they’ve tried to report these incidents, the dating apps in question often don’t even respond. Nearly every one of the hundreds of women and girls I’ve interviewed about online dating over the last several years has told me she’s experienced some incident where she didn’t feel safe, if not something much worse. These are astronomical figures, and yet somehow still largely left out of the online dating conversation. In a 2019 survey by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations of 1,200 women who said they had used an online dating platform in the past 15 years, “more than a third of the women said they were sexually assaulted by someone they had met through a dating app” and “f these women, more than half said they were raped”. Yet they do next to nothing to help women with their very real concerns. ![]() What some would chalk up to “the new dating culture” are actually crimes that women have been told to laugh off lest they look like they’re just not cool girls.ĭating app companies, which inhabit a multibillion-dollar industry, have been very adept at co-opting feminism in the marketing of their products as “empowering”. Unsolicited dick pics, harassing messages, and the non-consensual sharing of nudes are now routine features of dating for women across demographics. But dating apps have led to the normalization of abuses which would have been considered appalling in other, supposedly less progressive eras. This isn’t to say there haven’t always been more risks for women when it comes to dating – of course there have. Since Covid, business media tell us, online dating has “ surged”. All of which has only gotten worse since the pandemic, when dating sites have become pretty much the only way to date for millions of people across the world. (Although, from what I’ve heard from my sources and media reports, LGTBQ+ women have plenty to complain about as well.) For years I’ve been puzzled by why no one wants to be the one to say it – is it fear of looking like an “old” or a prude? – but here goes: I believe that online dating has made single women overall less happy, less likely to find a long-term partner, and more at risk of experiencing sexual violence. Let’s face it: dating apps have been terrible for women – especially straight women like me who have to deal with the straight men who use them. ![]()
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