The Promise of Flesh
"Online dating has promised to bring us closer to people with similar interests or people we might connect with on the other side of the pond. This promise has fallen flat."
By an Anonymous Author
Birth control has a very long and complicated history. Oral contraceptives have only been around since 1957 when the FDA first approved the pill to “help women regulate their menstruation”. In the 1960s, the first oral contraceptive to be labeled and advertised as birth control was Enviod. The number of women using the oral contraceptive doubled after the pills that were once said to just help with acne were now rebranded as a contraceptive. With the boom of women being able to access resources to prevent pregnancy came the rise of casual sex. As casual sex became normalized, many women and feminists put their efforts toward the cause of the so-called sexual revolution.
While the promise of sexual liberation was proclaimed by the introduction of birth control, these advancements have failed to deliver any true feminist liberation. Things that have been promised as liberation have done the opposite: the burden of birth control, hookup culture, and prostitution. That is not to say, however, that medical advances such as birth control are not helpful; in fact, the pill is probably the only modern invention that has alleviated the burdens of women’s duties. The problem is instead the burden of birth control is unduly placed on women. The problem with casual sex is not the fact that women are having sex, but because heterosexual sex is always unequal. In the end, like most things, women are the ones suffering the short end of the stick. Before liberation, we must first acknowledge and aim to change the conditions of women. The negative repercussions of the postmodern normalization of casual sex through dating apps being used as a sexual marketplace are subjugating women as a class.
Everything is now becoming more and more online, including dating. Dating apps may appear to be a tool for sexual liberation, but they reinforce gendered power imbalances, highlighting that sexual freedom does not equal women’s liberation. Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder are now extremely popular amongst young adults, according to the Pew Research Center: about 53 percent of Americans from the ages of 18 to 29-years old report using dating apps, turning them into a key site for young people to meet new people. These apps are having a crucial impact on casual sex. An act which happens primarily amongst college-aged adults that was previously dominated by the culture of one-night stands at parties, has now been replaced by weekends or lonely nights of swiping left and right on Tinder. Tinder is overwhelmingly considered a digital “sexual marketplace” (Goluboff 2015) and the primary app for casual sex and hookups (LeFebvre 2018). Now, instead of having to talk to people in person, you can swipe endlessly until you find someone you deem attractive enough to begin a conversation with. The app also has additional paid features like Super Like, Tinder boost, and Tinder passport, all to stand out more to your potential matches. Gender-neutral Tinder has been the standard and most recognized dating app for hookups, but the new emergence of Bumble, a reimagined dating app, claims to give women more power by requiring them to message men first.
Yet, there is a staunch gender difference in how these apps are used. Women on these dating sites frequently state that they use them to form romantic relationships and for validation, while men use them primarily for hookups (Lefebvre 2018; Ranzini and Lutz 2017; Sumter, Vandenbosch, and Ligtenberg 2017). Men also make up the majority of the users of these apps because society largely sees sex not as something that women actively participate in, but rather as something that is done to them. However, opting out of sex is not an option either, because then we are seen as puritanical prudes. A big testament to this is that even though the two dating apps are both very popular, they both seem to be running into a similar problem: not enough women using them.
Tinder seems unbothered, but Bumble seemed to take issue with this gender gap, having poured money into a campaign to try to get more women to use their app. Tried and failed: their ways of marketing to women were through attempts at shaming women into consumerism and accepting our new sexual culture. Bumble’s controversial new anti-celibacy campaign triggered backlash—the campaign contained a commercial in which a woman became a nun in an attempt to swear off dating. The advert ends with her drooling over a shirtless man and downloading Bumble anyway. In addition, the campaign included billboards that stated “You know celibacy is not the answer” and “Thou shall not become a nun.” Surely there are better ways to get women to join your app than shaming women’s choice of celibacy. Adding fuel to the fire, Bumble named itself a “feminist” dating app. The app has since apologized and taken down the billboard. In the apology, the app acknowledged its mistake and said that the company plans to donate money to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The clear gendered language of the campaign and their response to criticism shows how these apps display women as commodities to be sold and bought, with no regard to female choice or dignity.
Unlike Bumble, Tinder, the most popular dating app amongst heterosexuals, has never used a faux-feminist approach in its marketing—actually, quite the opposite. The app has generated a new lexicon via the creation of new phrases such as “tinderslut” and “tinderella”: a tinderslut being a woman who uses the app for its intended purpose, a casual hookup, while a tinderella is defined as a man’s dream girl. These specific words emerging from male Tinder users are an insight into how young women are perceived by scrolling men on the app—both of these terms denigrate women in a familiar way: they invoke the inevitable Madonna-whore complex.
The Madonna-whore complex is a psychological phenomenon that places women into two categories: the Madonna, pure and virtuous, or the Whore, promiscuous and manipulative. The term was first coined by controversial psychologist Sigmund Freud. Unfortunately, it is something that has become cemented into our religions, media, and culture. The complex, for example, is deeply intertwined with Christian theology, the Virgin Mary being seen as the end-all-be-all of purity. The Bible’s various passages shame women who are sexually active as sinners who cause men to stray away from righteousness. Similar patterns follow in other Abrahamic religions. In our media, specifically in slasher or horror films, we see a pattern of the promiscuous woman dying first while the good girl, the Sandra De, lives on to become one of the final girls. The Madonna-whore complex is so permeated into society that most people are not even aware that they subconsciously hold those feelings. Forcing women into limiting roles further proves that liberation cannot be achieved through the basis of harmful stereotypes.
Another heavily ignored factor of women’s subjugation in normalized casual sex is how these apps put women in dangerous situations, especially those that may result in sexual assault, rape, or even murder. There have been a multitude of cases where surveyed women have reported being sexually assaulted by someone they met through an online dating platform. In 2019, for example, a ProPublica report found that over ⅓ of the ~1,200 women surveyed by the Columbia Journalism Institute reported being sexually assaulted by someone they had met through an online dating platform. It is more likely for women to be assaulted on a date or meet-up from a dating app than from using a ride-share app or taking a taxi. Dating apps have no background checks, so all people, regardless of violent or criminal history, have access to these apps. The dating app industry standard is to only ask for a phone number or email verification. On Tinder, if a user would like a blue checkmark, a verification that signifies to other users that they are real, the only necessary step is to pay to upload a government issued ID. This creates a reality in which only users who want to pay out of pocket for verification are the only ones having their identity verified. Furthermore, the lack of any background checks also makes it easier for minors to use these apps. Slapping an over 18 label does not stop minors from faking their age to use these websites and applications.
Another issue with dating apps is that on the internet, people are seemingly more empowered to send women abusive and unnecessarily cruel messages, no doubt due to their virtual anonymity and the likely chance that they will never have to face the consequences of this verbal abuse. While there are always outliers in public, face-to-face settings, most people deliver and accept rejection kindly. Just a simple “no, thanks, not my type,” usually suffices. Men also will, hopefully in most cases, not flash their penis at you as they do with photos in direct messages.
Sexual harassment is all too common on these types of platforms. Some men use dating apps as a way to troll or cyberbully women they have deemed unattractive. Men report more frequent engagement in internet trolling behaviors and higher rates of trolling enjoyment than women (Buckels et al., 2014). While in-person dating does not exempt one from engaging in negative dating habits and behaviors, being able to hide behind a screen enables people to act out and say things they would never have the courage to in person—creating a sort of pseudo-bravery allowing men to be as cruel as possible. Even when women share nasty messages they have received online, they do not usually share the name or the user of the person who has harassed them or sent explicit threats out of respect or fear of retribution. A lot of these men will rally their followers to harass the victim if they are exposed. Some women have seen other women share these crude messages and watched them be hounded by people saying that it’s not true or it must be them sending messages on another account for attention. Shame becomes obsolete in these situations. Not only does the “sexual marketplace” and prevalence of the Madonna-whore complex harm women on an ideological level, the lack of safety protocols and verification on dating apps places real women in actual harm.
Online dating has promised to bring us closer to people with similar interests or people we might connect with on the other side of the pond. This promise has fallen flat and left us with marketing campaigns and even more social media begging to be downloaded. All around, these apps cause more harm than good to women and children. Modern society normalizing casual sex has led to a whirlwind of modern problems: women are harassed and preyed upon by unknown men hiding behind a screen and insulted for rejecting dates, engaging in casual sex, or even merely having friendly interactions with their counterparts on these dating apps. These apps have always fallen short on their promises of liberation and choice. The burden of staying safe, and avoiding assault or pregnancy, is always placed on the women. Dating apps also create impunity for predators, where they could easily place blame on young girls for lying about their ages when they groom, sexually assault and statutorily rape them. Although the use of dating apps has been relatively ignored in political feminist circles, it is worth discoursing to find ways to reduce the harm they cause to women and young girls.