Photo: Hashela Kumarawansa
Two weeks shy of reaching the half-year mark since she became single, Mia decided to celebrate by signing up for Tinder. Having called it off with her long-term partner of three years, Mia knew that Tinder and its offering of a platform for casual, fun “hook-ups” was exactly what she was after. So on the ubiquitious hype of Tinder, Mia decided to get swiping.
But that all changed when news of a Tinder gang rape broke out. The decision by a 28-year-old woman to go on a Tinder date while in New Zealand for business sent alarm bells ringing across the globe, calling for women Tinder users to err on the side of caution. One minute the woman was enjoying a drink with her companion, the next, she woke up in an unfamiliar location and a victim of a savage gang rape. In another case last year, Warriena Wright, 26, fell to her death on a Tinder date on the Gold Coast.
This event sparked many women members to shift the way they used Tinder, and for people like Mia (whose name has been changed for this article) to rethink using the app altogether.
“It really hit me how dangerous Tinder had the potential to be. I thought about the worst scenarios, like getting stalked, assaulted and scared myself into staying away from the app,” Mia said.
However, are women suffering beyond these haunting thoughts of having their personal safety compromised?
According to Vanity Fair‘s Nancy Jo Sales – yes. Sales’ feature in this month’s issue of the magazine, provided a lengthy piece on how the abolition of the “traditional dating scene” is affecting women the most, claiming the app did nothing for feminism as has been argued before.
However, Melbourne feminist, Sum Ambepitiya, claims that to label Tinder as a “feminist’s ideal” in the first place is to bark up the wrong tree.
“I think that statements about Tinder being inherently ‘feminist’ or ‘anti feminist’ are in themselves misogynist because they perpetuate the stereotype of men seeking quick, no-strings-attached sex, and women seeking long-term love relationships, with no room in between.”
Ambepitiya said Tinder is used for a wide range of purposes by its 50 million users – and they’re all gender neutral.
“Saying that Tinder causes heartbreak in women because they have unrealistic expectations of the men who use it denies women’s very real desires for casual sex, and men’s very real desires for serious relationships.”
And Tinder had a lot to say in response to Sales’ article as well, even boasting in a tweet to its almost 54,000 followers on how Tinder is the first dating app that puts women in control this morning.
If you want to try to tear us down with one-sided journalism, well, that’s your prerogative.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Or you could have talked about how everyone on Tinder is on an equal playing field.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Users can’t message each other unless BOTH people are interested in one another. — Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
This all creates social accountability so that Tinder users treat each other well. — Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
So is Tinder as harmful to females’ as it is perpetuated to be? Swipe right to find out.
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