And so, it was, that I read the article about Tinder supposedly overreacted to a recent Vanity Fair article about the mobile dating scene (more like a "game" of sorts, well at least to some people anyways), I go and look for the Vanity Fair article to see what the fuss is about.
And boy, how glad I am that I'm out of this modern-day dating scene, because it's so screwed up, both literally and metaphorically.
Here are a few thoughts...
(a) There are a few general themes from the Vanity Fair article, like:
- Young men general enjoy it, young women almost universally hate it.
- The sex that comes with mobile dating, is "too easy."
- Empowerment seems to be totally one-sided (in men's favor), although women claim to feel liberated and independent too (supposedly).
- Women complain about rudeness and lack of manners of men. Women complain about feeling disrespect from men. Men say they have no time for that.
(c) While I don't want to appear sexist, but let's start with the injured party, ie. the women who feel injured, disrespected, used (even). The first and last message is, if you want respect from others, you have to show some self-respect, and sleeping around, the reverse (wo)manizing, is not the way to go about gaining respect from others when all you do, is to spread your legs. In the bygone era, if women sleep around with guys, they would be called names, like, sluts or whore. In the internet age, women call that liberation, feminism, whatever. Whatever you call it, it's still the same thing, and you won't gain much respect from there either. If you want respect, practice a little self-restraint, for a start, and stop putting yourself out there on the web, on Tinder and what-not, stop objectifying yourself, acting like Kim K. and expect others to treat you like a precious virgin and focus on your beautiful inner self and personality, because hey, those are not the qualities you want people to look at when you do Tinder. Period. Everyone knows that.
(d) If these young women want total gender equality, which they seem to be heading down that way, they should be realistic and upfront about what guys are and do. Can they do the same? (Sure, boom-boom-boom swipe, then see ya.) Do they really want to do that for the rest of their life? (That seems to be the path a lot of young men are heading down, but are the women ready for it? Do they really want that? It doesn't appear to be.)
(e) Nothing of all these should excuse the callousness of the part of these young men in this casual hookup game. This mobile dating scene feels like a bunch of kids, boys and girls, messing about, with no adult supervision. So, yeah, it does look like some liberation of sorts, but they are liberated to the point where they are free to do whatever, but they have no idea what they are doing, or what they want, or why they're doing it, or how they can change it (if they don't like it).
(f) If I were in these young women's shoes, I'd say, start by withholding yourself from over-exposure on the web and in the mobile space. Yes, it could be scary getting to know someone in person, but it could be so much more satisfying when you connect with someone you like and who like you back. And yes, this takes time, and sometimes it hurts (breakup, got dumped, heartbreak, the works). But as the famous saying, it's so much better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all. And I'm sorry, hon', you won't find love on the mobile apps just by swiping with your finger. It doesn't work that way.
In a not-so-perverse way, all these remind me of Last Tango in Paris. It's the attempt, in a few generations past, to probe the possibility of a meaningful relationship that starts with anonymous sex and erotica without having to know the person first, or at all. In hindsight, that looks almost prescient in the Tinder world now. Looking at how these young men and women saying how terrifying they would feel when that other someone that you're fucking but have zero interest in whatsoever somehow want to know you better the morning after.
For what's worth, in this post-feminism world (or some would call it the third-wave feminism), it certainly feels like women of the younger generations have willingly turned back the clock on a number of achievements, all in the name of Girl Power. Is it really that by sleeping around with stranger men as fast as what men can do to women, these women are achieving gender equality and empowerment? Put it another way, what does it really mean, by putting themselves on par with men's womanizing, even if womanizing isn't something that they would want to see in the opposite sex? I'd instead argue that it's a foolish notion to reverse the evolution of the civility and civilization (assuming it was indeed true that human beings are historically polyamorous, as the one of the Vanity Fair article's interviewee author has propositioned). What women should have done, is to show a better way, a higher path, for men to follow, rather than plunging in to play the men's game (of causal sex and hookup, of womanizing).
And with all these women offering their body up for sex, for free, why would anyone even need prostitutes, one has to wonder...
All of which is to say, this is just so fucked up.
