A sacred part of the modern mating ritual is the Google search. Unless you are Meghan, who swears she didn’t look up Prince Harry before their first date, it’s par for the course to find out all you can about a potential love interest before meeting them in person. Now Tinder, and other Match Group-owned apps, are making things easier for armchair detectives: they have partnered with a non-profit called Garbo so users in the US can run background checks on their matches. All you need is a full name or a first name and phone number and up comes his or her chequered past.
Should we be finding ways to make online dating safer? Absolutely. Is this the right way to do it? I am unconvinced. Not least because it seems you will have to pay for this feature, which will add a whole new dimension to victim-blaming. They went on a date without paying for a background check? What did they expect? Dating apps should be the ones responsible for ensuring known sex abusers don’t use their services; this shifts the burden of responsibility on to the user.
The last half century or so has been one long shout that strong and independent women can – and should – shag as they wish. Make their own decisions unencumbered by patriarchal norms. And quite right too.
Now the demand is edging toward the idea that it’s the capitalists who will be to blame if they end up shagging a wrong ‘un?
Yes, most strong and independent…..
wasn’t there a big campaign that successfully stopped women’s histories turning up on google?
Women are strong and independent until its not advantageous to be so, and then they are poor weak willed things that are easily manipulated by evil menz………..I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the entire feminist movement is the mass gaslighting of men, a method of psychological warfare. Declare themselves the equal nay better of men when it suits, then fall back on the biological protective instinct of men when that suits. Given the female propensity for psychological violence over physical, it fits their psyche perfectly. One suspects this is the reason the Ancients created the Patriarchy – anarchy soon overtook any society that allowed such behaviour free rein.
Sebastiano Ricci certainly liked powerful-looking birds and it’s hard to imagine that this carry-on was anything other than consensual.
(Were the Sabine women holding mobile phones in those outstretched hands?)
My advice to young men using these apps is to work it so you appear to be edgy, potentially violent, transgressive, poor at controlling impulses, and exploitative.
You’ll get more casual sex, and you can project a more domesticated image when you feel like settling down.
TMB- are you referring to the painting? -there’s a theory that because of church and general morés of the day the reason for rather butch ladies and rather atypical ladyhumps was that the life models used for such paintings were all necessarily male.
I’m a fan of the Caracci brothers. One of them, Anibale or Ludovico, I’m not sure which, did woodcuts which were all those mythical couplings, so very cultured, but done as porn.
With respect to the actual topic, who is gonna stop scorned women poisoning the data of men they have done with?
Dare I suggest back to the future? All women are kept at home under lock and key. They’re only allowed out with a date who has first been comprehensively investigated by their family.
See. They knew how to do it in the good old days.
I once came across a chap who tried to stick his knife in my heart. If I’d been a woman he’d just have grabbed my handbag and run away. It’s not fair.
There’s of course the bit that the real predators take care to not announce their presence….
“I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that the entire feminist movement is the mass gaslighting of men, a method of psychological warfare. Declare themselves the equal nay better of men when it suits, then fall back on the biological protective instinct of men when that suits. Given the female propensity for psychological violence over physical, it fits their psyche perfectly. One suspects this is the reason the Ancients created the Patriarchy – anarchy soon overtook any society that allowed such behaviour free rein.”
The feminist movement is now in the mad, post-campaign success stage. Women campaigned for freedoms, won, and a lot of women went off and exercised their freedoms. What’s left are weak, angry, purposeless women, generally middle class and supported by parents dealing with trivial nonsense like who is on bank notes.
The actual strong, independent women are in management jobs or studying science. They’ll put up arguments and defend themselves, without crying when you defeat them.
I don’t know why people bother engaging with feminists. They bluff intelligence, they aren’t very bright, they’re not particularly sexually attractive and have bad personalities. They’re the worst of women. Better to spend your time around one who is actually intelligent and witty, or just a kind girl with big tits.