If a man and a woman meet on Tinder and the man later is accused of violence against the women, you can guarantee Tinder will be the first word in the headline of any article about that accusation.
Channel 7 News is not the only one and won’t be the last one.
If they had met at a church group or a book shop or over cabbages in Coles, it wouldn’t even rate a mention at the bottom of the article.
But Tinder creates a frenzy because violence is the expected consequence for women who actively and confidently pursue sex. “Nice girls” wait passively for men to want them, they are the objects of desire. “Bad girls” feel desire and act on it. And we all know what happens to “bad girls”.
It’s an insidious and persistent form of victim blaming. It implies Tinder is the problem, not the men who commit violence against women (in this case allegedly – his case has not yet been tried).
Tinder has nothing to do with the choices men make. How two people met is irrelevant to the violence men choose to commit against women.
FixedIt is an ongoing project to push back against the media’s constant erasure of violent men and blaming of innocent victims. If you would like to help fund it – even $5 a month makes a big difference – please consider becoming a Patron
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