FixedIt: ‘Tinder Rape’ is code for ‘what were you wearing’?

In this case, these men were convicted of rape so we don’t have to ‘allege’ anything.

They’re rapists. They raped a woman.

They didn’t rape Tinder. They didn’t do it because of Tinder. They raped HER. The woman who must now live with the consequences of their choice to rape her.

Isn’t it interesting that even when these four men were found guilty and sentenced to prison for a few years, whoever wrote the headline still can’t bring himself (I’m guessing their gender) to acknowledge that they’re guilty. They just ‘learn their fate’ for their ‘Tinder Rape’.

Before technology meant serial killer was not a viable choice for violent men, journalists used to name them to differentiate between all the men who gratified their desire for power and control by murdering women, children, and sometimes other men.

The Zodiac Killer, Boston Strangler, Son of Sam, BTK, and Jack the Ripper were all sensationalist nicknames for men who killed women – the clickbait of the analogue age.

Journalism is a conservative profession and the people who work in it do not easily change their habits.

Despite a reduction in overt victim-blaming and sensationalist headlines, the underlying myth that women are responsible for men’s violence hasn’t really disappeared.

It’s just more hidden.

One of the places it hides is in the ‘Tinder Rape’ or ‘Tinder Rapist’ headline.

‘Tinder Rapist’ is not a nickname given to one serial rapist to terrify readers and sell newspapers. ‘Tinder Rapist’ is any man who meets a woman online and later decides to rape her. He doesn’t make that decision because they met on a dating app.

Tinder and most of the other dating apps could certainly do more to protect their users from violent men, but that is not their business model. This does not mean they are responsible for a man’s choice to rape someone.

Women who meet men on dating apps (whether they are looking for a date, love, a long term relationship or a quick hookup) are not responsible for rape.

The only people responsible for rape are the men who choose to rape someone.

Rape is a decision. It’s not an accident or a mistake or an inevitable outcome of lust.

Rape is a choice to ignore or not care about consent.

Obscuring that choice by mislabelling a man as a ‘Tinder Rapist’ is thinly veiled victim blaming. It’s code for all the questions that used to be overt:

• What were you wearing?
• What did you do to lead him on?
• What else was he supposed to do?
• Why were you there?
• What did you think would happen?
• You wanted it, didn’t you?
• Why are you lying?

We need to ask better explicit and implicit questions about rape and give more thought to who we ask those questions of:

• Have you taken responsibility for your choice to rape her?
• Have you thought about how your choice made her feel?
• What can you do to give her back everything you took from her?
• What will do you do to make sure you never commit this crime again?
• What restitution can you make to her and to the world for the harm you have caused?