Article Title
When Tinder Swiping Gets Challenging: Women’s Narratives of Gender-Based Violence as Shared Through Quora
Abstract
Amidst the popular use of Tinder in urban society, the decision whether or not to date someone tends to be made quickly based on a photo and a short profile description. Simple as it may seem, there are moments when swiping gets challenging, especially for women. Tinder has a notorious reputation when it comes to gender-based violence. Unfortunately, despite the significant increase in online dating apps usage during the COVID-19 pandemic, this phenomenon is still highly underresearched.
In this qualitative netnographic research, we explore Tinder sexual harassment narratives uploaded by women in Quora. Through judgment sampling, 15 answers from 7 questions posted by Quora users and 12 comments were analyzed. Criteria of inclusion for answers are as follows: Answers should (1) contain personal account on violence and/or harassment related to Tinder-use, (2) be written by women, (3) indicate that the perpetrator is male. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis. Four main themes emerged: the forms of gender-based violence experienced by women while dating men from Tinder, women’s feelings after experiencing gender-based violence perpetrated by their Tinder dates, women’s responses after experiencing gender-based violence from their Tinder dates, and responses from other Quora users after reading women’s stories on gender-based violence experienced through Tinder.
References
Attrill, A., & Jalil, R. (2011). Revealing only the superficial me: Exploring categorical self-disclosure online. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(5), 1634-1642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.02.001
Bing, J. (2007). Liberated jokes: Sexual humor in all-female groups. International Journal of Humor Research. 20(4), 337-366. https://doi.org/10.1515/HUMOR.2007.017
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2012). Thematic analysis. In H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, & K. J. Sher (Eds.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol. 2. Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological (pp. 57–71). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13620-004
Brown, A. L., & Testa, M. (2008). Social influences on judgments of rape victims: The role of the negative and positive social reactions of others. Sex Roles, 58(7), 490-500. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9353-7
Costello, L., McDermott, M. L., & Wallace, R. (2017). Netnography: Range of practices, misperceptions, and missed opportunities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), 1609406917700647. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917700647
David, G., & Cambre, C. (2016). Screened intimacies: Tinder and the swipe logic. Social media+ society, 2(2), 2056305116641976. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116641976
Davies, M., & Rogers, P. (2006). Perceptions of male victims in depicted sexual assaults: A review of the literature. Aggression and violent behavior, 11(4), 367-377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2006.01.002
Dworkin, E. R., Jaffe, A. E., Bedard-Gilligan, M., & Fitzpatrick, S. (2021). PTSD in the Year Following Sexual Assault: A meta-analysis of prospective studies. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380211032213
Etikan, I., Musa, S. A., & Alkassim, R. S. (2016). Comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. American journal of theoretical and applied statistics, 5(1), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajtas.20160501.11
Fallahi, B., & Mehrad, A. (2014). Evaluation of national policy about domestic violence against women in Iran. Journal of Educational, Health and Community Psychology, 3(1), 25-31. https://doi.org/10.12928/jehcp.v3i1.3731
Fitzgerald, L. F., Swan, S., & Magley, V. J. (1997). But was it really sexual harassment? Legal, behavioral, and psychological definitions of the workplace victimization of women. In W. O'Donohue (Ed.), Sexual harassment: Theory, research, and treatment (pp. 5–28). Allyn & Bacon.
Fricker, R. D. (2016). Sampling methods for online surveys. The SAGE handbook of online research methods, 12(3), 184-202.
Fortune Editors (2021, February). Activity on dating apps has surged during the pandemic. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2021/02/12/covid-pandemic-online-dating-apps-usage-tinder-okcupid-bumble-meet-group/
Gillett, R. (2019). Everyday violence: Women's experiences of intimate intrusions on Tinder (Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology).
Hanson, K. R. (2017). Why Talk When You Can Swipe: A Qualitative Investigation of College Heterosexuals Using Smartphones to Hookup and Date (Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University).
Hess, A., & Flores, C. (2018). Simply more than swiping left: A critical analysis of toxic masculine performances on Tinder Nightmares. New Media & Society, 20(3), 1085-1102. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816681540
Holland, K. J., & Cortina, L. M. (2016). Sexual harassment: Undermining the wellbeing of working women. In M. L. Connerley & J. Wu (Eds.), Handbook on well-being of working women (pp. 83–101). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.
Hosterman, A. R., Johnson, N. R., Stouffer, R., & Herring, S. (2018). Twitter, social support messages, and the #metoo movement. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 7(2), 69-91.
Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: The marketer’s secret weapon. White paper, 1-13.
Kunst, J. R., Bailey, A., Prendergast, C., & Gundersen, A. (2019). Sexism, rape myths and feminist identification explain gender differences in attitudes toward the #metoo social media campaign in two countries. Media Psychology, 22(5), 818-843. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2018.1532300
Lee, J. (2019). Mediated superficiality and misogyny through cool on Tinder. Social Media+ Society, 5(3), 2056305119872949. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119872949
Russo, N. F., & Pirlott, A. (2006). Gender‐based violence: concepts, methods, and findings. Annals of the new york academy of sciences, 1087(1), 178-205. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1385.024
Siegel, R. (2020, January 23). Tinder now has a panic button. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/23/tinder-panic-button/
Sims, C. M., Noel, N. E., & Maisto, S. A. (2007). Rape blame as a function of alcohol presence and resistance type. Addictive behaviors, 32(12), 2766-2775. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2007.04.013
Sumter, S. R., Vandenbosch, L., & Ligtenberg, L. (2017). Love me Tinder: Untangling emerging adults’ motivations for using the dating application Tinder. Telematics and informatics, 34(1), 67-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2016.04.009
Thelwall, M. (2008). Fk yea I swear: Cursing and gender in MySpace. Corpora, 3(1), 83-107. https://doi.org/10.3366/E1749503208000087
Thompson, L. (2018). “I can be your Tinder nightmare”: Harassment and misogyny in the online sexual marketplace. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1), 69-89. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517720226
Timmermans, E., & De Caluwé, E. (2017). To Tinder or not to Tinder, that's the question: An individual differences perspective to Tinder use and motives. Personality and Individual Differences, 110, 74-79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.01.026
Vilariño, M., Vázquez, M. J., González Amado, B., & Arce, R. (2018). Psychological harm in women victims of intimate partner violence: Epidemiology and quantification of injury in mental health markers. Psychosocial Intervention, 27, 145-152. https://doi.org/10.5093/pi2018a23
Wang, G., Gill, K., Mohanlal, M., Zheng, H., & Zhao, B. Y. (2013). Wisdom in the social crowd: an analysis of Quora. In Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web (pp. 1341-1352). https://doi.org/10.1145/2488388.2488506
Wiederhold, B. K. (2021). How COVID has changed online dating—and what lies ahead. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 24(7), 435-436. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2021.29219.editorial
Yamawaki, N. (2009). The role of rape myth acceptance and belief in a just world on victim blame attribution: A study in Japan. Psychologia, 52(3), 163-174. https://doi.org/10.2117/psysoc.2009.163
Recommended Citation
Sabili, Zivana and Poerwandari, Elizabeth Kristi
(2023)
"When Tinder Swiping Gets Challenging: Women’s Narratives of Gender-Based Violence as Shared Through Quora,"
Psychological Research on Urban Society: Vol. 6:
No.
1, Article 9.
DOI: 10.7454/proust.v6i1.1121
Available at:
https://scholarhub.ui.ac.id/proust/vol6/iss1/9
Included in
Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Social Justice Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Women's Studies Commons