415 - Homework 4

By Alistair Poole, 9/12/16

Sex and Identity Online

There is a moment in the video where they discuss how dating app profiles are new for people, and that is the first issue that I want to tackle. We, as humans, are constantly making and adjusting profiles of ourselves in every evironment we pass through. We have "profiles" that we display at work, "profiles" we display at parties and at home. A one page profile can also determine our career; we call it a "resume". So I think that this idea of profiles as new is incorrect.

What is new about online dating is the freedom of information that it provides. You are now given the opportunity to find people with very specific characteristics. Where that becomes extremely important is for people of marginalized and minority alignments. I, being of heterosexual orientation, have the privilege of having a statistically high chance of meeting many people of compatible orientations simply by living my life. Were I homosexual, I would have statistically far lower chance of meeting people of a compatible orientation without either going to a gay bar our using a dating app. In this way, dating apps have made it far easier for many marginalized and miority groups to better connect.

The Elephant

The elephant in the room is that there are certain groups of people who lose out. For example, transgender people still tend to face significant hardships, as this article explains pretty well. Particularly for trans people, who are not simply out to find people similar to themselves, dating apps have not solved the issues underlying the discrimination they face.

Racism, ableism, and other such factors all get a chance to rear their ugly heads as well, of course.

But what's the score?

At the end of the day, dating apps don't really do anything new, they do just allow us to do certain things we were doing already much more efficiently.

Overall, I think that the impact as been postive. Many communities, like the gay community, have done much better for having these apps. The apps have not made life better for everyone, but it would be hard to argue that they've made anything particularly worse.

Conclusion

This is not a sexual revolution