I read this article in Gizmodo involving a woman luring “dozens of men” from Tinder to the same place at the same time for a dating competition. It contains a video of the event which I didn’t watch.
Here’s what happened, according to the article: She invites several dozen men, independently, to a “date” in Union Square, telling various lies as she does so. They all show up at the same time, and then she makes them compete over here.
It looks like several of them were unhappy with this, and left almost immediately. For the rest she “then started sending men away. Trump supporters were sent away. Men named “Jimmy” were sent away. Men who smoked or drank heavily were sent away. Men under 5’10” were sent away. By the time the physical challenges started, it looked like only about two dozen guys were left.”
So basically she lied to them, judged them based on her own, selfish standards right to their faces, essentially exposing them to a form of publish shaming, and then made them perform tests of physical endurance to prove their worth.
In the end, it might be that the whole thing was a viral marketing stunt. But at who’s expense? How many of those guys were sincerely hoping to make some kind of connection? How many of them were told to leave for reasons as superficial as their height, tantamount to saying they were unacceptable due to their skin color? Even if this whole thing was a joke, think of all the guys who were hurt.
What if a guy did this? What if a guy lured dozens of women, under false pretenses, to a park and then started pointing at them and saying things like “Anyone with B-Cups or smaller, you can leave. Anyone who isn’t blonde, you can leave. Anyone who requires monogamy in a relationship, you can leave. The rest of you make me a sandwich and I’ll date whoever makes the best one.”
I’m not going to attack the woman who performed the stunt, because I think that’d be lowering myself to her level, and it appears she’s already been shamed by several groups into shutting down much of her social presence. However, I think she has created (or at least supported) a sexist message of hate that, at worst, demonstrates an incredible amount of antiquated intolerance or nascent sexist paradigms (or both) and, at best, damages lots of gender equality work done in the last several decades.
I know this is only the message of one woman (and perhaps also those who helped her organize and market the event), but it’s a setback and they should have given it more thought than they did. Perhaps the only person who should be more ashamed of themselves is the guy who stayed for the whole thing and thought so little of himself that this woman deserved him.
Cassian Ward 