Online Dating in France: more (or less) progressive than you might think

Dating is hard, but it can also be a lot of fun. By dating I mean meeting and getting to know people one is interested in sexually and/or romantically. Young people generally do this by going to bars and clubs, meeting people at work, at university or through shared interests and hobbies. However, this doesn’t work for everyone, for example those too shy to approach someone in public or those who feel they are too old to go clubbing. Some just don’t want to take any more chances when it comes to going on dates with people, and they’d like to have a bit more information about their object of desire before risking a tête-à-tête.

That’s when online dating became the latest fad. In the beginning people had a hard time admitting that they had a profile on one of those dating websites. The general belief was that only socially aberrant freaks and other hopeless cases would have to resort to such “desperate measures”. But lo and behold, online dating is more popular than ever and has lost much of its sad reputation. One of the most popular dating websites today, OK Cupid, claims to have 7 million active users to date; that means literally 7 million users to date.

But online dating also has its downsides, especially for heterosexual women. I would estimate that about 90% of the men who get in touch with a woman online are total creeps, sexual harassers and misguided “pick-up artists” (yes, I know, the latter is a tautology). And that is not based on the woman simply being not interested, but on the completely uncalled-for messages, for which there are many wonderful examples on the internet.

And so the French, no strangers to chauvinism and misogyny, especially when it comes to dating, came up with a great idea: Let’s have women decide who gets to contact them for potential dates. The concept is fairly simple: every man and woman on the dating site gets to check out the profiles of everyone else; however, while women can send the men messages to evince interest, men are only allowed to “launch a charm” (lancer un charme), to which women may react or not. The dating site is called AdopteUnMec.com (AdoptAGuy.com for Americans) and functions as a virtual supermarket where women can “buy” men by dropping them in their shopping carts. (Yes, the capitalist analogy is quite blatant.)

So far, so interesting. Even though the page’s pink design and supermarket idea are not exactly original, the concept of leaving women in charge of the pick-up may be very appealing to both men and women. Men have less to worry about finding interesting things to say to impress the women, because they already know that the woman who contacts them is at least interested in their profile. Women on the other hand will feel more at ease in an environment that allows them to be in control of who gets to interact with them. That is, not ALL women.

Unfortunately and quite surprisingly, Adopte Un Mec has failed to acknowledge that not all men and women out there are interested in dating the opposite sex. The entire concept is obviously designed for heterosexuals, but I don’t see why it has to insist on it exclusively. After all, users can search for non-smokers, vegetarians and bisexuals, just not of the opposite sex. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great to see women in charge, but why not try some more inclusive options? For example, men and women who identify as homosexual or bisexual could be allowed to message people of their own sex freely. I understand the difficulty of adapting a concept that is based on gender difference to a more heterogeneous clientele, but it seems to me that there has never even been the attempt.

The advertising is clearly directed towards men looking for hot girls, which appears to contradict the whole idea of inverting the objectification. What may have been subversive in the 80′s feels a little too “postfeminist” to me now. As a woman signing up to Adopte Un Mec, the first thing you are asked to do is decribe yourself and state what you are looking for in a man, the same way that you would describe what you look for in a new dress or a handbag you intend to buy. The idea of woman as customer and man as product doesn’t sit well with the feminist online dater, who is looking first and foremost for an egalitarian relationship. Perhaps Adopte Un Mec is not the best online dating service for the truly progressive single, but then again, if I was single I’d probably use it, if only for lack of better alternatives…

The DSK Affair – An Angry Rant

I haven’t actually had time to write a full-blown article, but I can’t help but point to the disgusting media frenzy surrounding the rape accusations regarding the IMF boss and candidate for the French Socialist party Dominique Strauss-Kahn. What actually happened? No one knows, but everyone thinks it necessary to take sides and become the judge of the hour. The way this case is being talked about resembles a lot the Assange affair in Sweden and Great Britain and the Kachelmann trial in Germany. That is not a coincidence, it seems to me…

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Why is it easier for us to believe in elaborate conspiracies than in the likelihood of a women being sexually assaulted by a man, a rich man, an powerful man, by any man? What does that say about our culture? Does it mean we don’t believe in rape anymore (because it rarely happens, right…)? Surely not. It means that we have become grown so accustomed to seeing cases like this in the news; something fishy must be in the air…

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I tell you what it is: it is living, breathing proof of rape culture. And it has become so prevalent; it has made everyone hysterical. Everyone?
The alleged victims? Hardly. It takes a lot to make these accusations and for every woman who lies about it, there are hundreds who are not being taken seriously and thousands who never even dare to go to the police.
The feminists who are fighting it? Some of them, sure. That’s because rape has become such a loaded issue in the media, it often triggers misogyny and traumatizes victims, doing more damage than good. Another feature of rape culture.
But most of all these rape apologists who see just another unfortunate man captured by the misandrist system established by greedy lobbying feminists. That’s right. It’s feminism’s fault. Because we love rape culture so much, we secretly rejoice every time a woman is sexually assaulted, because at least it means we’re right…

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Guess what? The only reason why we keep on talking, arguing and screaming about rape culture, is because we want people to know it exists. It’s not a figment of our perverse imagination, it’s not a means for us to dwell upon our victimization. It’s real and it’s happening and when things like this scandal surface, it’s all out in the open only because it happened to someone famous.

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Dear public, rape is not a creation by powerful leaders in order to eliminate their enemies. Rape is real and it happens all the time.

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UPDATE: On Wednesday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as chief of the IMF.

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More links:

What the district attorney can tell us.

What the French press had to say. I can’t be bothered translating, but I assure you it’s disgusting. (via Feministe)

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News- and Blogwatch

France’s Burqa Ban

Yesterday, France’s so-called burqa ban went into effect. The decision was made last summer but from now on women wearing the burqa or the niqab in public can actually be fined, can be forced to attend civilization courses and be taken into custody if they refuse to remove their veils. Two women have already been arrested who protested the burqa ban in Paris. I have stated my position on this subject last year here and here. By now it has become fairly obvious that Sarkozy is only trying to gather votes from the right. His policies on immigration and the Roma have made clear that the only women he cares about, if at all, are white and born in France.

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You can blame Feminism for everything

Every now and then scientists come up with these new theories regarding the differences between the sexes, that are somehow considered valuable for society because, duh, they’re scientists, so they must be true. Like this one: Why feminism is the anti-viagra. Neuroscientist Ogi Ogas claims that “gender equality inhibits arousal” because women are hard-wired to be submissive and cannot negotiate this natural urge with their strife towards equality, which therefore limits their libido. Now, I don’t quite understand what one’s personal sexual urges have to do with leading an emancipated life and enjoying equality in one’s relationship. After all, someone with a golden shower fetish is not likely to be urinating on people at work or his or her partner outside of “the bedroom”. But I was interested to find out what this scientist bases his theory on. He references research done on Norwegian rats. Enough said.
Needless to say, homosexual relationships don’t seem to exist in this guy’s universe. According to his theory, homosexuals would have a hard time finding a partner because the men would always want to be dominant and the women always submissive. Unless, of course, this theory doesn’t apply to them because homos are weird anyway, right?

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Future Stalkers of America

When I first read about this video, I thought it had to be a joke, possibly even a trolling stunt by men’s rights activists themselves, who enjoy posing as “feminists” in order to ridicule the movement, even though their views of feminism are completely misguided and far from reality. But no, these guys are for real: a couple of new age gurus (they still exist?) thinking they are doing the world a favor by apologizing to women on behalf of all men who have done harm to women throughout centuries of masculine rule. The concept is already flawed in itself, but the execution really takes the cake. While I do agree with perhaps a couple of statements, the overall creepiness and obsolescence of the whole thing is just unbearable. The heyday of ecofeminism was nothing in comparison. If you cannot finish watching the video, for which I don’t blame you, but you still in need of a good critique, David Futrelle over at Manboobz has a great summary:

[...] no matter how earnest all the men in the video are trying to sound, none of them (except perhaps the two ringleaders) seem to really believe the ridiculous things they’re saying. Instead, they seem to be, with varying degrees of insincerity, mouthing a series of essentially meaningless New Age platitudes – in short, simply saying what they think women want to hear.

No one is buying this bullshit, guys. Give it up.

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Daily Discoveries

Apparently you can’t find any doctors, police officers, taxi drivers, or administrative officials in Paris who are female…

"renseignements et services de votre arrondissement" ("information and services for your department")

Or perhaps I got it all wrong and this is in fact an ad for a French version of the Village People…

Slavoj Zizek On The Rise Of The Far Right In Europe

Yesterday on Democracy Now!: Amy Goodman interviews Slavoj Zizek on the Far Right and Immigrant Politicians that are on the rise in Europe.

Zizek on the emergence of the new far right movement:

[...] it’s absolutely crucial how this anti-immigrant explosion is linked to the withdrawal of leftist politics, especially in the matters of economy and so on. It is as if the left, being obsessed by the idea that we shouldn’t appear as reactionary in the economic sense, that is to say that “No, no, no, we are not the old trade union representatives of the working class, we are for postmodern digital capitalism” and so on. They don’t want to touch the working class or so-called lower ordinary people. And here right-wingers enter. Do you know, the horrible paradox is that, apart from some small leftist fringe parties, the only serious political force in Europe today which still is ready to appeal to the ordinary working people are the right-wing anti-immigrants?

To cut a long story short, very briefly, ’til now, we had the standard situation that you also have it up ’til now here: one big left-of-center party, one big right-of-center party—they are the only two parties which address the entire population—and then small fringe parties. Now, more and more in Europe, another polarity is emerging: a big liberal capitalist party, which can even be in social matters like abortion, women’s rights, relatively progressive—pure, let’s call it, capitalist party—and the only serious opposition is the immigrant—anti-immigrant nationalists.

And on the strikes in France:

Of course, in general, in principle, I support those who strike and so on. But did you notice how they are mostly—mostly—state employees with guaranteed employment and so on. [...] Those who dare to strike today are usually the privileged, those who have a guaranteed state employment and so on. And they strike for these things like, no, we don’t want to freeze our salaries; we want raise them up, while, for example, in my country, there are thousands of textile workers, women, who, if one were to offer them what—that situation with regard to which those who strike today are protesting, like “we guarantee you permanent employment, just with frozen salaries for next five years,” they would say, “My god! That’s better than we dared to dream.” [...] The truly needy and poor one don’t even dare to strike.

Well, what the left is missing is a kind of a more global idea of how to restructure entire economy. I mean, they are not addressing the true causes. This makes me very sad. This is typical. All that the left can do today is to propose—sorry, oppose—protest against reductions. The left is, let me be very frank, in this social sense, a conservative force. In the social sense of social, fast changes and so on, it’s capitalists who are today the revolutionary class. This makes it very sad, the situation.

You can watch it here (part 1 and part 2 of the interview).

News- and Blogwatch

A French retiree has to go on trial for physically attacking a Middle Eastern woman because she was wearing a face-covering veil. The attacker defended herself by saying: “I felt it was unacceptable for someone to wear a niqab in (France), the country of human rights. It’s a muzzle, all that’s missing is a leash, it’s the negation of women.” Surely the best way to defend the human rights of someone else is by ”biting, slapping and scratching” that person. Thanks to the recently approved ‘burqa ban’, ‘human rights violations’ of this sort have been outlawed. Perhaps the retiree should join the French police…

More in French news:  gender equality exists on paper, not so much in the heads of the French people.

Raoul Hausmann: Der Geist Unserer Zeit - Mechanischer Kopf

I don’t know much about neuroscience and had to read this text twice, but this strikes me as particularly relevant: “[...] the significance of the Garcia-Falgueras and Swaab paper is really as much political and even legal as it is neuroscientific. If there are demonstrable and functionally relevant features in the brain that underlie beliefs or proclivities that determine a person’s behaviour from an early age, and may be immutable, then the case for a redefinition of gender and for reassignment surgery in transsexuals is strengthened.” (Herbert, 2008)

A great lecture by Tim Jackson on Prosperity Without Growth:

How is it possible for a continually expanding subsystem (let’s call it the economy) of a finite system (let’s call it the planet) to continue to deliver its system goals? [...] How is it that we can consider an economy which, if it grows at the rates that it has done over the last fifty years will be 16 times bigger by the year 2100, or 80 times bigger than it was just five decades ago, and even this 80 times bigger economy won’t be a place which has delivered the poorest nations out of poverty and given them a hope, a chance of a western level of income. If you wanted to achieve that bigger goal, the goal of global equity, you need an economy that is 200 times bigger than it was fifty years ago. The resource implications, the environmental implications of such an economy are barely believable, really, and yet this is the default supposition for the direction of our economy.

Aral Sea Satellite Pictures

News- and Blogwatch

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

Women now have a majority in the Swiss government. That is a huge achievement, especially considering that Swiss women were not allowed to vote until 1971! So I should be excited, right? Well, I am, except for this:

The new entrant to the Swiss cabinet, Simonetta Sommaruga, who is 50 and from the Social Democratic Party, had made a name for herself as a champion of consumers, rather than women’s, rights. “She is very credible for people from all parties — she is not a feminist or leftist,” said Lukas Godber,[...]. (NY Times, Sept.22 2010)

And this:

Nor does the realignment represent any broader shift toward gender equality in other areas of Swiss society, Mr. Lutz said. “Women are still underrepresented in Parliament,” he said. “They are not equal in society. They earn less. How many women do you see in leading positions in business?” (NY Times, Sept.22 2010)

The Sweden Democrats (SD), which are quite ‘Swedish’ but not that democratic, have been voted into the Swedish parliament, prompting another article on the rise of Europe’s far-right.

Women are leaving Wall Street.

Terminated: Why the Women of Wall Street Are Disappearing

La dialectique casse des briques has a detailed summary of a conference held in Paris about France’s expulsion of the Roma. Among the speakers were French intellectuals Luc Boltanski and Jaques Rancière.

After the suicide of yet another bullied gay teenager in an American suburb, advice columnist and gay activist Dan Savage has started a Youtube channel with the slogan ‘It Gets Better’, where everyone can upload videos telling LGBTQ kids and teenagers to hang in there because their lives will improve drastically after high school and small town bigotry. Watch the videos here.

Breaking News: French Senate Passes Burqa Ban

I’ve dreaded this news but here it is: today the French Senate approved the so-called ‘Burqa Ban’, making it illegal for women to leave the house wearing a niqab or a burqa (or any garment that veils the face). To be honest, I wouldn’t support any law affecting immigrants that has been proposed by a government which obviously singles out specific ethnic groups to pursue its right-wing, racist and inhumane agenda. To me, this law appears like just another one of Sarkozy’s measures towards gaining the majority of votes from the right-wing constituency. Apart from that I cannot comprehend the urgency of passing a law that affects an estimated amount of 2000 people in all of France and a distinct religious group that lately has come under fire in Europe and the U.S. for various reasons (burqas, mosques, meat products, ability to integrate…).

Broadsheet@Salon mentions that the veiling of the face is not specific to the Islamic religion (and not to women either), as you can see in this article about a Jewish sect.

Event Tip: elles@centrepompidou

Shadi Ghadirian: Comme d'habitude, 2001.

This year, visitors of the legendary Centre Pompidou, Paris’ central institution for modern art and culture, will be surprised when entering the museum’s 4th floor in search of the modern and contemporary collection. The entire level is made up of works by women artists only! Welcome to a new exhibition: elles@centrepompidou!

Since May 2010 Parisians and tourists are able to see the works of up to 200 female artists from the 20^th and 21^st century, among them such relevant names like Niki de Saint-Phalle, Barbara Kruger, Marina Abramovic and Pina Bausch. The names suggest a great variety of disciplines and sure enough the spacious location allows for sculptures, paintings, photography and video art.

The curator Camille Morineau has done a wonderful job at putting together an intriguing and thoughtful exhibition. Instead of arranging the works chronologically she aimed for a more topical and aesthetic approach. Thus, the different sections with names such as The Activist Body and Eccentric Abstraction offer more insight into an artist’s thought process than a mere demonstration of art-historical developments.

One of the show’s main topics is the self-reflexive question of women’s role in the art world. The Guerrilla Girls come to mind, a radical feminist artists collective that raises awareness of women’s underappreciated status in the art world. Several of their flashy, eye-opening posters can be found at the exhibition.

A Guerrilla Girls classic

In an interview Camille Morineau states that women artists make up only 17 percent of the center’s entire collection, which is quite equivalent to the proportion of women in the French Parliament. She also admits that France is still very patriarchal in many regards and an exhibition with feminism as its theme would have hardly been possible. While the show’s flyer claims that the exhibited works are “neither female nor feminist in point of view”, it is the show’s exclusive focus on women artists in itself that makes it so radical and relevant for feminist achievements.

Not in Paris at the moment? Don’t worry, the exhibition continues until February 21, 2011.

UPDATE: I found an interesting article in the New York Times on Women and Modern Art in Afghanistan.

News- and Blogwatch

Some interesting posts to read over your morning coffee. Warning! Coffee might get bitter over most of them…

France’s leaning towards a ‘burqa ban’ is already showing some results, perhaps a bit different from what the politicians had anticipated.

Sad but true: Not all women are peace-loving creatures who can do no wrong. We are just as susceptible to ideology, no matter how cruel and inhuman, as any other human being.

On to a more contemporary regime of cruelty: Uzbekistan and the secret terror of forced sterilization.

The trouble with ‘Fast Fashion’.

10 Things That Feminism Could Do Better. One thing feminism is already quite good at: self-criticism. Maybe Sarah Palin, self-proclaimed ‘feminist’, should look into that…

…before she continues claiming to fight for women. Yeah, these all-white middle-class ladies sure look like they have it really bad…: