Introducing: the men who dub themselves as feminists... for the purposes of Tinder.
New York based comedian, Lane Moore, has picked up on this strain of feminist fraudsters with her Tumblr ‘Male Feminists Of Tinder' which aims to showcase the men at the forefront of ideological grafting. Moore, who writes a comedy show called ‘Tinder Live,’ found herself stumbling upon many dubious-looking profiles of men trying to win our hearts by expressing their deep care about women’s issues. So, naturally, she collected them all together and made a blog about them.
Meet Jeff, 25, who wants to ‘lie on your bed and ask you difficult questions.’ We can only guess they’re about our thoughts on female sexual liberation. Will, 30, channels our favourite gender-equality poster boy Ludacris when describing himself as a ‘feminist in the street, misogynist in the bed.’ And, just in case you weren’t already convinced of what a great guy he is already, he is even doing yoga in his profile picture.
Sharing our political and ideological views online is no new concept, but it’s usually backed up with some sort of facts or opinion. We might share a relevant article, or rant about a current news story. The issue with these guys is their lack of a) evidence, and b) subtlety. Take Sam, 29, who wastes no time getting his stance on the matter across by superimposing ‘I AM A FEMINIST,’ in block capitals over his profile picture. You’ve got 500 characters to play with guys – that’s almost four tweets, surely you can expand just a little bit more on your so-called ideology if you feel that strongly about it?
Speaking to Dazed, Moore herself commented on how the men were ‘basically holding up signs saying “I don’t hate women”’ which she thought "seemed kind of weird."’ It’s almost as if themes like sexual violation are so prevalent in the current news that men have to declare themselves as ‘woman-friendly,’ before they can even be considered for a date. Playing on the word ‘feminism’ seems to be a sort of Internet code for ‘I’m a nice guy, I treat girls right.’ Only the sheer irony of the whole guise is that if they really respected women that much, they wouldn’t be using Tinder to try and get one into bed. Little bit of a Catch 22 you’ve got yourself into here boys.
So male feminist equals pussy magnet? We like a guy with social awareness, but only when they do it at least half-convincingly. Ironically, the women who are likely to fancy a feminist are the ones smart enough to see through this guise. Sorry Adam, 25, but take off the ‘FEMINIST’ t-shirt, because the slogan ain’t fooling anyone.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.