***This blog is Free Speech protected under the First Amendment to US Constitution and contains factual information, that would be stated in precisely the same way in the United States court of law. This content will be re-published on the servers outside of the US, if necessary, as you will NOT stop free speech and will not silence those who fight for the rights of women.
This blog had been created to address the issue that the large dating website OKCupid chooses to promote, facilitate and enable abuse, hatred and degradation of women and became a public forum that allows such abuse and serves as a breeding ground for it, which is nothing but good old ugly misogyny. Considering multi-million user base of this website, it is frightening to think of the magnitude of negative impact it may and will have on women. Sadly, I noticed that many young women started to take dating site abuse and misogyny for granted, as something that is to be expected and normal, which shows how much damage is being done to their self esteem.
I can no longer keep quiet about this as this website's modus operandi perpetuates the idea that women are free-for-all victims of abuse who have to means of defense, and that the gender-based hatred should be treated differently from racial or nationality-based hate and tolerated. This website potentially has minors (nothing prevents obtaining the account), who can be subjected to lewd or hateful messages, along with adults. I want to warn all women about this situation, so that they can think twice before allowing themselves to be degraded by those who perceives their gender as 2nd class citizens that should quietly and silently tolerate abuse.
By simply signing up for a dating site like this, one does NOT automatically waive their rights to be protected from bullying, hazing and harassment based on their societal status/gender/race/sexual orientation/gender identity/ethnicity or disability status--in this case gender.
Females on OKCupid are subjected to non-ending stream of hateful, harassing, abusive, bulling and lewd messages, and OKCupid does little to none to stop this. I had witnessed the abusers (CherryCokeNixon user, for example) who had been sending lewd messages repeatedly, over the course of many months, without any action taken by the site, despite numerous reports. I had actually been told, by the very same male user who sends out degrading messages that if I can't take lewdness in the messages, "I need to get off the dating site"--so if you won't TAKE IT from like a submissive creature (any woman, in their view) should... you should not try dating online. Wow. When I mentioned my feminist beliefs in my profile directly, the messages I received from strangers became bitterly hateful.
There're websites and forums that link directly to profiles of OKcupid users, subjecting them to degrading bullying. The worst thing is that OKCupid chooses not to give their users a choice whether to open a message from a particular user or not--all messages arrive to the mail box in the open state and the user can see hateful, disgusting, lewd, degrading content/text after simply upon logging in--the user is essentially forced to view and be subjected to whatever garbage whatever lowlife chooses to send them.This is not the case with websites like Plenty of Fish, where one can pre-block (choose not to receive messages from) entire categories of users (for example those seeking casual relations, or who previously messaged others for sex), and where the user can choose whether they want to open the message from a particular user or not.
There are numerous horror stories of insults and degradation on OKCupid, and most involve female users--as the harassment on this site happens to be gender-based, mostly and targets women. Numerous women (googling the subject matter will show this--or, simply obtaining OKC account and experiencing a barrage of abuse in person) were victimized on (and by!) this website. There used to be un-moderated forums hosted by OKCupid that carried streams of misogynist, hateful posts like never seen before. The site shut down the forums (I believe out of fear of long-overdue lawsuit) Endless streams of pornographic, hateful, rude, threatening, degrading messages and Instant Messages were sent by male users of this website in the past and are being sent every day. This is the kind of "culture" (as in "fratboy culture"--the culture of male PRIVILEGE, where males have the privilege to harass and insult) common to this website, and is considered something commonly accepted there, as OKCupid refuses to take action in many individual cases or to offer the choices of settings that would protect the female users of this website from harassment. Interestingly enough, if you question male users, they do mostly not report harassment from female users, especially from strangers they never talked to before--which clearly demonstrates the bias and discrimination.
Simply logging into this website often means having to view either insulting instant messages with heavy sexual, pornographic, lewd content (do you want YOUR CHILDREN to live and grow up like this and into the world where this is OK and women viewed as creatures without any dignity? It is the what you call "freedom"?), or, alternatively, one can see messages using profanities simply because a women chose not to respond to one or let them know they're incompatible, or just out of nowhere, without any prior contact--hateful, insulting messages sent by complete strangers to women just because they didn't like her profile
What are they (OKCupid) waiting for? A tragedy? Are they waiting for violence, death or suicide? (like in the Ravi case of gay bullying) It is about time to initiate a class action lawsuit against them and STOP, PUT A PERMANENT END to their sanctioned, condoned misogyny, and gender based hatred which is being PROFITED OFF by this company OKCupid.
No, it's not OK, OKCupid. You WOULD NOT be allowed to promote hatred based on Race, so why are you allowed to promote hatred based on Gender? It is the WOMEN who're mostly victims or harassment, insults ,degradation and hate on your site, and you do not take steps to stops this. You will be liable for pain, suffering and health damages you're causing to innocent people who obtained accounts mislead by your false advertising that you're a legitimate, non-adult, non-pornographic "dating website". Yet, you promote abuse, in hopes to get more male users (of certain kind) and to profit off it.
Time to sue, and not just to protect individuals, but to uphold the rights of entire groups that are being treated as worthless minority by this service and subjected to blatant and plain DISCRIMINATION based on gender.
It is time to send a strong message, via a legal precedent, that harassment of women and promotion of hatred of women is NOT OKAY, and this is something that falls one step short of promotion of violent crime against women.
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Here are links to some additional websites about OKC misogyny that I wasn't able to insert into Blogroll section (I should say that googling these matters will point you first and foremost to OKC own forums, which are now removed from their server--but many posts still available via "Cached" link in google search. The level of unabashed hatred on these forums is terrifying)
A VERY TYPICAL hateful, misogynist message from a male on OKCupid to a complete stranger:
http://talkinreckless.com/2010/09/17/interview-with-a-misogynist/
One of the OKC founders gives openly sexist advice (I guess it never hurts to teach women a lesson):
http://www.redlightpolitics.info/post/1534996280/sam-yagan-founder-of-ok-cupid-on-how-to-score-a
A girl bullied and insulted by a total stranger over her weight on OKC:
http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/the-lounge/called-fat-dating-site/page/5
An ageist hateful blog insulting, degrading a 46 year old woman's profile on OKC (notice how the blog owner openly admits his awareness that his blog can cause suicide of the bullied person), made by what I find to be a typical misogynist OKC user:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-sad-bitter-end-an-okcupid-catch/
A woman is bullied by stranger hiding behind computer screen and OKC sever, knowing that there's no penalty for this behavior, as he merely harassing what's apparently a 2nd class person in his and their eyes:
http://unwoman.livejournal.com/142160.html
OKCupid labels white women racist and assigns other labels to people based on race and gender:
http://community.feministing.com/2009/10/16/okcupid-has-discovered-that-all-white-women-are-racist/
http://blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2010/9/9/ok-cupid-survey-reinforces-stereotypes.html
Another girl is being insulted by a total stranger on OKC over her weight:
http://singlemuchny.com/dating-2/okcupid-attack/
A sexist person with open, blazing hatred of women admits using OKC as a venue to express it:
http://unfrozencaveman.wordpress.com/tag/okcupid/
A typical cascade of hateful, lewd messages found on OKC:
http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/mm285/twoxers_show_us_your_worst_okcupid_online_dating/
MILD examples of messages from males typically found on OKC, note the general spirit of disrespect towards women:
http://inourwordsblog.com/2012/01/16/how-not-to-be-a-dick-on-okcupid/
A young feminist OKC user comments on the wave of put downs and hostility on that website, just because of her beliefs:
http://talkinreckless.com/2010/05/17/open-letter-to-men-who-want-to-debate-feminism-on-okcupid/
--I want to comment on this: she explains that she doesn't owe them an explanation of "feminism" and her rights, essentially--well I say she doesn't OWE them to even explain what she is explaining. Not. worth. it.
A short and simple example of user sexism:
http://www.thejanedough.com/bad-okcupid-profile/
Amtrak banned OKC as site containing too much lewd material:
http://publicola.com/2011/02/03/amtrak-blocks-the-stranger-okcupid/
A feminist's view on certain subtleties:
http://dukegroups.duke.edu/develledish/2011/lessons-from-okcupid-i-am-not-the-exception/
Now, this is pretty horrifying--user's personal data is being sold--it goes hand in hand with general do-humanisation and disrespect I encountered on that site though, so NO surprises here:
http://www.nerve.com/news/web/ok-cupid-among-the-forty-five-percent-of-websites-that-sell-your-personal-info
A couple of more examples of official OKC misogyny, in this case subtle--
an "algorithm" to judge women based on their looks:
http://zeldalily.com/index.php/2011/01/okcupid-gives-us-the-mathematics-of-female-beauty-while-attempting-to-avoid-judging-anyone/
and a sexist okc test:
http://edu.j-l-r.org/pg/blog/amittman/read/97693/when-okcupid-is-not-ok-gender-and-the-dating-self?view=rss
