70% of the users of dating applications have felt pressured to maintain relationships and up to 21.7% say they have suffered a violent sexual assault. This is the reality that comes to light after an investigation into these apps, which are also used as a place to recruit women for prostitution.
This is the study "Apps Without Sexual Violence", financed by the Government Delegation against Gender Violence and prepared by the Federation of Young Women (FMJ), which is based on interviews with 963 women users of the dating application Tinder, the most used by young people in Spain.
An investigation that has surprised and alarmed the president of the FMJ, Ada Santana, in equal parts, who during the presentation of the report has called for control measures to prevent sexual violence that occurs in the environment of dating applications, both on line, as during the physical encounter.
Santana has detailed that 70% of the women users have felt pressured to have sexual relations; 40% to maintain violent relationships that have "a lot to do" with pornography; 57% have been pressured to consume alcohol to maintain relationships. "And a fact that alarms us is that almost 22% of the encounters have ended with a sexual assault, also mediating violence," she has denounced.
Regarding this data, the FMJ project coordinator, Mónica Sáiz, has highlighted the difficulties of the victims themselves when it comes to detecting sexual violence, since initially 86.4% of those surveyed said they had not suffered it.
"But by asking specific questions we discover other figures," he says. And he relates: 48.8% of those surveyed felt treated as an object; 33% wanted to stop the relationship and the man got angry; 27% experienced violent situations during sex such as drowning or smacking; 29.5% were pressured to carry out practices they did not want.
In addition, 27.7% were penetrated without a condom without their consent; in 28% of the cases the man continued the relationship despite the fact that the woman had told him that it was hurting her; 27.4% tried to record her without her consent; 33.8% wanted to stop, but they continued the practice; and 21.4% removed the condom when she did not realize it.
Lastly, indicates Sáez, 21.7% of women claimed to have suffered explicit violence to force them to have a sexual relationship.
In addition, this research has made it possible to verify how these dating applications may be being used as a channel to recruit women for prostitution. This is stated by Irene Otero, one of the authors of the report, who has denounced how in recent years a process of "glamourization of prostitution" has been observed based on the "false myth of free choice", which does not take into account structural factors of oppression or poverty.
Thus, the terms 'sugar daddy' and 'sugar baby' have replaced whoremongers and prostituted women and in dating apps there is a significant presence of profiles of men who openly offer money or gifts to women in exchange for sex. In fact, 72% of women have seen profiles of men offering money or gifts and more than 60% have been offered money or gifts to meet up.
In the research, 1,400 profiles of men between the ages of 18 and 55 and the same of women have been analyzed through the creation of two false profiles (a 24-year-old woman and a man of the same age), which have allowed interaction with they.
From this analysis, Otero has highlighted how the feminine ideal focused on sexual attractiveness is the most recurrent stereotype and how roles that are outside of this model are penalized. 90% of the male profiles look for "feminine, without drama or trauma, princesses, queens, delicate, daring, sexually determined, smiling, affectionate, etc" women, while they ask that "prude, feminazis, or bitter" refrain.
For their part, the adjectives that define men coincide with the masculine stereotypes of brave, strong, etc. 80% of women also report having felt uncomfortable reading male profiles that allude to stereotypes of a silly, frivolous or hysterical woman.
The profile invented for the investigation obtained more than 10,000 likes in two weeks, from men between the ages of 35 and 55 and already during the first messages violence is observed through compliments, requests for nude photos and 'sexting'.
79% of women felt violated by requests for nude photos and 69.3% by calls to maintain 'sexting' or telephone sex. The researchers highlight the influence of pornography and the eroticization of women's pain. More than 63% of women say they were asked if they were submissive and more than 50% have felt pressured to admit practices of sexual domination.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
