opinion | A new film from Tinder India sees a young couple navigating the minefield of consent
Two days into online friendship and boy starts sexting. A break-up ends with private photos uploaded as revenge porn. Say hello to someone and he sends pictures of his body parts.
Just a few bad scenarios in the lives of those pursuing digital romance, which is practically everyone from Gen Z. In my own younger, simpler days, a sweaty hand tried to hold you in a dark cinema hall or a little poppinje decided you owed him a kiss because he mein and fanta chow to you was treated. Simple yes, but the dice against women was as full as it is today, with consent violations as rampant as ever. So it is totally fitting that popular dating app Tinder India should step into the fray with a short film, which is part of their ongoing #Let’sTalkConsent series.
The film is about a young couple who met on Tinder, started dating, and then broke up because Ved misread Rhea’s na for yes. After meeting a year later, Rhea now explains why she had left, telling Ved that she wished he had only asked if she wanted to have sex, rather than assuming. This goes on to show Riya in a new relationship, where her boyfriend asks for permission before she holds his hand or kisses him.
At first glance, the film seems like an extremely simplistic approach to a subject that grapples with complexities, but on second thought, it’s probably good to keep it so basic – an ABC primer for dating – that India’s almost perfect sexual In view of ignorance. Look at entitled, arrogant young men and women driven by unrealistic romance, and you see the price we are paying for the absence of healthy, socially accepted male-female relationships. We’ve spawned a cultural illiteracy that leads most men to imagine that any woman they see online is available for sex because “nice girls” will be rolling in rather than online. Bread Somewhere in the kitchen. Women are already slotted on dating apps, and men’s reactions are predetermined.
This movie literally spells it out – check to hold hands, hug if you can, ask permission for a kiss – it does nothing more than educate young men in the most elementary of dating etiquette Used to be. In fact, as much as the mechanics of sex, such interactions should be part of the school curriculum, built around respect for all genders, friendship, love, physicality, boundaries. The longer we put off talking about it, the more guilty we are of promoting rape culture.
Having said that, I hope Tinder will go on to make a more developed film around consent as the oversimplification of this one is likely to create its own problems, for example, in the stereotypes it echoes. Watch how Riya tells Ved about her actions: “I didn’t have the strength to say no”; “I didn’t want to look bad and look difficult.” While it’s true that women find it difficult to say no and that men usually use it to force intimacy, I hate on popular culture for reinforcing the idea that women shouldn’t look ‘bad’ Want to ‘please’ the guy, afraid he’ll be upset if they refuse sex. Generations of socialization have taught women to always desire to be ‘nice’, to be ‘liked’, and they have to undo this. They should refuse, push back, step out without being afraid of labels like ‘difficult’, ‘repressed’, ‘teasing’.
Interestingly, the beauty salon employee in the movie does this. When he refreshes she simply shoos away the lover, doing what the upper class Riya couldn’t, really shows why wrapping a woman’s ‘no’ in gauze isn’t. When women stop feeling guilty or awkward for reducing intimacy, when they stop worrying about male approval, then they will be truly free. Anything less is still a compromise.
Also, teaching men to respect consent, verbal and non-verbal, can continue as an ongoing project, but second-guessing or asking artificial pre-determined questions cannot lead to healthy sex. It comes from equality and respect. Two people in love or lust will be driven by passion, impulse, desire, all of which are innately nonverbal. If they truly respect each other, consent will neither be sought nor given, but will flow naturally from one to the other. Whether online or offline.
Where the author tries to understand the society with seven hundred words and a little nudge.
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