New law causes dating apps to go offline

Local artist Sarey Ruden will lead a weeklong digital silence in May to challenge online sexual harassment.

Birmingham artist Sarey Ruden has had it with online dating culture. All of it, she says. The hate speech women receive from men after they say they aren’t interested, the trauma from cyberflashing — receiving an unsolicited sexual image — and most of all, she says, being silenced by dating platforms for reporting abuse and harassment that happens on their sites.

Ruden’s not alone in her outrage. Over the past 3 ½ years, women all over the world have connected through her art and design project, Sareytales, to say they’re having the same experiences.

They’re drawn to Ruden’s creative response: to transform ugly into art. She takes the cruel and obscene messages men send her, and turns them into clever, conversation-starting graphic design prints, sculptures and photographs.

“I’m subverting the narrative,” she says, “and reframing the words. ‘You said this to me, yeah, but I’m doing something with it that makes me feel powerful and fulfilled.’”

Having connected with female audiences and their allies through pop-up art shows, speaking engagements — she hosted a TED Talk, “The Art of Online Dating” at TEDxDetroit’s 2019 conference — and on social media, Ruden’s now launching a week-long protest to raise awareness of what she calls gender-based injustices and abuse on dating apps.

Women are routinely silenced in digital spaces, she says, for exposing cyberflashing; harassing and threatening messages; and unwanted sexual offers from men. But what if there were no women on dating apps, she asks.

So from May 9 to 16, Ruden is launching AWOL: All Women On Line, a protest where she’s urged her 11,000-plus Instagram followers and other Sareytales supporters to go dark on their dating platforms. Participants can freeze engagement, ignore their messages and even cancel their accounts.

There’s significance to the launch date of May 9 — the date the FDA approved the birth control pill in 1960. “It’s a theme of hearing our voices and not being silenced,” Ruden says.

“I want [dating apps] to feel this,” the artist-activist says. “I want them to see less activity, to be made aware there’s an issue, that people are unhappy and there’s injustice going on.”

Online dating activity has been on the rise since COVID-19, according to media reports. With many Americans being asked to stay home, platforms are producing new tools and offering free special services. But numbers released by the Pew Research Center in early February revealed some of the downsides.