Are women done with dating apps, or with dating? 

Bumble’s recent ad campaign, which featured slogans including “you know full well a vow of celibacy isn’t the answer” and “thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun,” has met with swift backlash from consumers. Social media was soon awash in posts from women interpreting Bumble’s new ads as “shaming celibacy/abstinence” and “undermin[ing] women’s choices.”  

Bumble, which let 350 employees go in February due to falling subscriber numbers, differs from other dating apps in its permanent “ladies’ choice” model. Female users must initiate contact with male ones for communication between a potential couple to begin. In protecting women from the (often unwanted and sexually explicit) overtures of men, Bumble was supposed to “empower women to date on their terms.”  

Today, apparently, those terms often include not dating at all.  

Chastened, Bumble has issued an apology and retracted the ads that caused offense. The company was, it says, attempting to “lean into a community frustrated by modern dating.” But it failed to recognize that “celibacy” is “the only answer for some when reproductive rights are continuously restricted;” that there are “others, for whom celibacy is a choice, one that we respect;” and that many in the “asexual community” see “celibacy” as “having a particular meaning and importance, which should not be diminished.” 

Will Bumble, already a struggling company, recover from this misstep? That’s anyone’s guess. But there is a more interesting question: What does it say about today’s romantic and sexual landscape that some women see “celibacy” as an empowering choice, and a dating app’s attempts at humorous “sex-positivity” as misogynistic and regressive?  

Here are three partial answers.  

First, young people are on to the incentive structures built into dating apps’ algorithms. These digital matchmakers don’t ultimately exist to help people find partners; they exist to make money. And they make money by keeping users on the app. This means, by and large, keeping people single while advertising lasting relationships. More like casinos (where the house always eventually wins) than matchmakers (who were answerable to the wider community for fulfilling their promises), dating apps are beginning to be viewed askance by their target demographic. And rightfully so.  

Second, that a left-leaning company would use the moment’s trendiest, most “inclusive” language to retract an ad campaign because young women found its endorsement of casual sex offensive indicates that the sexual revolution is over — and has been for a long time. It's not entirely because “off screen” activities are happening less among the digital generation (though that is part of the story). And it’s not because sexual morality is making a comeback. It’s because, on the contrary, casual sex has become so utterly banal — so conformist and expected — that it’s entirely lost its edge. Sexual liberation happened 65 years ago; the grandparents of many Gen Zers experienced it. Nothing, casual sex included, is prima facie cool or edgy to youths when people in their 70s have been there, done that.   

Third and most importantly, the “questions” implied by Bumble’s unpopular tag line (“you know full well celibacy isn’t the answer”) are of urgent societal consequence. Why, women are wondering, are so many men so undatable? Why is a good man so hard to find?

Immaturity and futility seem to be the perverse birthright of a growing percentage of American males. Neo-misogyny that rejects romantic relationships with women as emasculating is the disposition of others. Given this unromantic reality, opting out of dating altogether feels empowering to some young women in part because time spent hoping for or pursuing a reciprocal heterosexual relationship, online or off, feels pointless.  

Moving past the dating app era, if it means bringing back the norm of meeting romantic partners organically, would probably be good for everyone. Outsourcing intimacy to digital businesses has yielded mixed results. For every “winner” who has married someone she met on an app, there is more than one “loser” for whom the apps yielded nothing but a lot of frustration.  

Ultimately, we cannot fix dating for women without first fixing what ails today’s men. And there is no app for that.  

Elizabeth Grace Matthew is a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.