Political divide between young men and women fueling dating app distrust

Young men’s shift to the political right has complicated the dating world and led to distrust by women of dating apps, according to The Atlantic writer Faith Hill, who appeared on CNN on Thursday. 

Hill argued that women’s growing distrust of dating apps stems from men — young men in particular — becoming more conservative while young women are becoming more progressive, leading to the sexes “growing further apart in a lot of ways.”

“You see that young men are moving further to the right. Young women growing more progressive. And I think for a lot of women in particular, it can just sort of feel like, ‘This is not a time where I trust men — I feel respected by men. I don’t necessarily want to go out and meet strangers who are men,’” Hill said.

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According to The Atlantic writer, this social phenomenon is happening during a time when the Trump administration is seen as “stripping away reproductive rights and protections against gender discrimination,” which is making women more conscious of their prospective partners’ political beliefs.

“And you can see in surveys that there is this kind of, resentment among a lot of men, kind of a backlash to ‘Me Too,’ a backlash to women gaining financial independence, going to college more than men now, where, you know, among Gen Z even, far more women who identify as feminists than men,” she noted.

Hill contended that there is a “real feeling” among women that the “larger political backdrop is seeping into individual relationships,” which is making it much more difficult to trust others.

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Later on in the discussion, Hill brought up the idea of “heteropessimism,” which is a social phenomenon in which heterosexual individuals become disaffected by the prospect of being in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex.

“You hear a lot of people talk about this idea of heteropessimism today, which I think just gets at this idea that a lot of people, a lot of women particularly, are fed up with the way that they’re being treated by men on these apps, and with this kind of backdrop of hearing about how few men would call themselves feminists, or the kind of whole ‘manosphere’ of resentful single men becoming this kind of cultural force that is, like, swaying elections,” she argued.

Hill was asked by CNN’s Audie Cornish whether she felt that people like themselves talking about how bad dating has gotten is exacerbating the problem and making dating feel hopeless.

“I worry about that, I do. And I think that there’s so much of a narrative these days about how bad dating is … about women’s sort of valid fears about what could go wrong, like, I don’t want to give readers the idea, or listeners, the idea that it’s always going to be bad — they always need to be distrustful,” she said. “But I also think there’s a reason this narrative exists, people are picking up on something and, you know, people want to feel like that is heard, like they’re not crazy.”