How Bumble Is Taking Action to Spread Awareness About Unsolicited Fetishization

The dating app now categorizes the behavior as sexual harassment

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Some people prefer to date someone who is a little older. Others hinge their preferences on their favorite hobbies, opting to connect with someone who shares their love in anime or sports. All of this is fine. Harboring certain preferences when it comes to dating is natural and fairly harmless.

But when we build a deep, sexual fascination around these and other inherently nonsexual things, such as race or identity, that’s when having a preference evolves into fetishizing—and in many cases, it can be completely reductive and incredibly harmful.

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