Jews in the D

20 | MAY 7 • 2020 

to Lie Still and Take It.
• It’
s Your Fault for Being Hot. 
• I’
m Gonna Beat Some Sense 
into You. 
• Thank God You Don’
t Have 
Kids Because Hitler Should Have 
Taken Care of the Jews (Ruden is 
Jewish). 
Ruden says her accounts have 
been deleted from multiple apps 
after she reported harassment 
and cyberflashing. When she 
follows up with the platforms, 
her accounts may get reinstated 
with an apology for the incon-
venience. Other times, she says, 
she’
s been banned or blocked for 
months. 
On April 23, Ruden says she 
reported a man on Plenty of Fish 
for using hate speech against 
her Jewish identity. She says her 
account was then cancelled due 
to “a violation of Terms of Use & 
Community Guidelines.
”
These guidelines, Ruden 
says, need to be reformed. The 
AWOL movement includes a 
Protest Demand Document, 
which Ruden is co-crafting with 
supporters. The in-progress 
document currently calls for 
timely and appropriate action to 
abuses, background checks on 
users and the implementation 
of no-tolerance to hate speech, 
unsolicited sexual image sharing 
and vulgar language.
What someone says and does 
outside their profile is often 
ignored, Ruden says. “What’
s 
public-facing is what these com-
panies care about. As soon as it 
goes private in a direct message, 
they don’
t want anything to do 
with it.
”
In January, she and others 
tweeted against Plenty of Fish 
for stating that reports could 
only be made about a person’
s 
profile and that accounts would 
be deleted for reporting “silly 
disputes.
”
Ruden says she had wanted 

to report a man who’
d made her 
nervous by sending her several 
unsolicited naked photos, leav-
ing her many voice messages 
through the platform and saying 
he wanted to surprise her at 
work.
When she saw the warning 
from Plenty of Fish, she chose 
not to report him because she 
didn’
t want her account can-
celled. “This language (‘
silly dis-
pute’
) is not only dismissive and 
negligent,
” she says. “It’
s actually 
complicit in the victim-blaming 
and rape culture mentality that 
permeates cyberspace.
”
Plenty of Fish has since 
changed its report language, 
which Ruden believes is a result 
of her tweets. On Feb. 14, she 
received a direct message from 
the dating app on Twitter thank-
ing her for bringing the language 
to their attention and stating 
that a person’
s behavior would 
now also be reportable.
But, Ruden says, reporting 
someone’
s behavior is exactly 
what got her kicked off the plat-
form recently. 
When contacted by the JN, 

Plenty of Fish did not comment 
on the AWOL movement, but 
shared the following statement 
about their methods for banning 
and deactivating accounts and 
for handling reports of sexual 
harassment:
“We have a zero-tolerance 
policy against abuse or assault. 
We encourage users to report 
any bad online or offline behav-
ior immediately so our dedicat-

ed team can take appropriate 
measures, such as removing and 
blocking these accounts from 
our platform. If a crime has been 
committed, we encourage users 
to report it to local law enforce-
ment.
”
Ruden’
s negative experiences 
spill into social media, as well. In 
one case, she says she received 
an unsolicited sexual image on 
Instagram. When she filed a 
complaint, she says Instagram 
responded that the incident 

didn’
t violate community guide-
lines. Ruden blurred out the 
genitals and posted the picture 
to her story. 
“It was removed for violating 
community guidelines,
” she says. 
“The person who sent it didn’
t 
violate guidelines, but the person 
who exposed it gets penalized?”
Instagram is where Ruden’
s 
met many of her supporters, like 
Dani James, a massage therapist 

who lives in Colorado. Also 
Jewish, James says she connected 
with Ruden over the work they 
both do to raise awareness of 
online abuse toward women. 
She remembers feeling hope-
ful when she joined the dating 
realm but has since been dis-
heartened.
“I thought it was going to 
be this fun thing, because after 
being in a long-term relation-
ship, and really growing as a 
human being, I was prepared,
” 
she says. “I thought that I was 
going to meet all these amazing 
guys. Man, was I wrong.
”
Over the past six years, James 
says she’
s received thousands of 
“atrocious” messages: what men 
want to do to her, lewd com-
ments about her body, the kind 
of stuff you’
d smack him for in 
person, she says, but in cyber-
space all the normal boundaries 
are removed.
“Unsolicited dick pics?” she 
asks. “Yeah, I’
ve received my 
fair share of those. Every single 
time it just makes me cringe. It’
s 
always a violation.
” 
After she reported cyberflash-
ing to Plenty of Fish, James’
s 
account was put under “quar-
antine,
” she says, where she 
wasn’
t able to refuse messages 

Ruden makes art
featuring some of the
abusive, derogatory
or condescending
messages she has
received from men
over her years of
online dating.

“I thought that I was going to 
meet all these amazing guys. 
Man, was I wrong.”

— SAREY RUDEN

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