Does Online Dating Create More Equality Or Less?

The Internet: the great equalizer. Once we log on, we're all just anonymous screen names and carefully chosen email signatures. Online dating could be making society more equal than it's ever been, or it could be perpetuating social inequality. The Atlantic and BuzzFeed each took a side in the argument recently.

On January 24, BuzzFeed asked the provocative question "Is Online Dating Feminist?" Jaclyn Friedman, a writer, sexuality educator, and online dater who met her current boyfriend on OkCupid, believes the answer is "yes." "It may give women more power than the conventional dating scene," she explains, because "you can set your terms."

In her case, that meant announcing that she is a feminist and that anyone who was uncomfortable with that need not apply. She found it, and other aspects of her profile, to be great screening mechanisms. Anyone who ignored important aspects of her profile - like her boundaries or her request to email first - was automatically screened out as an incompatible partner.

Friedman also believes that women are comfortable initiating interactions online in a way they are not offline. "There's really no stigma at all online about a woman emailing a man," she says. "It all puts the control much more in your hands." Social scripts about who is the instigator in romantic situations are broken down online.

On the other hand, some think online dating reinforces social inequality. Philip Cohen analyzed message patterns on OkCupid to find significant imbalances based on race. Black women received the lowest response rates to their messages on the site (for example, a 32% response rate from white men, while Middle Eastern women got a 47% response rate from white men). Even white avatars in virtual worlds are given preference over black avatars.

What online dating might be most efficient at then, looking at Cohen's research, is boxing people into categories and reinforcing existing social hierarchies. Instead of closing the gap, online dating could be responsible for widening social inequality. It's far easier to discriminate online, where users aren't face to face, than it is to discriminate in person.

So which is it? Is online dating helping to promote equality? Is it maintaining the inequality that already exists? Is it making inequality worse? Does it depend on what kind of inequality we're talking about - is race one story while gender is another?

What has your experience been?