Bumble was born with a feminist promise: Women would make the first move. They would not sit around waiting to be chosen, be flooded with messages from men they had no interest in or play the role of the passive princess. A match would only develop into a conversation if the woman decided to initiate it.
This month, Bumble finally abandoned the rule that made it famous and began allowing men to send the first message as well. According to company data, around 66% of women prefer the man to initiate.
It is possible to describe the change as a commercial retreat. Bumble may simply be trying to bring women back to the app amid declining profitability. But there is another, more uncomfortable interpretation: dating’s great feminist experiment failed.
Not because women are incapable of approaching men. They clearly are. Nor because they lack confidence or depend on male approval. It failed because feminism tried to change the rules of attraction by changing the settings of an app, while biology refused to cooperate.
In research I conducted for Bumble in Israel, one pattern was unmistakable: Most women wanted men to pursue them. When a woman is interested in a man, it is not enough for him merely to respond positively to her. She wants to see that he is clearly interested, that he initiates, makes an effort and is willing to risk rejection. That pattern appeared across almost every age group.
But the research uncovered something else. Women wanted men to pursue them, make the first move and even pay on the date, yet many felt that openly admitting those preferences was somehow illegitimate.
The bottom line is simple: Women want to choose the man, but they often want to choose from among men who have already chosen them.
That sounds contradictory only if equality is assumed to require men and women to behave identically. That has been one of feminism’s major mistakes. It rightly fought for equality in rights, opportunity and power, but along the way, every difference between the sexes increasingly came to be treated as a social malfunction waiting to be corrected. Equality, however, is not symmetry. Desire has no ideological obligation.
The evolution of courtship
To understand why many women still want to be pursued, we need to go back long before dating apps, marriage or even human culture. In nature, the sex that invests more in reproduction tends to be more selective when choosing a mate.
For human females, the minimum biological investment required to produce a child includes pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. For most of human history, the potential cost of a poor choice was therefore enormous.
The study found that women want men to pursue them, make the first move and even pay for the date, but feel it is not legitimate to say so openly
(Photo: Shutterstock)
The minimum biological investment for men was considerably lower. That created a basic asymmetry: Men competed and demonstrated their value; women filtered and selected.
When a man initiates, he signals that his interest is not accidental. He is willing to pay a price in time, effort and the risk of rejection.
Courtship allows a woman to assess not only whether a man is attracted to her, but how interested he really is. The first message is therefore not merely a message. It is evidence of motivation.
Women do not necessarily wait for male initiative because they lack power. They may wait because his willingness to initiate is itself part of the information they use to choose.
Bumble gave women control, but it also asked them to give up that test. A woman selected the man with a swipe, then had to open the conversation, propel it forward and simultaneously work out whether he truly wanted her or was simply responding because the opportunity had been placed in front of him.
And that is the great irony. For years, women were told: You do not need to wait. Initiate. Ask him out. Call. Say exactly what you want. Stop playing games. That message freed women from the idea that being sexually or romantically assertive was somehow improper.
At some point, however, liberation became another obligation. It was no longer enough to be independent, successful and in control of your life. Now you were also expected to manage the courtship.
If you wanted him to approach you, you were old-fashioned. If you wanted him to call, you were dependent. If you wanted him to make an effort, you were playing games. If you were attracted to a man who took initiative, perhaps you had simply internalized the patriarchy.
But none of that necessarily follows.
A woman can be a CEO, earn more than her partner, vote for a feminist party and still want him to ask her out. There is no contradiction. A woman can want equality inside a relationship while still needing some degree of asymmetry for attraction to begin.
Indeed, male courtship may become more important as women become more independent. In the past, a woman might have needed a man for economic security, social standing or protection. Today, many women do not need a man in order to survive. They therefore need another reason to choose him.
Dr. Liraz MargalitPhoto: Rami SinaiThe mistake was to equate male initiative with male superiority. They are not the same thing. Courtship does not mean that the man decides and the woman obeys. Quite the opposite: He presents himself, and she chooses. He takes the risk; she filters. Her power does not depend on performing precisely the same action he performs. It lies in the fact that nothing moves forward without her consent.
Feminism should have fought female dependence, not male initiative. It should have secured women’s right to say yes or no, rather than persuading them that the only way to demonstrate strength was to behave exactly like men.
We like to imagine that we have evolved beyond biology, that education, financial independence and gender equality have rewritten the rules of attraction. But institutions can change far faster than the mechanisms underlying desire. Equality evolved. Evolution never received the update.
Women can and should be taught that there is nothing wrong with initiating. They can be encouraged to express interest openly. But they cannot be instructed what they must find attractive.
After more than a decade, Bumble discovered what many women may have already understood instinctively: They do not necessarily want less power. They want more choice. And genuine choice does not require women to surrender courtship. It requires them to have enough suitors from whom to choose.
The feminist failure was not giving women too much freedom. It was convincing ourselves that true freedom required erasing every difference between women and men.
Dr. Liraz Margalit is an expert in behavioral design and shaping human behavior