The problem of the scams and the risks for women
Marta, 24, presents herself as a pansexual and pangender displaced person who works as a tattoo artist: “I am looking for friends from the LGBT community from all over Europe. I am Ukrainian and we are living in war. I would be grateful for any support. I can make a tattoo for you.” Many profiles contain the hashtags #stoprussianaggresion and #standwithukraine.
Dasha, a 25-year-old graphic design student from Lviv, set the passport function to go virtually to Moscow with a political goal: to help local activists tell Russians how Ukrainians are living by sending images of death and destruction. “Russians are brainwashed by their television, they don’t know how things are,” she says. After the first profile picture that shows her lying barefoot on a lawn, the following images show a Ukrainian city devastated by the war. In its bio, a paragraph written in Cyrillic, in blue on a yellow background, reads: “Please do not turn around: close the skies, not your eyes” (the reference is to the request, also made by the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, to NATO countries for a no-fly zone over Ukraine).
But it is mostly foreign men, it seems, who are changing their location to meet Ukrainian women in this time of war. And Tinder’s ease of use, combined with the humanitarian crisis unleashed by the Russian invasion, is allowing the app to function as a politically neutral entity – connecting warring Ukraine with liberal, democratic-minded nations but also sexually repressive regimes, circumventing any censorship.
“I know I’m easy prey for guys looking for fun, but I can defend myself without problems,” Alyona, 26, who uses Google translator to communicate, tells us.
For now, she is in Lviv, but is ready to leave for Poland and from there to reach Barcelona, a city she has always loved
Many people have swiped right on her profile to make superficial proposals, or using an almost predatory tone, but one man convinced her by offering a hotel where she will be alone for a few days, waiting to get to know each other best dating online site better and maybe take a next step. Continue reading “The problem of the scams and the risks for women”