As more and more women seem to be combating dating fatigue and never-ending sexism, what can we learn about Bumble’s failed chastity campaign and what it illustrates about voluntary celibacy and asexuality? 

Let’s revisit this marketing fail and see what it tells us about our political anxieties and the state of sex and dating.

What Can We Learn From the Failed Bumble Celibacy Ad?

What’s With The Celibacy Hype? 

Depending on how chronically online you are, you may or may not have heard about the fallout relating to the Bumble celibacy ad a few months ago. Maybe some of you are already past it and moving on to the new scandal-du-jour, but I want to revisit this marketing failure and see what it illustrates about our political anxieties and the state of sex and dating. Let me fill you in for those who aren’t up to date, In May of this year, the online dating app Bumble launched an ad campaign with slogans like “A vow of celibacy is not the answer” and “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.” The backlash was swift and brutal. Bumble promptly issued an apology. 

We could easily see this as another example of corporations hiring tone-deaf marketing executives who try to capitalize on trends they fundamentally don’t understand only for it to backfire. But I want us to talk about why there’s been so much hype recently about celibacy and what it reflects about our attitudes toward sex. 

Asexuality, involuntary celibacy, voluntary celibacy, and chastity… 

 is a sexual orientation that describes people who don’t experience sexual attraction. 

 refers to people who want to have sex but are unable to find willing partners. Some segments adopt the incel label and lament online about their inferior physical attributes responsible (in their minds) for their sexlessness. While most people who are involuntarily celibate are not fantasizing about brutalizing women and shooting up schools, the online incel community encourages this flavor of blatant misogyny justified by self-victimization. 

 refers to people who opt out of having sex for a variety of reasons which we’ll explore in this article. 

 usually refers to people who follow religious abstinence and temperance. 

 is a form of powerplay that often employs chastity cages, orgasm denial, and control.  What all of these have in common is the refrain from sex but the reasons and motivations are very different.

There’s an incredible amount of misunderstanding when it comes to the reasons people don’t have sex and along with confusion there can be cruelty. Asexual activist and model, Yasmin Benoit, is regularly the punching bag for people who are uncomfortable with any challenges to compulsory allosexuality (the belief that all adults should have sexual relationships). She fights for people who don’t experience sexual attraction to have the same legal status and protections as other members of the LGBTQ+ community. She brings to light the ways that asexuals are often forced into conversion therapy and discriminated against based on their orientation. But her detractors regularly point to the fact that she wears lingerie and isn’t afraid to appear sexy as a sign that she’s being deceptive or that asexuality doesn’t exist. These people struggle to reconcile their objectifying gaze with a person who refuses to be its recipient; that disconnect is often transformed into vitriol. 

Yasmin Benoit launched the campaign #ThisIsWhatAsexualityLooksLike as a result, standing strong in her assertion that orientation doesn’t determine how people dress and vice versa.

Understandably, asexual people took issue with the insensitivity of the Bumble celibacy ad. While it wasn’t directly targeting asexual people, the billboards did insinuate that not having sex made you a nun or wasn’t a legitimate option - things that asexuals hear reugularly. It’s ignorant and disrespectful to make fun of communities that are so frequently demonized for just existing. It makes sense that many asexual people were pissed off alongside allosexual women who choose celibacy. 

While the Bumble celibacy ad wasn’t directly targeting asexual people, the billboards did insinuate that not having sex made you a nun or wasn’t a legitimate option - things that asexuals hear reugularly.

While asexual people like Benoit often don’t have sex (though some do and that’s a legitimate choice) because they don’t experience attraction, other allosexual people are also choosing to abstain. There’s a growing number of women who are discussing their choice to swear off men, as a response to their dating fatigue. They explain that this choice frees up their time. Some argue that they have better sex while masturbating with their favorite toy. No need to put up with the orgasm gap (where straight men orgasm anywhere from 20% to 72% more often than their female partners depending on the context) when you can reliably make yourself come. Instead of wasting their time on men, these women get their emotional needs met through quality female friendships. The 4B movement in South Korea has been advocating for divestment from men as a way of protesting misogyny, and it seems this attitude is gaining momentum across the world.

It’s easy to blame men entirely for many women’s choice to be celibate, but let’s talk about the role dating apps play for a minute. As feminists, like YouTuber Alice Cappelle have pointed out, women are the product that dating apps sell. 

In a video essay about the Bumble debacle, Alice Cappelle explains that “wherever women go, men will follow.”

 But this means that dating apps rely on women to utilize their products in order to stay afloat. However, the capitalist never-ending-growth model is at fundamental odds with building human relationships. Apps are driven by market logic first and foremost, and users are thus subjected to their worst impulses. As a result, we are all getting progressively more tired of app-mitigated dating. We’re starting to see more clearly how apps, rather than facilitating love, have trained us to behave abhorrently towards each other — judging people almost exclusively based on their looks, having shallow and sometimes violating conversations, only to ghost or be ghosted. After all, the less success we have at establishing long-term fulfilling relationships, the longer we will use their apps. But it turns out we don’t like being treated like commodities rather than people. This is especially true for women who feel the culmination of dating fatigue and the misogyny these apps promote. With women leaving, dating apps are in crisis, after all, they can’t sell their tools if there are no products to consume.

Is celibacy the answer to sexism and dating fatigue? 

There isn’t a single right answer to this question. As someone who’s been called a “man-hating lesbian” more than once, I also fear my opinion is biased. I echo 

Kate Moennig’s sentiment, “who the fuck wants a man in their house?”

 Jokes aside, I do wonder if giving up on men is the right answer to our continued frustration with gender inequality and the general shittiness of online dating. While I’m all for divestment from toxic apps and people who keep us down, I would hope that women who date men could expect and receive more from their counterparts. Why is it once again the responsibility of women to change their behavior, while men continue to get a free pass? And is it an effective strategy to hope that men will change because a segment of women are opting to disengage? I hope so, but I’m a bit too cynical to believe it will happen. 

Now I want to be clear that I think people should have the agency to make decisions that feel empowering. If you want a break from sex, for however long, that shouldn’t be something you feel the need to justify. If you get more fulfillment from your vibrator and your gal pals than men — same. But as we’ve seen in the past decade or so, choice feminism doesn’t ultimately lead to powerful social or political change. What this wave of voluntary celibacy illustrates is the need to tackle the underlying issue — patriarchy. 

Beyond dating burn-out, the most common reason why women are opting out of sex with men is because they feel their reproductive rights are too precarious to take chances. 

With the overthrow of abortion rights in the US, lots of women find that the risk of pregnancy is too big

. While it’s a very valid concern, reproductive rights and gender equality more broadly aren’t issues that can be resolved through individual choice. Nor should it be the responsibility of women to individually fight this system. In order for voluntary celibacy to be a legitimately empowering choice, we need to have social conditions in which our material and corporeal wellbeing isn’t threatened. Otherwise, celibacy is not so much voluntary as it is reactionary. But faced with a bleak political landscape, it’s easy to see why opting out of sex seems easier than organizing to fight a corrupt system. 

What this wave of voluntary celibacy illustrates is the need to tackle the underlying issue — patriarchy. 

What made the Bumble celibacy ad so fucking cringe is that it ignored the legitimate frustrations that women have with dating. Rather than recognizing their role in that situation, Bumble positioned themselves as the solution. I don’t think the problem was just that it portrayed celibacy as the punchline to a bad joke. Rather, it attempted to repackage the same bullying tactics that have always weaponized women’s sexuality for other’s gains. Instead of slut shaming women, it tried to reverse slut shame. But the whole point of the voluntary celibacy movement is that women feel like they’ve run out of options and are trying to reclaim their agency and feel empowered in a world hell-bent on keeping them down. Bumble, who had previously pretended to be a feminist app (because women could message first! Disregard the fact they have also killed this feature recently) revealed that it was just the same type of capitalist shill, willing to exploit and co-opt women’s plight to make a quick buck. But women are fed up, and the backlash along with the voluntary celibacy trend is a clear sign of that.   

It seems the voluntary celibacy trend is a reflection of the political tension women and queer people are feeling intensely right now. Many of us in the US are waiting to see if even more of our rights will be stripped away come January. With few options to express our political demands, we’re left with individual actions that give us a semblance of control. Sometimes, hanging out with your group of girls who have all sworn off men feels like the most radical thing you can muster. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better solution to offer at this point. So instead of putting the responsibility back on women who are doing their best given some bullshit options, I want to end on a lighthearted note. Let’s talk about cock cages! If I were to give Bumble some marketing advice, I would encourage them to roll out a new version of their chastity campaign. But this time, why not encourage straight women to embrace their inner dommes? Perhaps a few dozen giant billboards telling her to lock her boyfriend’s (or more likely “dude she’s in an amorphous situationship with’s”) dick in a cage. “No cumming for you boo boo, until I do.” #GirlPower Can you picture it? I’ll be eager to read their groveling social media apology once this flawless marketing push hits chastity kink-tok.