Mismatch: Bumble vs the men’s rights activists
The Slow Newscast
Alice Sandelson
4.6 • 894 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The dating app Bumble built its identity on a promise: women make the first move. In this episode, The Observer uncovers a legal campaign by men’s rights activists that helped dismantle that premise.
Correction: A previous version of this episode stated that the Los Angeles Angels baseball case settled for $500,000. That case did not settle and was dismissed in court. It was a separate case involving the Oakland Athletics baseball team that settled for $500,000. This episode has been updated.
Reporter: Patricia Clarke
Producer: Jonathan Lewis
Sound design: Dominic Delargy
Artwork: Blythe Walker Sibthorp
Editor: Jasper Corbett
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer |
| 0:02.0 | Hello and welcome to the slow newscast from The Observer. |
| 0:16.0 | I'm Alexi Mostris. |
| 0:18.0 | In 2014, a dating app launches with a simple idea. |
| 0:22.9 | Women make the first move. |
| 0:25.4 | It sounds like not a big deal, maybe even obvious, but it's radical enough to turn Bumble |
| 0:31.2 | into a trailblazer for a new type of feminism. |
| 0:35.7 | Fast forward 10 years, and that defining feature is no longer around. Not |
| 0:42.0 | because users hate it, not because it doesn't work, because a small group of men decided |
| 0:48.6 | to tear it down. This week, a story about power and the backlash to power, about dating in the 21st century, |
| 0:58.1 | and how progress doesn't happen in a straight line, but lurches forward and then snaps back. |
| 1:05.5 | Now over to Patricia Clark. |
| 1:19.4 | We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. |
| 1:23.7 | We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. |
| 1:37.3 | We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. The voice of the feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is blaring through the speakers at the 2014 Video Music Awards. It's a spoken word monologue, an extract from her famous essay, We Should All Be Feminists, about gender and power. |
| 1:45.0 | You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. |
| 1:50.0 | Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. |
| 1:57.0 | As her words echo in the vast space that is New York City's Madison Square Garden, |
| 2:02.0 | dry ice drifts through the beams of light above the dimly lit stage. |
| 2:07.2 | An army of women marches on. |
| 2:09.6 | Then they disappear one by one until only a single figure remains. |
| 2:16.2 | Beyonce. |
... |
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