Thoroughly Modern Dating: Women think silence shows indifference but is it allowing abuse?
The #MeToo movement and legislation against economic abuse have thrown a light on all types of abuse, but sometimes it starts before you’ve even gone on a date . Dating during the days of yore was easy, you’d don your best bonnet, tighten your corset a couple more millimetres, and flutter your eyelashes at the eligible bachelor who’d just moved into the neighbourhood. In the post-war world, women could get jobs, go to clubs and enrol in a life drawing class. Relationships would develop the organic way and you could choose your partner based on your proclivities. Today, you don’t even need to leave the house to find love; you can change your distance settings or slide into someone’s DMs if you like the cut of their digital jib. Women went from dealing with a straightforward courtship, but mismatched marriages - as they had no other choice - to having the agency to go out, swap numbers and spend the next two weeks cradling the phone, opening up a new type of mind fuck. And ther