The projector whirred in the classroom and the screen lit up with a question: ‘I know it’s a bit too early, but can I send you a shirtless picture?’ As many as 80 college students in the packed classroom started whispering and murmuring among themselves. Instructors Kevin Lee and Shruti Jain had their complete attention. Is this a red or green flag situation, or a grey area, they asked the class.
With the traditional dating dance evolving through apps and social media platforms, safety has become a hot button topic. It’s why students—all young adults between 18-20 years—signed up to attend a voluntary 90-minute workshop on ‘Consent and Safe Dating’ at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai on a Friday afternoon. Even though lectures were done for the day, and the weekend beckoned enticingly, the classroom was full.
This workshop is an initiative by the online dating platform, Tinder, in collaboration with youth media platform Yuvaa and Love Matters India. The intent is to teach youth about the practice of dating in a safe environment and the importance of consent.
“It is the first-of-its-kind initiative to help normalise open, candid discussions on these topics and enable access to appropriate, authentic information,” said Aahana Dhar, director of communications, Tinder India.
And going by the interest the first workshop has generated, they seem to be on the right track. More than 65 per cent of young adults are hesitant to withdraw, give, or ask consent, according to a report by YouGov for Tinder India. Seventy per cent of youth surveyed felt that consent needed to be discussed more openly with a date/partner, while 67 per cent felt that it needed to be taught formally in schools and colleges.
“We launched a consent campaign last year and that’s when we did this survey. Dating plays such an important role in today’s life. People are talking about the butterflies associated with it but not about the safety,” Dhar added.
Also read: Tinder to Bumble—Shraddha Walker’s murder case has women thinking twice about swiping right
Reading the flags
The workshop was conducted by Kevin Lee and Shruti Jani from Yuvaa. They had designed it to be interactive rather than preachy.
“Consent is about asking and not assuming,” Lee explained to the young students.
Short films, situations, context, pop culture and the depiction of relationships in Bollywood were all up for discussion to drive this point home.
Students were divided into groups and assigned activities. The presenters put up few statements on the projector. A board and coloured sticky notes were distributed to the groups. Each board had four quadrants.
“I want you all to think about these statements and put a red, green, yellow post-it note representing red, green and grey flags,” siad Lee, editor-in-chief, Yuvaa. If a situation is a “complete no-no”, students had to affix a red sticky note on the board. Green represented ‘go ahead’ or ‘no problem’, while yellow sticky notes were for grey areas.
The request to send a shirtless photo elicited a mixed response, and plenty of debate. One student grey flagged it.
“The context is not really known. Who initiated the conversation is also important to know what kind of relationship they are in. So it’s a confusing scenario,” said one male student.
Another voted for a green flag. “The person is asking beforehand. It asks for consent, and hence it is a green flag,” said a female student. But many participants also saw this as a red flag as it violated boundaries.
The activity went on for another half hour with many such situational statements thrown up in front of students. One by one, each statement was discussed with various ideas coming up.
To a situation relating to first date — ‘I am only offering you to drop home because I’m worried about how late it is’ — most students raised the green flag, finding it safe. But there were also some who saw it as a grey and red sign.
The workshop is a safe space. There are no right or wrong answers. No judgments. “But we want to understand the rationale behind the answers,” said Lee.
According to Tinder’s survey, top 5 green flags include clarity on what a partner feels about you, comfort around the true self, prioritising time, discussing boundaries, and exposing their vulnerabilities.
Against this, the top-5 red flags include asking for personal/intimate photos, making fun of a person’s interests or beliefs, shutting oneself down, lack of empathy, and choosing to chat over the phone instead of meeting up even when a partner makes the request.
“Gen-Zs and younger millennials are often aware of the need to have conversations around consent as they are grown up on the internet,” said Lee. “But they often find the lack of support in the offline world holding them back from talking freely about it. Our institutions need to do better for young people,” Lee added. Yuvaa’s mission, he explains, is to make young people feel less alone.
Also read: How dating apps exploit India’s loosely formed definition of ‘personal information’
Influence of popular culture
The workshop also addressed dissonance between social mores and popular culture. Often, in Indian pop culture, the idea of content, and its importance is not there, and kids tend to follow what is shown in movies, songs— which can be the opposite of what needs to be done in real life,” said Dhar.
Many students pointed out that in movies—mostly Indian super hits—consent is peripheral. The hero does not pay attention to the woman and her wishes but forces his interests on her.
While emphasising that such behaviour is not acceptable, Jani did not suggest that students block out popular culture or films. “The idea is to make you understand what consent is. So go ahead and definitely watch movies, if you wish to, but remember to separate the right from the wrong,” said Jani.
Tinder India hopes to conduct more sessions on a pilot basis for the next three months across many colleges in Maharashtra. “This all depends on many factors—permission from colleges and the feedback we receive. And also hopefully, maybe next year in the first quarter, we can conduct something that can be accessible across without any space constraints as well,” said Dhar.
Most students were happy about this session as they felt it is otherwise awkward to talk about consent, dating and relationship issues to an elderly in an open manner. In fact, the level of comfort the session instructors provided is generally difficult to achieve even with friends, said students.
(Edited by Anurag Chabuey)