The writer behind the ongoing ‘Seattle Dating Scene‘ columns in The Seattle Times shows a clear pattern of antipathy toward males in her professional Instagram profile, @dating_in_seattle.
>> UPDATE to this story posted July 17, 2022: Has the Seattle Times finally dropped its man-hating dating advice columnist?
Is it appropriate for The Seattle Times to regularly promote this sexist Instagram profile in their printed newspapers and on their website? Misogyny and misandry are both poisonous to much-needed efforts toward reducing antagonism and increasing empathy between the sexes.
Seattle Times staff either did not vet the Instagram profile they are promoting, or they vetted it and did not notice its distinct pattern of calling attention to objectionable people — specifically men. A third possibility is the newspaper’s staff checked it, noticed the male-bashing, and decided to promote the Instagram profile anyway.
Criticizing men at ratio of 13 to 1
The @dating_in_seattle Instagram profile, which has over 2,500 followers and is run by Marina Resto, contains 35 posts over the last 12 months. (Our analysis only looks at the profile’s posts, not its stories.) Of the 35 posts, 13 are critical of a male and 1 is critical of a female. The remainder of the posts are neutral. Put another way, 37% of @dating_in_seattle’s posts over the last year draw attention to a man who has done or said something objectionable.
| Posts featuring either objectionable men or victimized women | Posts featuring either objectionable women or victimized men |
| December 18, 2020 | Septemer 14, 2020 |
| December 9, 2020 | |
| December 1, 2020 | |
| October 1, 2020 | |
| August 19, 2020 | |
| May 20, 2020 | |
| April 14, 2020 | |
| March 2, 2020 | |
| February 26, 2020 | |
| February 14, 2020 | |
| February 7, 2020 | |
| January 25, 2020 | |
| January 17, 2020 |
Resto’s “likes” of comments on her posts, along with her replies to people’s comments, show a pattern of praising commenters who express scorn for the objectionable individuals she highlights in her Instagram posts. For example, @dating_in_seattle “liked” a comment that used the Spanish word for “a**hole”, according to Google Translate, to describe a man she featured in her December 9, 2020 post.
A post on August 19, 2020 that garnered over a dozen comments features a screenshot from a man’s online dating profile. The screenshot shows a list of four traits the man is looking for in a woman. Most of the comments on the post mock the list of traits. Resto’s replies to those comments add to the mocking.
Read here about another way in which The Seattle Times promotes gender bias: Seattle Times editorial celebrates billionaires’ one-sided take on gender equality
It is bizarre that the writer, who describes herself as a “dating expert” in a November 16, 2020 post, frequently uses her @dating_in_seattle platform to express criticism and contempt for single men and women in Seattle. (She does not, however, show the identities of the criticized individuals.) We would not bother raising concern about this if The Seattle Times was not actively promoting it (see snip below).
Why does The Seattle Times endorse this content?
There are hundreds of thousands of single men and women in the Seattle area who want a mate of the opposite sex. Many of these people have been hurt in past relationships, and they need to heal and to regain trust. Greater empathy between the sexes, not greater animosity, is what’s needed. Anyone is free to run a misandrist social media profile like @dating_in_seattle, but it is a mistake for Seattle’s largest mainstream newspaper to promote it.
The dating columnist for The Seattle Times demonstrates in her professional Instagram profile a pattern of calling attention to men behaving disagreeably, as opposed to women, at a ratio of 13 to 1. We note that this pattern does not carry over into the writer’s columns that The Seattle Times publishes.
Update March 1, 2021
In the video below, the writer behind the @dating_in_seattle Instagram profile responds to the question “Why do you always bash men?” by raising her middle finger and smiling. She posted the video to her @dating_in_seattle Instagram profile February 25, 2021.