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PARIS — This is not news, but dating today is a completely different animal than it was even five years ago, as new apps keep arriving to create "matches' between people online who may have never come face-to-face otherwise. Personally, online or off, the whole "dating" thing has never really been my strong suit — I was consistently told in high school that "I would do better in college where people were more mature." But alas, here I am, heading into my senior year at Boston University, the same age my parents were when they first got together, and I have never been on a proper date. But I'm not alone.
After learning that many of her seniors were about to graduate without ever having been on a date, Boston College Philosophy Professor Kerry Cronin created an assignment that rewards her students for going out on traditional dates. Lisa Bonos of The Washington Post reports on Cronin, known on campus as the "dating professor," because she used to make the date a mandatory course requirement (she now gives extra credit for it). Students are encouraged to pursue a date set up under very specific parameters: They had to ask someone out in person, not over text (Cronin refers to texting as "the devil") and the person has to know it's a date. They have to stick a budget of $10 (the asker has to pay) and a time limit of 90 minutes. And they have to be sober.
The rules are meant to help the conversation bypass normal party chatter, as one of her former students, Erika Peña said: "It leapfrogged us into having an actual conversation that didn't revolve around a Jägerbomb."
Cronin says that a traditional date has become "a weirdly countercultural thing to do," while dates set up through the dating apps like Tinder or Bumble where immediacy and availability dominate over deeper connections.
Some are asking where we might find romance these days.
Sticking in the city known for both its universities and its many bars and pubs, Dugan Arnett writes in the Boston Globe that spotting these "manufactured" dates has become something of a pastime for Boston bartenders.
"The guys working behind the bar had just spotted yet another one: The young couple at the bar's edge were showing all the requisite signs. They'd arrived separately. They'd spent a long stretch wordlessly scanning the menu. And at the moment, they were nervously working their way through a first drink, struggling mightily to keep the conversation afloat."
Not only can bartenders identify these dating app dates, which Arnett describes as "essentially blind," but they are now so accustomed to them that they can differentiate which app was used to set up the date. "Tinder is notoriously the hook-up app, so you notice it's two people getting loose and really touchy-feely," bartender Greg Coote says. "Bumble is more like the interview process. It's like they're going through all these formalities."
With the digital revolution's warping of the sexual revolution, some are asking where we might find romance these days. Over here in Europe, where I'm in a studying abroad, a colleague spotted an interesting article in German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about internationally known bondage artist, Matthias Grimme, who is in long-term relationships with two women, Andrea Grimme, his wife of 27 years and his bondage partner of 17 years, Nicole, who goes by the name "Ropecat." The, er, bond with Nicole, he says is "a very special form of tenderness."
Grimme, from the northern German city of Hamburg, defended his relationships in light of the #MeToo movement, and declared: "Sadomasochists are the last romantics." That's, well, interesting. Here in Paris, where the old brand of romance is still very much in the air, the dating world is nevertheless just as complicated (and virtual) as back in Boston.
Whether or not "romantic" bondage or dates for academic credit is your thing, dating and mating will no doubt continue to evolve. "Not everybody is called to romantic relationship, not everyone is called to marriage," Professor Cronin says. "But everybody's called to relationships — that's what it means to be human."
PARIS — This is not news, but dating today is a completely different animal than it was even five years ago, as new apps keep arriving to create "matches' between people online who may have never come face-to-face otherwise. Personally, online or off, the whole "dating" thing has never really been my strong suit — I was consistently told in high school that "I would do better in college where people were more mature." But alas, here I am, heading into my senior year at Boston University, the same age my parents were when they first got together, and I have never been on a proper date. But I'm not alone.
After learning that many of her seniors were about to graduate without ever having been on a date, Boston College Philosophy Professor Kerry Cronin created an assignment that rewards her students for going out on traditional dates. Lisa Bonos of The Washington Post reports on Cronin, known on campus as the "dating professor," because she used to make the date a mandatory course requirement (she now gives extra credit for it). Students are encouraged to pursue a date set up under very specific parameters: They had to ask someone out in person, not over text (Cronin refers to texting as "the devil") and the person has to know it's a date. They have to stick a budget of $10 (the asker has to pay) and a time limit of 90 minutes. And they have to be sober.
The rules are meant to help the conversation bypass normal party chatter, as one of her former students, Erika Peña said: "It leapfrogged us into having an actual conversation that didn't revolve around a Jägerbomb."
Cronin says that a traditional date has become "a weirdly countercultural thing to do," while dates set up through the dating apps like Tinder or Bumble where immediacy and availability dominate over deeper connections.
Some are asking where we might find romance these days.
Sticking in the city known for both its universities and its many bars and pubs, Dugan Arnett writes in the Boston Globe that spotting these "manufactured" dates has become something of a pastime for Boston bartenders.
"The guys working behind the bar had just spotted yet another one: The young couple at the bar's edge were showing all the requisite signs. They'd arrived separately. They'd spent a long stretch wordlessly scanning the menu. And at the moment, they were nervously working their way through a first drink, struggling mightily to keep the conversation afloat."
Not only can bartenders identify these dating app dates, which Arnett describes as "essentially blind," but they are now so accustomed to them that they can differentiate which app was used to set up the date. "Tinder is notoriously the hook-up app, so you notice it's two people getting loose and really touchy-feely," bartender Greg Coote says. "Bumble is more like the interview process. It's like they're going through all these formalities."
With the digital revolution's warping of the sexual revolution, some are asking where we might find romance these days. Over here in Europe, where I'm in a studying abroad, a colleague spotted an interesting article in German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about internationally known bondage artist, Matthias Grimme, who is in long-term relationships with two women, Andrea Grimme, his wife of 27 years and his bondage partner of 17 years, Nicole, who goes by the name "Ropecat." The, er, bond with Nicole, he says is "a very special form of tenderness."
Grimme, from the northern German city of Hamburg, defended his relationships in light of the #MeToo movement, and declared: "Sadomasochists are the last romantics." That's, well, interesting. Here in Paris, where the old brand of romance is still very much in the air, the dating world is nevertheless just as complicated (and virtual) as back in Boston.
Whether or not "romantic" bondage or dates for academic credit is your thing, dating and mating will no doubt continue to evolve. "Not everybody is called to romantic relationship, not everyone is called to marriage," Professor Cronin says. "But everybody's called to relationships — that's what it means to be human."
With dimmed hopes of a transition from the economic crisis and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro, many Venezuelans increasingly see the United States, rather than Latin America, as the place to rebuild a life..
Migrants from Venezuela crossed the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum.
Migration has too many elements to count. Beyond the matter of leaving your homeland, the process creates a gaping emptiness inside the migrant — and outside, in their lives. If forced upon someone, it can cause psychological and anthropological harm, as it involves the destruction of roots. That's in fact the case of millions of Venezuelans who have left their country without plans for the future or pleasurable intentions.
Their experience is comparable to paddling desperately in shark-infested waters. As many Mexicans will concur, it is one thing to take a plane, and another to pay a coyote to smuggle you to some place 'safe.'
Venezuela's mass emigration of recent years has evolved in time. Initially, it was the middle and upper classes and especially their youth, migrating to escape the socialist regime's socio-political and economic policies. Evidently, they sought countries with better work, study and business opportunities like the United States, Panama or Spain. The process intensified after 2017 when the regime's erosion of democratic structures and unrelenting economic vandalism were harming all Venezuelans.
That is when we began seeing the poor rushing Venezuela's frontiers and migrant numbers ballooning to 7 million. Ours became the world's second biggest exodus. In that phase migrants headed mainly for regional states like Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Ecuador. These were closer, but far enough from President Nicolás Maduro.
The meaning of 'getting sorted'
After 2021, motivated by changes in Latin America and a pandemic-induced recession, they began considering the United States as the only option that could yield a dignified life. Thousands of Venezuelans have risked their lives since, wading through the Darien Gap as a first, harrowing leg of a long journey to the United States. The challenges of this route often are simply unsurmountable, and meant for the truly desperate. Yet Panama's migration office believes more than 250,000 Venezuelans have crossed the Gap in the past two years and in 2022, made up six of every 10 people heading north this way.
The country is supposedly on the cusp of a rebirth.
This intensification of U.S.-bound migration means Venezuela is a long way from recovering or 'getting sorted,' as Maduro and his cronies like to say. Its crises are on the contrary becoming more intractable and deep-seated, at least for all those without perks or not living off the public purse. Maduro has turned to propaganda, showy projects and displays of luxury to give the impression that economic problems are over and Venezuelans needn't leave anymore. The country is supposedly on the cusp of a rebirth.
But no amount of publicity can hide Venezuela's shortages, even of basic items like food and medicines. A recent National Hospitals Survey taken by an independent medical body, found the principal hospitals to have a shortage rate of 70% in such essential supplies as anaesthesia drugs or pain killers. Imagine needing surgery in Venezuela...
Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants camping in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
Another recent poll taken by Caracas-based consultants Consultores 21found three out of 10 Venezuelans wanting to leave (with a third of those planning to leave in 2023). The firm's annual surveys since 2015 have shown a steady, upward curve in favor of emigration except for a period in the middle of the pandemic. The recent poll shows Colombia to be the first destination at present (for 30% of respondents, followed by 21% planning on Chile) in spite of its increasing restrictions. This means the region is still bearing the brunt of this outflow.
States cannot overlook people's problems nor whitewash - or 'redwash' - them with ideological verbiage.
To solve the massive problem of Venezuelan migration, one must tackle its roots. Visas, regulations and militarization of frontiers are palliative measures here, though their effect is to increase the suffering of Venezuelans. What regional countries must do is agree on a working framework to pressure the Maduro regime to allow proper elections in 2024. It is essential for these states to find a common position on Venezuela, and move on from the principle of non-intervention to the principle of non-indifference.
