On Friday morning, Instagram deleted the @feministsontinder account. Nowak says Instagram told her that the account violated their guidelines. BuzzFeed News has contacted Instagram for a statement.
In a Tinder experiment, 24-year-old waitress Laura Nowak decided to spark up conversations about respect, consent, and feminism to see if she could "normalise" discussions about those issues.
Here's what her profile looked like when she began:
Nowak, from Toronto, Ontario, began documenting her conversations on Instagram.
"@feministsontinder is an Instagram account I set up to document the young single-and-looking-for-something male's reactions to everything feminist," Nowak told BuzzFeed News.
"In a dream world, I'm looking for intelligent and well-articulated discussions about the importance of empowering women in our culture. In reality, my aim is to share our culture's, ahem, diverse views on the merits of feminism, in the hopes of raising awareness about what gender inequalities are pertinent today."
Nowak said she started the project because she felt that although the majority of people using Tinder are looking for casual sex, she wanted to show the app could also be a place for "respect" and smart conversation to exist.
She said: "In my experience, it's not uncommon for people (men and women) to have a hard time understanding that casual sex and respect can co-exist."
Speaking about why she chose Tinder as the place to try this idea out, she said: "I don't want women thinking they have to settle for being objectified if they want casual sex, and I don't want men on Tinder being systematically categorised as creeps."
The reaction to her experiment has been mixed, but Nowak said she wanted to "normalise" these topics of discussion in dating culture.
"Often I'm asked about the validity of bringing feminism into an app designed to facilitate romantic or sexual encounters," she said. "But consent and respect aren't just valid topics of discussion when it comes to sex and romance, they're necessary."
Nowak has been receiving a lot of responses from men on Tinder.
"I would say about one-third of the things I post are men who generally support feminism, and two-thirds are men who are openly misogynistic (although they tend to lack a sense of self-awareness)."
She was also clear to say that she has not forced anyone to participate in a conversation, and that she often posts "moments" on Tinder and men choose to respond.
