I ain’t saying she’s a gold-digger
Published by Sabotabby January 4th, 2008 in For the ladies, Dudes, another fucking sex postThere’s no shortage of misguided notions to be found in MRA/pick-up artist/MSN-Lifestyle-reading/Craigslist-rant-posting circles (which all seem to overlap, surprisingly). But one common meme that seems to always crop up is the scenario of a man and a woman, out on a date. He buys dinner and movie tickets and perhaps some flowers, and then acts gobsmacked when she doesn’t repay him with sex. He immediately goes on the internet and complains about gold-digging women.
Here’s an excerpt from an article recently mocked on Pandagon:
As I mentioned earlier, women often have an imagined ideal for a date. This may involve many things I’d rather not do (and pay for) with a complete stranger: dinner at Daniel, drinks in the Rainbow Room, the opera — all of this is fine if I really enjoy the person. But with a woman I hardly know this an unacceptable risk to wallet and watch. Not to mention the slim chance of either party wanting to get physical after such a marathon night. In addition, women often say they “want to go out (on the town) so they can get to know me,” which is contradictory. Spending time with me in my apartment will show them more about who I am than cavorting about town. And in my experience, young women often brag to their girlfriends about where they went and what they ate, rather than who they were with. That’s a lousy deal for the sap who funds the night.
Now, misogynist slime oozes out of every corner of these sorts of articles, as the post and comments point out, but one assumption that often goes unremarked-upon is that the man is always paying for the date. It made me wonder whether it’s just my own group of friends that assumes that the couple (het or homo, platonic or romantic) splits the bill evenly, unless there’s a good reason (a birthday, for example, or one party being flat broke). Granted, I mostly hang out with, and date, other Canuckistani-based leftists, so it occurred to me that I just might be living in a social bubble. Seriously, who are these men who drop hundreds of dollars on dinner? And who are these women who are getting free meals all the time? Is it a geography thing, a class thing, a this-is-what-non-feminist-couples-are-actually-like thing?
Fortunately, I live with someone who keeps etiquette books in our library (awesome), so I was able to consult the 1950 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, Publishers). This was what Post had to say about who pays on a date:
In this modern day, when women are competing with men in politics, in business, and in every profession, it is really senseless to cling to that one obsolete convention—no matter what the circumstances—that the man must buy the tickets, pay the check, pay the taxi, or else be branded a gigolo or a parasite. The modern point of view has changed in every particular save this one! Certainly it does not seem logical that an otherwise modern man-and-girl situation should still be depicted as that of a Victorian lady dependent for her safety in public upon the protection of a chivalrous gentleman, instead of the modern one of girl friend and boy friend—or one business associate and another.
Ethically this subject comes down to a question of underlying motive. The man who is deliberately “out for what he can get” from a woman is a type of parasite that is not even mentionable. And it is natural that every man of decent impulse shun the faintest likeness to one of these pariahs. Therefore, it is very hard to say how the various angles of a man’s self-respect are to be reckoned with, and at the same time solve the typical situation of Mary who is wondering what has changed Jim, who used to be the life of the party, but who never wants to go anywhere any more! In other words, what can the girl, who likes Jim better than any other man, do about it except to make believe that above everything she likes to cook and stay home and to listen to the radio?
The only real advice to be offered is, first of all, to take whatever the situation may be, frankly and unself-consciously.
Wait, so in the 50s, the time period that anti-feminists consider ideal in regard to courtship and gender relations, the etiquette experts were recommending dividing up the bill on an egalitarian, or at least case-by-case, basis? You’d think that nearly 60 years later, this arrangement would have been adopted into common practice. And I think that it probably has been, if only because there can’t be that many men wealthy enough to regularly pay at fancy restaurants.
So what’s the deal, Punkasses? Are the MRAs lying again, or am I just dating cheapskates?
Perhaps those guys typically pursue Barbies?
I dunno. Maybe MRA types INSIST on paying so the sneaky female has less excuse to weasel out of blowjob duty.
I’ve never dated a guy who even offered to pay for everything on a date. But when I survey my students (teenagers), a good number of them think the guy should pay for everything. I hope that changes with age - but I split bills back in high school too. I’m afraid this one’s fluctuating year-to-year.
If they weren’t complaining about paying for dates in order to bribe women for sex, they’d be complaining about showing affection to women in order to bribe them for sex. These guys think of women as sex vending machines, period.
The only time I ever had a boyfriend who paid for most everything, he made way more than I did. And he was still kind of a dick about it. Other than that, I’ve usually been on a s/he who asks, pays for first dates, followed by 50/50 split on dates thereafter excluding special occasions.
I don’t ‘do’ dating - I establish relationships, then we tend to take turns or go with whoever’s most solvent for nights out. But I’m tired enough of the practice of men buying me drinks in bars. I find it uncomfortable but refusing, or going ‘No - can I get you a drink?’ is a form of social escalation that could constitute party pooping. I’m not comfy with being bought drinks - I guess because it feels like my time/attention is being purchased when I’d rather just distribute those things where I will.
Expensive “dinner and a movie” dates are this uneccessarily expensive thing that people do in the course of courtship because capitalism tells them too. I much prefer the “homemade dinner and Netflix movie” dates I’ve been on, and that sort of thing makes it way harder to fight over who pays.
Also, no dude has ever offered to buy me drink who I didn’t immediately feel was trying to
1) Strike up a conversation with me without actually having to have anything in common with me or having received any signal from me that I was interested, as I would obviously feel obliged to talk to a man with beer.
or
2) Get as many beers into me as possible before the bar closed so as to render me inebriatedly slutty.
IAWTC, Sera. #1 especially is what I feel is occurring and that squicks me. Not least because some guys - even guys who otherwise are not total assholes - find it hard to take ‘no’ for an answer. And once in a blue moon I get offered a drink by someone who seems genuinely fantastic, and that makes me feel equally uneasy because the same power dynamic is there.
Somewhat lying, I think. I’m sure that men pick up a lot of checks on the first date, but I bet not nearly as often as they’re pretending.
You aren’t alone…I don’t know anyone who dates like that (”datey-dates”).
Or maybe we are all just freaks!
But no regrets…I’ve had a great life, and am now happy with someone I will grow old with.
So, yay for us!
I’ve always gone with the old “I’ll pay for this date and you can pay for the next one” system. The only drawback is that it leads to arguments about who payed for the last date.
I definitely run in Canuckistani-lefty circles and generally whoever asks pays on a first date, and then I fall into a turn-taking deal. I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship, so we basically take turns. Like “you paid for dinner last night, let me get the movie.” As opposed to actually evenly splitting cheques.
i once had a girlfriend who insisted that i should pay for everything because women only make 75% of what men do.
the fact that i was making a scant $8/hour was kinda lost on her.
My first boyfriend insisted on paying for everything. He also had way more money than I did, so I let him. Now that I look back on it, he was the target of these dating articles: he really believed that his paying for stuff meant that I should reward him by 1) always looking “nice” (i.e. dressing up for dates), 2) helping him with his homework (since I was “the smart one”), and 3) eventually putting out. That teenage relationship was deeply dysfunctional in a number of ways, and I blame the patriarchy for most of them.
Since that deeply messed-up adolescent relationship, though, one of two models has prevailed in my dating and relationships. If I’m dating someone who has significantly more money than I do, that person will treat me if they want to do something that falls outside my budget, because, well, either they treat me or they find a date who can afford to share the cost, or we don’t attend that event together. Usually on a first date, we split the tab, however if someone insists, I don’t argue, because arguing about money is unseemly. I just make sure to get the next one, if there is a next date. With my wealthier boyfriend, I’ve made sure to pick up activities when I have money; when I don’t, he pays for anything he really wants to do with me, or we do inexpensive things. If I’m dating someone whose as penurious as I am, we do inexpensive things, and we generally split the tab; one person will treat the other if the other is particularly broke or the person treating has come into some money. On the rare occasions that I’ve been the flush party in a relationship, I’ve picked up the tab more often, for things I wanted to do together.
I should mention that it works this way with my non-romantic friends, too.