Posted by
Playful Walrus on Friday, May 16, 2008 11:36:30 AM
I mostly agree, but I have hard time with this "men should always pay for dates" thing. This carries over a tradition that had a reason behind it - back when this became tradition, women usually didn't earn income outside of the home. They lived in their father or brother's or uncle's house until they married, maybe helping out with the family business but certainly expected to help with the clearning, cooking, and raising of children (perhaps their own younger siblings).
Women now make up the majority on the college campus. They have equal access to the workplace. They can earn income, head households, own property, buy and sell, save, invest, and insure (and file for divorce, and more often do!). They can live a very full life without a man. Indeed, what have we heard? Women want to be independent and don't need men. They want to be respected as equals.
Well how can you be equal if you don't pay your share for the date? Why should my son spend money entertaining and feeding a woman that, chances are, he will not marry? He should be saving that money for his future. When my father takes me out to lunch, he always insists on paying. We do not have an equality between us, and I admit and accept that.
I have heard that a man pays for a date because he is paying for a woman's time. Excuse me? Why is her time more valuable than his? If a man is paying for a woman's time, it should mean that she is his doctor, lawyer, accountant, counselor (or some other "employee").
Another thing a real man should know how to do is distinguish betweem marriage-and-family minded women and other kinds of women, like ones who will gladly let him pay for dinner and a play, then will leave him at her door, wait until he is gone, and then call over a bad boy for a booty call.
Men should not be fools - paying the way for women who will only marry him if she is done fornicating with a host of "jerks" and is bored of sex, looking for someone to marry as a means to pay off her debts and perhaps as a sperm donor.