So over in the Men’s Rights subreddit, the fellas are doing their best to address the burning Men’s Right issue of “date inequality,” or, as one recent poster put the question,“Hey feminists. How come men are still expected to pay for dates?”
I’m pretty sure that feminists aren’t the ones expecting men to pay for dates, so I’m not sure why feminists should be held to account for something they’re not doing, but in any case, the Men’s Rightsers don’t seem much interested in hearing explanations from feminists. No, they’re rather offer their own theories.
Enter a new convert to Men’s Rightsism called MrKocha, who enlists the aid of SCIENCE to offer his own explanation of this terrible date injustice:
I see a lot of problems with every day inequality between the sexes in mate interaction in various areas.
Attention, human female. Initiating mate interaction protocol.
First being, the average female has vastly different motivations in her mate selection. How much is nature vs nurture is up for debate, but I tend towards believing millions of years of evolution probably have left a significant mark there.
Huh. What are the odds that these millions of years of evolution just happen to line up with whatever regressive assertions about women — sorry, females — this dude is about to make?
Anyway her mate choice process often involves looking for signs of genetic fitness in male (attractive appearance, displayed dominance socially or physically, risk taking, higher social status), and weighing this against his ability to invest in her long term future: such as pay her dinner/bills). Paying for dinner displays two things: one a willingness to self sacrifice for women, and two the financial resources to continue to do so.
Let’s see. Human beings for the majority of their existence on this planet were hunters and gatherers. Even if we assume that men mainly did the hunting and women mainly did the gathering, the gathered food made up the bulk of the diet. So really, men on dates should expect women to bring them large salads in return for the carcass of a small mammal.
The second part of the problem is women also have a significantly stronger in group bias, to the point where considering points of view don’t immediately benefit females is actively more difficult.
Uh, I think you accidentally the sentence there.
The process of asking women to merely consider in the name of equality, whether there are social solutions to reduce inequalities between the sexes in mate selection scenarios commonly triggers a strong negative emotional response, that her ‘turf’ is under attack and whoever presents such a question is a threat.
Really? Lots of women have no fucking problem whatsoever with paying for dinner.
How women deal with this varies tremendously. Some experience a great deal of cognitive dissonance, denial, and explain away inequalities with whatever rationalization provides the most reassuring emotional responses.
Wait, are we talking about women or about MRAs now?
Some project their outgroup hatred upon whoever voices the opinion by attacking the individual with petty, poorly thought out attacks on their character.
He must be talking about MRAs, right?
Others, immediately jump miles past the idea of social equality being a noble (if potentially impossible goal), to the issue of consent, making accusations that somehow even considering the idea of more equality in gender relations is an attempt to violate consent of female mate choice? (MY CHOICE! DISCUSSION IS RAPEFUL!)
Um, how did we get from talking about dinner to talking about rape? Is he really suggesting that women have literally accused him of rape because he suggested they pay for their own dinner?
And finally, there do seem to a minority of women who are able to consider the issue rationally, even if it admittedly, challenges her immediate self interests and might be harder than other subjects to think about?
Wow, some women — albeit a minority — somehow manage not to be spiteful, narcissistic children! What a generous assessment of half the human race.
How to tackle the issue, when women potentially have 4 times the amount of in group preference, reinforced by feminist doctrine and a potential biological preference towards the behavior?
How is “getting dudes to pay for dinner” part of feminist doctrine exactly? I’m pretty sure The Rules isn’t a feminist manifesto.
All I can say is to continue to challenge any social doctrine that reinforces in group bias of women and praise women when they display the ability to think outside the spectrum of their immediate self interest even if ultimately there isn’t much other benefit to you?
Who’s a good woman for thinking outside the spectrum of her immediate self-interest? You’re a good woman for thinking outside the spectrum of your immediate self-interest!
Always try to keep in mind, that the negative responses, are basically a reflection of why the question is a valid one in the first place.
Exactly. Whenever women recoil in horror at some astoundingly misogynistic thing you’ve said, that just means you’re totally right!
In a followup comment, MrKocha returns to the notion that women love throwing around rape accusations, not only at men who argue with them about paying for dinner but at “sexually inexperienced men” generally. It’s bad enough that women aren’t attracted to these men, he argues, but
the amount of shame, condescension and hostility thrown their way is quite impressive.
It can range anywhere from rape accusations to golden ones like “I hope you never find someone and stay alone forever!”
Fun fact: each and every man on the planet earth, no matter how sexually experienced, was once a virgin. Somehow most of them managed to garner themselves a certain amount of sexual experience without being accused of rape and/or having women express the opinion that they should remain alone forever.
Assuming that McKocha is speaking from experience here, and assuming also (because I’m already disturbed enough by his comments) that the bit about the rape accusations is internet hyperbole, what exactly is causing all these women to get so angry at him?
I don’t think it’s the sexual inexperience. I think that maybe, possibly, it might be the fact that he obviously hates women?
Just a wild guess.
MrKocha started up a whole thread of his own to further discuss his scientific hypotheses about the human female and her mate choices. It’s called Females Oppressing Female Mate Choice. Because these evil females who put down sexually inexperienced men are also oppressing females who might choose to mate with these men!
Thanks to AgainstMensRights for clueing me in to the wonderfulness of MrKocha — here and here.
Alice,
When we studied that in high school, when we read the Flea my teacher said, “If you’re giggling that means you get it.”
And I checked Wikipedia–it looks like John Donne became a CofE cleric, which means he was not under a vow of chastity, but only after he was widowed. He’d also lost several children, and nearly committed suicide. I think he loved his wife deeply.
I think his poetry kind of follows a life path–you get the young stuff, which is all about getting laid, then some beautiful love poetry (the one where he compared himself and his wife to a compass, the kind you draw with–far apart, but always connected… sigh) then meditations on religion and death.
Or, as we used to joke, he was either writing about getting laid or getting saved.
Um… I clearly love John Donne’s poetry.
LBT said:
“Maybe this guy is talking about how a lot of folks pay for dinner because they feel worried they’ll be pressured into sex otherwise? And somehow he totally turned this upside-down? Or something?”
You’re right. When I was dating mumblemumblemumble years ago this was exactly what I though and the reason I always paid for my own meal. Unless he was skint. Then I paid for his as well because hey, I had no expectations except spending a pleasant evening with a friend.
“A Validation Forbidding Mourning”, right?
I must have misremembered that detail. Whoops.
I do enjoy poetry though, and I enjoyed reading John Donne’s work when I was in AP Lit in high school/Medieval Literature in college. I’m very, very, very fond of “The Flea” though. 😛
“Paging Argenti…do you feel extra sorry for the rainbow fish?”
I haven’t read it, but the idea of a fish intentionally removing its scales…*shudders* that’d be fishie suicide. Fuck, ich is deadly mostly because it’ll do exactly that — all those tiny wounds add up to one very ill fish.
And what’s puff supposed to do? My little guy is scaleless in the first place! (Also, I can’t imagine him sharing, seeing how I have to ration snails or he’ll gorge on them)
Eek. That Rainbow Fish thing sounds like the message I’d have taken would have been “Be really wary of getting close to people, because they’ll demand that you give them bits of your skin and it’ll be like something out of Hellraiser and argh I think I’m going to go hide in my room now”.
How freakin’ nice are these dinners, to be such a big deal? I mean, for the level of gratitude these guys expect, you’d think we were talking three meals a day, lobster every lunch and steak every dinner. Self-sacrifice! Financial commitment! OH THE AGONY OF SUPPORTING THIS WOMAN IN THE MANNER TO WHICH SHE IS ACCUSTOMED!
…We’re actually talking about like $15 every other Friday night, aren’t we.
Hey, thought: if paying for dinner is such an agony, why not just make dinner? You’re still buying the groceries, yeah, but it’s a lot cheaper and a lot of women will be impressed by a guy cookie for them.
….yes. “by a guy cookie for them.” Exactly what I meant. I should be getting ready for bed.
Given that they expect sex afterwards what they want is basically a sex worker who’ll work for $5 an hour.
I will admit I do find men who cook for me very charming. One sweet guy really wanted to impress me, but didn’t have much. So he made cinnamon toast, in the middle of the afternoon.
We all have our price I guess, and some of us can be had for cinnamon toast.
All these biotruthisms that equate human societal standards of success with natural selection are bogus shit and everyone spouting them should take remedial population genetics.
Cliff – Maybe cooking for a girl is MISANDRY!™ or something?
CassandraSays – $5? You sure MRAs want to spend that much?
Well, bear in mind that they’re still complaining that the sex isn’t “free” and they’re being forced to “pay” for it by taking women to Applebees.
… Wasn’t the last thread about a MRA who celebrated being in a position where women had to sleep with him for food?
Well, that answered that question.
Buy a guy cookie for me!
So, I’m feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemale and I do have one male friend who often insists on buying my dinner when we go out, because he makes about twice as much as I do and wants to go to much fancier places than I would pick. So I let him pay for those dinners, but I sneakily buy movie tickets when we go to matinees.
My sister just bought me dinner, and 2 glasses of wine. I am not sure what I owe her.
Given the kind of guys we’re talking about I’m not sure you really want to know the answer to that question.
BTW that guy friend is gay, as in homosexual, as in we do neither-of-us want to have sex with each other but we’ve been friends forever and I took him to his last colonoscopy appointment and he will take me to mine. Friendship. And colonoscopies. That’s what life’s about, folks.
Blech. I love my sister, but NOT THAT WAY.
Don’t some MRAs think that gay men resent the women they hang out with for not offering to sex them up too? I’m still scratching my head about that one.
I am sure MRAs have all kind of fucked up ideas about gay men. I’ve seen my friend through losing his lover to AIDS, finding out he was HIV positive, finding out he had lymphoma, having a heart attack, and more. And he’s seen me through stuff. And I am 100% positive that he doesn’t want me to offer to sex him up.
Totally OT, I’m trying to find a pic of the shoes I bought tonight. These aren’t them, but omg so gorgeous:
http://img.loveitsomuch.com/uploads/201209/07/re/red%20and%20burgundy%20leather%20flapper%20style%20oxford%20heels%207-f47108.jpg
Ahahaha, because women’s set-in-stone preferences are “No MRAs, thank you!”
I don’t think the MRA movement is a good place for gay men either. This is the same group who said that we should totally have same-sex (to say nothing about same-gender) marriage… but because that way straight men can marry each other (but totally no homo!) and not have to risk marriage to those pesky gold-digging women.
I can’t remember…what is it that they think they’ll get out of marriage to someone who they’re not attracted to or romantically interested in? The tax breaks aren’t THAT good.
For me, the issue with other people buying me stuff is that it makes me feel like a child. I hadn’t even considered that they might now assume I owe them sex; I guess I’m naive. But when another person pays for the meal, it makes me feel like a kid eating out with their parents, and that is not a feeling that puts me in the mood for sexytimes.
Oh, and I liked the rainbow fish book when I was a kid. I don’t think I ever actually read it, though. It just had really shiny pictures.