Dating Double Standard

[kimera]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Based on a couple of news reports I’ve heard about proposals to open up women’s colleges to males, and the ensuant protests from the all-female student bodies, I can only say that men and women must be very different. No 18 - 22 year old straight men anywhere will ever, ever raise the slightest objection to having women in their midst. But women the same age seem perfectly capable of saying things to the effect that the presence of male students will be distracting, or otherwise detrimental to their educational persuits.

Having gone to an all-girl school and loved it, I can tell you that I prefer all girl-high schools. Colleges? I’m not so sure.

But the main reason I prefered to go to an all-girl school was not that I didn’t like being around men, but that women were far more tolerable when guys weren’t around. I have many brothers and have always had more guy than girl friends and more guyish interests so I don’t really change around guys unless I have a huge crush on them, but most women do. I have seen my classmates go from intelligent, outspoken, delightful women to simper idiots in the sudden presence of a member of the male species.

[Siege]

OK, the fellow I mentioned is reading hard copy of this as I type but I can resist getting in one more point between him hitting the Backspace key. (And you folks think cats on the keyboard are bad! :D)

Now, while he’s on the phone. I have asked a man out in my day, including a Doper. The problem is, women, especially young aren’t taught that you guys think it’s attractive when we ask you out. We’re told it’s forward, unladylike, and generally unattractive. If that’s the case, why should we bother?

I’m not 6’ tall, blonde, and 120 pounds. I’m a hardcore geek myself, and I’m very aware that a lot of men out there find intelligence downright frightening. I know because they’ve told me. It took all my courage to give that fellow my phone number a year ago. He, himself, doesn’t know what he’d have done if I’d asked him out.

As I said, as a rule, women suffer just as much as men; it’s just that neither of us show it.

Now to hit “Submit Reply” while he’s distracted!

CJ

[MysteryFellow63427]

@Siege

I’m very aware that a lot of men out there find intelligence downright frightening.

I’ll take an intelligent plain Jane over a gorgeous idiot eight days a week.

[CanvasShoes]

@June

I’d like to clarify one point that’s been bothering me since I made this post. Why did I even bring up feminism? Weren’t guys expected to shoulder most of the “first date” burden before feminism came along?

That’s funny! I never even thought of that either. Well, not to worry, it was really quite clear that any snarkiness was due to pain and frustration, and not that you really thought awful things about women.

Now you’ve made ME think, wouldn’t “real” feminists (whatever they are) be asking out men anyway?

Good point. By pitting those women who’ve failed to ask me out because of fear, I’d be a hypocrite to deny that I’m also pitting myself, because there have been many occasions, especially in high school when I was sorely lacking in self-esteem, when I made exactly the same mistake. I think there’s a bit of self-loathing implicit in my last statement.

High school is purgatory on earth for most people anyway. So you really can’t use it to judge anything out IRL, let alone dating. As for the self-loathing part. There’s some of that in almost all of us I think.

I guess I’m just sad that I missed out on so many opportunities because of fear (whether it be my own or someone else’s). In my senior year of high school, one of my classmates wrote in my yearbook that she’d had a crush on me a few years earlier, but she’d been too reticent to act on her feelings. It’s written somewhat jokingly, but I don’t think I’m wrong to assume it contains a grain of truth.

No, it does. Even though I’m admittedly a product of an earlier time, in which women were not just expected to be “ladies”, but who were looked down upon if they didn’t act “properly”, well I never stuck totally to that mode of dating behaviour even then.

I didn’t ask men out on a very regular basis, nor for even a large percentage of my dating experiences. But I did do it occasionally. And yes, it’s scary as hell for we girls too.

As to the “it’s sad” part of it. Yes, that’s very true, and I’m sure it’s true for anyone who wishes they’d said or done something that may have turned out differently. We just never know.

We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. All of us really. If we get rejected for TAKING that step, we kick ourselves for being so “stupid” etc. If we pass up an opportunity, we kick ourselves for that. That’s not so much “dating” but just life as a human. Don’t dwell too much on that, or give it too much weight in your dating experiences. I hope you keep us updated on Stacy though.

[Lilairen]

@CandidGamera

Well, yes, okay, that’s fair. You’re running into a combination of two factors there, I betcha. One, we overthink. We overthink everything. Some of us have trouble falling asleep at night because our brains won’t shut up for five seconds - and even trivial, obvious decisions will be carefully considered.

Two, clearly, we’re not used to getting asked out, so there’s a bit of a mental stun there.

A few of us have learned the lesson of Ghostbusters, though. When someone asks you if you’d like to go on a date, or if you’re a God, you say “Yes!”.

I think there’s a significant factor missing from that analysis, though I won’t deny that those two are components to the experience. That’s that a lot of geekfolk socialising is very task-based – for example, I met my husband in a gaming store. We were both there to play games. That was the purpose of our presence in the location; people in the area were evaluated primarily on the basis of whether they were interesting to play games with.

If you get someone who’s very task-focused – especially someone who’s not very adept with mainstream social interaction patterns and/or who has at some level discounted them from relevance, as is the case with many geeks – the whole question of romantic-type-interactions may not come up at all. It’s not, after all, relevant to the task. And in the case of people who live in their heads a lot – as is, again, often a geek trait – the emotional and even physical responses may not even process as data without a specific shift of task to evaluating “Is this person attractive to me?” (I still tease my husband about one day before we were together, though he is, admittedly, much better now – we’d spent the afternoon hanging out, and I walked him to the bus stop. Eventually I worked up the nerve to ask the question on my mind: “Were you aware that you were flirting?” He said, “No.” And got on the bus.)

I always ask out the geekboys I fancy. The odds are much better than trusting them to crack open those datafiles on their own initiative.

[Rubystreak]

But the difference 50 years ago is that men actually got something in exchange for that burden, i.e. intrinsic dominance. It was assumed that men were intellectually and emotionally superior to women, and it was expected that a woman would be the subservient partner in the relationship.

This kind of runs counter to what other men have said in this thread, that the seemingly passive partner actually has the power and makes the choices. I’m not sure I buy either interpretation. In each relationship, the balance of power is unique and dynamic, shifing over time (even over the course of one conversation, I’ve found).

That said, I have no problem with the 50/50 partnership of the modern “ideal” relationship, but I can’t deny that the idea of dating a malleable, obedient love slave is slightly appealing. It might even make the burden of initiating the relationship somewhat more bearable.

I know you’re joking, but there probably is some truth to the above for you, no? That you wish you could be dominant, and you’re angry that you have to give that up AND not get dates either. Well, I think you need to let go of one or the other. You could probably find a woman who was interested in being a “malleable, obedient love slave,” but then again, you probably couldn’t take her home to meet your mother. If that’s what you want, then dating is not what we’re talking about here. So let go of this idea that dominance should be your reward for taking the initiative. What you get is a date, or you get to find out that particular woman is not interested in you. Allowing your soul to be crushed by this rejection shows that you probably have too much of your ego tied into this whole process. Think about it-- would you rather be rejected before you’ve gotten too involved, or wait until you have years invested and THEN be rejected? Think of it as a pre-screening process.

I’m not going to sing the blues here, but it is not easy to reject a guy, especially one that you like or love as a friend. I don’t feel powerful or in control after that; I just feel bad, sad, and I blame myself for not being able to get it up for a guy who I know is a great person. I can’t agree to date him because I don’t want to lead him on and I want to stay friends with him, so I just say no, I really need to just be your friend. And you know what? It works, and they don’t seem to hold it against me. Honesty is what you want, right? Not some pity date?

I guess my argument is this: now that the balance of power has shifted in favor of women, traditional modes of thinking, at least in regards to dating, are
giving men, especially shy ones such as myself, a distinct disadvantage.

The balance of power has not shifted in favor of women. Men still control the government, the majority of big corporations, higher education, etc., there is still a glass ceiling, I could go on. I really don’t understand how you figure that women have the balance of the power. Just because you still have to ask a woman out, and that the woman in question might have a competitive job in today’s business world does not mean that the balance of power had shifted over to women. Let’s be perfectly clear about that.

Also, I’d like to add that the all-male colleges and the US military (largely composed of men 18-22 at the entry level) protested strenuously against having women in their ranks. So much for that sweeping generalization.

For the record, I have initiated the vast majority of the relationships I’ve been in. I am into shy, nerdy guys, and I just don’t like to wait around for them to get up the nerve. When a guy offers to pay for dinner, I offer to pay half. If he insists, I pay the tip. Nothing about the paying situation ever ticks me off. It’s just not a big enough deal. I hate all those games people play, and the whining about how women have all the power is part of the games. Just be real and don’t let it get to you-- it’s all a process and the outcome is most likely going to be you finding the right woman.

[catsix]

I have to wonder if this ‘new trend’ of women asking men out on dates will result in women paying for more of the dates, in proportion to the asking.

It’s my opinion that whoever did the asking does the paying, but I’ve seen more than one instance of the opposite, where a friend of mine was asked out on a date by a girl who didn’t bring any money on the date.

An important step to equality, no?

[Robot_Arm]

There are two reasons why guys view this as a double standard.

One of them (related to feminism, as mentioned in the OP) is that while women have pressed for greater opportunity in many situations, it doesn’t seem like they’re stepping up and taking an equal part in one of the more stressful tasks of modern life. (While the changing roles and expectations may even make it harder to ask someone out than it used to be.)

The other reason is that we still feel the expectation to initiate things, while women have the option to wait for the pressure to build on us or take things in their own hands. And if we don’t like this state of affairs, there’s not a thing we can do about.

All of which is a tremendously over-simplified way of looking at things. I know it can’t be any fun to try to encourage a guy without being too blatant about it, wait for him, and second-guess yourself if it doesn’t work. But I can also think of two women I know who were very smart and capable, but still expected a guy to step up and take charge in certain ways.

My own experiences don’t break down into particular categories. I have to disagree with the line about men being attracted to the degree of a woman’s beauty. I have a definite type, I just can’t describe it in sufficient detail. And I once asked out a woman by giving her flowers on Valentine’s Day, and she didn’t realize it was supposed to be a date.

[Phantom_Dennis]

I considered making the standard “I got asked out today” post in MPSIMS, but I figured a Pit thread would be a more unique and fun way to approach the subject.

In MPSIMS I’d just get a bunch of people congratulating me and giving me pep talks and pointers.

Boring.

Here, I get a big, dramatic, group therapy session with lots of cathartic venting and interesting perspectives from both sides of the fence.

I’ll take the Pit any day.

Update: Stacy and I have set a time and place for our date. Dinner on a Wednesday night (she had plans this weekend). We communicated a little more today by email (we’re coworkers in different departments so we don’t see each other much). She expressed concern that I might think she’s being “too forward” and she assured me that she isn’t normally so assertive with men (I couldn’t help smiling when I read that). I told her the truth – that I don’t mind in the least.

I don’t plan on broaching the subject of double standards and gender roles on our first date, unless of course the subject comes up.

One observation I can make – She’s certainly pretty, but I don’t know if I’m attracted to her beyond the physical level. Maybe this is atypical for a guy, but personality is by far the main factor that determines how I define “attractive”. Features such as “blonde” or “brunette” or “tall” or “skinny” are mostly meaningless to me, but mention “intelligence”, “kindness”, “sense of humor”, or “creativity”, and then I start getting excited.

cowgirl:
The result was a catch-22 situation, in that the first time a guy actually expressed unprompted interest in me, I was so impressed that I was totally all over him. Of course, the only guys who expressed unprompted interest me were raging assholes, because the non-RAs figured that showing unprompted interest would indicate that they were RAs.

I can relate. The fact that this woman is categorically “into me” is a huge turn-on. If I can say anything absolute about my feelings for at this point, it’s that I really like her for liking me.

Does that sound strange?

[John_Carter_of_Mars]

@June

One observation I can make – She’s certainly pretty, but I don’t know if I’m attracted to her beyond the physical level. Maybe this is atypical for a guy, but personality is by far the main factor that determines how I define “attractive”. Features such as “blonde” or “brunette” or “tall” or “skinny” are mostly meaningless to me, but mention “intelligence”, “kindness”, “sense of humor”, or “creativity”, and then I start getting excited.

I’m so shallow! I’ve seen a number of times on this board where guys say they are turned on by a girl’s intelligence. If someone becomes my SO and she’s smart, that’s cool, but it certainly wasn’t what attracted me to begin with. :o

@June

I can relate. The fact that this woman is categorically “into me” is a huge turn-on. If I can say anything absolute about my feelings for at this point, it’s that I really like her for liking me.

Does that sound strange?

This I can fully understand! It’s not strange at all.

[BrotherCadfael]

@neuroman

I’ll take an intelligent plain Jane over a gorgeous idiot eight days a week.

I’ll take an intelligent plain Jane over a gorgeous idiot six days a week.

Meat and potatoes (even Chateaubriand and Gratin Dauphinois) are wonderful, but every so often you get a hankering for Death by Chocolate…

[MaddyStrut]

@June

Update: Stacy and I have set a time and place for our date. Dinner on a Wednesday night (she had plans this weekend). We communicated a little more today by email (we’re coworkers in different departments so we don’t see each other much). She expressed concern that I might think she’s being “too forward” and she assured me that she isn’t normally so assertive with men (I couldn’t help smiling when I read that). I told her the truth – that I don’t mind in the least.

You should hear some of my girlfriends agonize for hours/days/weeks over asking a guy out: will he thing she’s too forward/desparate/aggressive etc. If they get over that fear, it usually means they really like him–good news for you!

One observation I can make – She’s certainly pretty, but I don’t know if I’m attracted to her beyond the physical level. Maybe this is atypical for a guy, but personality is by far the main factor that determines how I define “attractive”. Features such as “blonde” or “brunette” or “tall” or “skinny” are mostly meaningless to me, but mention “intelligence”, “kindness”, “sense of humor”, or “creativity”, and then I start getting excited.

It may be too early. Am I correct that you know her through work and one date? You may not have had a chance to see much of her personality yet. My personality is very different around the office. Many of my girlfriends say the same thing. It’s not like we’re totally different people. We just keep some of the more “fun” aspects of our personality out of a work environment. Also, most people are too nervous on a first date to really let you see their real sense of humor or get into an intelligent discussion.

Good luck on Wednesday!

[Sunspace]

@Lilairen

I always ask out the geekboys I fancy.

Where were you and the others like you when I was in electronics school? Damn I wish I was fifteen or twenty years younger sometimes…

[F.U.Shakespeare]

The rule isn’t carved in stone – heck, I’m sort of a violation of it: I tend to prefer short, dark-haired and curvaceous women, but the love of my life was blonde and thin (She was 5’1", but since I’m 5’7", I think that my preference for short women actually may be a manifestation of taller women’s preference for taller men – if they won’t go out with me, I probably won’t be attracted to them).

I also think this tendency is more pronounced when we are younger: raging hormones rule less as we get older and our emotions become more complex.

@Robot Arm

My own experiences don’t break down into particular categories. I have to disagree with the line about men being attracted to the degree of a woman’s beauty. I have a definite type, I just can’t describe it in sufficient detail. And I once asked out a woman by giving her flowers on Valentine’s Day, and she didn’t realize it was supposed to be a date.

[CandidGamera]

@Lilairen

I think there’s a significant factor missing from that analysis, though I won’t deny that those two are components to the experience. That’s that a lot of geekfolk socialising is very task-based – for example, I met my husband in a gaming store. We were both there to play games. That was the purpose of our presence in the location; people in the area were evaluated primarily on the basis of whether they were interesting to play games with.

I always ask out the geekboys I fancy. The odds are much better than trusting them to crack open those datafiles on their own initiative.

Hmm… yes, our laser-like focus. Good point, I hadn’t considered that.

Though, see, I do differ from the geek norm in this regard. I go to the gaming/comic store, and while I’m there to shop, primarily, any females there automatically get noticed. Though it’s a fifty/fifty shot of the first thought in my head being “Wow, a girl gamer!” or “Wow, I wonder if she’d want to join my gaming group”, both thoughts account for the task at hand, and the potential (okay, remote potential given my social reticence) for dating.

[Grits_and_Hard_Toast]

I think it is important to remember we are all just products of our previous dating experiences. I once did the, “I absolutely insist on paying my half of the bill,” thing when the check came one night after dinner and ruined what had up to that point been a very nice evening. I am sure my date thought, “Uhhg, another one of those militant feminist types, glad I found out now rather than later. Wonder how she was able to fool me for so long?”

What my date didn’t realize was that he was the first guy I accepted a date from in a long time. Which meant I had turned down several other nice men and caused them to feel hurt and dejected. They probably thought of me as one of those “perched on the luxuriously detached ivory tower of the pursued,” and that I was foolish for not just accepting a date just to see if anything could come of it. Some may have even thought I turned them down because they didn’t drive a nice enough car, or make enough money. Well none of that was the case, it was all due to the last date I had been on.

I was just out of college and hadn’t dated much. A man that worked in the same office building that I did asked me out. I was thrilled! I was very attracted to him physically, he was kind and charming. And even though I usually get really nervous and stupid around men I am attracted to, on our date he was able to put me at ease and I really enjoyed myself. When the check came, I treated it as I would if I was out with my boss or a friend who had asked me to dinner. I told him I would be happy to pitch in to cover the bill. He smiled, and thanked me and said, “I really appreciate your offer, but I asked you out, and your saying ‘yes’, and the pleasure of your company tonight more than covers the price of the bill.” My heart went, ahhh. The rest of the evening was a dream, I REALLY liked this guy. He could not have been more sweet and attentive. So he drives me to my apartment and parks in the parking lot. We tell each other what a great time we had and all. He leans over and kisses me. It is wonderful, for about 10 seconds, then I feel his hand in my crotch. For a minute I think it is an accidental touching, then I think he has dropped something in my lap and is just trying to get it out. But then I realize he is just going for it. I push him back and tell him that he is moving way too fast for me, he needs to slow down. He asks what on earth that means. I have no words, I am confused and scared. He says, “Are you trying to tell me you won’t be inviting me in and we won’t be having sex?” “Yes,” I mutter. He says, “Well just get the fuck out of my car then. You could have told me you wouldn’t be sleeping with me before I bought your damn dinner and paid for all those drinks, you fucking cunt cock tease.” I am not one to cry easily, but I burst into tears, fled the car and ran to my apartment. Later when I told my girlfriends about the horrible evening, they sympathized, told me I was too good for a louse like that, and then shocked me by saying something similar had happened to each one of them. I think that was the hardest thing for me to accept, that this wasn’t an isolated incident, which meant it could happen again.

So for the next six months, anyone man who asked me out got a polite, “No thank you.” And I promise, as bad as being turned down must have felt to them, I felt just as bad saying no. So when I finally did decide to try dating again, I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again, so I made way too big a deal over paying my share. Poor guy, my bad experience caused him to have a bad experience, which I imagine caused him to get weird the next time he asked someone else out. And his date probably then had a bad experience, and on and on it goes.

So all this to say if you ask someone out and they say no, it may have absolutely nothing to do with you. And if someone you think likes you, but doesn’t ask you out, it could be that they really do like you but they are working through something, and not ready to ask anyone out. I actually find it amazing that we are ever able to get to “I do.”

[Kaboodle]

Congratulations and good luck June! I hope things work out for you.

@June

Update: Stacy and I have set a time and place for our date. Dinner on a Wednesday night (she had plans this weekend). We communicated a little more today by email (we’re coworkers in different departments so we don’t see each other much). She expressed concern that I might think she’s being “too forward” and she assured me that she isn’t normally so assertive with men (I couldn’t help smiling when I read that). I told her the truth – that I don’t mind in the least.

Bolding mine.

Be very careful what you write on a company’s e-mail system. Don’t write anything you don’t want your employer or the entire company to see. IANALawyer but last I heard an employer is allowed to read anything on a system they own.

As Microsoft and some other companies found out, some e-mails, even ones they deliberately try to hide, as a result of backups and system redundancies, may never go away.

[CanvasShoes]

@Maureen

Sorry, tdn, not your fault. This is a button pusher for me. Women work out, try to look nice, put a lot of effort into their appearance, and when we do get asked out by a guy we are really interested in, we find out they aren’t especially interested in us as people at all. Don’t get me wrong; I get plenty horny, too, and there are times when really nasty monkey sex is all I want. But jeez, am I not worth getting to know at all? shrug

WAY too many men do this. No, not ALL, not even most, but a hell of a lot more than is reasonable to have to deal with. And BOY!, you got THAT above scenario right.

If you see through them and say no to the date, they get all annoyed and do the “I can have any woman I want, but I asked you” whine. Or, if you don’t realize their type until into the date, and decline a one night stand, then they get all annoyed and do the “I wasted all this time and money” rant.

REAL nice.

This may be one of the reasons for us waiting to be asked, and to expect for the first date to be paid for. And THAT strings free thanks. My policy is to pay for the second date, and to do my fair share from that point forward should the man and I end up dating exclusively.

But there IS something about the man’s willingness to pay for the first date that shows at least enough commitment to plan and pay for it. For me at least (and I suspect for most of my sisters), it’s not the money, it’s what it represents.

[CanvasShoes]

@tdn

I think it’s more than you think. I’d estimate it to be close to 50%. Of course, that means that half of all women are dateable, so that’s still pretty good.

Were you meaning that 50% are bitchy golddiggers only after a man’s money? Or that 50% were interested in knowing a man’s overall financial info?

Genuine question, no snarkiness intended.

[CanvasShoes]

@cowgirl

See, I could have written the exact opposite rant (or, the same rant with the gender pronouns reversed).

In my dating days, I was the aggressor in most of my relationships. I think the men involved were so afraid of rejection, or so afraid of coming across as jerks, that they not only wouldn’t ask me out, but wouldn’t indicate any sexual interest for fear of being too aggressive, nor would they recognize my interest in them (perhaps because they were trying so hard not to be assholes?).

Really irritating, I’ll add. I was well and truly sick of doing all the asking.

This is an awesome point. If a man won’t or can’t ask you out in the first place, there is the fear that if you entered into a relationship with him, that this would be the tendency for him for life in general.

That is, that he was “afraid” to make any sorts of decisions or have any sort of confidence. That he would basically expect you to continue to take the reins and just “run” life for him.

This may not be consciously why women wait to be asked. But now that cowgirl has mentioned it, it occurs to me that this may be a hardwired subconscious need of women, or a lot of women anyway at some ancient leftover genetic “caveperson” level.