An Article from 1992

[RealityBitesParticipant 2198]

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-25/features/9204170952_1_translation-drinks-big-bucks

(Note: this was written by a Woman….I wonder how much s~~~ she got from her female friends for writing this piece. But the date is illustrative….things really haven’t changed. Just technology, clothing styles…but women are the same today as they were 25, 50, 100, 1000 or even 5000 years ago….)

When A Man Is Nothing More Than A Meal Ticket
November 25, 1992|By Cheryl Lavin.
***
When you hitch up your sleeve, do her eyes turn to dollar signs at the sight of your Rolex? Meet the gold diggers, 1992:

– Jeff – “Sometimes I feel that women have a little cheat sheet of gold-digger questions that they hide in their handbags”
Where do you work?
(Translation: How successful are you?)
What floor?
(Translation: The executive or the grunt floors?)
Where`d you go to school?
<strong>(Translation: Do you have an advanced degree?) </strong>
Where do you live?
<strong> (Translation: Does the address place you in the ritzy neighborhood?) </strong>
At a restaurant, what do you order?
<strong> (Translation: Are you going to be so cheap that I can`t risk ordering a salad with my meal?)

– Brice – “When I told a woman I had just met that I was in the mental health field, she wanted to know more. It later dawned on me, after I analyzed her line of questions, that all she really wanted to know was if I was a psychiatrist, making the big bucks. A social worker, psychologist or other counselor would not do. Since I was not one of the former, I didn`t pass muster. Never spoke to her again.”

– Butch – “I met Goldie five years earlier. I was attending evening classes and she was in one of them. We met, talked and had lunch a couple of times. Then she told me I was not her type and I should not call again. I was a successful businessman, owned my own home and drove a nice mid-sized car at the time. About five years later, our paths crossed again. She was working for one of my clients. I had just purchased a new red Cadillac, and she wasted no time in showing a new interest in me. She said that if I could drive a car like that, I might be her type after all. <strong>She was right the first time. </strong>”

– Kyle – “A woman I knew asked me if Id like to meet for drinks. I agreed and we met that night in a bar/restaurant. While the waitress took our orders for the first of several rounds of drinks, my date said that she hadnt had a chance to eat dinner yet and would I mind if she got something to eat. I assumed she was concerned that I might feel uncomfortable watching her eat, so I told her I didnt mind. She smiled and ordered a meal. Despite the fact that she had invited me, despite the fact that the agreement was just for drinks, and despite the fact that she earned multiples of my income (shes a medical doctor and she knew I wasn`t earning much more than minimum wage), she stuck me with the entire bill for all the food and drinks. What burns me up about her and many of the women who treat men like meal tickets is that they are unforgiving of any male chauvinist pig who retains even a tiny sexist expectation.”

– Victor – “I dated a woman who was angry with me because the boyfriend of her friend had given her (the friend) a gold bracelet shortly after they began dating. This guy was a trader who made big bucks. It was a purely competitive thing. My date wanted that bracelet. She had no sense that it should have meaning, that we weren`t very serious yet, that gifts imply a certain level of emotion, nothing.”

– John – “I like good quality clothes and put a lot of my disposable income into them. I like to look nice and I feel that ultimately this will help me get ahead in my career. I have been out with more than one woman who is immediately turned on by my designer labels, but tosses me over faster than you can say Hugo Boss after she finds out that I have an entry-level position and live in a modest studio apartment.”

– Andy – “Women like men with money. To get money you have to be reasonably aggressive and ambitious. Many-not all-of the men who fit this bill are not nice guys. They think in a certain way that does not allow for gentleness or softness. Hence my longstanding belief that women do not like nice guys.”

[RealityBitesParticipant 2198]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2016/04/13/why-are-men-still-paying-for-women-dates/RT3zjhcqD42cnJdLnOKZEL/story.html

(Fast Forward to 2016)

It’s 2016. Why are men still paying for women on dates?
More than two-fifths of women say they’re bothered if men expect them to help pay. One single man asks, what’s going on here?

By Alfie Kohn APRIL 13, 2016

Imagine that a committed feminist woke up last week from a decades-long coma. She looks around and finds that considerable consciousness-raising has taken place while she’s been unconscious. Women are now serving on the Supreme Court and excelling in professions that had been the exclusive domain of men.

But what strikes our latter-day Rip van Winkle is how much things haven’t changed. Women still have to fight for the right to make decisions about their own bodies. Men still tell women to smile. And where informal social norms are concerned, she’s flabbergasted to discover that men still expect to pick up the tab on a date — and that women accept and actually seem to prefer this arrangement. “Seriously?” she says. “The last thing I remember is that we were starting to move beyond that.”

A LearnVest survey in 2013 found that a majority of men, and an even larger majority of women, thought the man should pay on a first date. Last November, after surveying some 17,000 heterosexual unmarried individuals from ages 18 to 65, Janet Lever of California State University, Los Angeles, and two colleagues reported that men typically still pay for most of a couple’s expenses, even after they’ve been dating for a while. In fact, more than two-fifths of women — with no difference in response by income level — say they’re bothered if men expect them to help pay.

What’s going on here? One interpretation is that the man is basically shelling out for access to sex, a possibility so offensive that you’d think splitting the bill would have become the default just to rule out the possibility of such a quid pro quo.

he other explanation is that we’re witnessing a continued preference for unequal relationships. “Men’s paying,” Lever and her colleagues explained, “reinforces the gender stereotype of ‘male as provider.’ ”

Men paying for meals may have made more sense when fewer women worked outside the home — and those who did faced a bigger gender wage gap — but today, unmarried women earn, on average, almost as much as single men. Yet traditional gender roles have persisted. Besides, what matters are the two specific people having dinner. If both make a good living, then the man’s paying for her makes precisely as much sense as the woman’s paying for him.

If a date consists of two adults checking each other out, then naturally they’d split the bill. But if a date is construed as part of a process in which the man is the pursuer and the woman is the pursued — such that she does him a favor by agreeing to be “caught” — then he’d be expected to pay for the privilege. And only if an entire culture still accepted that pursuit model would it be typical for men to pay for women.

I, personally, have not been in a coma, but I was off the dating market for a couple of decades. During that time I was vaguely aware that a new generation was reproducing old patterns, which I found perplexing and sad. Now that I’m back in the fray, what I see at closer range offers even more evidence of how far we haven’t come.

First, what’s going on can’t be blamed on Trump supporters. Many highly educated, professionally successful, politically liberal men and women perpetuate these norms without apology or apparent ambivalence. “There is something viscerally unappealing about a guy who doesn’t pick up the whole check on a first date,” a female management consultant recently told me.

Second, there are nuances here that may not be evident from a distance. For example, the woman may offer to pay for her own meal, but that offer can be disingenuous: Often, she expects him to decline. If he takes her at her word, he’s failed the test.

On the other hand, if her credit card is extended in good faith, that doesn’t necessarily mean she regards the idea of his paying for her as a distasteful throwback to a less enlightened age. Rather, it may communicate her lack of interest in him. Conversely, as a woman explained to me, “If I let you pay for dinner, it means you have a chance for another date.” She’ll allow me to pursue her again, and that permission comes at a price.

Some try to rationalize this arrangement by stipulating that whoever issued the invitation should pay. The trouble is that the man is still typically expected to do the asking. Moreover, both men and women seem to believe that it’s his responsibility to reach out after a first date to indicate continued interest.

How a woman feels about this issue has become a kind of marker for me — one of those apparently minor preferences that may predict compatibility. It’s a way of peering beyond education or political affiliation to uncover the possibility of deeper values. My hunch is that an attachment to rigid gender roles will show up again later in other contexts.

Thus, I reveal my take on this issue upfront in an online dating profile. I want to be transparent about my values and about the kind of woman I’m looking for — someone who, from our first meeting, wants us to be on equal footing. If I proposed to pick up the whole check, she’d give me a funny look — a little confused, a little put off, maybe a little concerned that she had overestimated me — and say, “Why in the world would you pay for me? Is this 1955?”

[RealityBitesParticipant 2198]

I run into women daily whenever I go out to eat, get a drink at the bar, or get my haircut….and almost the first question out of their mouth is – “What do you do?” or “Where do you work?”…and if the conversation moves along….and she is still interested she will next ask “Where do you live?”

For example….I went in for a hair cut and an extremely good looking woman cut my hair…she saw me ride up on my bike…and started to chat with me…and she kept trying to find out several times where I worked and she would ask the question in different ways….(I never did answer her)…

She then asked me if I would be coming back…and I lied and said “sure”… On a scale of 1-10…she was 8 to 9….(this woman hadn’t hit the wall yet…but she was clearly on the lookout for a wallet)…same sort of deal with some female bartenders I ran into…

I once chatted with an older lady and I teased out the following information on why women do this…and she said it was because by that age most of them feel like they aren’t where they should be financially (ie….they p~~~ed away their money on clothing, makeup, facials, etc.. and they don’t want to be pushing a shopping cart and living in a cardboard box under a bridge in their old age)….

Women have a lot of power…unless they are extremely gross looking….they constantly have a stream of desperate guys who want to f~~~ them…and yes….women will f~~~ an entire army of guys….and then with the biological clock ticking will be on the lookout for a Wallet (or 2) to bail them out, pay the bills they racked up, and financially catch up, and if they figure they can get another guy who makes as much or more than their current guy, they will trade him in in a New York Minute….they are always on the lookout for a better deal.

In short: women do not love men. The word “love” in a woman’s dictionary really means “like”…and what do they “like”? MONEY and CHAD…and usually the Wallet and Chad are not the same guy.

[Branched offParticipant 10969]

The great liberal delusion is that we could change natural behaviours, that they were actually social constructs.

Women want what they have always wanted from a man. They just happen these days to have rights and entitlements that are greater than a man’s and they have no duties. The result is their natural selfishness is out of control, while mens’ is very tightly regulated.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[Anonymous 11]

I don’t give a flying f~~~ about a slag’s feelings concerning men paying for anything.

Chad never pays, so why would I?

[Frank V.Participant 2445]

Great spots on both articles.

Frank V.

[OldBillParticipant]

Two articles full of women’s opinions? I’ll pass.

Do not date. Do not impregnate. Do not co-habitate. Above all, do not marry. Reclaim and never again surrender your personal sovereignty.

[Secret Agent MGTOWParticipant 22545]

RealityBites wrote:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-11-25/features/9204170952_1_translation-drinks-big-bucks

(Note: this was written by a Woman….I wonder how much s~~~ she got from her female friends for writing this piece. But the date is illustrative….things really haven’t changed. Just technology, clothing styles…but women are the same today as they were 25, 50, 100, 1000 or even 5000 years ago….)

When A Man Is Nothing More Than A Meal Ticket
November 25, 1992|By Cheryl Lavin.
***
When you hitch up your sleeve, do her eyes turn to dollar signs at the sight of your Rolex? Meet the gold diggers, 1992:

– Jeff – “Sometimes I feel that women have a little cheat sheet of gold-digger questions that they hide in their handbags”
Where do you work?
(Translation: How successful are you?)
What floor?
(Translation: The executive or the grunt floors?)
Where`d you go to school?
<strong>(Translation: Do you have an advanced degree?) </strong>
Where do you live?
<strong> (Translation: Does the address place you in the ritzy neighborhood?) </strong>
At a restaurant, what do you order?
<strong> (Translation: Are you going to be so cheap that I can`t risk ordering a salad with my meal?)

– Brice – “When I told a woman I had just met that I was in the mental health field, she wanted to know more. It later dawned on me, after I analyzed her line of questions, that all she really wanted to know was if I was a psychiatrist, making the big bucks. A social worker, psychologist or other counselor would not do. Since I was not one of the former, I didn`t pass muster. Never spoke to her again.”

– Butch – “I met Goldie five years earlier. I was attending evening classes and she was in one of them. We met, talked and had lunch a couple of times. Then she told me I was not her type and I should not call again. I was a successful businessman, owned my own home and drove a nice mid-sized car at the time. About five years later, our paths crossed again. She was working for one of my clients. I had just purchased a new red Cadillac, and she wasted no time in showing a new interest in me. She said that if I could drive a car like that, I might be her type after all. <strong>She was right the first time. </strong>”

– Kyle – “A woman I knew asked me if I<code>d like to meet for drinks. I agreed and we met that night in a bar/restaurant. While the waitress took our orders for the first of several rounds of drinks, my date said that she hadn</code>t had a chance to eat dinner yet and would I mind if she got something to eat. I assumed she was concerned that I might feel uncomfortable watching her eat, so I told her I didn<code>t mind. She smiled and ordered a meal. Despite the fact that she had invited me, despite the fact that the agreement was just for drinks, and despite the fact that she earned multiples of my income (she</code>s a medical doctor and she knew I wasn`t earning much more than minimum wage), she stuck me with the entire bill for all the food and drinks. What burns me up about her and many of the women who treat men like meal tickets is that they are unforgiving of any male chauvinist pig who retains even a tiny sexist expectation.”

– Victor – “I dated a woman who was angry with me because the boyfriend of her friend had given her (the friend) a gold bracelet shortly after they began dating. This guy was a trader who made big bucks. It was a purely competitive thing. My date wanted that bracelet. She had no sense that it should have meaning, that we weren`t very serious yet, that gifts imply a certain level of emotion, nothing.”

– John – “I like good quality clothes and put a lot of my disposable income into them. I like to look nice and I feel that ultimately this will help me get ahead in my career. I have been out with more than one woman who is immediately turned on by my designer labels, but tosses me over faster than you can say Hugo Boss after she finds out that I have an entry-level position and live in a modest studio apartment.”

– Andy – “Women like men with money. To get money you have to be reasonably aggressive and ambitious. Many-not all-of the men who fit this bill are not nice guys. They think in a certain way that does not allow for gentleness or softness. Hence my longstanding belief that women do not like nice guys.”

She actually hardly wrote anything. She just documented a number of verbatim stories sent in by men.

Women want everything, but want responsibility and accountability for nothing.

[Author]

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