Picking Up the Check

Every so often, conservatives declare that our way of life is in crisis—and it’s always the fault of feminists. What’s the sign of the apocalypse this time? No one in this era knows who should pick up the check at dinner. Kay Hymowitz declares in the conservative City Journal that “the dating and mating scene is in chaos.” Chaos! And who is to blame? Why, feminists, of course. Hymowitz determines that women in the “postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional.”

In Hymowitz’ misguided dating advice, she lists every stereotype out there: looking back to the Good Old Days of dating, the battle of the sexes over the first date dinner check, and the Nice Guy who always gets rejected in favor of the jerk. Contrary to her analysis (and that of the conservative movement at large), the dating “system” is not in crisis. There are a million websites out there with advice on how to deal with dating, but there are also sites with tips on how to handle your friends, negotiate with your boss, and get your roommate to clean the toilet more often. Interpersonal communication can be difficult in any relationship between equals; it’s not unique to romantic entanglements. Just because our society is creeping toward gender equality does not mean that such egalitarianism is to blame for trivial dating problems. She also ignores the many couples that have managed to deal with these “problems” on their own.

Hymowitz says that the solution, of course, can be found by looking back at The Way Things Used to Be:

By the early twentieth century, things had evolved so that in the United States, at any rate, a man knew the following: he was supposed to call for a date; he was supposed to pick up his date; he was supposed to take his date out, say, to a dance, a movie, or an ice-cream joint; if the date went well, he was supposed to call for another one; and at some point, if the relationship seemed charged enough—or if the woman got pregnant—he was supposed to ask her to marry him. Sure, these rules could end in a midlife crisis and an unhealthy fondness for gin, but their advantage was that anyone with an emotional IQ over 70 could follow them.

Today, though, there is no standard scenario for meeting and mating, or even relating. For one thing, men face a situation—and I’m not exaggerating here—new to human history. Never before have men wooed women who are, at least theoretically, their equals—socially, professionally, and sexually.

The main problem is that Hymowitz is longing for a time that didn’t actually exist in the way she thinks it did. She may be longing for the dating standards presented in television and movies of the time, but this was a very specific set of dating standards presented by white, middle-class people. Not everyone played by the rules then. And those dating stereotypes presented their own problems: a woman was discouraged pursue someone she was interested in—she risked getting labeled a slut or worse. Hymowitz seems to forget that the reason we don’t have those dating roles anymore is because many people found them limiting, frustrating, and inadequate.

What’s more, she implies that men (well, heterosexual men, anyway—she doesn’t acknowledge that dating exists in the gay community) are incapable of figuring out what to do without these obvious social cues. There is no standard! What will we ever do without the ice cream joint?!

But the biggest problem, Hymowitz complains, comes at the end of the first date:

The cultural muddle is at its greatest when the dinner check arrives. The question of who grabs it is a subject of endless discussion on the hundreds of Internet dating sites. The general consensus among women is that a guy should pay on a first date: they see it as a way for him to demonstrate interest. Many men agree, but others find the presumption confusing. Aren’t the sexes equal? In fact, at this stage in their lives, women may well be in a better position to pick up the tab: according to a 2005 study by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge, college-educated women working full-time are earning more than their male counterparts in a number of cities, including New York, Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis.

 

Sure, girls can—and do—ask guys out for dinner and pick up the check without missing a beat. But that doesn’t clarify matters, men complain.

The crisis over who should pick up the check is really a fundamental communication gap. Relying on cultural shorthand that dictated men would always pay on the first date eliminated the need to actually have a conversation about the check. Sure, it may have been easier, but it also established icky expectations about who was in charge. And if who’s going to pay for dinner is really the “greatest” part of this “cultural muddle,” then I’m willing to deal with a few uncomfortable minutes of negotiating payment for dinner.

Hymowitz also brings up another tiresome dating trope: the poor, picked-on Nice Guy. But the Nice Guy is really just a whiney dude that somehow feels he didn’t get what he deserved. As writer Amanda Marcotte so bluntly put it, this is the all-to-familiar “Nice Guy whine (‘I didn’t get the pussy I deserved not being a dick, so I have to be one to get laid.’)” Hymowitz’s does a good job of displaying a “Nice Guy” in his own words:

According to a “Recovering Nice Guy” writing on Craigslist, the female preference for jerks and “assholes,” as they’re also widely known, lies behind women’s age-old lament, “What happened to all the nice guys?” His answer: “You did. You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.”

If that lament doesn’t reek of entitlement, I don’t know what does. Rejection sucks, but just because a man gets rejected doesn’t mean that they somehow “deserved” that woman. Recovering Nice Guy has decided that his emotional support for this woman earned him a way into her pants. Sorry, dude, but it doesn’t work like that. A woman is entitled to say “no” to your sexual advances, regardless of how much time you’ve spent listening to her.

Will Wilkinson nicely deals with this in his response: “I think Hymowitz’s story gives too small a part to resentment at the loss of male privilege. Many men aren’t angry and confused because they don’t know what women want. They’re angry because they want what their fathers or grandfathers had, and they can’t get it.”

Hymowitz calls contemporary dating problematic mostly because men get lost in it. Men can’t figure out what the new rules are. Men have to deal with mixed messages. Men are cautious of dating because they witnessed divorce growing up. Men need to “survive in a ruthless dating environment.” Hymowitz ignores the fact that that women also have to deal with all of these factors—she’s so busy trying to protect a fictitious, nostalgic masculinity that she can’t admit that women get confused, too. Negotiating relationships is complicated. The solutions need to be as nuanced as the problems. But Hymowitz seems to think that the only solution is to return to male-dominated dating. Then all of our problems would be solved, right?

Kay Steiger is editor of Campus Progress. Follow her on Twitter.

Kay Steiger is the editor of CampusProgress.org.

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