Sexist Dating Traditions

Although America has rightly become far more gender egalitarian in the workplace, in people's social lives, and in homes, some sexist traditions still continue to be acted upon.  Some of these traditions involve gender-specific dating expectations.  These norms and expectations assume fallacious and false gender stereotypes, reinforce sexist ideas, and can prevent men and women from expressing their God-given individuality.  As an egalitarian, a rationalist, and a theonomist, I see how laughably stupid these social expectations and rules are.  They are irrational, sexist, and no person is obligated to abide by them, man or woman.  They are nothing but the remnants of an illogical tradition encouraged by a culture of ignorance.  Any beliefs about non-physical gender-specific characteristics that these ideas rest upon are entirely disproven by logic and are rejected by the Bible, as I've explained before.

I have selected two of these sexist dating traditions to highlight the absurd illogicality and unbiblicality of them.

The first is the idea that men should initiate dates with women (at least or especially the first date).  Men who initiate dates do not necessarily want to be the first movers in their relationships, and women do not necessarily want to just wait to men to try to date them.  They can want to be the ones to ask guys out for their first dates or to express romantic interest or attraction to guys.  Whether a person wants to actively initiate or passively accept or decline dates has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not that person is a man or a woman.  Besides, men who struggle with anxiety could find it extremely difficult for them to muster the strength to do such a thing.  Whether tradition-oriented people are comfortable with it or not, women can initiate texts, date invitations, and even marriage proposals--and there is nothing wrong with this!  Scripture and reason oppose idiotic beliefs that deny this.

Ironically, even if complementarianism were true and married women should unilaterally submit to their husbands and allow them to be the leaders by default, there would be no obligation for unmarried dating individuals to privilege the men with leadership authority to initiate while depriving women of that same ability (no Bible verse even hints otherwise, and there can be no sin where Scripture has not spoken [1]); such gender roles involving male leadership would only apply to husbands at most.  But the obligations of egalitarianism, a position that is logically and Biblically correct [2], extend even into dating relationships (Ephesians 5:21), as all Christians are commanded to submit to each other.

The second sexist dating tradition I will address here is the belief that men should pay for the activities of the women they are dating.  This bullshit tradition is a fine example of benevolent sexism.  It elevates one gender over the other, but does so in an allegedly "good" or "acceptable" way.  The facade of niceness actually conceals an extremely sexist practice, one that requires men to sacrifice more resources for romantic interests that they may not even marry than the resources their dates will sacrifice for them, not to mention one that discourages women from expressing affection and love for their male partners by paying for their meals, movie tickets, or whatever else the dates may revolve around.  Both partners in a healthy dating relationship should strive to sacrifice for each other and show their mutual affection.  The tradition of having men pay for the food or other products or services used by their dates is very sexist--as if women deserve to have money spent on them just because they are women, as if they are not to financially contribute to dating relationships, and as if women should be financially dependent on men!

These traditions are sexist to both genders--they pressure men into having to spend more money and planning time on relationships than women, assume that men want to constantly be the initiators, assume that women don't like initiating or don't have the desire to do so, and can present women who do initiate or want to initiate as "desperate" when this is not necessarily the case at all.  Men aren't obligated to have one-sided leader relationships with women in marriage, and the same applies to dating.

Women are entirely free to initiate dates and to otherwise express their
God-given personalities in every way that men are.

In dating, I am looking for a woman who recognizes her own personality traits, strengths, abilities, and intellect.  I am looking for someone who acts in accordance with God's actual moral prescriptions and has no concern for anything else that places arbitrary, extra-Biblical, fallacious limitations on male or female behavior.  I don't want someone who isn't willing to do as she pleases as long as there is no sin; I don't want someone who locks herself into nonexistent gender roles (aka all of them) and deprives herself of her fullest ability to live for God as he made her.  Egalitarian dating is totally free of any sense of gender-specific obligation.  There is no need to waste time with societal rules that don't have any basis in objective reality.


[1].  Although the necessity of special divine revelation for moral knowledge is entirely provable on logical grounds, the Bible affirms this in places like Deuteronomy 4:2 (people cannot know if they are adding to the Law unless they know the Law), Romans 7:7, and 1 John 3:4.

[2].  See here (there are other posts where I address complementarianism as well):
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/complementarianism-is-inherently-sexist.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-ephesians-5-does-not-teach-rigid.html
C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-error-of-complementarian-arguments.html
D.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/book-criticism-preparing-to-be-help.html
E.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/sexuality-in-marriage-part-1-mutuality.html
F.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-bible-never.html