Mutually Proposing Marriage

Though both women and men can yearn to marry, and though men and women are both equally capable of planning and communication, pressures on each gender have manipulated many people to assume that men should or want to propose marriage to women, while women should or want to be a passive recipient of this gesture up until they accept or decline.  Like all gender stereotypes, these ideas contradict reason because gender is a type of physical body, not something connected to moral obligation or personality characteristics.  It does not follow from having certain genitalia that one will or should act in any given way.

The expectation for men to initiate romantic or sexual interactions as a whole is the foundation of the "normal" execution of a marriage proposal.  However, do men not want to be pursued?  Of course they do or could; this is a matter of individual preference or how much a man has allowed himself to give in to social conditioning, not his biological bodily structure.  Do women want to contribute nothing to what sparks their own formal engagement?  This too could only be a matter of individuality or yielding to social pressures.  Gender has nothing to do with it one way or another.  A man could be someone who naturally hopes for his girlfriend to ask to marry him, escalating the relationship from one of dating to one of formal marriage.

A man can propose to a woman without being sexist against men or women, just as a woman can propose to a man without being sexist in any direction as well.  Also, neither kind of proposal requires misogynistic or misandrist motivations.  A joint proposal where both the female and male member of a couple participate in each role is certainly a great way to express egalitarianism, but either type of unilateral request for marriage can also express egalitarianism.  As long as the individuals are not being pressured to act in accordance with tradition or any sexist, and thus invalid, ideology--whether it primarily targets men or women--this act can be entirely egalitarian.

When there are no fallacies, assumptions, or immoral motives present, it does not matter who asks their partner for legal marriage.  any of the three aforementioned scenarios, which are the only ones possible with one man and one woman, are legitimate.  No one sacrifices their rationalism or egalitarianism (not that there are many rationalists whatsoever!) by doing sometimes that happens to match a social construct, if the thing itself is not irrational and they are not doing it out of cultural relativism, emotionalism, or any other manifestation of irrationalism.  Mutual marriage proposals are one of many ways to express the individuality of a couple as long as this is a natural reflection of it.