“There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view I hold dear.”
― Daniel Dennett
In social disputes, using bad arguments may end up not only hurting your position, but hurting the people you care about in a general sense. Christians who teach their children that they are vile things which corrupt God’s creation cause significant negative side-effects even if they get the behavior they want. Narrative is the foundation of all human experience, and everything else flows from that. So if you’re going to tell someone to do a good thing, tell them to do it for good reasons.
Paying On A Date
Brangus wrote his 10 Rules for Sleeping With Women. It takes a different view on sex than mine, but it has valuable perspectives. At least once I said “Oh jeez, I’ve always been really bad at that, glad to see it highlighted.”
Particularly good advice is for the guy to just pay on a date.
First, you should buy dinner. Why? Dude, just buy dinner. Don’t expect anything in return. Don’t let her buy dinner. Just buy dinner; don’t make a big deal about it.
This is the way. Who pays for dinner is the least important thing anyone is finding out. Default to paying and get on with figuring out if you actually have mutual desire, because otherwise the amount of energy diverted away from discovering that is not worth the price of dinner.
“Don’t let her buy” is technically wrong, but not wrong enough to be worth bothering with. You’ll know when it’s wrong, and congrats to you when this is true. :)
Ruby objected to this advice on fairness grounds. Ruby is of the exceptional people who believe in taking ideas seriously and following them to their conclusions.
“Advising men to always buy dinner irritates me because it feels like a bad equilibrium in a coordination problem but I get it”
“I think it would be better if there wasn’t an expectation that guys would always pay, and if they all coordinated to not do this we could break that expectation, but each individual guy is incentivized to defect on this in order to increase their chance of getting the girl”
Ruby is correct that society is set up unfairly in this regard. As a lady of integrity, she walks the walk and does pay on dates, and has even been known to offer fun and innovative new ways to split bills when going out with groups of friends in the pursuit of better equilibria. Wonderful lady! However her focus on the economic aspect lured Brangus into defending his statement on the wrong grounds.
“In the sexual marketplace, there is generally much more demand from men for sex with women than there is demand from women for sex with men. […] men must provide value in some other way.”
This is wrong in multiple of ways. First, female demand for good sex vastly outstrips supply. A woman who finds a guy she has good sex with will overwhelm almost any man’s sex drive (and sometimes she’ll go to ruinous lengths to retain access to him).
More importantly this reduces people to two variables on a supply-demand graph. One party brings sex, one party brings money, and economics sorts out the details. We’ll ignore the obvious objection that none of this is remotely true IRL. The far bigger thing that’s bad here is the assertion that one party (the woman) has inherent value, and the other party (the man) must find something external to compensate for his lack of value.
This is not Brangus’s failing, this is a core load-bearing part of the modern leftist worldview. Women are not asked what they bring to a date, they do not need to find some way to justify their presence. The fact that they are there at all is valuable. Anyone who tried to advise women to pay on dates in a bid to justify their presence would be viewed as a misogynist. Correctly. Men, on the other hand…
“She could decide to give [sex] to another man who is not the man currently on a date with her. The man knows this as well. He is trying to get the woman to choose to sleep with him instead of someone else, so he wants to impress her and provide value for her.”
The first part is also flatly wrong. A woman on a date generally can’t decide to “give” sex to someone else, her options are sex with the man she’s on a date with or no sex tonight1. But again, the objection isn’t about whether this is technically true, it’s about the narrative framing. This is the economics of disgust. The man is trying to “get” the woman to “give” him sex. He must overcome his inherent repulsiveness to get something she doesn’t want to give. This is best demonstrated by looking at the specific narratives Brangus suggests for thinking about the situation that could help…
“One is that I am not actually buying dinner in exchange for sex. I am buying dinner in exchange for an interview during which I will be assessed for sex. Interviewing me in that way is plausibly costly. There are other things she could be doing with her time.”
Is the man’s time valuable? Are there other things he could be doing? Is the woman getting any joy out of the interaction? Does she not need to compensate the man for his efforts and her enjoyment? In this scenario the man is a burden, and he’s grasping for an opportunity to show he’s worth having around at all. He is “being assessed.” This is pathetic.
Even setting aside my own prejudices, I’ve found that women who come in with this attitude are awful. You will not have a good time dating them. Odds are that the sex you have with them won’t be good. Men should only date women who like men. Do not filter for women who are disgusted by men! And especially don’t adopt that narrative as your own. It will reflect in everything you do on the date. You will feel grasping and ugly and desperate. It will be an awful bargain paid with ever-growing shreds of your own soul.
Building An Experience
The failure was in looking at this in economic terms at all. The frame of an adversarial relationship where one party is trying to get something from the other is toxic. It directly leads to publicly degrading the other side to lower their perceived value. This is a rational strategy for winning in such negotiations… and it destroys our humanity whether we’re on the receiving or attacking side. People believe the stories they are taught. The narratives we adopt rule everything about our lives.
So why should you, the guy reading this, pay on a date? Because when you go on a date you aren’t trying to get something from your date, or prove anything to her. You are collaborating with an enthusiastic partner to find out if you are excited about each other. You want to know what lights up her eyes, what fills her with wonder, what catches her breath with desire. You want to see if those line up with the things you find joyous, wonderful, and hot.
Both of you want to have a fun evening where you entertain each other and experience some emotional flow, often while crafting a fun story for yourselves about the evening. One of the things that’s really fun is seeing the other person happy when you pick up the check. It feels good to make someone else feel that shine of being desired enough to be cared for like that. Watch her smile and gaze at you and feel proud that you caused that spark.
Am I A Big Fat Hypocrite?
Some of my first dates were ones where we split the check, and they were often top-tier playful. I’ve even had a couple where the lady paid. (It’s a great feeling when someone else wants to take you out enough to pay for you, and it gives one a greater appreciation of being the payer.) And indeed, I think the actual considerations as to who pays are a lot more nuanced than just “the guy does.” So why the heck am I saying guys should lean into paying?
First, the two of you usually don’t have knowledge of the other’s ability to pay very early on. If you weren’t willing to pay for a date to learn that sort of thing, were you really even actually that interested in finding out if you’re compatible? Once there’s a rough idea of incomes, and mutual interest is established, one can proceed in a more informed manner. But on the first date the party who did the asking out should do the courteous thing and pay. Courtesy is a powerful narrative virtue, and if you can show mastery of that aspect of your role you are much more likely to be an exciting person to date/play with. Are you going to step up and do an awesome job being noble and bold, or sulk because this aspect of life isn’t totally fair? One of those is a lot more fun than the other.
Secondly, it lets you get her measure as well. My beautiful girlfriend used “carrying things” as an analogy. I’m always carrying things for her. If there’s something heavy she’s hauling around and I have a free hand, I take it from her. It’s not that she can’t carry it herself. But it is easier for me, and I want to do things to make her life better. She genuinely appreciates it, and we both feel much happier.
If she were to act entitled and condescending, with comments like “well finally,” I would not feel good about carrying things for her. The joy is in being appreciated and in seeing her happy. Attitude is everything. Narrative is everything.
When you pay, is your date made happy? Does she appreciate you for doing a nice thing? Or does she act like you owe her this, like you compensated her for the cost of putting up with your presence? If it’s the latter you’ve gained a lot of information about her, and it was absolutely worth the cost of a date to find this out early and distance yourself from her ASAP.
Turn this inward, too. Do you appreciate her when she pays on later dates? Do you actually feel joy, rather than feeling this is karmic turnabout?
This is why the economic question should be ignored, at least initially. No one feels joyful appreciation at being treated like a vending machine or a bank account.2 A tally of bad investments sparks passion in no one. This sentiment:
“I am paying for a sort of lottery that sometimes pays out in sex and sometimes doesn’t. It would be silly to put money into an investment that I think has about a 10% chance of paying out and then be upset when it doesn’t pay out.”
is one of self-harm, not clear-eyed realism. The fact that it’s wrong is only a tiny fraction of the damage it does.
The two things all the economic arguments got right is that information is initially hidden, and the heuristics for dealing with this aren’t fair. Embracing the modern leftist view that men are gross as a way to excuse this unfairness, and rewriting that narrative under the genre of economics, doesn’t make anything better. We accept that the world isn’t particularly fair. We can make it fairer if we don’t get bitter. We start by finding joy where it can be found and amplifying it. There are women out there on your side. You can find them.
But only if you can reflect the same belief that both sexes are enriched by interacting with each other.
Not literally true, but true in practice for almost everyone. Even poly women with husbands/boyfriends-on-tap may have trouble calling someone over for a last-minute lay, people are busy!
The first 3/4 of this are excellent, but the final 1/4 doesn't answer the central question - why should men pay on dates? Your reasons are completely symmetric. They apply to both parties. As with most gendered advice, it's not so much bad advice as it's unnecessarily gendered. Anyone of any gender should be willing to pay for those reasons!
I can definitely see the argument here, but as a British Gen Z-er I would make three countervailing observations about my own experiences in my generation:
1. The nature of student budgets combined with the rise in online ordering, self checkout and bar service means that for the majority of us, about 90% of the food we purchase is done so on an individual basis prior to receiving it, even in groups (eg everyone making separate McDonald’s orders before sitting down on the table together). This usually means there is no ‘bill’ at the end to settle nor an especially communal ordering process other than one or two ‘sharer’ items, so not only would it be unusual to do anything other than pay for what you have, but it would usually be actively difficult to manage.
2. An increasing amount of dating either occurs through apps or through escalated friendships - as such, rather than one person asking the other person out, they instead tend to be more mutual agreements to go on a date. This means there isn’t really as much of a sense of one person being the ‘requester’ and so carrying an obligation to return the favour by paying for food.
3. There is an obvious shift in gender norms. Whilst I think this is overstated when it comes to dating (most women would still probably expect and want to be the pursued rather than the pursuer), it is much more pronounced when it comes to things like paying, where the notion of a gendered expectation would be considered silly and strange. The man may still end up paying, but there will *definitely* be some ironic jokes from both parties about ‘patriarchal expectations’ and “how come you think women aren’t capable of paying?! 😜” if he does.
These three factors I would say therefore combine to mean that for our generation, the instinctive expectation we would all have would very much be for everyone to pay for what they had, and anything beyond that would be unusual and noteworthy (even splitting the bill evenly would honestly be considered weird and dumb unless there were specific items you explicitly shared).
That doesn’t necessarily negate your points, but it certainly means that any case of a man paying on the basis of being a man will seem much less expected and honestly much stranger. I will admit to be fair that I don’t have that much extensive experience on our dating scene, but my experience in social situations in group settings would certainly corroborate these observations.
The first 3/4 of this are excellent, but the final 1/4 doesn't answer the central question - why should men pay on dates? Your reasons are completely symmetric. They apply to both parties. As with most gendered advice, it's not so much bad advice as it's unnecessarily gendered. Anyone of any gender should be willing to pay for those reasons!
I can definitely see the argument here, but as a British Gen Z-er I would make three countervailing observations about my own experiences in my generation:
1. The nature of student budgets combined with the rise in online ordering, self checkout and bar service means that for the majority of us, about 90% of the food we purchase is done so on an individual basis prior to receiving it, even in groups (eg everyone making separate McDonald’s orders before sitting down on the table together). This usually means there is no ‘bill’ at the end to settle nor an especially communal ordering process other than one or two ‘sharer’ items, so not only would it be unusual to do anything other than pay for what you have, but it would usually be actively difficult to manage.
2. An increasing amount of dating either occurs through apps or through escalated friendships - as such, rather than one person asking the other person out, they instead tend to be more mutual agreements to go on a date. This means there isn’t really as much of a sense of one person being the ‘requester’ and so carrying an obligation to return the favour by paying for food.
3. There is an obvious shift in gender norms. Whilst I think this is overstated when it comes to dating (most women would still probably expect and want to be the pursued rather than the pursuer), it is much more pronounced when it comes to things like paying, where the notion of a gendered expectation would be considered silly and strange. The man may still end up paying, but there will *definitely* be some ironic jokes from both parties about ‘patriarchal expectations’ and “how come you think women aren’t capable of paying?! 😜” if he does.
These three factors I would say therefore combine to mean that for our generation, the instinctive expectation we would all have would very much be for everyone to pay for what they had, and anything beyond that would be unusual and noteworthy (even splitting the bill evenly would honestly be considered weird and dumb unless there were specific items you explicitly shared).
That doesn’t necessarily negate your points, but it certainly means that any case of a man paying on the basis of being a man will seem much less expected and honestly much stranger. I will admit to be fair that I don’t have that much extensive experience on our dating scene, but my experience in social situations in group settings would certainly corroborate these observations.