"Paying to date a man is delusional… They're our apex predator."
My 24 hours in the 'femosphere': the raging, self-pitying, man-hating response to toxic masculinity, where getting a bloke to pay for your dinner is an act of righteous vengeance.
Holy f**kity, I’ve had a week of it on the internet! I’d forgotten how exhausting it can be. How it makes you bone-tired, real-life jumpy.
The internet is mad.
MAD.
It started when Grazia posted an online version of the column I write for it regularly. The subject of the column is one of my most ferociously nurtured personal gripes: why, increasingly, women expect men to pay for them on dates.
Based on conversations I’ve had with single and dating men and women, and observations of shows like First Dates, it is just entirely expected that, when the bill comes, a lady gently inclines her head, looks at her nails or some such, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips - while the geez pays. And pays. And pays. In this column, I’d talked about my mate D who’d taken a woman out the week before, paid for pre dinner cocktails, dinner, then:
“She suggested more drinks. I said ‘yes’! I thought she’d pay…”
But she did not. He quite liked her, so invited her to his a few days later for dinner. He cooked for her extravagantly - he’s a good cook.
“She turned up. No wine, no chocolate… Nothing. Nothing at all.”
He’s too poor to see her again - and not that bothered.
I hear variations on this, from men in their mid thirties and younger, over and over. When it comes to paying on dates, modern young women apparently becomes 1950s housewives-in-waiting. Simpering princesses who don’t trouble themselves with finances: that’s men’s work. IE another mate said he’d taken a first date to a pub, where she’d just sat, as he got in round after round after round…
“But it’s ROUNDS!” I said.
“I know,” he said.
A third was amazed, when I suggested he suggest splitting the bill.
“You've got no idea,” he said. “They’d walk out.”
As a woman last single in the mid 1990s - I find this extraordinary. It isn’t even about feminism, demonstrating your equality, pride in paying your way… It’s about fairness. Decency. Generosity. Imagine if all blokes just sat there, when the bill came, time after time. Imagine if your mate did. If one half of a party arbitrarily decided they just don’t pay for stuff - that’s your job. It's cringe. Gross, ick-inducing, feeble.
So that’s the column I wrote, the one which Grazia posted, linking to its Instagram feed, in a collaboration with my Instagram feed - which is why I saw the comments, when they began. I wouldn't have normally. I haven’t looked at The Comments since 2002, that is a fool’s errand. But I couldn’t help it, in this instance. They were coming directly at me, thick and first.
The very first one wasn't too severe, though it did hint at a perspective, and a level of anger, of which I’d been oblivious.
(As my mate who is also called Polly said: “Apex predator? Is she dating a T-rex?”)
Admittedly, this was not the first time I’d heard the gender pay gap invoked as justification for men always getting the bill. I’d seen it chucked about social media, one single n dating female friend had half heartedly referred to it in my presence, but I hadn't actually thought anyone was serious about it. Hadn't dreamed anyone realistically considers every last chump who swipes right on them, to be the embodiment of this widespread and enduring societal inequality, for which he must be penalised via the medium of paying for her dinner. But apparently, some of them