From: oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu (Sharon O'Neil)
Subject: Re: What is gold-digging?
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 12:26:21 GMT

rkf@wildrose.infoserv.com (Ray Fink) writes:

>oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu (Sharon O'Neil) writes:
>>rkf@wildrose.infoserv.com (Ray Fink) writes:
>>>crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:

>>>>If a man asks me out, and I don't know him very well, I assume he's
>>>>paying.  If he doesn't, he's got no class whatsoever, IMO.  Frankly, it
>>>>hasn't happened to me (though it did happen to a friend of mine).  

>>>Three-fourths of the women I've gone out with expected me to pay for 
>>>everything.  For a while, I put up with that nonsense for a few
>>>dates, but I found that most women who were willing to share expenses
>>>at all either insisted on, or offered, sharing right from the start.

>>You know, it has a lot to do with how a woman is taught.  I would say that
>>most women are taught to expect the guy to pay.  My folks, on the other hand,
>>taught me that I should pay my own way in.  When I was first dating as a 
>>teenager, in fact, my dad would give me the money to cover my share of the
>>evening.  He told me that the guy wouldn't be able to pull anything like, "I
>>paid for this date.  Now you /owe/ me something..."

>Yes, most women I've met were taught (directly or indirectly) to expect
>the guy to pay.  To me, though, it's yet another gender stereotype that
>I'm trying to avoid. I've learned that it's not my job to try to change
>somebody else's behavior to fit my view of the world.  I can be 
>sympathetic to the fact that "that's what they learned", but I'm not
>willing to foot the bill for their fantasies. 

Well, that's fine.  But good luck.  Most of my female friends are of the
traditional bent: don't come to Nebraska in search of the independent woman.

>>>Oh yeah, I probably do have no class whatsoever, I don't even open
>>>car doors for women.  Another useful sorting criterion, I've found ;-)

>>You and I should talk.  I'll usually let a guy open the car door, if he
>>insists, but it really, really, really ANNOYS the hell out of me. 

>Can you explain that... I'm curious what part of it you find annoying.
>One of ex-wife's (numerous :-)) complaints was that I didn't make her
>feel special by opening car doors for her.  So when I first started 
>dating again, I thought "ok I'll try this".  Some women liked it,
>some objected...but after a while it became like the "who pays"
>problem:  I'm looking for a partner and equal for an equal partnership,
>and I found it enormously difficult to view somebody as an equal 
>while at the same time treating them as incapable of opening a car
>door.  

Sure, I can explain that.  I am looking for a partner and an equal.  How can
I feel equal if someone is constantly opening the door for me?  It's like, I
have two choices?  Either he thinks I'm weak or he thinks he's my servant.
Either way, one of us is less than equal.

Now, if my hands are full, he can open the door for me.  If his hands are
full, I can open the door for him.  

And like I said before, if he really, really, really wants to open the door
for me -- the last guy I went out with (shortly) always did -- then it is 
fine.  But it's not something I feel comfortable with and I would have 
preferred that he did not.

Sharon 
oneil@cwis.unomaha.edu