We’re confident, successful and intelligent… so why do we still allow dating to be so sexist?

Words: Dolly Alderton

It’s 11pm on a Wednesday and I’m meant to be asleep ahead of an important meeting the next morning. But I’m not. Why? A man. Well, talk of a man. On our Whatsapp group, my friends and I – all successful, intelligent, powerful feminists – are talking down one of our friends from the edge of recklessness. A guy she’s been dating for three months hasn’t replied to her text from four days ago, he hasn’t called. She’s being ghosted, and the group is divided.

“Don’t get in touch, you don’t want to look keen,” are the replies from one side. On the other, “He might be dead/dying. You like him, don’t you? Just text him!”

It’s a timeless debate – yet, it’s also 2016. Women are sexually liberated, we’re astronauts, CEOs, politicians. So shouldn’t we be over the idea that only men should make the first move? In our day-to-day lives, we’re outspoken, ambitious, won’t-stand-for-that women, yet throw a Tinder match on the cards and things begin to blur. Stereotypes coyly masked as traditions mean my friends and I regularly shrivel into dating-handbook-bots: we refuse to text twice in a row (lest we worry for days about being unfairly labelled “needy”); we won’t call first during the first six months; we definitely won’t text first. We accept (despite how it might jar with, you know, our right to make decisions about our own lives) that it’s normal for a woman to wait four years for the one day – next week, on 29 February – they’re “allowed” to propose. We’re reinforcing these myths too – not convinced? Then consider this – do you expect a man to pick up the bill or hold a door open? Well quite.

Surely it’s time to recognise how ridiculous it is? We wouldn’t withhold our needs or worry about how much we’re texting if it was a friend. So why, instead of having confidence in our ability to sustain a man’s interest, do we cower in the passenger seat – being coolly unavailable, letting him pick the venue – when it comes to dating?

It’s 2016 not 1950. So why is dating still so sexist?