Evolving Competition
Scifes said:
It may be worth noting that I spent most of my not-too-long life in a society which rejects dating altogether. They are simply non-existent. A taboo out of place and hard to commit more than, say, adultery, which I can relate to more(and old fashioned rape).
So yes, date rape is new to me.
Lol, look at it this way, where I come from, if you're dating, you're already a slut* 
.
(* /womanizer)
This is an important note; it helps others understand the problem they perceive.
However, with nothing more to go on in
#492, I might offer the following perspective.
The question of "playing hard to get" is a relic of an older time that has not yet died a dignified death. It comes from the time when women were expected to be wives and mothers exclusively; they "played hard to get" in order to not simply give over to the first suitor who arrived. This was a time when marriage was utilitarian, not romantic; a woman's place was as a cog in her husband's larger function.
However, the question of "playing hard to get" pertains to the
right of courtship, the exclusivity one claims when entering a relationship with another. It does not pertain to the
right to get laid.
In the twenty-first century, "playing hard to get" is nothing more than a marketplace demonstration. You can certainly be charming, intelligent, and kindly, but if she's looking forward to spending the rest of her life cleaning up after your lazy ass, well, there are better competitors on the market.
From a more liberal perspective, the issue recently arose when a feminist at an Ivy League institution told female college students they should find a husband now. After the first shockwave passed, the professor offered a radio interview in which she explained she was making an odds-based argument instead of a moral assignation. That is, if a woman intends to marry, she will not have a better marketplace than while she is in college.
We liberals get it, but the basic objection at that point is that a woman should not simply be destined for marriage.
We're in a different world, now. In its former day, courtship was a prelude to marriage. Now it's a recreation. The purpose has changed, and therefore the rules change, too.
In the U.S., and I would imagine Canada, England, Australia, and other such nations, courtship is not restricted to marital prelude.
I would put it this way:
There are times when a sausage-fest (all men) is just fine. That is, six guys gathering to drink beer and watch GSP pound the living shit out of Nick Diaz is one thing. After all, it's not that the women weren't welcome, but rather that so few in our circles like these fights. But the idea that a woman should not attend the party with us because in doing so she might be "consenting" to being raped—one of the implications of this unbounded prevention theory—is simply unacceptable.
Playing hard to get? It's one thing to say, "If you're going to try to romance me, you're going to have to compete." But it's quite another to say that extends to conjugal privilege.
It is my belief that most men would not enjoy the world they advocate. That is, the open-ended prevention theory is so sub- or un-consciously widespread that if it ever came true, men would be really pissed off at women for treating them that way.
In the end, the
only functional solution is to stop presuming male privilege, whether it's because she accepted a date, or because she let him buy her a drink, or because she was walking alone at night, or because she agreed to marry him, or because ... really, what we're down to is two competing assertions.
Either women are human beings entitled to the same rights and expectations as everyone else, or they're not.
