Why men shouldn’t actually have to pay on a first date

The guy you like asked you out and you're buzzed about it. You go out for dinner, you eat some food and you drink some alcohol, and then, the bill comes and you're both going, "what do we do now?"

It's hard to believe that we are still discussing this in 2017, but here we are. Why the fuck are men still trying to pay? Camilla literally broke up with Jonny over it on Love Island because she's a feminist with a brain. It's time to wake up to this outdated bullshit.

It's sometimes easier to label the man as the one who pays because that's how we see romance portrayed in the media, and that's how society functioned in the olden days: men earned the money and paid for his lady. Things have obviously changed. So let's get with the times.

Refusing to allow a woman to pay often comes across as controlling and objectifying, that the woman's attention is to be purchased with dinner and drinks. There is an underlying expectation of sexual reward when dinner is bought for a woman. Whether or not this is intended by the man who pays, there is an unspoken feeling of guilt that often leads to sexual repayment, which would likely not occur if the bill was split.

The pay gap is slowly closing, and women are no longer jobless waiting around to be looked after by a man. We have our own money to pay for our own meal, we can even pay for both if we want to treat our date. The power dynamic created when a man pays for a woman needs to be broken down if we are to achieve equal respect for all genders. This is one of the final traditions to be broken.

And what about same sex relationships? People stuck in their ways saying "men should always pay" are those who are not accepting of the progression of modern society: gender can no longer define the way relationships function. How to gay people decide who pays? They just work it out in other, more logical ways or split the bill. It's not that hard.

Masculinity can't possibly still be this fragile, can everyone just please move on and accept the progress. If you're still dating someone who feels he needs to pay for you to feel like a man, dump his ass.