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by DoreenMichele 2053 days ago
I don't disagree with you, but I've been attacked for stating too bluntly that "dating is a polite form of prostitution." (You will note I swore off "dating" nearly four decades ago -- as stated in a separate comment by me here.)
1 comments
maxerickson 2053 days ago
I'm not attacking you for it, but I'm disagreeing. My point above is that most dates do not have a transactional pretext and are not similar to prostitution at all.

Some dates probably are like that.

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DoreenMichele 2053 days ago
Okay. I misunderstood something. I've reread your comment and I don't know where the disconnect is.

One of the things you commonly see is that men get divorced and don't want to pay alimony or child support on the grounds that she isn't sleeping with him anymore.

So I think for a great many people, there is a strong connection between "he pays the bills and his expectation is sex." And I think this begins with our dating norms where he typically pays for the date.

I think the fact that this is baseline normal for most people is why it is offensive to point it out. People want to think their relationship is a good relationship and not transactional and the evidence seems to be that it's much more often transactional than not.

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maxerickson 2053 days ago
There's a difference between "commonly" and "majority".

Is there data that shows it's a majority of relationships? I tried researching a couple of statistics that might be illustrative in the other direction and didn't find much (not, "didn't find the answers I wanted" but "didn't find any answer").

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DoreenMichele 2053 days ago
I'm comfortable calling it the "majority" because that only means "more than half." It doesn't have to mean anything as high as ninety percent.

I don't think saying "at least 51 percent of the time, it's transactional" is some kind of extremist position.

I did this analysis for my own benefit, not to convince anyone of anything. I chose to swear off "dating" of the "polite exchange of money for sex" variety because I felt it undermined my quality of life, my de facto human rights, etc. I'm satisfied with how that decision has impacted my life.

Given what I have overwhelmingly heard from other women, I have the impression that most women are less satisfied with their relationships to men than I have been.

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