I'm kind of a hard core feminist. It's not something as a guy I just pick up when it's convenient (check splitting). Im a very political person and it's something I'm engaged with on a regular basis. I haven't been dating for years so the paying for dinner thing hasn't been relevant to me recently at all.
I know this is an extremely small sample but I was just listening to a podcast where 2 women even younger than me, but not immature (early 30s I think), both agreed without reservation that if a guy wasn't paying for dinner on a date there's no way you would go on a 2nd date with him, no matter how well the date had gone otherwise. Now obviously I understand how if someone wasn't a feminist this wouldn't even be a factor. But realistically most women that age are and I heard other stray phrases that seemed to confirm what demographically speaking would usually be the case. However neither of them even mentioned feminism when it came to this issue and they seemed to take granted to the highest degree that this was just something that they were worth and accepting less would be bad.
Now this story has 2 obvious "answers".
From a "be yourself " standpoint, obviously it doesn't matter what 2 random women in a podcast think. Compromising your values over something so trivial is absurd. Everyone should have the courage of their convictions and if someone doesn't like you for who you are so be it.
And from a strategic standpoint, obviously the exact opposite. Paying for a dinner isn't a big deal (it's been done for centuries and I've done it myself plenty of times). Yeah you might care about your values but you also don't want to shoot yourself in the foot and guarantee a (huge?) percentage of your dates will never lead to 2nd ones over so small a thing.
I'm curious how some women who consider themselves a feminist feel about the situation (or even the fact that it wasn't brought up as an issue in their discussion).
I'm not particularly interested in being talked out of feminism as an ideology, and not really here to argue about that.
*edit* not important to what I was asking but just for sake of completeness I'll point out that one of them said that if you don't like a guy and don't intend on going a 2nd date with him you should definitely pay for your meal (one thing that was mentioned was in terms of not feeling like you owe him something).