Gifts and begging

From a very early age on children are taught not to beg. Yet when I was little, this rule went largely unnoticed. The person who happened to have a bag of treats was of course the center of attention with others hanging around begging and pleading to get their share of the candy. Adults were of course doing there best to teach some basic manners to us and get us to understand that a constant process of begging and moaning is very irritating and degrading and that it is something that should not be engaged in.

Fast-forward a decade or two and the lessons have been learned. Accepting money is not as clear cut as one would assume. I'm still a student and during the first two years of my studies I didn't work during the semesters, so much budget was quite limited. In part things were helped by the occasional subsidy of 50 euros from my parents, which allowed me to get the soy sauce for the rice, so to say. But accepting the money does dig into oneself. In a way, at least according to how I interpret it, it is a way of someone to enforce their authority over you. You take the money and regardless of the terms (be it a gift or whatever), you're still indebted to the other person. In a way you are no longer on the same level.

This might in fact also explain why students in Finland typically stear clear of student loans, even though they are state-backed and fairly cheap loans. But you tie yourself to a bank and agree to give away some of your freedoms in order to attempt to pay back the loan at some point. With inter-person money transfers, things get even more tedious. Some people may initially seem to be giving you gifts, but may implicitly assume that when a certain moment comes along that you know what to do.

According to traditional etiquette, men should treat women to dinners. Contemporary feminism will have its views and I would venture a guess that they are against this practice as it is yet another ancient relic which men use to demonstrate their authority over women. But quite many women still do expect the man to pick up the bill. This in turn translates to an interesting phenomenon concerning the transfer of wealth between the genders, especially during weekends.

So amidst the rise of feminism and the attempt for gender equality (I know, they are not synonyms...) it is quite interesting to see that women are partly becoming more aggressive in attempting to utilize the lax monetary policies followed by many men. The more interesting practice was one which I encountered last weekend in Turku. While waiting at a bar counter, I was rapidly approached by two girls. One started snuggling up to me and it was pretty obvious that she was trying to get a drink for herself and her friend. Or maybe I'm just so drop-dead handsome that it was that instead. Anyway, to see what would happen, I decided to play dumb and move myself a bit further. And lo-and-behold, the girl followed, still initiating slight physical contact. Finally I couldn't help myself anymore but decided to ask what it is that she wanted. And I was shocked to hear that they wanted drinks (well, ok, I wasn't shocked). So being me, I of course complied and ordered myself a beer and two glasses of ice water for the girls and walked away with my beer.

But this begs the question of where the line between normal behavior and whoring goes. I would in fact considering the actions of this specific girl to be borderline whoring as it was quite clear that leveraging the assets afforded to the more beautiful gender in a fashion like this was so blatant that it cannot be interpreted in any other way. The question becomes more difficult during e.g. dinners. My own personal policy is that during dates, I typically tend to offer to pay for small things if I was the one inviting the other party, but I reserve the right to go Dutch if I feel like it. It is a lot rarer that I let the girl pay everything, but it has also happened. But she has to insist upon it strongly before I give up this pleasure.

However, as is the policy that is suggested by different PUAs (pick-up artists), I do not buy drinks for strange women who I just met in nightclubs. Period. That is not only to save my hard earned cash but also to offer the chance to keep the field level. If I'd buy the drink, then a gift would already have been given and this would imply that I may demand something in return. And that sort of starting position is already becoming biased and slanted and offers too many angles for both sides to try to play. And as much fun as playing is, a distorted field spoils it for everyone involved.