[size=15pt]A feminist's guide to dating[/size]

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Can she ask him? Why do men send nude selfies? And who's paying for dinner? If you're venturing to the wild frontiers of dating, take a tip from a woman who's been there and back

There are things I've let slide when scoping out a potential beau – bad habits, bad spelling, bad breath (although the last one's a stretch, truth be told) – but if someone isn't a feminist, then it's a deal-breaker. That said, it can be hard to clock beforehand – dates being, as they are, opportunities to get to know someone you don't already know. To avoid time-wasters, I recommend sending over this quick questionnaire ahead of a meet: 1. Do you think the 1950s could be described as a golden era for gender relations? 2. Does the idea of a woman earning more money than you bring you out in hives? 3. Mine's a pint – that OK? Ah, if only it were so simple. Dating can be very confusing, especially when you add hangovers into the mix. For example: some mornings you think you want to get married, then you realise all you really want is a bacon sandwich. But love's the greatest, right? Maybe. I'll tell you what categorically isn't the greatest: looking for love when you're trying to keep some sisterly self-respect. Here's my alternative guide to the badlands of feminist dating.

Can you call yourself 'single'?

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Let's start with the basics: is using the word "single" not just asking for trouble? After all, it suggests something that's usually a bit crap. Single beds are no fun. Single cream is the dairy of denial. Single suggests something wanting. It also invites endless questions, and these get worse as you get older. In my 20s, the first question on everyone's lips at family dos was whether I was seeing someone. Now this question has graduated – no, mutated – to whether I want kids. "You don't want to leave it too late!" say relative strangers (and strange relatives) as we stand by buffets in function rooms in back pockets of Lancashire. I chug my vodka, wondering when I can feasibly escape for a gay. They narrow their eyes. What can you say, to assuage their expectations, to lessen your sense of failure; but moreover to divert this frankly fricking rude line of questioning? "Oh actually, I had a miscarriage this morning, lolz!" That would shut them up.

How to chat up a feminist

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Hey, girl, fancy coming over to mine and really smashing the patriarchy? Is what not to say. It's generally best to avoid harassment of any kind. Last week I was on a train platform when a man asked whether I'd like to take a bath with him. I was bamboozled. I stood there, wondering whether my discomfort was my problem or his problem. (Was a bath necessarily sexual? I mean, he didn't specify a naked bath. Was he just a communal-bath enthusiast? Truly it's exhausting, giving people the benefit of the doubt.) Then I stopped wondering and told him to go bathe himself, or words to that effect. Then he told me, just before he got on the train, that I had "the lips of an 80-year-old". "An 80-year-old you want to take a bath with!" I shouted as the train sped away. It's not often trad is best, but as a general principle, just asking someone whether they'd like to go for a drink works fine.

Navigating online dating

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I follow several people on Twitter who use OkCupid and they often tweet messages they've received from randoms, which range from lewd to sinister. Anonymous browsing is a big problem, because anonymity is so, well, liberating. At least on Tinder there are no unwanted advances, because you can chat only if you both swiped right, ie liked the look of each other. I know a lot of satisfied Tinder users. So there's something infinitely depressing about hearing friends on older dating sites talk about waiting for blokes to get in touch with them, because they don't want to seem too keen or forward. If you're waiting to be approached, you're just being passive, and on the back foot from the get-go.

One friend signed up to what could possibly be the Least Emancipated Dating Site Of All Time: a site called sugardaddie.com (I kid you not) and said the experience wasn't quite the Clooney-in-Claridge's dream she'd envisaged. She met up with a 60-year-old hedge fund specialist (she's 34) who bought her half a lager, talked about his dog for a hundred years and then said: "There you go, you've got your free drink out of me. I suppose you are happy now?" She left. I should say this friend is an idol of mine – a single mum who escaped a violent relationship to raise her (amazing) son while working her ass off at several jobs. She says now he's 16, she's reached a point where she wants "looking after a bit". I told her I think she needs a butler, not a boyfriend.

And while we're on the subject of messaging, how many of us have sent or received a penis selfie? (A pelfie, if you will.) It fills me with a peculiar kind of boiling horror that in the past year or so, four of my female friends have received cockshots from men they barely know. This is a modern version of flashing, no? A version of flashing where you get to stay cosy, at home, half-naked in your favourite chair, a selection of instantly harassable women at your fingertips. Now that's what I call Saturday.
emma jane unsworth Photograph: Michael Thomas Jones

So who pays the bill?

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Take my hand and come with me now (dreamy music, rippling screen) as we travel back in time… Let's talk about paying the bill, holding the door open; the kind of old-school chivalry that makes knights of men and princesses of women. Princesses who need rescuing, usually. Now, because it's not always practical to "rescue them right back", like in Pretty Woman, this is a potentially perilous area. Is it disempowering to let someone pay the bill if they're richer and just happen to be a man? Is this not just, you know, socialism? *ducks* All right, all right. Sometimes I do let people pay (hell, sometimes I offer to pay, if I'm feeling flush) but on other occasions I have nearly bankrupted myself for the sake of my pride. Nobody's perfect.

As for holding the door – well, that's just manners. This is what we do for other human beings if we are not bastards. You can overanalyse these things. An old work colleague of mine went out for doughnuts one afternoon and returned in a rage because she'd bumped into a boy she fancied in the foyer and he'd made a big fuss of calling the lift for her. "Like I was incapable; an incapable woman," she said. I looked at the box of doughnuts on her desk. It was a big box. "Maybe it's just because you were a person carrying a big box," I said. She looked at me blankly. I looked at the doughnuts. "Misogyny is everywhere," I said. She nodded: "That's what I'm talking about!" She gave me a doughnut.

Beware the office romance

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When I was 26, I dated a man from my office who, on our fifth date, picked up a coathanger from the floor of my bedroom on his way to the bathroom, regarded it and said, wistfully: "You know, I never thought I'd go out with a woman who was a size 12…" You'll be pleased to know I used said coathanger to give him a thorough Egyptian burial. In my glorious mind. Alas, in boring old reality, I merely booted him out of my flat and avoided the work canteen for a few weeks. He was more senior than me, and what I have come to recognise, shamefully, as "work sexy" – a quality that had blinded me to his less sexy qualities, such as body fascism. Watch out for work-sexy; it's a power fetish whereby the imbalance doesn't need inventing; it's there for the taking. He lives in south-east Asia now. I hope he's blissfully happy.

We need to talk about grooming

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No, not that kind. I'm talking about makeup, hair, waxes, frocks. There's obviously a line between the way you look making you feel good, and doing something because you feel you should. A friend of mine, disrobing with a man she'd just met, found herself apologising for her unkempt bikini line, then heard herself and started to get angry, effectively destroying the moment. He tried to recover things by saying: "I like what you've done down there", which just made things worse.

Can you "own" your bikini wax? Sure. Although most of the single women I know would rather own their own homes. I don't mind what a woman wants to do with her body and any date who does, and who openly disses your look, should be swiftly dispatched. Last year, a French holiday romance killed the pillow talk when he whispered: "You know, you can always spot English girls abroad because they have pot bellies…"

Oui, monsieur! This one also has legs.

Written by:
Emma Jane Unsworth
The Guardian, Saturday 28 June 2014
• Emma Jane Unsworth's second novel, Animals, is published by Canongate.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/28/feminist-dating-emma-jane-unsworth?CMP=fb_gu