As a woman I’ve heard it all. “You need to play hard to get”, “don’t text or call him he needs to do it”, “he needs to ask you out every time”, “he should be the one to propose”. A lot of these sayings come from the belief that women are “masculine”, “desperate”, or “sluts” if they dare to show interest.

In my opinion all of this is useless because why should certain acts of love be gendered? Gendering it make it more complicated than it should be. I saw a video about a woman proposing to her boyfriend and the guy doing the same right after. It turns out the whole thing was staged. The comments were rife with internalized misogyny from other women.

I also hear the sentiment from women that women shouldn’t ask men out because men will say yes to anyone because they struggle in dating. I don’t agree with this because a man could like a woman but not ask her out due to fear. Not only that, you need to be able to discern if someone is being serious about you or not. A guy could pursue a woman to make her think he’s serious about her, when really he just wants to her get in her pants. I also don’t like this sentiment because it generalizes men as dishonest.

I believe if more women made the first move things would be better in the dating scene. Men are in a spot where either they risk rejection or they stay alone which can take a toll on their mental health. If we want equality us women should stop shaming other women for pursuing men.