Dating is Dead: Part II

And if she asks you why you can tell her that I told you,

That I'm tired of Castles in the Air.

I've got a dream I want the world to share in castle walls,

Just leave me to despair.

~Don McLean

The following is the second installment of a post started last week. You will need to read the first post to understand this one.

The true tale I will now share is a rather extreme example; however I think the story establishes a certain principle.

I remember a time that I met a professor in his office to get him to sign a sort of permission slip (I am trying to be vague here to protect the innocent). He did not know me from a hole in the head, as I came from a rather large general ed class with multiple sections. The first inquiry was my name. He then signed the paper I needed signed. He then asked me if I was going on lots of dates. As I had literally been home for a mission about two months, I had not reached the quota of dating rates he was looking for. He then laid into me about "hanging out" and how it was such a pernicious evil and I needed to "repent and stop hanging out." He literally used the word "repent." And he was serious. He cared more about if I was "going on lots of dates" or not than he did about my work in his class, my major, or who I was as a person. Why is our society like that? This is not how to lead. This is not how to mentor.

To this man it was black and white. You either are dating someone, or you need to pray for forgiveness in sack cloth and ashes. There is no in between. You either kill whales, or you work for Greenpeace. You either watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood or you are a guest on Jerry Springer.

For just a moment, let's assume that hanging out is prodigiously endemic among singles. One  reason that some have suggested for the rise in "hanging out" is that young people do not know how to date. A romantic discourse of Jane Austen-like proportions  usually follows. These persons on the date-and-mate soap box fawn and foam over "how it used to be:" The froo-froo and hand-kissing, the carriage rides and courtship. Marriage in view, oh the joy! (All we can hope is that these people don't also want the accompanying corsets and layered petticoats). Yet where is the sense and sensibility in these frivolous tales and rules of courtship? It is much more appealing to meet someone of the opposite gender in a setting where you do not need to continuously be referring to a booklet of rules on how to act. The endless confusions on when (and if) to open all doors, where to stand, how to stand, when to bow, how to bow, how to dress, what to text, when to text, how to text, how to approach the door, how to leave the door.....yadda yadda yadda, becomes rather hard to keep track of. Honestly, some of this has become a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of thing.  And that is why people hang out.* It is an opportunity to meet on equal terms and strip away the facade of frivolities.

The last date hang out "meeting" (But not a 미팅) that I had with a girl was rather nice in this regard. We were just two people doing something together. There was no need to put a sociological title on it. Neither of us cared about what it was to be called. We did not need to go and write down in our little quota book what good people we were. Because we came from different cultures, we were forced to just "be." Neither of us felt the need to carry on some sort of ritualistic song and dance from yesteryear. I know that some of you may enjoy these dating rituals and rules. I do not. I find it petty and annoying. Perhaps my lack of reticence in this regard will be indeed damnable and all the girls in my area will black list me. In fact, some already have begun the paper work.

I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1811

There are many well intentioned people in this dating versus hanging out debate who exacerbate the problem of the dating facade with qualifying criterion, checklists, and catch phrases. While such practices may at times lead to better quantification of dates, they unintentionally also often lead to poorer qualitative results. Or, at the very least, they add yet another layer to the game of social charlatanism. 

Now take a big huge breath. Much blasphemy was spoken above. The progeny and the issue have been disgraced. Yet shall we not say that "nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility[?] It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

Actual footage of a true story.

I will hasten to point out that there are indeed men that hang out in inappropriate proportions and ways. Absolutely. But as I have said before, I very very rarely hang out. Maybe I am an outlier. I also hasten to point out that the type of hanging out that Elder Oaks is addressing in the 2005 talk requires the participation of women. Sometimes they are even the instigators. There have been a couple of instances where girls have actually rejected going on a date with me so they could hang out.** (Facebook is a marvelous reconnaissance tool. Yes, I can see your photos of you on your "spontaneous" movie night). Overall I feel that the role of women in hanging out has been incorrectly portrayed in the past. At times, hanging out is made to sound like it is a bunch of villainous hungry men with bazookas chasing the women and the poor widdle picked-on girls need to lock their doors and bunker down (Perhaps to watch a wonderful documentary like Twilight?). Not so. This is a bit of an iconoclastic view of course, but here are a few of my thoughts.

I am a member of group on Facebook that different people can post about activities they are doing and invite others to join them. I sifted through the last 50 posts advertising an opportunity to hang out. I ignored posts that were advertisements for an official activity relative to the group (aka "Sanctioned hanging out") and or posts pertaining to someone's job. There were 30 solicitations from men. There were 20 solicitations from women. So hang out solicitations were 60% to 40% in favor of men. In all but three of the posts where food was part of the hanging out, men were either equal providers or sole providers of such. One other interesting thing I noticed was that three men in the group contributed to 83.333% of the hang out solicitations from men. The women on the other hand were much more distributed in their hang out invitations, with no girl posting to hang out more than three times. 

So what does all of this mean? Who knows. I think it did demonstrate that girls also instigate hanging out to a statistically (and practically) significant degree. I also believe it shows that, in general, men in this group are not just free loading off of the women for food. It was interesting as well to note that a set of only three men comprised a far majority of the invitations to hang out. I will refrain from attempting to further interpret these findings. Who knows what it actually means. But I think it shows that the accusations of men forcing the ladies into hanging out and providing the food are not as well founded as some want to have us believe. Insinuation that I freeload off of the single women in my area is insulting and ridiculous.

A few of you know El Toque. Remember El Toque (This is like the Alamo, but with El Toque). No girl ever gave him one crumb from beneath the cushions of her precious little sofa. El Toque fed people again and again without reciprocation and it disappoints me when he is labeled as a freeloading "single man."

This rant will be continued next week.

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*There is scarcely room to speak on such topics here, but there are maybe about 30,078,103 levels of hanging out. Some types of hanging out can be way more productive than others. But I think that too often we get this image of hanging out as some overweight man in a wife beater, yelling at his woman to bring him another beverage in a can, and to make it snappy because the Celtics only called a 20-second timeout instead of a full. Oh, and after the game he is going to play Halo for a couple hours, so bring him a bag of Cheetos. Although, I really do not hang out anyway, so maybe that actually is what it is like. 

**A girl of course has every right to say no to a date. But then it would obviously be inappropriate to tell the bishop that the boys in your ward refuse to ask you on dates. Because that would be lying.