Margaret Leroy - Some Girls Do

Why Women Do – and Don’t –

Make the First Move

HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 1998

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1997

Copyright © Margaret Leroy 1997

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780002555920

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007484942

Version: 2016-06-20

Cover

Title Page MARGARET LEROY Some Girls Do Why Women Do – and Don’t – Make the First Move

Copyright Copyright Copyright CHAPTER 1: COURTSHIP TODAY CHAPTER 2: WOMEN WHO DO CHAPTER 3: WOMEN’S FEARS CHAPTER 4: MEN’S DOUBTS CHAPTER 5: MYTHOLOGIES CHAPTER 6: LOOKS AND SMILES CHAPTER 7: DO WOMEN SAY NO AND MEAN YES? CHAPTER 8: MONEY CHAPTER 9: DANGER CHAPTER 10: HOW TO References Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF Published by HarperCollins Publishers 1998 First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1997 Copyright © Margaret Leroy 1997 The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Source ISBN: 9780002555920 Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007484942 Version: 2016-06-20

CHAPTER 1: COURTSHIP TODAY

CHAPTER 2: WOMEN WHO DO

CHAPTER 3: WOMEN’S FEARS

CHAPTER 4: MEN’S DOUBTS

CHAPTER 5: MYTHOLOGIES

CHAPTER 6: LOOKS AND SMILES

CHAPTER 7: DO WOMEN SAY NO AND MEAN YES?

CHAPTER 8: MONEY

CHAPTER 9: DANGER

CHAPTER 10: HOW TO

References

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

I ASKmen out,’ said Emma. ‘I’m doing my bit. I can’t understand why more women don’t do it. It feels so good to go out with somebody you’ve chosen.’

Emma is a teacher in her early twenties. She’s warm and friendly – but not unusually assertive. She’s pretty – but not particularly confident about her appearance: like so many women, she’s forever struggling to lose weight. She enjoys her sex-life – but she’s not particularly sexually self-assured. In most ways, she’s as full of self-doubt as the rest of us. Yet she asks men out: she finds it easy: and making the first move is a source of real pleasure in her life. She relishes her sense of achievement when she thinks, I chose him.

My conversation with Emma was the genesis of this book. It set me thinking how extraordinary it is that so few women make this move. Why is it still so difficult? What could help us to change?

Since talking to Emma, I’ve asked all the women I’ve met if they’ve ever asked a man out. All of them have wanted to – but few have ever done so: most said, ‘I simply couldn’t …’. Some of these women edit glossy magazines or manage social services teams or work in busy casualty departments. They feel strong, autonomous, entitled. In every other area of their lives, they’re in control: they shape what happens to them. But this they wouldn’t do. Unlike Emma, they don’t think it would feel good, and they can understand why more women don’t do it.

Even women in the age-group where it’s often assumed that sexual patterns are changing most rapidly said the same. Nineteen-year-old Natalie told me: ‘I do leave it up to the lad to make the first move – with telephone calls, the first kiss, everything – and if they don’t do it, well then it’s tough cheese isn’t it?’ Lucy, aged fifteen, said: ‘Girls could, yeah – they don’t though … It’s just that nobody does. I think it would be good but no-one has the courage to.’

There are a few Emmas in every age group, of course. Most of the men I talked to had been asked out by a woman – but usually only once or twice.

Women’s reluctance to ask men out does seem amazing. Over the past few decades, so much has changed in our sexual behaviour. Women have been setting limits and drawing lines in the sand. We’ve said no to male sexual violence and attempted to outlaw the darker expressions of male sexual initiative by establishing rape-crisis centres, taking action on child sexual abuse, legislating against sexual harassment. Some women have sought to set the sexual agenda with that effective act of vengeance, the kiss and tell, with its ‘That’s no way to treat a lady’ subtext. And many of us have been exploring our own sexuality – by reading collections of female fantasies, or going to orgasm workshops, or buying ‘Black Lace’ books, or photographing the male nude, or queuing up to scream at the Chippendales.

Most notably for this book, women have been imposing their own agenda on courtship by highlighting the risk of sexual violence within a dating relationship. This is the sexual change that is causing most controversy. It’s been suggested, most notably by Katie Roiphe in her book The Morning After , that awareness of the possibility of date rape creates a climate of fear which makes it harder for men and women to get close. As Martin Amis told an audience at Princeton University, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can change your mind before, even during, but just not after sex’. 1 The worry is that now women are changing their minds afterwards, and that sometimes the men involved will be wrongfully blamed – like Austen Donellan, who was threatened with expulsion from university after a woman he’d slept with claimed he’d raped her. Wisely he chose to be tried in a public court, and was acquitted.

But there were certainly casualties too under the old dispensation. And by and large it surely makes sense to see the date-rape panic as part of something bigger, and something to be celebrated. Our questioning of the old sexual certainties is part of a general move towards more egalitarian ways of relating, as we strive for gender equality in so many areas of our lives.