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I'm a feminist and I love being romanced. I am fortunate in that I'm married to a woman who's willing to make little romantic gestures for me, even after five years together. I do the same for her, but in a different way because of the different roles we play in our relationship.
One thing that gets lost with the idea of equal treatment is that equal does not mean the same. Equal treatment is about allocating resources in such a way that the needs of both partners are met. Equal is about balancing how we accommodate a partner's needs with meeting one's own needs.
Do I get Grace flowers or other token gifts as often as she does me? Nope. We're different people, and I need that sort of thing more than she does; she's much more self contained than I am. At the same time, I'm much more likely to dress up in lingerie and model that for her or fix her a special treat.
She buys the lingerie, I wear it. We're acting differently, but it's something that meets both of our needs in different ways.
Treating each other equally isn't about being the same. It's about expending effort to make sure your partner's needs are met as often as your own. Sometimes there are things that benefit both.
Men and women are, on average, different in their behaviors and emotional, romantic, and sexual needs. For women, on average, sex has a larger emotional component to it than for men. There is, of course, a much larger individual variance within the sexes that is more important than this, which is to say that even more than the sexes are different, people are different.
Look at your partner as an individual, and balance her needs against your own, without worrying about the degree to which those fit or break some stereotype.
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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.
~Steven Colbert
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