No you don't. Agreeing to a date is not agreeing to a marriage or a relationship. It's a date, a social event, not a permanent arrangement.

There are still valid reasons for men to pay, at least for the first date. They're the ones that asked. If you're asking someone to spend time with you instead of doing something else, you're agreeing to host. It's that simple. You wouldn't ask a buddy to be part of a D&D group and then expect them to provide the venue and buy everyone sirloins. That's just rude.

If you don't want to host, then either learn to communicate needs and expectations better to start off with or don't ask to host social engagement. Men can choose to wait to be asked out, learn to signal interest, put themselves in someone's path to be noticed, etc.

You're being very hypocritical here. If there's no "Patriarchy lite" as you call it, that includes men's behavior too. Start looking and behaving in ways that women would want to ask you out instead of flapping around like scrub jays having a fit and maybe you'd get that chance to be appreciated.