I couldn't tell if this was a troll thread or not but I'd like to offer these points for consideration.
1) Does this question apply to previous generations of women as well? For example, is it necessary to question why women like our mothers and grandmothers likely liked to be taken out as well? If so, what reasons do you think they were? Were they valid in their desires then? Were their reasons more valid than the desires of women in this generation? Do the older men in your family have this same question?
2) Going out is not necessarily attention-seeking, though I'm sure some may be. For ladies, being in public ensures us a certain level of safety in the beginning stages of dating, I think. I really didn't think this is something that needed to be explained, but hey, it's a new day.
3) The lady may actually just want to get to know you understand different circumstances, to see how you handle yourself as a PERSON and a man. It would be hard to accomplish this by just staying at home with Netflix every single time, especially in the beginning.
I remember one date I had when I was in college - well before this era of "Netflix and chill". I was 20, and the man was 25. For our first date, he came to pick me up from my mother's house. When he came in, he was dressed very nicely - like, in a nice suit. Apart from going to prom, this was a first for me - to see a man present himself so formally, especially since we were not going anywhere very fancy.
My mother asked him for his license so she could verify his identify and wrote down all his info. He was cool with it.
The most memorable part of that night though was on our way to eat, on the freeway, he saw a family with car trouble on the shoulder. He pulled over, got out and walked back there to offer them help, all while wearing this suit. Plus, it was nighttime. They turned him down lol but I remember thinking that was so crazy. Everything about him was strange (in a good way) because I had never seen a man in my age group carry himself in that way. I'm not sure any of these are behaviors I could have observed in him by us just staying home.
3) The lady may just want to share her interests with you or get to know yours as well. I was a bookworm in college so when dating my friend/husband, I asked him to show me "his" world, per se. Going out sometimes meant going to a place I wanted to learn about, like a tattoo shop or a strip club, for instance - places I would otherwise have no need to visit but was curious about. In turn, I might ask him to come to a bookstore or cemetery with me, so I could show him a little about me. Plus, we were broke college students and so our ideas had to be creative. The intent was still to get to know one another.
And if you are honest, to get to really know someone - anyone in life, not just a romantic partner, you need to observe her/him in an array of different environments and under a lot of different types of circumstances.