"With that in mind, it's time, as the Americans say, for some real talk."
And that's when I clicked "close tab," as the Americans say. We get it, England: you're all super-tough Cockney rhyming slang Labour agitators when you're not fishwifing navvies down the pub, what?
The link is messed up. (I was able to get it to open because of my tech skills, but other commenters may struggle.)
I like this:
Young men do not worry about how they will achieve a "work-life balance", nor does the "life" aspect of that equation translate to "partnership and childcare". When commentators speak of women's "work-life balance", they're not talking about how much time a woman will have, at the end of the day, to work on her memoirs, or travel the world, or spend time with her friends. "Life", for women, is envisioned as a long trajectory towards marriage. "Life", for men, is meant to be bigger than that.
For a lot of men "work-life balance" does mean "time to spend on domestic duties/childcare", but I agree that for women it seems the phrase is used almost exclusively with that meaning. Whereas for many men, it just means having adequate time for their hobbies.
here is the link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/02/maybe-you-should-just-be-single
The dating is horrible for women in their twenties thing seems pretty new. Maybe triggered by ratio of college educated men women
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/07/why-college-educated-women-can-t-find-love.html
(Haven't read the link yet. Also probably Nick's right about the focus being too narrow.)
I'll be curious to know what you make of it when you do read it -- because I know you've talked about some of those issues before.
Also, it does make sense why she's addressing it to women in their 20s as her primary audience. Here arguments do ultimately boil down to (1) being single can allow your more time to pursue personal goals (and I also very much liked the bit that urple mentions in 4), (2) many men in their 20s are lousy romantic partners and potentially lousy people, and (3) the emphasis that society places on women seeking relationships can cause women to overprioritize relationships and twist themselves into knots trying to make them work.
All of those are things worth saying, and they're also things that have been said before. I think Laurie Penny does a good job of making those points on an abstract level and also drawing on her own life experience. So it makes sense that the essay is most addressed to people who are like Penny's younger self.
1) For a story about the virtues of being a single woman, way too much (most?) of the article was about what jerks most men are. It is what I would expect from Penny, pandering.
2) I have on this very blog mentioned that a good 30-40% of Japanese women are never-been-married all the way pushing age 40, and quite probably 25% are expected to never marry. The comparable UK-US numbers are around 10-15%
3) And of course these young Japanese women mention that Japanese men are jerks and social roles are oppressive, but they also focus much more on the free time, discretionary income, private living space, career opportunities, chances to travel, friendships with women, and with men when relationships are not in the picture ...and many other virtues of being single that would disappear in even the most accommodating of relationships. They like being single enough to give up dating and dreaming of marriage, although they sometimes pretend otherwise.
4) AFAICT, the Japanese men are the ones to focus on the difficulty of relationships and maintaining a career and pleasing a woman at the same time and although reconciled they seem sadder and more regretful.
The women seem happy, and indifferent to the Patriarchy.
Young men do not worry about how they will achieve a "work-life balance",
?
I should add, when I read the article I thought that it was exactly the sort of thing that would have generated many comments on unfogged circa 2007-08, and I'm curious to see whether there's still much to talk about now that the commentariat has aged.
I really enjoyed being single and dating/messing about with various guys when I wasn't in a relationship! Probably helps that I wasn't certain I wanted to ever settle down and have a kid or more. But I've also really enjoyed being with my better half and god knows I'm nauseatingly enthusiastic about my stepkids and son. I think I'm just easy to please on this front.
The New Statesman is generally not pleasing to me, however, so won't be clicking on the link sorry nick and heebie!
I'm sure I would enjoy being single more if it involved messing about with various women, rather than messing about with no women.
8: Yeah, reading these kind of articles led me to the inescapable conclusion that I'm not a man.
Certainly not young either, so I guess it's no surprise that it doesn't apply to me.
Many young women are already parents or carers.
I'm definitely older than she is, but this is a factor for sure. I have four free nights a month. At this point, I spend two with Punchy in a good month and usually the other two going to bed at 7 pm or something ridiculous but wonderful. I'm doing as much for myself and my self-improvement as I could possibly do (read! knit! buy more pens!) but there are only so many hours in the day.
now that the commentariat has aged.
Aged, and married with children. No offense intended, but I hope I don't have to pretend to anything more than acceptance.
Anime:Shirobako is a little sugercoated but mostly realistic best anime of the year of 2015. About a small broke anime production company trying to make a comeback and build a reputation, focusing on 5 young women, around twenty, and one in particular, a production assistant working her way up. As is realistic the majority of workers are young women, with some people in the thirties and forties, and a few older.
They love love love their work, see it as a mission, and work 16 hour days for miserable pay. (Piecework, and mosr artists make less than minimum wage. To survive, they never stop drawing)
The people in their 40s are mostly divorced. There are no as in zero mentions of romance or relationships, and no regrets. There are a lot in their thirties still unmarried in small apartments.
Be nice if pay was better, but otherwise looks ideal to me. Not even recognition, they want achievement. Accomplishment. Self-respect.
7 (2) et seq: It's complicated, but mainly for economic reasons. Until very recently, in Japan there was no expectation that women would be able to achieve a work-life balance if they married and had children. Given that binary choice between a career in a company and a career as a housewife/mother (and in Japan that is a well-defined career), of course a large number of educated women will and do choose the former. It's not that they don't have regrets, it's that they're pragmatic about them.
The government is trying to encourage more women to go back into the labour force, but women aren't buying it. I had plenty of married Japanese women friends who would have loved to go back to their pre-motherhood professional roles. But companies won't rehire them in permanent positions, since they can't work the same long hours as male or unmarried female employees, and so they're stuck working part time for minimum pay with no chance of promotion. Small wonder that so few can be bothered, and that ambitious younger women who see that happening to their seniors decide that a family isn't worth the cost.
Tangentially, this is a wonderful illustration of just how far Japan has to go. You'd think that a prefectural program to empower women in business would, you know, actually show one on its website ...
There are simply no greater social pressures than the ones about pairing up, wanting love and children. None more powerful. No doubt married with children is great some of the time, fun not so awful hard.
But not 90% of the time, not for 90% of people, although sunk costs here are a psychic and social pressure.
I no more have to buy self reporting in this instance than I have to believe that the guys in time of war really really do want to go die for their country.
They are comparable. The Patriarchy speaks through us all, and speaks loudest in interpersonal relationships, the most usual behavior, and the least questioned beliefs and attitudes.
Whatever. Bye. Married with children talk about the virtues of being single. Carry on.
I might be unusual in that I'm not sure I want to get into a serious relationship and I'm quite sure I don't want to spend much more time on other people than I do already. The only thing that's kept me from deleting my okcupid profile is that then I'd have to make another one if I decided to try harder at actually dating. I can't really do hypotheticals about what I'd do if I were in this situation without kids because without kids I could have gotten out of the last relationship years sooner and wouldn't be where I am today. I guess I'm not really saying anything useful, but I have gone back and looked at some of the old relationship threads here.
I've surely mentioned before that I also regret not having spent more time unattached--from my first kiss to this day, a span of some 27 years now, I've been unattached* for literally 17.5 months, 4 of which I spent sad/in denial about being dumped by my HS GF. Some of that was the best time of my life.
OTOH, some of that also included a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing that I basically never felt while in my 2 healthy relationships (and I don't think I felt much while with BOGF either). There was/is always a part of me that, when I go to bed alone at the end of the night, feels that t's very likely that I'm alone because I'm deeply flawed and nobody likes me. Which I suppose is what therapy's for. But being happily married is cheaper.
*either dating or not-dating, but not monogamous
I love that the other post people are commenting on is Regrets.
I have really enjoyed being single for the last 3 years, even though I am not a 20 something woman.
11: Have you considered boats?
Canonically, that does not improve one's chances of messing around with women, I think.
Indeed. I was thinking as an alternative pleasure, but you are presumably doing all right on that front. I hope things on the other get much better for you.
I guess this is the thread to note that I think I'm now at half a dozen married men in the neighborhood who've expressed interest in me. Is there a thing where you think someone might be willing to help you cheat on your wife but not until she herself is single? That would not have occurred to me but apparently does to other people.
Is there a thing where you think someone might be willing to help you cheat on your wife but not until she herself is single?
That is an odd concept of propriety. "I wouldn't think to ask Thorn to cheat on her partner, but don't think she'd have a problem with me wanting to cheat on my partner."
22, 23: I don't think it's so outlandish to see a distinction*. A married person cheating with another married (or coupled, whevs) person is asking that person to be dishonest to two people, as well as doing so themselves. Cheating with a single means that the single is not breaking any personal vows, and may not care about the cheater's vows (which are classically characterized as dead letter).
That said, asking someone in the neighborhood is skeevy as hell, since it's guaranteeing that the single has at least a nodding acquaintance with the victim.
This is all predicated on bourgeois values, but that's what we're discussing. In some other, more "sophisticated" milieu, one would have to adjust assumptions and judgments.
*set aside the specifics of approaching Thorn, who's a recently-separated (divorced? Unsure of status) lesbian, not some unattached heterosexual just moved into the neighborhood
I suspect it has less to do with a sense of propriety and more to do with seeing single people as "available" and potentially interested. I'm sure they'd probably have been interested if, while still coupled, you had approached them.
Also: really, half a dozen?? Yikes. I guess maybe that's a normal thing for women to experience, but it seems insanely high.
16.1, 17: I went through my 20s single, and it was pretty good. By my mid-20s, I'd gotten life pretty well arranged: a nice apartment with a friend, clean, and filled with friends a few times a week.
I was enjoying life and generally happy, and not really emotionally available for romance (but in denial about that). Every six months or so, I'd get weird "Why am I still single? Am I so unloveable?" jags that'd rock my normally serene self confidence for a few days or a week.
I was single mostly because I wasn't trying so hard--I understood the drawback part of being a couple, the compromises and giving in on your priorities. But even with a good life, those jags would show up once or twice a year and challenge me: Are you really happy, or just settling? Because we all know that true happiness is only possible in a "real" relationship...
A good friend of AB's is a fellow parent at Kai's school whose husband OD'd on heroin a couple years ago. She's quite attractive*, and tells tales of unsuccessful Tindering and such. I can't imagine how many neighbors and fathers from school have tried to make a move. I never even thought of it before, but after 22....
*not at all important, but this is fascinating to me: there's another friend of ours who is also quite attractive. IRL, I'd say they're both about equally attractive, which is to say head-turningly so. But on the FB, the former appears absolutely gorgeous, and the latter just on the attractive side of normal. I mean, not that I didn't know that photogenic people exist, it's just striking to me for whatever reason. They're both mothers, so it's not like one posts only carefully composed, well-lit glamour shots, while the other is a blur chasing after a child. Just kind of weird.
They're both mothers, so it's not like one posts only carefully composed, well-lit glamour shots, while the other is a blur chasing after a child
Technically, they could both be mothers and one only post well-lit glamour shots and the other be a blur etc.
My surprise at the 'half a dozen' number wasn't meant to imply anything at all about thorn's level of attractiveness. She's very hot, and if I was a married man in her neighborhood looking to have an affair with a neighbor, I'd certainly hit on her. My surprise was just that there were so many married men in her neighborhood who are openly looking to have an affair with a neighbor. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I was.
Oh god, maybe this is as weird as I thought and I shouldn't have said anything! A friend I told has suggested that because I'm queer I'm presumably going to be less judgmental and that may come into the calculus. (In all but I think one instance they don't know I've ever had a relationship with a man, so it's not that they're counting that.) And I'm not counting the ubiquitous "Oh, if you and your girlfriend ever want a third..." sort of comment that happens constantly. Mostly it's been relatively classy and left details unstated, the exception being one guy who lives close enough that his initial gross pickup line was asking whether I thought the baby monitors would reach from my house to his or vice versa, though that initial foray was pre-breakup and I keep hoping he'll give up.
There's really nothing that interesting about how I look and I don't take care of myself or anything like that, though presumably I give off some sort of vibe? Certainly the wives are much more attractive than I am. It's just breasts plus my being single (if that matters) plus not straight (ditto) plus I guess stereotypical sexual problems in their relationships? I thought it was funny when I got facebook birthday messages from all the wives and none of the husbands, but then there were comments from a sixth guy this weekend while I was getting groceries before Lee brought the girls back and that sort of put me over the edge.
Further to 30.2, that I have kids and thus obligations and so on is also probably something that makes it seem achievable? That I'll understand why they can't leave their families or that I too will have something to lose? I've thought about asking, but that seems like it would then invite more conversations I don't really want to have. So I don't know.
Hi, Thorn. Have you been working out? You look great!
Wait, you are facebook friends with your neighbors?
Nobody has been stupid enough to try to compliment me on my looks UNTIL NOW. The real point is that nosflow has it tougher in terms of options (wanted or not) because patriarchy, which is sort of what he was saying to dq in the first place.
And yes, urple, I generally accept friend requests from people I know in real life unless I really hate them, so several teachers at the school, quite a few neighbors, some community activists and people involved in local government. Is your wife friends with any neighbors? I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat gendered, but it may also be that our neighborhood is very big on the neighborhood identity and so forth.
36 to "Is your wife friends with any neighbors?"
22. As a former philanderer, this is crazy. Unhappily partnered, seeking affair with a similarly unhappily partnered lady is a much better idea than seeking an affair with a single woman. Possibly these guys don't mean what they say, or they're bad at thinking things through?
"Hey hot stuff, did you know you can listen to your baby monitor from my sex chamber" is totally classy, if the word "classy" has any meaning.
But our neighborhood is definitely not big on the neighborhood identity thing. I don't know any neighbors. I used to know the people next door, but they moved.
Actually now that I think about it, my neighborhood may be big into the neighborhood identity thing, and possibly I'm just not invited.
I know it's too far for the baby monitors to reach but I do have a Diaper Genie in the attic. If you know what I mean.
38: That's why I think having three kids must count for that or something. Your way makes a lot more sense to me. But that's what makes me think there must be something weird about my situation or personality. At any rate, I'm basically not the kind of single the article is about.
I'm told that when it was first created, my neighborhood was a hotbed (*cough*) of wife-swapping and adultery in general. As far as I know, it isn't like that today.
I'm basically not the kind of single the article is about.
I was going to say; this thread is fairly conclusive evidence of the fact that the commentariat has aged. Which is not intended as a judgement, but apparently nobody feels like the article speaks to anything that they are working on in their own life*/**.
*Except nosflow, who finds it dispiriting.
** I appreciated the article, but I don't know that I have much to add other than nodding along. I've spent plenty of time single in my life and don't regret it, even though, like nosflow, that time did not involve messing around with multiple women.
39: "Did you know you can listen to your baby monitor from my sex grotto" would be classy. "Sex chamber" is just gauche.
*Except nosflow, who finds it dispiriting.
I didn't read the article.
Definitely aged. Getting partnered was my main concern for a decade, and getting comfortable with being single didn't happen until the last year or so of that. I figured out how to have good roommates and separate lovers and that worked pretty well for staying happy.
But now I've got nothing to contribute but "sorry to hear it, single people. Therapy worked for me.".
I found the article 80% annoying and poorly thought-out/argued. The 20% that seemed interesting was her description of women who are diligently doing huge amounts of emotional labor, organizing, support, etc, for their male partners and getting a mixed dose of entitlement and resentment in return.
That's definitely a phenomenon that I've witnessed, and while it can run in the reverse, I think it's more often a female/male thing. Perhaps because women are SO thoroughly acculturated in thousands of ways to EXPECT relationships to be work, and to view emotional labor as the mandatory price for domestic partnership and happiness?
Eh. I don't know. It's still a tiny fraction of the relationships I've witnessed, and it does seem to be somewhat age-bound (i.e., men get out of their 20s and somewhat grow out of it). And I'm a counter-example -- partnered with someone who does far more emotional labor than I do.
Huh. It's weird (patriarchal?) that they'd assume as a lesbian you'd be interested in them. I can see how it would both add to your allure for a certain type of man (not that you're not alluring enough as it is), but also be less of a threat to their marriage. (Oh no honey, I'm not going to leave you, she's a lesbian.)
My reaction to the article was the same as 51's, but that's probably because I'm feeling crotchety. Like, being single is important if the alternative is dating an emotionally needy manchild, but it's possible to find a man who's not a jerk in your 20s, and it's not weird to desire love.* I say this as a woman who married and divorced an emotionally stunted manchild in her 20s, so maybe I'm not the best to talk. Although in fairness, the marriage in large part broke up because I refused to compromise on doing what I wanted or to provide the appropriate level of support, because feminism.
*Like, love and feminism don't have to be so opposed.
apparently nobody feels like the article speaks to anything that they are working on in their own life*/**.
*Except nosflow, who finds it dispiriting.
And me! I recognize a lot of what she's talking about, albeit more from observing other people's lives than living mine. I don't find it particularly dispiriting, though.
I found the article 80% annoying and poorly thought-out/argued.
I feel like more than 20% of it is description of her personal experiences, which might fall into the "annoying" category, but you also might need a third category.
But, okay, let me pick out something that I liked. This isn't an argument, but I appreciated this:
I'm not single right now. It's sad that I felt I had to wait until that was the case before publishing a post like this. Part of me, I suspect, wanted to justify myself, to prove to you that I could attained the love of a man-shaped human, and thereby be an acceptable female. I wanted to wait and see if I felt the same way from the other side of five years without a primary partner. It turns out that I do.
You see, I don't believe that my relationship constitutes a happy ending. I don't want a "happy ending". I don't want an ending at all, particularly not while I'm still in my goddamn twenties--I want a long life full of work and adventure. I absolutely don't see partnership as the end of that adventure. And I still believe that being single is the right choice for a great many young women.
Incidentally, this:
Perhaps because women are SO thoroughly acculturated in thousands of ways to EXPECT relationships to be work, and to view emotional labor as the mandatory price for domestic partnership and happiness?
Matches precisely one of the things that she says:
Women, by contrast, learn from an early age that love is work. That in order to be loved, we will need to work hard, and if we want to stay loved we will need to work harder. We take care of people, soothe hurt feelings, organise chaotic lives and care for men who never learned to care for themselves, regardless of whether or not we're constitutionally suited for such work. We do this because we are told that if we don't, we will die alone and nobody will find us until an army of cats has eaten all the skin off our faces.
aged
I guess. I wasn't interested in self-absorbed twenty somethings decades ago. I find it hard to generalize, personally I fall back to viewing the personal as political only as a last resort,. I see it as a contemptuous perspective usually.
(i.e., men get out of their 20s and somewhat grow out of it)
"So, I hear there's an article out about about how twenty-something women should date thirty-something men. Ladeez."
To add a data point: I'm a twenty-something man who's not been in a relationship for ten years, but fortunately I prefer being single. I certainly miss fooling around, though as it happens I also prefer to only make a mess within the context of a romantic entanglement, or at least while in a friendship that has the potential to become so entangled. Ah well, you can't have it all. (If you did, where would you take it out on a date?) Similarly, I'd enjoy having more money, but I enjoy not working even more.
I can't say I envy my female peers. It seems they're under greater external pressure, and it's not like a ton of twenty-ish dudes are great prizes. Who knows, maybe for more and more of us adulthood does begin at thirty.
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NMM to brilliant Polish director Andrzej Żuławski. Damn. Damn Damn.
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58: I loved Possession
The Jonathan Capehart Saga ...about Sanders' civil rights background, attempts to discredit Sanders with blacks immediately after New Hampshire.
Jonathan Capehart is a writer for the Washington Post, and last Thursday, he wrote an opinion piece called "Stop sending around this photo of 'Bernie Sanders."
(Assume from article til noted)
Capehart's live-in partner is Nick Schmit, who was the travel compliance director for Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign
In December 2004, Capehart joined the global public relations company Hill & Knowlton as a Senior Vice President and senior counselor of public affairs.
...switch to McManus
Gay, Clinton supporter, part of moneyed elite, morally corrupt...Neoliberalism as identity politics, and why I don't pay attention to American "intersectionality."
Identity politics is a profit-making enterprise in America and is in no way progressive or egalitarian.