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The deficient single woman

Chally is a former Feministe staffer. She writes at Zero at the Bone.

I’m really quite troubled by the centring of romantic/sexual relationships at the expense of all other ways of organising lives. Right now, I’m going to explore this in terms of single women being seen as deficient.

I’ve seen so many divorced and older single women pushed out of their social worlds. They’ve been encouraged to build social lives around “couple friends,” and once or if there’s no partner, well. Single men, as far as I’ve seen, don’t seem to face the same freezing out. Wives, after all, are taught to fear the stealing of their husbands, and that they ought to do everything they can to keep them. This is an intensely heteronormative story, too, obviously.

What’s a single lady to do? Get fixed up quickly, of course – although there’ll still be something wrong with you if you are only settling down with someone later in life, or maybe this is a pale shadow of the real life you had with your first husband, because first is always best, or there’s something wrong with you if your presumed previous relationship failed, because ending always represents failure. You really can’t win, so you’d better keep out of social sight and mind.

Singleness is treated as something to be fixed. It’s treated as a state one would surely want to change as quickly as possible. If you’re single, you’re automatically miserable, and everyone’s going to try and figure out what’s wrong with you – there’s nothing wrong with your former gentleman callers, of course. There’s no room for you to be single and happy or indifferent. The romantic narrative of the West has no way to deal with women who aren’t seeking a man, or holding on to one. It definitely doesn’t know how to deal with women who don’t experience romantic or sexual desire. Single womanhood as a sustained and satisfying state just doesn’t compute for a lot of people.

Part of overcoming the shoving aside and suspicion of single women would be, well, to first stop devaluing singleness, and also to look at alternative ways of organising ourselves.

What would society look like if little girls weren’t expected to organise their lives around finding a sole and central heteronormative relationship around which everything else in their lives must then revolve? We could explore different living arrangements. As it is, many wealthy couples keep two homes and stay together on the weekends or at night, simply because they have the monetary and social capital to go with that desire. Maybe it’d be nice to live with friends, or alone, or switch everything around once in a while. We could explore not just a different social structure for living spaces, but explode the normative linearity of life. Maybe you want to have kids before you find love, and we’d shifted enough that the resources to do that comfortably without a dual income would be available to you. Maybe you experience happiness in other bits of life and don’t feel deficient if your life isn’t centred around sex or romance. Maybe all this could also open people up to sexuality and love we’re taught to repress: if you’re not told you have to find a nice fellow to marry, it’s easier to realise you actually want to settle down with the girl next door.

There’s nothing deficient about finding yourself single, or pursuing the kind of life you want. I know that much of my personal unhappiness comes from not fitting various norms, and feeling like I ought to be more normal in order to have a happy life. That’s not an unwarranted fear as there’s real social marginalisation attached to being non-normative. If we expand our ideas of the kinds of lives that are acceptable, older divorced women; young ladies like me who are starting to build their lives; queer, asexual, and poly people; hey, even happily married straight people – all kinds of people! – will be better served.

Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone.

Online Dating: Permission to Be a Judgemental Bitch AND an Opportunity to Date Outside Your Comfort Zone

This post was inspired by Jill’s previous post, Online Dating: The Most Depressing, Or Only as Depressing as Regular Dating?, which you should read. Some of what I’m going to say may have been covered in the comments on Jill’s post, but I didn’t read them, so I’m just going to go ahead and write this.

First, a little background: I started online dating in late November of last year. I went on dates with a total of seven guys, maybe eight. As with Jill’s experience, they were all totally normal, and though I haven’t boyfriended any of them (thanks Jill for that fun term), I’m still in touch with a couple of them and I still canoodle with one from time to time. Like Jill, I’ve gotten busy/bored, and after three months of not responding to really great guys who seemed interesting, I deactivated my account. (Actually, I JUST reactivated it…for the sake of research…Really. I swear.)

Now, back to Jill’s previous post. I especially love this part:

What’s particularly nice about online dating, though, is the ability to auto-eliminate the people who you definitely are not going to get along with. He lists The Da Vinci Code as his favorite book? Rejected. Are those wrap-around Oakleys? Rejected. Really, Creed? Rejected. Shirtless photo? Rejected. “I like to have fun and hang out with my friends.” Original! Rejected. Did he really not spell-check this thing? Rejected. Etc etc.

Why do I love that part? It’s EXACTLY how I finagle my way through the online dating universe. I’m sorry, but more than two spelling errors and I’m judging you. If you put “u” instead of “you” or anything along those lines, you are automatically out of the running. I’d like to quote Jill again:

Online dating makes it easier to be a judgmental bitch, I guess is what I’m saying. And in matters of the heart, I think being a judgmental bitch is a pretty good idea. That doesn’t mean rejecting people for any perceived flaw…but it does mean knowing what you can’t deal with…

Sing it, sister!

One thing Jill didn’t bring up that I would like to touch on is that, in addition to giving me an opportunity to be a judgmental bitch, online dating has also given me the chance to date outside my comfort zone. Okay, to be fair, getting approached by a man in real life almost always puts me outside my comfort zone, and I very rarely give out my number. But anyway, online dating has allowed me to look at a man I might not be interested in based on a short meeting in real life, notice all the awesome things we have in common, and eventually, give out my number. He likes Scrabble? One point. He likes this random, obscure book that I’m obsessed with? Two points. He likes cheese? Five points. Oh my god, he works for NPR?! That’s like a million points. Yes, a million. Come on! He could be the next Ira Glass! No? A girl can dream.

You might be saying, “Wait, you still reject him if he’s ugly right?” But to tell the truth, I don’t set much store by the pictures on online dating sites, because let’s be honest, not everyone is photogenic. If you judge the photos — I mean, other than judging a guy for being shirtless or having wraparound Oakleys — you could be screwing yourself out of meeting a hot guy who just doesn’t know how to work a camera. (I’ve definitely dated a few of those in the past.)

What am I saying? No idea. Attempt at a summary: I’ve met a couple of really awesome men as a result of online dating, and like Jill, I’ve found that dates with online suitors often go better than dates with real-world prospects. But more importantly, I think that the process of online dating has made me more open to experiences that come my way, both online and in the real world, because it has taught me that my knee-jerk reaction might be screwing me out of some really great dates. So thanks, OK Cupid, for opening my eyes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to update my profile.

I like boys. But also girls. But also boys.

I’ve been married to my husband for almost two years now. Mr. Shoshie is awesome and supportive and I love him very, very much. But sometimes I wish that we hadn’t gotten married so soon.

Well, actually, I wish that we hadn’t started dating so soon.

Let me back up.

I’ve liked girls pretty much as long as I’ve liked boys, meaning, about as long as I can remember liking anyone. I mean like liking anyone. But I didn’t come out as bisexual (well, actually pansexual) until I was 21 or so. I was never afraid of what my friends would say. I have wonderful, accepting parents who love me regardless of sexuality. I went to a fairly liberal high school and had a good number of queer friends. Then I went to a pretty queer friendly college. So it wasn’t really fear or concern that kept my mouth shut.

It was that…and, well, this is kind of embarrassing…it was that I really thought I was heterosexual until I was 21 or so. Being heterosexual was always presented as the default. Then, if I didn’t like boys, then I could be homosexual. Easy peasy. Like one of those flow diagrams.

Question 1. Do you like boys? If yes, then you are heterosexual. If no, then proceed to question 2.

Question 2. Do you like girls? If yes, then you are homosexual.

So, for the first 20-odd years of my life, I never got to question 2. I liked boys, so clearly I fit into the first category. Even though I had multiple crushes on girls. As many or more than I had on boys.

It took me a long time to learn how to date, being the wonderfully awkward person that I am. But, with some trial and error (OK, mostly lots of error), I figured out how to date boys. And it turned out that I actually got pretty good at it. But then, somewhere along the line (thank you, “But I’m a Cheerleader”!) I realized that oh, that attraction I had towards women? Well, just because I liked and wanted to date men didn’t mean that I couldn’t also like and date women.

Revolutionary, I know.

Of course, by the time I got this figured out, I was dating a couple guys simultaneously and was all sorts of confused because I was about to graduate college and start grad school and even though there were totally cute ladies who were flirting with me in the college coffee shop I felt so completely overwhelmed that I didn’t think I could really go on any more dates ’cause oops no time.

Then I moved cities. And, shortly thereafter, I started dating my now-husband. So at present, I’m a pansexual woman who has never even kissed another woman. Even though I love my husband so much I can’t even begin to describe it, I feel a bit of sadness sometimes. And anger when bisexual people are erased (I’m looking at you, Glee). I feel like something important has been stolen from me.

I feel like my sexuality is this weird, awkward thing that sits quietly in the corner until someone assumes that everyone there is straight, and then it has a big ol’ awkward party. It’s become a big question for me, whether or not to come out to people that I meet. Because, at this point, what difference does it make? What does it matter who I’m attracted to? Mr. Shoshie and I are monogamous, so I’m with one person for the foreseeable future. But then, sexuality does come up occasionally and then I feel weird because here’s this person that I’m friends with, that I’ve known for a year, who knows so much about me, but doesn’t know that I also like people who aren’t men. And who I find attractive shouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow it is anyways.

So I’m coming to you all, awesome Feministe readers. Are these my own special insecurities, or have any of you felt the same weird conflicting emotions? How have you dealt with it? How do you avoid getting your identity erased when it’s not readily apparent? Assuming a person is in a safe environment, do they have a responsibility to be open about their queer identity? What about for passing privilege, in general? I’ll be honest that, while I’ve thought a lot about these things, I haven’t done a ton of reading, so these thoughts are maybe a little too convoluted and undeveloped. But I’m really curious how you all have navigated these kinds of issues, so have at it.

Diversity in Dating

Cindy majors in linguistics/philosophy, classics and ancient Mediterranean studies, and English at UConn.
I’ve had some head-scratching moments about why I always dated white men – as I disdain white men who fetishize Asian women. I’d be pretty horrified to find out that I am a white male fetishizer. So why I have always dated white men? Because I’m surrounded by them.