Modern & Im/material Things

You know that feeling when you like the initial idea of something and then it’s execution is so terribly offensive (but arguably well meant) that you can no longer support the idea? Subsequently, the terrible execution makes the mere mention of the idea irritating to no end. For me, Kate Bolick’s recently published piece, “All the Single Ladies” in the The Atlantic is a perfect example of that feeling. 

The article starts off with an interesting premise: what are the socio-cultural and economic reasons undergirding the trend of single females? A larger philosophical question about what it means to be single as a woman has the potential be a really interesting, insightful and engaging piece, even if the author’s arguments are not points I agree with. Needless to say I read this article excitedly with the aforementioned hope in mind. What I ended up reading was, frankly, five webpages of a relatively privileged heterosexual white woman bemoaning the state of her love life, looking to the blacks and the dutch for an explanation (or solace?) for her singledom. I won’t spend too much time discussing how racially insensitive Bolick’s discussion of single females in the African American community was, as others no doubt have already done so - a former graduate school classmate of mine, Ali, has a nice post about this article. I did, however, find this particular passage horrifying:

But the non-committers are out there in growing force. If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace—and of course it is—today we’re contending with a new “dating gap,” where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players. For evidence, we don’t need to look to the past, or abroad—we have two examples right in front of us: the African American community, and the college campus…Given the crisis in gender it has suffered through for the past half century, the African American population might as well be a separate nation. [emphasis mine]

What troubled me beyond the biologically deterministic, Gloria Steinem obsessed feminist rhetoric was an absolute disregard for what being single woman means outside of a heterosexual union. Bolick gives a hat tip to gay men and how homosexual marriage creates an opportunity to rethink the notion of marriage. But nowhere in her article does she discuss non-heterosexual women and how they too might be freaking out about being partner-less.

This is a missed opportunity because discussing queer women would have been a chance for Bolick to tackle a larger philosophical question about the social function of love, of intimate connections between two human beings without the immediate reference of a biological ability to reproduce (e.g., “love is just a precursor to making babies”). Singledom, whether self-imposed or an undesired by-product, is a very pertinent issue in the queer community, especially so because being queer for many means a life in the margins or being ostracized by family and friends. I promise you that there are as many queer single women freaking out about being single as there are straight women worried about the lack of ‘marriageable men.’

But instead of treating the discussion as an analysis of the marketplace of marriagable men, maybe we could talk about the marketplace itself. Why is there a marketplace at all? Why frame love in a capitalist model, relegating it to a mere transaction between two beings? Is marriage or partnership the only acceptable outcome for love between two people? What does it mean to feel like you’re not ready to “settle down”? What forms-life-does love take on in the context of connecting to another person whether they’re “the one” or a future ex? Anything would have been better than “I have so much privilege thanks to second wave feminism and now all this agency has left me single.”