Women Writing Digitally: On Spinsterhood
Compiled by Amy’s Brain Today & Kya Ogyn
In the last few years, women around the globe have embraced weblogs, or “blogs,” as informal, grassroots fora to spread ideas, connect with others, and develop activist strategies. A variety of issues central to radical feminism are written about, read, and discussed with immediacy and personality by women who care about these topics. Novices, as well as veterans, write about radical feminism; some publish their words under their own name, and others choose varying degrees of anonymity by writing pseudonymously. Nevertheless, each woman’s words add to a growing online radical feminist community. For this issue, we poked around online to see what feminists are writing about spinsterhood and the state of being single.
In “On Being Single,” Yawning Lion talks about the daily reality of being single and the obstacles to socializing single people face in a coupled society:
“Yes, there are times when I get lonely, times when I wish I had someone to invite to couple-centric events, times when I just want to be held, times when I want to have sex with someone, times when I positively yearn for a girlfriend. Then, there's the rest of the time when I'm quite happily focused on my life. I go to work, I buy groceries, I walk in the park, I have dinner with friends, I go to movies, I write on my blog, I read books, I make tea, I go to the beach, I visit my family. There are these delicious moments that seem to happen after particularly satisfying grocery-shopping trips when I am driving myself home in my relatively fuel-efficient car when I find myself overcome with love - for me. In those moments I realize how much I truly enjoy my own company, how much I appreciate the chance to be wholly in sync with my own rhythms, and how much time to myself I need to recharge and be able to deal with other people.
Today I'm okay with the idea of staying single. Some days I feel like a failure. Some days I'm quite sure there is something terribly wrong with me. Some days I feel there is something terribly wrong with all of you for not having picked me. Most days I just wish there were a way for us single folks not to feel so gosh-darn left out from so much, and that there were more ways to engage in affectionate touch with friends (I'm going broke getting massages to fill that need!), and that there weren't such a single-stigma, and that couples would make plans separately once in a while (just 'cause I like you doesn't mean I like your sweetie after all, or that I like the two of you together), and that people would stop assuming that a) I'm perfectly content being single, or b) I want to be set up with any random Lesbian that also happens to be single.”
In “The happy spinster..” ms. jared delights in her singleness:
“To be perfectly honest, if I don't think about the war, Darfur, the status of women, the conservatives, the environment, or the puppy mills, I'm personally happier than I've ever been.
And reading [Twisty’s post on marriage; see below] kind of affirmed it.
I've never been especially good at relationships and almost immediately find myself regretting ever getting involved in them in the first place. It's been three years since my last serious relationship and I can tell you, THANK MAUDE THAT SHIT IS BEHIND ME!
That's not to say that I'll never be in another committed relationship, but it certainly won't be with a man. As it stands now, I'm a lot less angry, frustrated, disappointed, bored, bitter, and defeated than I ever was in any relationship. I enjoy my solitude, my cat, the peace and quiet, my friends, the pleasure of my own company, MacGyver*.
And the funny thing is, I've always felt this way, but I struggled against it and tried to settle and make my relationships work even at the expense of my own happiness and fulfillment for more than half my life.
I saw all of my friends getting married and settling down and I freaked: I'm late! I thought. I've got to find "the one" (or someone, anyway) and catch up and settle down and do the "June Cleaver Thing"!
But I never really wanted the "June Cleaver Thing" and the idea of spending THE REST OF MY LIFE UNTIL I DIE with any of the people I was ever involved with was a horrifying prospect. Thank Maude I managed to "sabotage" all of them by being mouthy or demanding or independent or intelligent or feminist or "fat" or whatever else drives "good" men away. Good riddance.
Now obviously I have friends who are happily married or partnered so I'm not trying to diminish or disrespect anyone's relationship. As long as you're happy, I'm happy for you. I'm just saying that marriage isn't necessarily the be all/end all for everybody and it's unfortunate that we're sold that box of rocks from the moment we're born, wasting years and years and years chasing after some dream that isn't even ours.
One can find peace and joy and love and fulfillment without a partner and I'm living proof.
You see, I'm not broken. I'm not anyone's "other half". I'm not "empty" and there is no "hole" in me to fill. I am whole and I belong to me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
*I kid! I've never even seen MacGyver, I just love Patty and Selma."
The following are comments posted by readers in response to “the post on marriage” at I Blame the Patriarchy. They discuss the joys, obstacles, and fears of single women:
Niki writes: “It’s really not so awful and terrible to be single, also known in some circles as “independent”. It’s just what the patriarchy wants you to think.”
Roamaround writes: “I am really enjoying all these posts that critique marriage, but am I the only other single, hetero woman out here who is going to point out how rough THAT particular row can be to hoe? I know a thing or two about marriage. I am divorced from a millionaire who was a sweet guy but had a very controlling uber-patriarchal family. My youthful good looks snagged him, it seemed like the thing to do, but I soon realized I was being groomed as a brood mare and left. My mama didn’t raise no mares.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of freedom and am lucky enough to have been able to travel and pretty much live it up. I remember visiting an Aussie friend on one of my carefree holidays. She had married when I did but stayed on and had two kids. Standing in her modest kitchen away from the men, with a screaming baby in her arms and a toddler clinging to her legs, she warned grimly, “Just never have kids.” We have a picture of the two of us on that visit. She’s puffy and exhausted; I’m chic and radiant.
But my current reality is another story: it is not easy to be a single woman over forty. Some of the woes are financial since we women earn so much less and have to survive on one income. I worry constantly about becoming the old lady eating cat food.But the hardest part, really, is not having anyone automatically there. I broke my foot and it was a nightmare trying to get food up the stairs and the dog walked. I have to go alone to work functions where I know I am pitied and/or scorned. I do it and hold my head up, but it’s not easy.
Maybe the ideal would be feminist collectives, where we could find companionship and solidarity (and look after each others’ kids), without the bonds and binds of marriage.“
Toonces writes: “Count me as among the sometimes lonely het gals. But I look around my lovely house, and my space is my own. I look in my art studio, and see a painting on the easel I have all my time in the world to finish, because I don’t have to act as caretaker to a man who now assumes I am his personal slave and sexbot. I look into my fridge, and see all the good-for-you organic produce that I make into lovely meals for myself when I am hungry, not when someone else is. I sleep in a big lovely bed that I can sprawl out in, hog all the blankets in, and fart loudly in without some husbandthing giving me looks of horror and disgust.
I also know myself well in that I think marriage would be something I would eventually walk out on. I lived with a man for 6 months, and it ruined the relationship. I was the domestic servant who did all the cleaning, laundry, meal preparation and grocery shopping. He worked at his construction job during the day and at night came home, ate the meal I prepared, and then retired to his music room to drink beer and play guitar. The older I get, the more I look around me and realize there just aren’t many fabulous, feminist men who really want to be with a woman who has brains, ideas, opinions, and a strong sense of her own self-worth. Once I remind myself of that, suddenly I don’t feel as lonely. I just can’t play the game of settling anymore.
I consider the fact that I get to live my life for myself as a true gift. There is much to be done. To waste my life on being a man’s housekeeper while giving up my dreams and goals just seems kind of nuts. It would be lovely to have a true life partner, but given the sampling of men I have come across over the years, well, let’s just say you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”
Silence writes: “Single here. No — I’ll say it. A spinster. What a fucking ugly word. You know you’re living in a patriarchy when there are ugly connotations connected to a word for single women and none to the word for single men.
And that is one reason why women are so eager to marry. Marriage represents (to society) a graduation to adulthood, to personhood. Ironic, because as many poster here have pointed out, they felt that their personhood was stifled during their marriage.
But for a woman, the flipside, singlehood, means opening yourself up to ridicule or pity. I’m in my mid-thirities, never been married, struggling to start a small business, and none of my more distant relatives give a shit about me because I’m not married. My aunt and uncle didn’t even know when I received an MA in history becuase they barely ever bother to talk to me, and when they do, they do it in a way that implies I’m still a child because I never Caught My Man.
Well, back in my twenties I had ideas about ‘getting a man.’ Fortunately for me, my roomate in college was even more determined to catch a man and succeeded first. I went to her wedding, and the priest married them and told them to face the congregation. The priest said: “May I present Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.”
Just like that, in an instant, my friend vanished. She was no longer herself, but an appendage to the man standing in front of us. I don’t know why it shocked me so much, but those words made me think a lot. They made me very wary of marriage...
What single woman isn’t afraid of living alone and without the “support” that marriage (allegedly) entails? What single, child-free woman doesn’t envision a future for herself that involves a State Nursing Home and discount catfood?”
eggbert writes: “There’s this intense fear of loneliness, isolation, and poverty that drives people to pair off, and that fear is cultivated in nearly every aspect of the media and in every “concerned” comment made by family members, and it is no surprise that women end up actually believing that it is impossible to have a support system unless you are appended to a man and slotted neatly away in the nuclear family filing cabinet.
This, I think, is one of the most tragic things about marriage and our heteronormative culture. You know why? Because we don’t HAVE to be alone! In fact, if people weren’t cordoned off with their precious “me and mine” and beholden to husbands and housekeeping and the bonds of nuclear family, people-women-could support one another. The institution of marriage is what circumscribes our support system so tragically. It isolates us, makes us dependent on itself, and encourages us to replicate it. Isolated in families, we are more vulnerable and less likely to chum it up with the gals. OR get too chatty about changing the craptastic status quo.
An alternate narrative: My mother’s single friend dated men and cohabitated with men for much of her adult life. One New Years Eve about ten years ago, she announced that she was saying To Hell with Men. We toasted her, my dad thought she was just “giving up”, and then life moved on. Last year, she and five friends, all of them single or divorced, purchased a large plot of land in rural Kansas. They divided up the land and are building their own houses on it. They intend to retire there, ensconced in their idyllic, self-created support system. I get misty eyed when I think of the courage and foresight of these women. While many of their married friends will be alone in old age or trapped in crabby matrimony, they will be picnicking and laughing and drinking mojitos.
Already, in my mid-twenties, most of my friends have been lost to marriage or cohabitation. My best friend cries herself to sleep at night because her husband harasses her mercilessly about her “baby weight” and the condition of their house. Another one is trapped in an abusive relationship with two kids and a possessive, violent dude who kicks her like a dog. She won’t leave “for the children.” Still others are loudly happy about their relationships. But all of them are absorbed in marriage, and as the institution demands, they have traded their large and generous group of supportive friends for a single close relationship with a man.
Pretty soon I think I will be the only one standing. Where is my farm? Where are my friends? Where are my mojitos?
Ginmar writes: “God, I keep talking about Geektopia, where a bunch of women can support one another and have some rest away from men. I’m so grateful I never got married. I can just see it now; marry the boyfriend when I joined the Army, accidentally get pregnant becuase he wanted to have sex, have a bitter divorce that linked me to him forever, and have to take care of a kid who would have kept me from travelling to Russia, Korea, France, the Ukraine, and so forth. Instead, I turned him down—and my mom was a major part of that. She was married for fifty years and she took her widowhood as an opportunity to have her house the way she wanted it at long last and so forth and so on. She liked being by herself after four kids and grandkids and so on. She served as an example to me that marriage didn’t have to be inevitable.
I look at that avoided marriage and shudder every now and then at how close I came, but I was young and stupid and not feminist yet. I would have been trapped not just for a while but forever. I think I could have lost myself.”
Belle O’Cosity writes: "I am 38 and have never been married, never had kids and have never had a desire for either. Man do I get shit for this. Every time I meet someone new and they discover my status they freak the hell out. Especially the men. A man actually asked me the other day, “You’re pretty and funny and smart, so what’s wrong with you?” He went on to say I must be a psycho if no guy had “snapped me up.” I had to point out to him that that it was a choice I made, and marriage had no advantage for me. If I want companionship, I have great friends. If I want sex, it really isn’t that hard to find someone to have sex with. Oh that freaked him out. He simply could not conceive of a woman making that choice.”
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Amy’s Brain Today, aka Amy Winter, is a radical lesbian feminist blogger and the webspinster at feminist reprise, a radical feminist archive and online feminist resource. You can read her blog here.