Last week, I was invited to appear on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss "the end of marriage(?)" and "shifting gender power(?) with changing institutional trends(?)"... I have not been more excited since the opening weekend of Spice World. His show is one of the only broadcasts I watch regularly, and this theme runs my life.
We, the panel, were meant to react to Kate Bolick's latest, "All the Single Ladies," from the November issue of the Atlantic. I read the article until I had nearly memorized it, and scribbled all over two hardcopy editions. I have not been that ready since camping in the line of aforementioned film opening.
Also to appear on the panel was Danielle Crittenden, social conservative and anti-feminist journalist from Toronto, now based in Washington. She writes on how feminism is not only unnecessary but evil. Evil. Jeez, I thought I had my work cut out for me. For a taste of just what we're dealing with in Crittenden discourse, check out her vid on "How can I meet the right guy?" According to the book that brought her fame in 2000, feminism has produced confusion (fine), uncertainty (great!) and unhappiness (oh, come on...).
Sadly, as I was planning my jet down to Toronto, the producers cancelled my appearance (with a cryptic message). I have not been this disappointed since May 2nd! So to channel my sadness, I record my reactions to the article below.
I take much issue with the Beyoncé Knowles brand, but damn, her songs are catchy, and she's unquestionably talented. I feel similarly about Kate Bolick. Bolick's All the Single Ladies taps into the pulse of a cohort of women who are now overeducated, single, and unable to live the full awesomeness of the present because they fear the future. I have a number of critiques of how Bolick frames this general trend, but she nails the existence of the new dating desert for a slew of (predominantly white, upper-middle class) women (in Canada and the US). On countless "date-nights," I have sat across from women friends at the Manx and watched as they've nearly thrown their towels into their pints of organic ale while pondering this state of our dating world.
I refuse to participate in categorizing men into "deadbeat" or "player" the way Bolick does (although, according to my dad, I did this with confident poignancy when I came home from Grade 8 one afternoon). There are, of course, millions of men in this world (also, billions of fish in the sea, I'm told), and resetting the battle of the sexes this way is unnecessary. And it's just mean. And depressing...
But the new "dating gap" for those desiring heterosexual monogamy is real. Sociologists observe that when women outnumber men (see college campuses), women demonstrate increased promiscuity and, correspondingly, men are less willing to commit. Overall, net monogamy is low. On the contrary, when there are more available men, women hold more dating capital and net monogamy rises. This gives us an insight into preferred mating patterns that admittedly makes me cringe a little.
Save the complication of essentialist categories (of all of gender, sex and dating/mating style), to me, this makes sense, and imagining alternatives can't include resenting the behaviour of an entire gender (read: men). We're talking simple laws of supply and demand.
Right?
And now for context. What makes this culturally fascinating is that women have not held this much human capital in the US/Canada since the dawn of the nuclear family (post-modernization, and especially since its intensification post-wwii). So why their social/dating capital so low? And why the assumption that educated women are searching for equally educated men? After all, this is not what men have done historically.
I attribute these trends to the cultural expectation of women's unpaid domestic labour and, at least in part, to the related straying from the Disney daydream to which we've been oriented. Willingness to perform unpaid labour makes women more attractive commodities to men. Sociologists Armstrong & Armstrong hit this home with their book title, Everybody Needs a Wife (which their publisher insisted they change to The Double Ghetto). Straying from cultural norms makes people uneasy, even if their personal and political convictions are intact. For example, family sociologists observe that even among women and men with self-affirmed feminist attitudes, both members of couples report dissatisfaction when women make more money, and these relationships are extremely volatile. Women feel they're under-benefitting and men feel emasculated. The relationship often ends in divorce. Enter the stabilizing phenomenon/stereotype of the attractive young woman with the rich man - these relationships are surprisingly(?) stable.
Well, frack. The idea that higher education makes a woman less desirable to (some) men is daunting. But what does it mean that we're afraid of this? The ability to connect egg with sperm during the fertility window is about as difficult as finding a late-night poutine in a Montreal/Ottawa clubbing district (read: easy). Achieving egg+sperm nuclear family with sperm that's cute, kind and educated (in feminist theory - this seems to determine equity in my relationships), on the other hand, feels like a crapshoot. This is the reality of the dating gap.
So, assuming we're looking for heterosexual nuclear families, we'd better get cut throat? Women of many political convictions have been writing books about what to do about this "mess" for the last several decades. Lower your standards and settle for Mr. Good Enough, says Lori Gottlieb in Marry Him. Have a kick-ass "single" life ("I can't mate in captivity"), says Gloria Steinem. Become a doormat, says Mrs. Crittenden-From.
Bolick offers plenty of alternatives to the nuclear family, including communal living, queer kinship structures and singlehood. I find this part of her article refreshing, as she reminds us that the nuclear family is our invention, and can thus be deconstructed. Where she falls horribly short, though, is in her unchallenged assumption that we participate in an either/or choice when the fertility window comes to a close. We are assumed heterosexual near-mothers, even though she admits at the outset that she does not define womanhood by motherhood. Apparently it's one thing to feel this way and another to be convincing and consistent about it. I empathize. We don't have a ton of language to describe womanhood outside of motherhood and domesticity. I can't think of any. Further, while acknowledging certain class elements of the phenom, Bolick closes without problematizing the notion of choice and who gets to make it - offering us the opportunity to ask questions. What are we so afraid of anyway?
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