amysilstein

moorehn:

This was the song I thought of when I read the latest ridiculous pseudo-intellectual, completely unimpressive “analysis” of “single women” in The Atlantic. The title of the article is All the Single Ladies, because: wow, is it 2008 already? The Atlantic is Down With the Kids These Days and Their Culture. Of 2008.

If you missed this absolutely absurd article, which should have been too embarrassing to both the author and the magazine to publish because of its incredibly low quality of thought, you can get the takeaways here. The putative purpose is to celebrate singlehood, particularly as applied to women (singlehood in men is only to be bemoaned as self-indulgence and a societal obstruction to the happiness of single women, obviously). But the real purpose of the article seems to be to prosecute, once and for all, before a grand jury of subscribers, the romantic life and experiences of the author, one Kate Bolick. 

(I don’t know her, and I wish her well -  though I may suggest that her absolutely miserably depressed expression, in which she cannot manage even the ghost of a real smile, was not the best choice for the cover picture of a story about how being 39 and single is awesome and revolutionary).

I almost just don’t even have the time - I mean, have you ever? I can’t even -  for the litany of anecdotally biased stupidity in this article, but let’s take a couple just for giggles.

Here’s one: “We’re contending with a new ‘dating gap,’” Bolick says, “where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players.”

Again I ask: I mean, have you ever? I can’t even.

Yes, all single men are deadbeats or players. Increasingly, even! While this may seem to be, say statistically impossible to any intelligent human being with rudimentary powers of observation or, more importantly, an ounce of human compassion or insight into human behavior, it is definitely impossible for anyone with any kind of knowledge of basic human history to call this perception “new.” That is, unless this person has literally had their consciousness formed in the past 58 seconds and/or has been struck with some combination of basic devastating ignorance and deep amnesia.  Some men are deadbeats, some men are players. Some of those men are single, some of them are married. All of these things are true of all genders since before the Bronze Age, and was probably true of the first amoeba crawling out of the primordial muck. Come the f*** on.

Again, I don’t know this author. But basic English 101 reading comprehension suggests that anyone who posits such an absolutely ridiculous generalization of an entire gender based on their own limited history (and all of our histories are limited, particularly compared to, like, the entire goddamn scope of humanity) probably has a recent history of making very bad choices and, moreover, is addicted to the drama of dissecting those exact same choices because the thrill of talking about herself is probably far greater than the thrill of actually fixing the goddamn problem and not picking deadbeats and players. Trust me on this: women who talk this way are a Type and they will ruin your entire goddamn night, every night, with their perceived and extensive Boy Troubles which are Completely Without A Remedy on This Shallow Earth because they are a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake and that’s why No Man is Strong Enough to Love Them. The trap this Type sets is that they posit absolutely absurd, annoying theories, non-truths and made-up patterns of behavior - behavior mainly exhibited by men, not by the women themselves, because come on, insight is so much harder than generalizations - and then they sit back smugly and Wait For You to Contradict Them. You will never win this argument, ever, because the whole thing here is that people reflect back at you exactly what you send to them, and this Type always, always, always, refuses to acknowledge that they are sending an absolute stench of negative assumptions about other people out there, which other people will absolutely rush to fulfill. If you’ve ever fallen into this morass, you know the response you’ll get. It Cannot Be Them. They are Perfect in All Their Actions in Romantic Relationships. They are Just Romantic Idealists. They’re Picky. They Bear No Responsibility.

You cannot win against a closed mind. Walk away.

(By the way, just a note on People when you’ve reached this level of generalization about anybody - men, Catholics, turnip-carvers. When you think you’ve figured out huge behavioral patterns based on a sample size of direct experience that you should recognize as mortifyingly small, then you have reached a point where you are completely comfortable not trying to understand or accept these men, Catholics, turnip-carvers as human beings.

When you say, “the dating gap consists of an increasing number of men who are deadbeats and players,” that is an asshole move, because you have already stopped considering them human at all and rendered them The Other. Which means, in turn, that you are not showing any empathy towards them. This lack of empathy and rush to judge other people instead of trying to understand them is, in turn, a really annoying and deplorable quality that will discourage good men from dating you. It will also discourage even deadbeats and players from dating you, because they can see your Judgment and Righteous Outrage coming a mile away. You are fooling no one. Just a pro tip. If you don’t believe me, you can find it in books. Any books. It may actually even be in the Encyclopedia Brown series, or maybe even Goodnight Moon, and definitely The Little Prince, because it’s really that basic a concept.)

Here’s another example of muddled thinking. Let’s call this example, “questionable solutions to questions no one ever asked and that no possible data can prove:”

“Statistics show that women are dating younger men, less wealthy men, and even shorter men simply because these men make the women happy — not because they would make good husbands and fathers.”

That’s right, you heard it here first. The year 2011-  in fact, the exact print date of this Atlantic article-  is the first time in history that women married to make themselves happy. Before this - in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and even as late as, say, August 3, 2011, throughout the cultural changes of feminism, post-feminism, third-wave feminism and fourth-wave feminism - women married men only for economic security, and made sure those men were older and taller, because that is the only acceptable form of a marriage. All women agreed on this. Finally, after 10,000 years, women finally figured it out! They decided marriage was supposed to be about happiness! As for the previous 10,000 years: D’oh! Live and learn, I guess.

But we don’t learn what happened to these brave women, who have just married for their own happiness in the minutes since the Atlantic’s October issue went to press - largely because all the short, poor, young single men they married are - whoops! - all deadbeats and players. Right? That’s how it works in this absolute messed-up Narnia of an article?

Anyway the whole premise here - of someone being 39 and single and happy - is completely not problematic. But in the case of this particular author and the way in which she directs and describes the situation, I just have this to say: people who are happy and comfortable with themselves don’t talk the way this article is written.

I just. I can’t even.

7 months ago - 12