To say that someone is politicizing something is typically a rebuke. The person who is accused is supposed to deny any political intent, or retreat in shame.
Not Israeli scholar Kinneret Lahad. Her new academic book, A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender, and Time, is a scholarly analysis of the ways in which single women get hassled about time (“What are you waiting for?”, “Your time is running out,” “you’re going to miss the train”) and the importance of writing a new script about single life. But in the end, it becomes overtly political, as Professor Lahad makes the case that we should politicize singlehood. We need to have an agenda, she says, of “challenging the discriminatory, patronizing attitudes toward late singlehood” – and, of course, the policies.
Lahad has kindly allowed me to reprint “Politicizing Singlehood,” the final section of her book. It is at the end of this post.
Why, Professor Lahad asks, has singlehood not yet been politicized, in Israel, the United States, or most other nations around the world? She suggests two key impediments to social action in the service of unmarried equality. One has seemed evident to me for quite some time. The other, I never construed as an obstacle to social justice for unmarried Americans, but now I think she may be right.
The problem that has long worried me is that people think of single life as temporary, just a way station on the route to starting your “real” adult life of marriage and children. Why bother working for meaningful social change for single people when all unmarried Americans need to do is hang in there until they get married, then they will have all those perks and protections?
The fundamental argument of Unmarried Equality has always been that no one should have to get married in order to be accorded basic rights, privileges, and protections. The legalization of same-sex marriage let another group of Americans in on the perks and protections of federal laws, but only if they get married. All American adults of all gender orientations and identities are still left out in the cold if they are single.
The argument that single status is just temporary and can be changed at will is also belied by demography. More and more people are staying single for longer and longer periods of time – often for life. And even counting all adults, including those who marry, Americans spend more years of their adult lives not married than married. That’s been true for years.
Even if you are single and you want to marry, and you think you will marry eventually, why settle for second-class citizenship in the meantime? And for the many people who stood by in support of their LGBTQ friends while same-sex marriage was not yet a legal reality – some of them refusing to marry until their friends could do so, too – where is your support of single people of all varieties?
As self-evident as these arguments seem to me, they do not seem to be breaking through. Professor Lahad is right – the view of singlehood as transitory is an impediment to the mobilization of forces for social justice.
The second roadblock Lahad described is the one I never considered. Much of what is written about contemporary single life is in the form of personal essays or advice, often penned by or for single women. Single people telling the stories of their lives can be quite powerful. Their narratives can challenge prevailing myths and offer empowering, authentic, and non-stereotypical perspectives on single life, as Professor Lahad has noted. And yet, there can be a downside.
When individual single people tell their personal stories, then the issues can seem personal and individual, as if they were only about specific people. If something needs to change, the personal story approach can seem to imply that it is the individual single people who need to do the changing.
It’s not. For wholesale social change to happen, it is policies and social structures and social institutions that need to change. We need to remember that, reiterate it, underscore it, and work for it, even as we continue to tell the stories of our lives.
Now, with thanks to Professor Kinneret Lahad, here is most of the final section of A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender, and Time. (I’ve added a brief note and some links.)
Politicizing singlehood
To a large extent, singlehood in Israel is a non-existent political category; it is neither
identified nor included in the agendas of feminist, human rights, and social justice
organizations. Furthermore, singlehood is very much underrepresented in critical
studies curriculums at both the graduate and undergraduate level. In fact, to the best
of my knowledge, challenging the discriminatory, patronizing attitudes towards late
singlehood has been rarely on the agenda of any social or political organization. I
therefore wish to ask why the discrimination and stigmatization against single persons
has not translated to public and political initiatives. Based on this reality, I can point
to some preliminary assumptions here, which explain why singlehood is yet to be
politicized and become a target of feminist action.
First, the widely held perception of late or lifelong singlehood as a liminal, transitory
phase and as a disruption and unnatural social category is very much alive and
well in many societies. This line of thinking poses substantial obstacles for envisioning
singlehood in political terms. Second, contemporary mainstream discourse mostly
relates to singlehood through personal narratives, single women’s life stories and advice
columns. Thus, a complex web of discourses de-contextualizes singlehood from its
wider social and cultural settings, leading to the widely held beliefs that attribute blame
to single women themselves. Moreover, as I have shown, the widespread discourse not
only puts the blame on single women, it emphasizes that their future will be nothing
but a life of misery and loneliness. Paraphrasing Virginia Woolf ’s well-known dictum:
she can perhaps live in “a room of her own but not in a house of her own.” Simply put,
the message single women hear again and again is that they cannot make it on their own.
This is why accentuating the social and political dimensions of singlehood is an
important step in the right direction. I suggest that the re-constitution of singlehood
into a social category that one may wish to identify with—and form a political community
with—can positively yield material and discursive changes. Here, I join
DePaulo (2006), Reynolds (2008), and Moran (2004) in their call for the politicization
of singlehood and the need for a nuanced feminist engagement with the concept.
This book is also a call for such needed intervention.
In this vein, some recent developments may inspire the hope of social change. At
the time of writing, the 2016 American presidential election campaign was underway;
media coverage of the campaign reflected what may lead to a significant change in the
discourse about single women, and particularly the growing recognition of their voting
power. Major newspapers such as the The Economist, the Guardian, the New York Times,
and the Washington Post have dedicated extensive space to what is perceived as the
potential and rising salience of single women in local and global politics
For example, a headline of New York magazine, from February 2016, declared that
the single American woman had become “The most powerful voter this year, who
in her rapidly increasing numbers has become an entirely new category of citizen”
(Traister 2016b). Some of these discussions were triggered by the publication of a
non-fiction book, already a best-seller, by Rebecca Traister (2016a), the writer of the
NY article above. In the book, entitled All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, Traister notes that for the first time in history, unmarried
women outnumber their married counterparts. She also argues that this state
of affairs enables more women to pursue high-powered careers, and to live sexually
diverse lives (ibid.).
It might be that these developments taking place in the US, alongside the growing
numbers of single women worldwide, could lead the way to what I consider the next
and required step in singlehood scholarship and advocacy. Moving forward could pave
the way for encouraging both researchers and activists to become more involved in
singlehood politics, perceiving singlehood in political terms, and attending to the
unique needs of single persons. Thus far, relatively few scholars (DePaulo 2006; Hacker
2001) have vocalized the need to catalyze policy change for the single population.
The most prominent among them is Bella DePaulo, who is both a researcher and
an activist. For the last two decades she has written for many years about how single
persons are socially and economically discriminated against and do not enjoy the
various financial benefits granted to couples and parents. She is one of the prominent
advocates for this required change. In her scholarly works and numerous online
columns and media interviews she promotes a new outlook on singlehood which views
singlehood as a political consistency.
For example, even in a 2004 letter to the editor published in the New York Times
opinion section [Bella DePaulo’s correction: It was an op-ed, not a letter to the editor], DePaulo makes several offers to the to the candidates running for presidency at that time:
- Hit the books. Learn about the real place of singles in contemporary American
society. Singles account for more than 40 percent of the electorate and work force.
Households consisting of two parents and their children are slightly outnumbered by
households comprised of a single person living alone. And most singles do not live
alone. About nine million households are single-parent homes. Singles are also homeowners.
Last year, they accounted for 46.7 percent of house sales. Singles are not
predominantly youthful; only a third are aged 18 to 29. Singlehood is no longer a way
station on the road to marriage. Women on average now spend more years of their
adult lives single than married, and men are not far behind.
- Learn the actual voting patterns. Despite the hype, it was not single women who had
the lowest rate of voting in 2000, but single men. In their candidate preferences, the
men stood out in their support of Ralph Nader (7 percent, compared to 4 percent for
single women, and 2 percent for married men and women).
- Master the issues of concern to singles. You will find, for example, that singles would
like to make a decent living, have affordable health care and enjoy retirement. Their
values are not antifamily—they are human values. The language of singles is the
language of inclusiveness. Here is an example: “If you are willing to work hard and
play by the rules, you are part of our family, and we’re proud to be with you.” It is from
Bill Clinton’s 1996 speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president.
(DePaulo 2004)
I regard this letter as reflecting a new kind of politics that offers tangible possibilities
for changing the public discourse and looks at singlehood as a visible community which political candidates have to take seriously. It also views single persons as political
and citizen subjects with obligations and rights.
This also poses an alternative to the “family values” political discourse often conveyed
by liberal, conservative, and even progressive parties. The rhetoric of “family
values” or “ensuring our children’s future” has come to stand for the public good, and
of doing the right thing. Promoting issues and speaking on behalf of and for single
persons is uncommon, if not inconceivable.
Another exception to this state of affairs was articulated by Raija Eeva, a Finnish
politician and founder of the Finnish Association for Singles, quoted in one of DePaulo’s
online columns:
An employer may purchase insurance for his or her employee. If the employee dies a
claim will be paid out to a widow, widower or the employee’s children. In the case of a
single, the insurance company gets to pocket the claim. (DePaulo 2015)
In another article Eeva further argues:
If I were to say that a social democrat or a Swedish-speaking person or an immigrant
couldn’t get the same tax rebate as someone else, there’d be a hue and cry. But apparently
you can suffer injustice based on your legal or family status. (Yle 2014)
Such views express a confident call to end the discrimination against singles and the
high price singles pay for their single status. That is, these voices do not accept and
endorse hegemonic heteronormative practices of public acceptance. These suggested
transformations are dependent upon changes in the public discourse of singlehood
together with structural and institutional change.
In this context it is important to stress that one should take care not to relate to
singlehood as one unitary category, and should distinguish between different types of
representations of singles. This demands the consideration of, amongst other things,
exogenous factors such as class, gender, religion, and race. Hopefully, this study can
contribute to future research and thinking about ways to re-appropriate singlehood
from its derogatory position and to remove its fixed connotations. As such, this book
can be complemented by studies of the nuances and variances in the experiences and
social contexts of women’s singlehood.
Thus, my hope here is to re-conceptualise singlehood as a social and political category,
which may in turn open more avenues for moving beyond the dichotomous and
essentialist thinking of misery/happiness, togetherness/loneliness, and success/
failure. Institutional policy-oriented reforms such as those proposed by Bella DePaulo
(2006) and Daphna Hacker (2001) (building apartments designed for single households,
or changing the tax structure for example) are important. Yet they alone cannot
create the new language and the discursive spaces necessary to rethink the conceptions of singlehood and familism so prominent in our widespread conventions of the worthy
and good life.
Hopefully, this study can contribute to such an endeavor, by constructing and
deconstructing some of the familiar and taken-for-granted meanings associated with
singlehood. A different form of thinking on singlehood and time, one which explores
and can envision alternative networks of support and solidarity while questioning the
central place the family and couplehood occupy, might be a crucial first step in this
direction.
[End of excerpt]
Want to know more about author Kinneret Lahad? Here’s what she says about herself: “I am currently a Senior Lecturer in the NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program of Tel-Aviv University, Israel. I am a sociologist and a gender, cultural studies scholar, a single woman, a loving aunt and a good friend (I hope). I think what sparked my initial interest in singlehood was my fascination with the idea and gendered ideology of the “ideal family. I am currently involved in various research projects among them are aunthood, friendships, discourses of freezing eggs and “late” motherhood. All these projects in various degrees communicate and attempt to understand the notion of the “good family” and female respectability. More about my work can be found here.”
Want to read the book? Table for One is available here, or here as an open-access e-book, or here as a hardcover (you may be able to use the discount code table41 at checkout if it is still available).
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) The comment option on the UE website has been invaded by spammers, so I have disabled comments for now. I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About the Author: Bella DePaulo (PhD, Harvard), a long-time member of Unmarried Equality, is the author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After and How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century, among other books. She writes the “Living Single” blog for Psychology Today and the “Single at Heart” blog for Psych Central. Visit her website at www.BellaDePaulo.com and take a look at her TEDx talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single.”
About Bella DePaulo
