Lifestyle Advice
Laurie Penny – yes, ‘tis she – wants to expand our minds with her deep knowledge of marriage:
More women are living alone or without a partner than ever before, and the question on the table once again is not how to have a better marriage, but whether to have one at all.
I suppose there’s also the question of whether those living alone, perhaps in the name of feminism, are happier than they otherwise might be, more satisfied, and more prepared for later life. Sadly, Laurie waves aside the, as she puts it, “vanishing amount of security offered by coupledom” – coupledom which she assumes must be antithetical to “personal autonomy.”
The notion that a person’s sense of freedom – say, from doubt, isolation or poverty – might be enhanced by the practical and emotional support of a lifelong exclusive relationship, is oddly unexplored. The advantages of a second income, shared labour, shared troubles and an expanded circle of relatives on whom one might call for support – and above all, a sense of personal commitment through thick and thin – these things are apparently much too bourgeois and conformist, and so unworthy of attention.
Instead, Ms Penny thrills to the “growing power of uncoupled women” and “the threat this poses to the socioeconomic status quo.” Posing threats to the status quo is, for Laurie, a thing of great importance, something to be championed, seemingly regardless of what that challenge might realistically entail. This, after all, is someone whose pronouncements often suggest a pretentious teenager hoping to scandalise elderly relatives, and who believes, or pretends to believe, that “romantic love is a systemic lie designed to manipulate women into lifelong emotional labour.”
As so often, Laurie’s sincerity is somewhat in question, and either way, one has to wonder how this dark conspiracy, this “systemic lie,” might explain the romantic feelings of gay couples, or those who are fairly sure that their partnership is not in fact a sham, an idle reflex or the result of subtle brainwashing.
This being a Laurie Penny article, the spotlight soon shifts to her glorious self:
I had been struggling to find language for my growing anxiety over the fact that, at almost 30, I still have no desire to settle down and form a traditional family. I’ve been waiting, as open-mindedly as possible, for a sudden neo-Darwinian impulse to pair up and reproduce. And yet here I am, and it hasn’t happened. Despite no small amount of social pressure, I am happy as I am.
Which would explain all those cheery, contended articles she churns out.
I am quite content with the fact that my work, my politics, my community and my books are just as important to me as anyone I happen to be dating… I live in a commune, I date multiple people, and I’m focused on my career.
Potential suitors please take note. You are but one of many, and of no more importance than Laurie’s books.
“Do you actually want to spend years taking care of children and a partner when it’s hard enough taking care of yourself?” asks our empowered adult ladyperson, possibly revealing a touch more than she intends. This is accompanied by a list of oppressions supposedly inherent to marriage, including “the wiping of snotty noses,” being considerate of a partner’s allergies, and cleaning and cooking, which unmarried people never do, obviously. Even the remembering of birthdays is framed as unpaid labour, a ghastly imposition, too much to bear. Says she:
A typically bold statement, presented as if self-evident, and followed, quite promptly, by this:
Today, single women have more power and presence than ever before – but there’s still a price to pay for choosing not to pair up. It’s not just about the stress of steering a life in unnavigated waters and unlearning decades of conditioning… It’s also about the money. Over half of Americans earning minimum wage or below are single women – and single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married ones.
A detail that seems somewhat at odds with the claim that marriage and monogamy are probably best avoided. However, Laurie hastens past these mere practicalities, muttering only that,
society must do more, and better, to support women’s choices.
She then fixes on the more pressing imperative:
If women reject marriage and partnership en masse, the economic and social functioning of modern society will be shaken to its core.
And so the abandonment of the stable family unit is something to be endorsed in the war against the Great Hegemon of heteropatriachal capitalism, which must be toppled at all cost. Or, in Laurie’s words,
I happen to believe in dismantling the social and economic institutions of marriage and family.
The destruction of which is, apparently,
the only chance we have of one day, at last, meeting and mating as true equals.
Readers who currently regard their marriages and relationships as both functional and a meeting of equals are, it seems, delusional, at least according to Laurie. At which point, you may wish to revisit Ms Penny’s excited endorsement of an article by Madeleine Schwartz, in which we were told, based on nothing, that the “diffusion” of the family unit – which is to say, absent fathers, hardship and subsequent dependence on the state – “is one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation.”
And if that fact-free assertion tickles your fancy, you may also be entertained by one of Laurie’s own:
Women everywhere are simply going on strike, and it is a strike the like of which society has barely contemplated. It is distributed and dispersed, and the picket lines begin at the door of every household and the threshold of every human heart.
You heard her, women everywhere.
And note that, in 2,252 words, and despite an ostensible topic of the nuclear family, no mention is made of parenting and its practicalities, and specifically the needs of children and one’s obligations to them, beyond a brief admission that, “single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married ones.” But hey, let’s all do as Laurie says. For the revolution.
Just not for realism or coherence.
Take her reference to neo-Darwinism, for example. To Penny it’s just a groovy-sounding phrase to drop, without the slightest grasp of what the concept entails.
She’s a fraud, simple as that.
@ Hedgehog
Agree absolutely – was speaking strictly from the biological perspective. But if one holds that personality is influenced by genes, such feminists are most definitely “on the wrong side of history”!
As I’ve said before, Laurie is following the standard trajectory of her type. Her status and career would have been much less likely without the very same bourgeois values she claims to despise and urges others to reject. If instead of a stable, rather comfortable middle-class upbringing she’d been raised in keeping with her own professed values – say, by a welfare-dependent single parent with multiple transient partners and no stability or commitment – I somehow doubt she’d have been able to spend time at Wadham College finding herself politically and playing “riot girl.” And I doubt she’d now be able to flit around the world while tweeting about how oppressed she is.
Likewise, her self-imagined role as a wordsmith revolutionary would be much harder to sustain without a great many other people cultivating those same bourgeois values and keeping things ticking over. A fact that Laurie counts on, despite her pretence. In effect, we, the bourgeois rubes whose values she rails against, are her safety net. The fact that few of us are credulous enough to take her at her words and follow her advice is what allows her to mouth it in relative comfort and security, knowing that the destruction of capitalism, marriage and the family unit (and all that would go with it), which she claims to want, won’t happen just yet.
If women reject marriage and partnership en masse, the economic and social functioning of modern society will be shaken to its core.
Li’l Penny wouldn’t survive five minutes in the chaos that would ensue from such an event.
She’s a fraud, simple as that.
She’s 27 years old and moderately famous. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize (had to look up if that was meant to be ironic…apparently not), writes for a major international newspaper (as long as it lasts), invited to speak at universities across the globe, an International Nieman Fellow at Harvard of all places, and appears regularly on news shows on y’alls side of the pond. I dare say anyone here is much more likely to go to their graves having accumulated far less fanfare than she. Hell, Mohamar Khadaffi had to take over his country at that age to get as much attention. An authentic fraud, yes.
Apropos of nothing, anyone know where I can go to appeal my college GPA score? Apparently they still ask for such on job applications. I’m beginning to refuse to accept mine as valid.
From a biologist’s perspective, spinsters’ lives are largely pointless.
It’s pointless from a spinsters’ perspective, too.
The thread is full of chewy goodness, but I want to focus on one line from the UBI wiki entry quoted by Nikw211:
“A basic income would be a massive transfer of wealth from men to women.”
To me this line exemplifies the basic societal and economic misunderstandings underpinning so much socialist and SJW “thought”.
What does it take to believe that line? It takes this – That, AFTER the UBI is in place:
1. Individual men will continue to generate at least as much wealth as they do today.
2. Vastly fewer men than women will take the UBI as their main source of income.
3. (More subtly) The net per-capita wealth of society will not drop much, if at all.
I’ll let 1 & 2 stand unsupported by me, and just look at 3.
There’s this usually unstated corollary to the UBI dream: that most folk will be happy living in either a commune, or in a tiny and cheap urban apartment. That’s because it takes MORE wealth to make MORE separate households, which is what Laurie Penny imagines would be her option should she ever tire of communal living. You can bet she’s not longing for a future with 6 cats in a SRO hotel. No, she’s surely thinking more along the lines of a loft apartment in SOMA SF, or an artists colony in the Smokies, or some such. Multiply that idea and its economics by 100 million and see what society looks like.
“But why is that a problem?” you ask. “Surely there’s lots of wealth around?”
And this is where we get right back to Maggie Thatcher and running out of other people’s money. The real key to modern socialist thinking is that it assumes that the status quo, resource-and-money-availability-wise, is fixed and robust. For operational proofs of the contrary, see Venezuela, Argentina, the USSR, the DDR, or any of countless other examples over the last century.
And THAT gets us back to the real root problem: a steadfast refusal to learn, or learn from, history.
Yeah, love the “neo-darwinist” thing. I bet she loves her friends who write about “quanta” and “geodesics” and “chaos” and “relativity” and all the rest of the old “Dancing Wu-Li Masters” crapola.
From a biologist’s perspective, spinsters’ lives are largely pointless.
It’s pointless from a spinsters’ perspective, too.
If I may offer an opposing view, I have a distant cousin–now in her late eighties–for whom marriage was never in the cards. She dreamed of being a wife and mother, but it didn’t happen. So, she prayed for God to show her what to do.
She wound up adopting four children from dysfunctional families and all whom she put through college and all of whom have significant careers and families of their own.
In addition to that, she decided she needed to do something to help Vietnamese immigrants and proceeded to learn the Vietnamese and help dozens of families acclimate to the American rural Midwest.
May I suggest, life is only pointless, if you let be so.
Amazing!
Divorce used to be so rare. No doubt that some couples had miserable relationships, but generally most couples you speak of from two generations ago look back on their relationship fondly. I think of my Nanna, who was a more conservative-valued woman, with a dash of protestant work ethic and libertarianism mixed in. Love for my Papa (whom I never met) got her through WWII, the great depression, stillbirth of first child that almost killed her, Vietnam, and raising her first child in a shed in the hot Australian summer, among many other genuine life-challenges. Furthermore, her love and support for Papa despite his health scares, somewhat taciturn and reclusive personality upon return from war, and her embrace of a hard life as a farmers wife in a newly settled area made both of their lives so much richer, warmer, happier and more meaningful.
If only Nanna had known it was all a scam and that she was merely deluded into a life of slave labour. She might have had a proper, enlightened life of endless narcissism, navel gazing, and dependency on the state.
Come to think of it, if love is a con then Papa would have been deluded too. haha he went to war and sacrificed just cause he was deluded. What a racist asshole. Our generation is obviously superior.
May I suggest, life is only pointless, if you let be so.
In the year 2000 I bought a new house, and inspired by 1 Cor 7:32-33 (“He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife”), I decided that if I weren’t going to raise a family in this life, I’d still make myself useful in the world. I was going to grow a kick-ass flower garden and also find one or more charities to devote myself to.
By the summer of 2001 I was utterly kneecapped by a debilitating fatigue. I still don’t have a diagnosis for it, and last year it progressed to the point where I cannot really work in my garden. I couldn’t even put up the Christmas decorations last year.
It would appear that God doesn’t find me useful in any capacity.
That’s why I call my life pointless: because it is.
(No suggestions regarding diagnoses, please: I’ve heard it all tried even more. Nothing works.)
Dicentra, your life is not pointless. You just haven’t gotten to the point yet. Stay faithful, and you will.
What is it with women complaining about how unfair it is to be married? My wife dictated how many kids we had. She has decreed she’s never going back to work, even when they’re all at school (next year). I work from home so am immediately available in the worst parts of the day – morning and evening. She considers everything I earn to be hers and spends freely without consultation. She does exactly what works for her without regard for the impact on me.
Where is the downside to marriage for her?
On top of all that, some of my taxes go to paying for Pointless Studies students to take up valuable space and produce useless, offensive theses.
I wish these silly bints would STFU – they’ve got everything going their way. They’re just too stupid to realise it.
And yes, I am bitter. But not dumb enough (and don’t want) to get divorced.
It would appear that God doesn’t find me useful in any capacity.
I know this sounds trite, cliche and whatever else, but not so. I cannot know what your purpose is, but you have one. Don’t give up.
I’ll cut the narcissistic no-mind some slack over her comment about books/work being as important as her dating. But –
society must do more, and better, to support women’s choices
Wrong. Every individual woman’s (and man’s) choices are up to him or her, individually. “Society”, meaning the collective, has no say.
I happen to believe in dismantling the social and economic institutions of marriage and family
It’s not your call, except for your own individual situation.
dicentra,
Re your earlier point about grandchildren, I wholeheartedly concur. I’m early 60s, one son who is married but no kids. Our relationship has broken down due to a special kind of Tourettes that goes:
“Hi son, how are you? Long time no WHERE’S MY F**KING GRANDCHILDREN YOU USELESS LITTLE SH*T hear. Wife OK?”
Chin up.
“For a picture of the ravishing Ms. Penny:
This one is more flattering.”
Love the slave collar! Is it some sort of subliminal message?
I cannot imagine anyone sensible taking the least notice of her views.
Sensible or not, Laurie has 130,000 Twitter groupies and the retweets of her latest article have so far been mostly favourable. Quite a few people seem to like the sound of what she says and aren’t too troubled by its assumptions and general ricketiness. Which is interesting, as most of Laurie’s fan base are students, who are supposedly clever.
But as with so much of Laurie’s blathering, it’s quite hard to disentangle. Chiefly because there are so many bits missing – it’s typically a pile of assertion, much of which is question-begging or simply contradictory. She seems to imagine that wild and dubious claims needn’t be supported with reference to reality or even the sketchiest argument provided she can quote someone else making much the same dubious, unsupported claim. A result of which is that these things sound like hyperbolical declarations of faith, or paranoia. And so she refers to capitalism as if it were some plotting, scheming entity, determined to subjugate anyone with a womb. And we get Laurie’s claim that unspecified “neoconservatives” are “bullying” and “threatening” white women “back to the kitchen and nursery” in “a racist panic.”
It’s boggling stuff.
society must do more, and better, to support women’s choices
That is a valid opinion for Penny to hold, and society as a whole will decide how much it has to do to support women’s choices. I think that last bit is where she falls over, demanding rather than presenting a persuasive argument for why we should all make our own situation worse to supposedly better hers and those like her. Equal rights and opportunities for women is hard to argue against but I don’t think that’s what she’s demanding.
I think she should take a long hard look at that anxiety that is starting to dog her… it could be the first stirrings of self-awareness that she’s being an idiot well beyond when it is socially acceptable to do so.
There is a fun word for that: pronunciamento — an authoritarian statement.
Here’s a perfect example:
Penny, Penny, you silly bint. Might that, just possibly have something to do with selection effect? That women, by and large, prefer not to marry losers? After all, if it was otherwise, women would be just as stupid as random chance. I’ll bet that’s not where you were intending to go with that, dear.
Behold the irony. She, no doubt, given half a reason, would heap scorn upon creationists. Yet that is precisely what she, and her similarly addled feminist friends, is. She, through the miracle of pronunciamento, has in effect decreed that evolution stopped at the neckline; that despite eons of completely different survival challenges, men and women are wholly interchangeable equals.
If that isn’t magical thinking, I have no earthly idea what might qualify.
“For a picture of the ravishing Ms. Penny”
I have to admit that I actually find that a rather attractive image. It’s a thang I guess……
Couldn’t live with her though.
I think it’s the squint and brown eyes that draws me.
“It would appear that God doesn’t find me useful in any capacity.
Well, your posts are always interesting and thought-provoking, so you have a fan club of sorts here.
so you have a fan club of sorts here.
I knew I should have turned this place into a low-rent dating site.
[ Rubs chin. ]
Could still happen.
Right.. there’s a challenge. Which wag is going to have a go at writing Penny’s dating-agency profile? Come on.. I need a laugh as it’s been raining here all day.
“Well, your posts are always interesting and thought-provoking, so you have a fan club of sorts here.”
I’ll second that.
I’ll second that.
Thirded.
According to Laurie, the “vanishing amount of security offered by coupledom” is outweighed by a million oppressions, like being mutually considerate and remembering birthdays..
…or having to negotiate with another person who’s sharing your life, and is affected by your choices. And it’s impossible to know if the roles are equal, or who’s happier with the situation*. And you just can’t get your way all the time, dang it…
Anyway, I digress. The nasty thing about expecting the state to be a father is the (very real) implication that real fathers aren’t necessary. Of course things are complicated – some blokes disappear having helped a woman conceive. The problem is, it’s not always clear that conception was their plan (or whether they had any say in the decision – they certainly don’t get a say in whether an abortion takes place).
It also seems that the amount of state help means that some mothers have (and use) a choice to kick out unemployed fathers (& separate them from their kids) if the state benefits are more that way.
So I’m sceptical about the narrative that states that all men are bastards who take no responsibility. Even if they were – there are alternatives available: DNA tests can provide proof of parenthood, more pressure could be put on genuine absentee dads. Possibly women could be encouraged not to have children with chaps who aren’t going to be around (but of course that would be denying women choice, and we couldn’t be having that)
Every option has complex repercussions. Then we get Ms Penny with her customary even-handedness and wordly wisdom, saying give mothers more benefits, and not mentioning fathers** as though that part of the equation didn’t exist. Thanks, Laurie!
* Ted Hughes wrote some unfathomable love poems based around this: mythical characters trying to answer questions like “Who gave most? Him or her?”
** we’ve counted the number of “I”s in the piece. The word “father” doesn’t appear once.
“It would appear that God doesn’t find me useful in any capacity.
I have been reading your comments for quite a few years now di, and that is a long way from being true. I have learned a great deal from you.
What Silver Whistle said.
The more of her crap I read the more convinced than ever I become that when she makes peace with bourgeois society – and logic – she will morph into the Melanie Phillips of the 2040s.
I look forward to seeing her despised by whatever has risen from the ashes of The Guardian a few decades hence.
Guys either figure this out quicker, are better at compromising, or have more options to rectify the problem as they get older than a lot of their female counterparts, it seems
That is my wife’s theory anyway.
She reckons that the women are generally hit on the double: their erstwhile drinking and partying male companions not only jump ship, but generally catch a spouse 5 or 10 years younger.
It would appear that God doesn’t find me useful in any capacity.
That’s why I call my life pointless: because it is.
@dicentra
I am a regular reader, and occasional poster here.
I always enjoy your posts, which are thoughtful and have a different perspective from most here.
I have no advice for you (you will be relieved to hear)- just my best wishes that things improve.
“Well, your posts are always interesting and thought-provoking, so you have a fan club of sorts here.”
I thank you all for your kind words.
May you never endure 15+ plus years of debilitating fatigue while single, working, and having to maintain a house and yard.
But may such a plague descend on all your enemies. 🙂
I knew I should have turned this place into a low-rent dating site.
[ Rubs chin. ]
Could still happen.
I only have eyes for you, David, and since you’re not available (in so many ways), I’ll just go back to crushing on Godfrey Elfwick and Milo.
I only have eyes for you, David,
Think of the babies we’d have produced.
What?
Which wag is going to have a go at writing Penny’s dating-agency profile?
I’ve read some which would probably be close. They go something like this:
Summary: Sapiosexual (don’t bother contacting me if you need to look it up) feminist and proud of it, looking for short or long term dating and casual sex. No creeps please and no guys with beards (ugh, I hate beards!) Be prepared to be challenged, if you can’t handle me you’ll be told to move on!
Interests: Feminist theory, politics, smashing the patriarchy, protests, travelling, writing, films.
Photo will look something like this.
She just can’t help herself.
https://twitter.com/Sargon_of_Akkad/status/742813919077670912
#FeelLauriesPain
#LauriesSoBrave
#MeMeMe
She just can’t help herself.
Laurie churns out these awful, mawkish things so frequently, I sometimes wonder if she keeps a template drafted, on hot standby, in case something awful happens, and then just fills in the particulars of the latest horror, but always with herself in a starring role, forever caring and weeping bravely. And given Laurie’s history of fabrication, I’m never quite convinced that much of what she describes actually happened. It all sounds a little scripted and contrived.
It all sounds a little scripted and contrived.
In that sense she’s the Johann Hari de nos jours.
“What?”
I love that film and have seen it multiple times, and will see it again. The remake with Superman and Rebecca was acceptable.
The storyline could be a metaphor for what’s happening at some universities in the Angry/Useless Studies Departments, I suppose. Except for the part where the “new breed” is super intelligent, competent and sort of appealing.
I love that film and have seen it multiple times,
Yes, given its age and tiny budget, it stands up quite well. Much better than the inferior sequel or the 90s remake. One of John Wyndham’s better stories, I think. “You’re not thinking of atomic energy. You’re thinking of… a brick wall…!”
There’s a pretty good documentary about Wyndham here.
Talking of SJWs… http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-15
“documentary about Wyndham”
I was supposed to actually get stuff done today, David. Thanks a lot.
Except for the part where the “new breed” is super intelligent, competent and sort of appealing.
If memory serves, the children are to some extent sympathetic, at least in the book, insofar as they aren’t cartoonishly malevolent and have little understanding of where they came from, or why. They can, however, anticipate how events will unfold, and are obliged to act accordingly. I suppose the sense of inevitability is what made the scenario rather chilling.
Thanks a lot.
No refunds. Credit note only.
Think of the babies we’d have produced.
Don’t be daft, David. The schnozz on that kid isn’t nearly long and pointy enough.
To be one of MY offspring, I mean. I’ve no clue what’s sticking out of YOUR face.
I’ve no clue what’s sticking out of YOUR face.
Cup of coffee at the moment.
[ Checks self in mirror, oozes self-satisfaction. ]
Cup of coffee at the moment.
You should be proud; that’s a good one.
“If the scholars believed their work had value, they would presumably appreciate wide distribution”
“Don’t point out my mistakes and crappy ‘science’, my ego and psyche can’t handle it! [Plus, I might be exposed]”
(I just needed to push this thread past the century mark)