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.
Did someone order this?
Instead, Ms Penny thrills to the “growing power of uncoupled women” and “the threat this poses to the socioeconomic status quo.”
She’s right in a sense. The welfare bill for even more single mothers could screw with the economy. Or isn’t that what she meant?
Or isn’t that what she meant?
Quite. Though chronic dependency on the state, on the coerced forbearance of others, is a strange definition of power, or of “personal autonomy.”
On the upside, you don’t often hear the words “commune” and “career” in the same sentence.
“Do you actually want to spend years taking care of children and a partner when it’s hard enough taking care of yourself?”
Speaks volumes.
Misery demands company.
Speaks volumes.
It does suggest an arrested, narrow and rather joyless view of human intimacy. Conventional coupling is disdained as merely the result of conformity and mental dullness, not love, and little more than a chore – “emotional labour… cleaning and cooking, the wiping of snotty noses… the remembering of food allergies… even if you’re lucky… a lifetime of domestic management.” Even the remembering of birthdays is framed as unpaid labour, a ghastly imposition, too much to bear. And curiously, the idea that a committed partner will reciprocate and take care of us, make us feel stronger and more capable, doesn’t seem to feature in her thinking. Or rather, her posturing.
I don’t know about “everywhere”.
But in the West, it’s increasingly the men who are going on strike re marriage. For extended discourse on the matter, try Dalrock. The long and the short of it is perhaps this – there is little reason to marry any more, the classics of sex, children and helpmeet being increasingly disconnected from marriage, and much reason not to marry, due to presumption of male guilt in in practically every aspect of marital conflict.
Speaks volumes.
And again, you have to wonder, what would have happened if Laurie’s own parents had pursued a similar vision – scorning monogamous commitment and family stability as a thankless chore, an inconvenience best avoided. Would Laurie’s own rather comfortable middle-class upbringing, and her subsequent career as a thrusting leftwing columnist, have been quite so viable? Does she believe that her parents’ marriage and relationship were merely “a systemic lie designed to manipulate women into lifelong emotional labour”?
Orlando, you know where 50 gay people have been shot was and more injured has just brought hatred of Laurie to the fore.
https://twitter.com/PennyRed/status/742267122831765504
Hey! She’s the *real* victim here
#PrayForPenny
Which would explain all those cheery, contended articles she churns out.
Nearly choked on my sandwich. Damn you, Thompson!
Instead, Ms Penny thrills to the “growing power of uncoupled women” and “the threat this poses to the socioeconomic status quo
Not entirely unrelated, I don’t think, is that Universal Basic Income (UBI) seems to be growing in popularity as the latest cause du jour just one of the arguments for which is the following:
Patriarchy has put the world’s wealth in the hands of men, prevented women from being professionals and entrepreneurs, forced poor women into dead-end second-class labor jobs, and forced all women to become unpaid domestic servants and caretakers of the young, elderly, and disabled of their families. Women have been forced to be financially dependent on fathers or husbands who are often abusive. A basic income would change all of this. A basic income would be a massive transfer of wealth from men to women. Women would be free of financial dependence on any man, and the young, elderly, and disabled would all be fully supported. Women could afford to leave abusive husbands, those who chose to be caretakers would be fully compensated, and no woman would be forced into a dead-end job, and would instead be able to pursue her own financial goals as she saw fit.
No, really.
If this is being touted as an advantage of UBI, I can’t imagine what the disadvantages must look like.
Nearly choked on my sandwich.
No refunds. Credit note only.
Penny is advocating a return to matriarchy. The female-centered kinship system where fatherhood is a matter of opinion. She apparently thinks that without confidence in their own status as fathers, men will still be willing to work, bleed, kill, and die to protect and provide for women and *their* children.
One of the many problems with this perspective is that we can *see* what happens when traditional marriage is abandoned or actively destroyed: ghettos. The black underclass in the U.S. and, per Theodore Dalrymple’s _Life at the Bottom_, the dolist classes in Britain, suffer from rampant illegitimacy and welfare-dependence. These are not “strong, independent” women (or men), they’re bums. Parasites on the body politic, living on monies extorted via taxation from the working classes.
If men can’t have guaranteed fatherhood, then we’ll see more and more men deciding that marriage, which is already a bad deal in many ways given the divorce laws, simply isn’t worth the bother. As Penny mentions, unmarried mothers are likely to be poor. Unmarried *men* on the other hand, do quite well for ourselves if we have any kind of work-ethic (granted, many don’t, especially if they were raised in mother-headed, single-parent households in the ghettos). I suppose the next step is to significantly increase taxes on those hateful, commito-phobic shitlords to support the strong, independent womyn who bear children out of wedlock. Because “equality” or somesuch.
Microbillionaire mentioned Dalrock, so I’ll put in a plug for Daniel Amneus’ book The case for father custody. It could’ve used a better editor, but he essentially predicted everything Penny advocates.
“pretentious teenager hoping to scandalise elderly relatives”
That does seem like an appropriate metaphor for whole swaths of the loud, loony left.
One of the many problems with this perspective is that we can *see* what happens when traditional marriage is abandoned or actively destroyed: ghettos… unmarried mothers are likely to be poor.
No, it doesn’t seem to result in much “personal autonomy” or any great swelling of human happiness. But Laurie feels that she and people like her should be able to self-determine how much of other people’s earnings are distributed their way, regardless of any effort or merit on their own part, and regardless of their own bad choices, thereby allowing them to avoid the chores and responsibilities endured by the little people.
For a picture of the ravishing Ms. Penny:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/18/laurie-penny-s-in-your-face-feminism.html
“… Universal Basic Income (UBI) … Women would be free of financial dependence on any man,…”
So none of us, men, will have to contribute any taxes to fund the UBI? On that basis, sure, I’m in.
Feminists and the Left have fetishized single motherhood since the early 1980s, if not earlier, with the unsupportable assertion that all would be perfect if only society picked up the cost of raising these kids. This UBI nonsense has been around forever, in one form or another.
Does Ms. Penny realize she is mouthing the same dreary platitudes we’ve heard for nearly 40 years? My guess is “no.” I’m sure she views herself as so radically transgressive when these ideas pop into her head.
Narcissistic personality disorder: a career not an illness…
I’d like to think that Penny might feel differently about the world if she’s in the same state when she’s 40, but I suspect she is so fundamentally selfish that eternal spinsterhood won’t bother her a bit. More ‘me’ time.
On the subject of marriage, despite its flaws it remains popular. It’s often pointed out that gay marriage was not an issue, say 15 years ago. That may be true, but the number of my gay friends who have got married in the past five years or so suggests there was a fair bit of pent-up demand for it. Marriage is a good thing and people recognise that.
So much deeply wrong in Red Penny’s word salad that it proves, as if further proof is needed, that New Statesman’s editorial standards are on the Voyager spacecraft, hurtling through interstellar space.
Challenge to the dread Red: re-write without passive voice.
Betcha can’t do it.
For a picture of the ravishing Ms. Penny:
This one is more flattering.
2,252 words; ‘I’ or ‘me’ used about 70 times.
Re: flattering picture
Gordon Brown was also accomplished snot eater himself.
“We haf ze ways to make you laf.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DQ61G9ir0Q
without confidence in their own status as fathers, men will still be willing to work, bleed, kill, and die
Except for the work part, they seem to be willing to do that, as the body count in Chicago every weekend makes abundantly clear. And ultimately that is the hellhole that reliance on Laurie Penny’s advice will bring about. Of course she will somehow still be able to have a home in an upscale neighborhood and find readers for her drivel. Because mass societal disintegration will leave her corner of the world magically untouched.
But other than that, the advocating for the UBI, the claim that families are unnecessary for the rearing of children, the idea of the state as the ultimate provider, these are all hallmarks of every totalitarian society. The Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, the Hitlerjugend, East Germany’s Freie Deutsche Jugend, the Kim Il-Sung Socialist Youth League, and on and on, all of them are a way for the state to take children away from their families and raise them within the governing ideology and turn them away from their bourgeois tendencies.
There is a lot of totalitarianism in mainstream feminism.
Sounds like, because she wants this lifestyle with no responsibilities or joy, she demands that we should be just as miserable as she is. I’m sure she’s just loads of fun on a date. Typical lib.
Once again, we see the Leftist reality: All human interactions are zero-sum. If I am happy, someone somewhere must be miserable. Of course, this is especially insidious in marriage, because the miserable person is always the wife, by definition, and who derives no benefit whatsoever from a cooperative enterprise.
Somehow it escapes Penny’s attention that the cooperative benefits of a voluntary association like her beloved commune, can be replicated with two participants (more with kids) with equal success.
I have this theory that only unhappy people feel the need to convince us how happy they are.
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.
Give it another 2-3 years, 5 tops, and she’ll be desperately meeting all sorts of weirdos and misfits on OK Cupid wondering where it all went wrong. One of the most tragic things to witness in life is women entering their 30s thinking – in terms of romantic options – they’ll be just like their 20s. It normally takes them until about 32-35 to figure out they should have wrapped things up years ago.
society must do more, and better, to support women’s choices.
It seems to me there’s quite a lot packed into that one throwaway line, which is Laurie’s sole attempt to address the correlation of single motherhood with hardship, welfare dependency, educational failure, criminality, etc.
According to Laurie, the “vanishing amount of security offered by coupledom” is outweighed by a million oppressions, like being mutually considerate and remembering birthdays, all of which constitute an intolerable loss of “personal autonomy.” Such is her disdain, she likes the idea of “women reject[ing] marriage and partnership en masse” and wishes to see the institutions of marriage and family “dismantled” in favour of atomised living and single mothers, which necessarily entails ever-more widespread dependency on the state – the aforementioned “society doing more to support women’s choices.”
According to Laurie, the participants in a marriage or any remotely conventional coupling can never be “true equals.” And so the gist seems to be that it’s wrong and oppressive for a woman to be emotionally or financially dependent on a man who cares for her, for richer and poorer, ‘til death, etc., even if he is equally dependent, financially and emotionally, on her. But for women, and by extension any children, to be utterly and existentially dependent on the state, which doesn’t and cannot care, this is somehow morally right and an act of “liberation.”
Incidentally, you don’t really get articles extolling the virtues of men remaining single, do you? Probably because – in my experience at least – despite all the stereotypes men don’t really want to be single forever. I have reached my late 30s slightly surprised that *every* guy I know is in some sort of meaningful, long-term relationship with almost all of them being married and most with kids. Given the types of guys I used to know in their 20s and the behaviour some of them engaged in, I must say I’m surprised: I’d have thought that at least one or two would have shunned the restrictions of a serious, loving relationship in order to live the imagined “dream” of a single guy. When I discuss this with my friends and colleagues, we all agree that living a carefree life with no significant other can be heaps of fun in your early 20s but it starts to get boring and eventually just gets sad. One would be forgiven for thinking there is some strange natural force at work which predisposes human beings to form a special relationship with a chosen other. Who would have thought?
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. What Penny needs to realise is that menfolk don’t give a shit whether she’s single or not, and nor do most right-thinking women.
@Hedgehog: Regarding my “fight, bleed, kill, and die” comment, while it’s true that many un-married baby-daddies will do all but the “work” part, how much of what they *will* do is “to protect and provide for women and *their* [ie, the womens’ bastard] children”? I’d warrant not much.
The “work” part is particularly significant of course. Civilization doesn’t happen on its own. The work needed to build and maintain it carries significant costs in time, effort, and personal safety. Why bother with all that to benefit someone else’s children? Much easier to hang out, draw welfare (or deal drugs), and party like there’s no tomorrow.
Today the benefits of marriage and monogamy are increasingly outweighed by the costs.
Many young men seem to agree:
While social realities have changed, the laws have yet to catch up.
I spent a substantial part of my early career representing litigants in domestic relations cases. In my jurisdiction, the laws “caught up,” but they were ignored in favor of the old prejudices. Sadly, there was/is very little recourse to men who find themselves on the “right” side of the law but on the wrong side of judgement of dissolution of marriage, given that in such cases there is a substantial amount of “judicial discretion” baked into the system. Add in an increasing number of feminists on the judiciary and a government which takes a cut of child support payments, and one quickly sees why men are thinking twice about subjecting themselves to the risk of financial destruction at some point in the future.
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.
So I can eat out every night and afford a maid and all I have to do is divorce my husband?
*thinks*
@jabrwok: Regarding my “fight, bleed, kill, and die” comment…
Yes, of course. My point was in part that men seem to be wired for the “bleed, kill, and die” thing, so they’ll do it anyway. The advantage of a civilization is that it tries to channel the behavior into productive uses, hence the work part, which tends to fall by the wayside once the civilizing effect of the responsibility for another human being (or 2, or 3) disappears.
And then of course I was being snarky, but at the expense of Laurie Penny, not yours.
As to Why bother with all that to benefit someone else’s children? I think there are studies that show that infants tend to look like their fathers in the first couple of years of life. The hypothesis is that it makes the father more likely to provide for the offspring since it gives him some confidence that he is, indeed, the father. The mother doesn’t need this kind of reassurance since, strangely, she knows exactly where the kid came from. And so a resemblance to the father gives infants an evolutionary advantage. Just another example of how unscientific, even anti-scientific, the Left tends to be these days. But then the Left always wants to remake humanity in some Utopian fashion, reality be damned.
So I can eat out every night and afford a maid and all I have to do is divorce my husband?
In LaurieWorld™ all things are possible.
divorce courts tend to favor women (who, incidentally, initiate the majority of divorces)
You mean that women take advantage of the situation? Really?
“… and no more important than Laurie’s books.”
Am I the only one that read that line as Laurie’s boobs instead of books? 🙂
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.
Men are like a wine, best after they’ve aerated a bit. Women are like mayonnaise at a picnic, best avoided after they’ve been in the sun for a while.
@Hedgehog: And then of course I was being snarky, but at the expense of Laurie Penny, not yours.
I didn’t take it as directed at me. I can be a bit pedantic at times (really!) and thought I should expand on my point a bit. It looks like we’re in pretty violent agreement:-).
She doesn’t seem to realize (or care) that those snotty nosed kids tend to grow up and produce grandchildren; yours truly had already rebutted her asinine assertions several days ago:
I’ll lying be on my deathbed, USB drive of my portfolio clutched in my arthritic hands, glorying in my independence.
Yessir, that will be me.
Would Laurie’s own rather comfortable middle-class upbringing, and her subsequent career as a thrusting leftwing columnist, have been quite so viable?
Of course not. She probably rebelled against her parents in her teens by dyeing her hair and piercing her nose and never grew out of it. As your readers will know by now, I saw this first hand from somebody who could have been Penny’s twin: not two days went by when she, age 32, did not launch into some rant about her middle-class, rather normal parents and their unreasonable expectations and attitudes.
“Do you actually want to spend years taking care of children and a partner when it’s hard enough taking care of yourself?”
Absolutely yes. The happiest years of my life have been the ‘give-and-take’ years of my marriage and child-rearing. How terribly tragic (and innately selfish) that Penny sees it all so negatively one-sided. She has clearly never known love, happiness, the joy of caring and of being cared for. All she knows is the me-me-ME!
What a hollow husk of a person she is.
… “the threat this poses to the socioeconomic status quo” is indeed real, since these women will not pass on their genes and their phenotype will disappear, supplanted by that of people willing to breed.
From a biologist’s perspective, spinsters’ lives are largely pointless. In population biology, a non-breeder is defined as a “supernumerary”, which neatly describes Miss P.
I cannot imagine anyone sensible taking the least notice of her views.
@ Thomas Fuller: From a biologist’s perspective, spinsters’ lives are largely pointless.
One of the nice things about being human is that it is possible to expand the ability of the population without doing it exclusively through the transmission of one’s genes, by adding to the sum total of human knowledge for example.
But then of course that would exclude Laurie Penny, so I’ll concede your point.
And again, you have to wonder, what would have happened if Laurie’s own parents had pursued a similar vision – scorning monogamous commitment and family stability as a thankless chore, an inconvenience best avoided.
I’m reminded of the 1930 movie Just Imagine (looks like it might be available on Youtube) in which Marjorie White sings the following ditty:
Mothers tell your daughters: never ever wed
Mothers tell your daughters: shun the married bed
Although I find that good advice, one drawback I can see
If Mom had followed that advice, there wouldn’t be a me!
I’ve been waiting, as open-mindedly as possible, for a sudden neo-Darwinian impulse to pair up and reproduce.
Perhaps the lack of impulse is the ghost of Darwin telling her she is not among the fittest of the species and hence should not reproduce.
chronic dependency on the state, on the coerced forbearance of others, is a strange definition of power, or of “personal autonomy.”
Does Penny Dreadful ever proof read her own articles?
Does Penny Dreadful ever proof read her own articles?
For spelling and colourful turns of phrase, yes, I’m sure she does. Just not for realism or coherence.