Let’s Be Alone And Unhappy

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly:

Yes, from the pages of Vice, it’s a men-are-the-problem-and-therefore-unnecessary article. Because we haven’t had one of those in weeks.

Lesbian relationships being entirely free of aggravation and disappointment, you see. With rates of failure and divorce twice that of heterosexuals, more than double that of gay male couples, and with high rates of alcoholism and spousal abuse. What one might infer from that, I leave to others.

And,

At which point, readers may wish to share their favourite joke about female indirectness and the two dozen possible meanings of the words “I’m fine” when uttered by a woman, depending on the precise intonation and the current alignment of the planets.

Readers may also note the replacement of a once common but now seemingly unfashionable grievance – ‘Men don’t express their feelings’ – with one of a much more modish kind – ‘Men are expressing their feelings and it’s exhausting and unfair.’

One more time:

It occurs to me that there’s something a little dissonant about the framing of affection and basic consideration – say, remembering your partner’s birthday – as “unpaid.” As “emotional labour.” As if being in a relationship or having any concern for those you supposedly care about were some onerous, crushing chore. As if you should be applauded – and financially compensated – for the thirty-second task of adding a birthday to the calendar on your phone.

The attitude implied by the above would, I think, explain many failures on the progressive partner-finding front and the consequent “stepping away from dating altogether.” Though possibly not in ways the author intended.

Before we go further, it’s perhaps worth pondering how the conceit of “emotional labour” is typically deployed by a certain type of woman. Say, the kind who complains, in print and at great length, about the “emotional labour” of hiring a servant to clean her multiple bathrooms. Or writing a shopping list. Or brushing her daughter’s hair.

And for whom explaining to her husband the concept of “emotional labour” is itself bemoaned as “emotional labour.” The final indignity.

The kind of woman who bitches in tremendous detail about her husband and his shortcomings – among which, an inability to receive instructions sent via telepathy – in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement. The kind of woman who tells the world about how hiring servants is just so “exhausting,” while professing some heroic reluctance to complain.

As I said, worth pondering.

But back to the pages of Vice, where Ms Ashley Fike is telling us how it is:

Stoic, heroic women burdened by needy, emotional men. It’s a bold take.

And I can’t help but wonder what all of those single women, cited above, are doing instead of finding a suitable mate and building a happy life, perhaps even a family. Are they searching for a sense of purpose in causes, protests and political fashion, fuelled at least in part by envy and resentment? Just speculation, of course. But it would, I think, explain the tone and emotional convulsions of so many single, progressive women.

Again, the term “emotional labour” and its connotations of calculation, antagonism, and something vaguely inhuman. As if the concept of wanting to care, to help, to remember those birthdays, were somehow alien or offensive.

The reliance on this conceit – as the basis for an article, perhaps an entire worldview – doesn’t strike me as an obvious recipe for contentment, or indeed love. What with the endless cataloguing of shortcomings. All those reasons to resent.

Ah, a glimmer of hope.

So, don’t bore your wife with your troubles, gentlemen. No, search out a therapist. Or, “Be vulnerable, like we asked, but somewhere else.”

Also,

Again, connotations. Things implied. Not a wife, or wife-to-be. Just a shag. A rental.

And then, given the above, an inadvertent punchline:

No laughing at the back.

What women want, we’re told, is “mutual support,” which is to be had, apparently, by “the choice to stay single” and “choosing solitude over stress.” Ditching all those tiresome, exhausting men who appreciate having their birthdays remembered. Because “being alone is easier than managing someone else’s emotional life.”

Yes, I know. “Mutual support” via “solitude” and “being alone.” It’s a mastery of logic available only to expensively educated female journalists of a progressive leaning. You may have to tilt your head and squint.

So I see. Perhaps the crying and depression will come later.

As so often with progressive lifestyle advice, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that the one giving the advice is speaking, unwittingly, of themselves and their own immediate circle, their similarly progressive peers, rather than of men and women more generally. Just as one might wonder whether the objective is to encourage the credulous to sabotage their own lives, their own prospects for happiness.

See, for instance, the blatherings of Laurie Penny, who seemed very excited that “more women are living alone than ever before,” and who thrilled to the “growing power of uncoupled women.” By which she means, but is careful not to say, a dependence on the state and on state benefits. And for whom the “emotional labour” of coupledom includes cooking food, which single people don’t require, of course, and being considerate of a partner’s allergies.

Readers may wish to imagine a version of the article quoted above from a male perspective, and the likely reactions to it, at least from the scrupulously progressive readers of Vice.

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