05

Feb

Singles in the News: Baby Mamas, Bachelors in politics and Single woman writers

Finally. Publishing in January 2013.

On Sale until Feb. 14.

Bella DePaulo, Queen of Singles, called my book, “A story of single life you haven’t heard before.” And Ezra, one of my most thoughtful commenters, posted a review on Goodreads saying that my stories of single life were “a better, maturer different.” I hope that you’ll get a copy for half off between now and Valentine’s Day. You can buy the book here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/270861 and to get $2.50 off, use the coupon code GM36A.

Did I mention there’s a party? There’s a Singles Party to celebrate the publication of the book. Feb. 14th. You can pay what you like at the door, but if you can pay in advance on Eventbrite: I’ll send you a copy of the book: http://singlespartyaustin2013.eventbrite.com/

So, now that I’ve said that, I’ve noticed as Bella DePaulo has noted (can you tell I’m a fan?) there’s been more positive coverage of singles in recent years. “Increasingly,” she wrote in a Psychology Today post, “Singles are getting some love and some respect!” It’s true. It also means I can’t always keep up with all the love singles get in individual posts. But I love digests, so I thought I’d start one.

OK, this isn’t exactly a love note to singles, but: “A gay president in a committed relationship will still be more comfortable for many people than someone who stays single.” That was the kicker quote in a story at The Root about bachelors (Cory Booker, haaay!)  who might be running for president in 2016.

From the “Amen, sister” files: “If you are a single woman writer, you live a unique, complicated reality. You may desire companionship, but you also desire to write. These are sometimes conflicting needs.” – Deonna Kelli on the challenges of being a single woman writer at Love InshAllah.

I go back and forth on whether or not we should write what we know. I know secondhand some of the challenges related to being a single parent, because I was raised by one. But I wrote about the All My Babies’ Mamas drama for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Basically: Most media we see portrays black mothers as single stereotypical ones, even when they’re not. Which is just weird. It was a joy to talk to other smart black women for the piece, including one of my favorites, Stacia L. Brown at Beyond Baby Mamas.

103 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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28

Aug

Tamara K. Nopper writes about the Marriage Access Narrative

The whole article is great, but this resonates deeply:

Marriage politics also encompasses the political purpose of marriage, or why it is encouraged, whose agenda it serves beyond those who exchange the vows, and the use of the institution to justify a range of austerity campaigns that privilege certain classes as well as promote the surveillance and criminalization of those structurally deemed unfit for full citizenship or who reject or “fail at” marriage.

Marriage promotion as a punitive measure has been most aggressively targeted at African Americans and for that reason alone, marriage as a purportedly benign right should be questioned.  We can also consider why, in the context of an anti-Black civil society in which we all exist, marriage serves as an explanation for enduring social inequalities, particularly during the era of mass incarceration, the HIV AIDS crisis, and the most severe financial meltdown since the Great Depression.  As Kandaswamy succinctly puts it, “the language of marriage has displaced the question of political economy almost entirely.”

To be clear: my exploration of the state’s aggressive promotion of marriage among African Americans is not to equate the contemporary call for gay marriage with Black striving for full citizenship or to imply that those in the Black community (or of any background) who want to get married shouldn’t do so.  Rather, it is to discuss marriage politics beyond access to legal recognition and to consider what the African American experience reveals about marriage as an organizing principle of the structure, under which we all attempt to carve out emotional meaning and have a variety of relationships.

If I could propose to a set of paragraphs, I would ask the ones above to be in a long-term committed companionship with me forever. I suppose I’ll just go nerd out on Tamara’s website.

264 days ago Short URL Comments

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15

May

Ebony Magazine on being Single, Saved & Having Sex

Let me not cast any stones, not even the first one. But ranting online this morning about the ways that the discussion of Barack Obama’s changed stance on same sex marriage has cast the Black Church and the Black Community as a monolith nearly clarified for me what I find annoying about discussions related to black everything in popular culture.

If the community is still a monolith (which it isn’t) then no one has to do the work of finding out just how diverse the individuals who make up said community are. It is a way of denying their humanity – collectively and individually.

That said, I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of Christians who do things that aren’t Biblical. But this is a false conundrum because having sex as a single person if you’re saved is explicitly a no-no for Christians. But so is judging others. And not tithing. And a host of other ugly things that folks have no trouble doing.

Ebony spells it out:

Many Christian youths who signed abstinence pledges or wore purity rings reach a crossroad as young adults. They are faced with upholding Biblical principles against sex outside of marriage during an era when the average age of first marriage creeps toward 30. Celibacy may be even tougher for singles who have splashed around in the pool of fornication long before dedicating their lives to Christ. More are asking, “Am I really condemning my soul to eternal damnation by getting my freak on Saturday night and praising the Lord on Sunday morning?” As many as 80 percent of young unmarried Christians have had sex, according to Relevant, a magazine for Christians aged 18 to 30.

So, let’s do some quick math, because you know — that’s my favorite subject.

One hundred million unmarried people. About 12 percent of those are black folks. So, about 10 million black people, let’s say. Eighty-five percent of them identify as Christian. Less than 50 percent are married. What’s that – about 2 million, give or take? (That’s a low estimate. From a journalist. Who doesn’t really like math and never took statistics.)

I guess I wonder about the voices of the single and celibate who aren’t sure they even want to get married. Because if you’re not sure that God is calling you to get married, that seems about as plausible as declaring yourself a practicing and devout Christian and saying you think it’s cool with Jesus if you just let this one thing slip, right? I mean, what is the point of going all in if you’re not really going all in? (I did not mean that as a pun.)

And another thing. Sex is at the heart of so much shame in the black community. Part of the reason that’s the case is because of the shaming of churches around pervasive behavior. You know there are women getting infected with HIV/AIDS in your pews, on your watch, and all you can do is gesture in the direction of what the Bible says? The Bible also says a lot of things that people forget about when it is convenient for them.

368 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

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01

May

Cindy Butler on 100 million unmarried people & family values

I liked this piece by Cindy Butler at the New York Times recently called “Unmarried, and Ignored by the G.O.P.”:

Republican candidates are missing the mark when speaking to the American public. In all their discussions about “family values” – as defined by marriage between a man and a woman and children born only in marriage – the candidates are ignoring the 100 million unmarried individuals in this country. This is a huge mistake, as this constituency makes up about 30 percent of all American adults. Not all people want to or can marry.

The shift in attitudes about marriage is not new, and it’s not reversible.

Unmarried people build diverse and fulfilling lives in ways that are deeply personal and cannot be legislated, certainly not in ways proposed by the Republican Party.

Butler leads the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which might interest some of you.

383 days ago Short URL Comments

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26

Apr

The connection between civil rights and gay rights

This article by Jonathan Capeheart makes some excellent points. I usually dislike the analogy between the struggles for gay rights and civil rights in the African American community, because they seem to be very different struggles. But I am OK with being wrong in this case. That’s what education is good for:

Civil rights icon Julian Bond told me during an interview for the PBS program “In The Life” in 2008, “Black people, of all people, should not oppose equality. It does not matter the rationale – religious, cultural, pseudo-scientific. No people of good will should oppose marriage equality. And they should not think civil unions are a substitute. At best, civil unions are separate but equal. And we all know separate is never equal.”

When I asked Bond what is the connection between the black civil rights movement and its gay counterpart, he said it was the immutable characteristics of the individuals involved. “You are what you are,” he said, “and you cannot be discriminated against in this country for what you are.

“And the fact that the black civil rights movement came to public attention before the gay civil rights movement, which is existing at the same time but I don’t think well known to people. . . These draw from each other. And the gay movement draws tactics and techniques and songs and slogans. As did the Hispanic movement, as did the women’s movement.”

From The Washington Post: “Black and gays: The shared struggle for civil rights.”

388 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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27

Mar

The new anti-man movement

Critiquing men and manhood is not declaring war, but since there are millions of single women — more than single men — in America, I have been turning this over in my head for a little while now.

Nicole Jonson wrote a few months ago at The Good Men Project that women should stop declaring war on men:

There is not a war between men and women. From my vantage point, there are not battles, bombings, or bloodshed between the sexes. Men and women are not plotting carnage against each other. Furthermore, men are too smart to declare war on women.
Most men understand they can not survive without women. Ladies, can you say the same about men? I hope so. The truth is we would die without each other.
If there is any type of “war” going on it’s the new anti-men movement. To the ladies waging this campaign against men, I’m begging you, please: drop your weapons. You are fighting a losing battle, and ultimately, you are harming yourself and the female gender. Regardless of your sexual orientation, you need men; you can’t live without men. Moreover, I believe a portion of your disdain for men stems from internal strife and discontent.
Labels are limiting and lugubrious. We label people as a way to contain them, as well as to create a consistent, pre-determined expectation. This is tremendously unfair…
Degrees of inequalities will always exist between the sexes. Ladies, stop fighting this truth. Concentrate on your strengths, and address the internal battle with yourself before declaring men the enemy.

Because there has been a lot of talk about the Republican War on Women, in Texas and elsewhere, I wondered what others thought about the idea that there is a new strain of anti-man writing in our society. I think that patriarchy as we have always known it is starting to flatten like other hierarchies (the economy, corporations, education) in part because of deindustrialization. As that has happened, the definition of manhood has shifted, so that it cannot solely depend on women, children and job status as a man’s sole indicator of how manly he is.

In this transition, it seems that men have become vulnerable to being categorized as good men and bad men in most media coverage, with little room for the average guy. Does it seem that way to you?

418 days ago Short URL Comments

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24

Mar

Reads for the weekend: Swingle women, Empty Hands & Full Hearts and How to deal with Fear of Missing Out

 

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(This is a picture I took of Talib Kweli during SXSW. He is in no way endorsing anything I write about, I’m just a fan.)

Politics isn’t really my favorite topic but I can’t avoid it. Maybe because I’m one of these fun new swingles?

“The single woman, or “swingle,” as pollsters are now calling her, is already one of the largest voting blocs at 55 million, and that number is growing by almost 1 million voters a year—faster than any other group of voters broken out in the polls,” reports Hanna Rosin at Slate. “They may think like Republicans but they live like a Republican’s parody of a Democrat. They struggle financially, and living alone has given them a kind of ‘ambiguous independence,’  as (Kathy Edin, Harvard sociologist) likes to say.”

I cannot wait to study sociology so that I can use fantastic phrases like ‘ambiguous independence.’ It sounds so fancy.

Speaking of fancy, in my efforts to succeed at adulthood, I read Get Rich Slowly often. This is a great post from April Dykman on how to handle your fear of missing out (or FOMO).

One of my favorites: Leo Babauta at Zen Habits on empty hands and full hearts: “Having empty hands but a heart that is full of love leaves us prepared for anything.”

421 days ago Short URL Comments

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18

Mar

Mancession or He-Covery?

I really did intend to get to this sooner, but it’s the kind of news that doesn’t get old.

I wonder what other people make of the words we make up to describe economic trends: Mancession. The End of Men. He-Covery.

This Jezebel blog had me cracking up:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2011, 2/3 of new hires by American companies were men. A total of 1.6 million dudes joined the workforce compared to just 600,000 women, re-widening the gap between men and women in the workforce, which means that everyone lamenting the death of the American man can just go right on ahead and shut up.
In October 2009, women comprised 49.99% of the workforce, a breath of a hair of an itty bitty thread away from being half of Americans in the workforce. Part of this illusory equality was brought on by the gendered nature of the industries overwhelmingly affected by the recession in the first place. As the recession plodded along, the jobs in traditionally male industries like construction didn’t return, and unemployment benefits started to run out. And we now appear to be moving away from gender parity once again; threatened with impending expiration of any form of aid or income, some men did the unthinkable— debase themselves enough to work women’s jobs like- gasp!- retail.

What I find fascinating about discussions around masculinity now, seriously, is that there are few stories focusing on older men and women — past well into their 40s and 50s, but not yet old enough to qualify for retirement benefits — who have to take any kind of job to make ends meet.

The way we’ve talked about the economy up to this point has been focused on the way work has become more feminine or woman-focused, despite the fact that men still make more money and hold more of the decision-making positions in society. I feel like that has to fuel some of the resentment that men have about single women. The only thing I really have to go on is the snowballing number of articles about women as breadwinners and men as stay-at-home dads or irritated jobless jerks.

I wonder if the War on Women here in Texas and across the country is related to women’s success during America’s economic downturn. Something about women being free to make decisions about their own bodies, whether they actually have money or not, tends to really piss off wealthy white dudes, I’ve noticed. “Those broads have too much independence, while the bros are struggling,” I can hear one of these guys muttering.

427 days ago Short URL Comments

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04

Feb

Planned Parenthood Saved Me

After a decade of striving to be objective and fair in news coverage, I was always uncomfortable writing about my personal experiences unless I felt like it was necessary to prove a greater point about the invisibility of certain stories in our culture. It took Susan G. Komen’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood (which it has since reversed) to remind me of the importance of taking a side. I found this Planned Parenthood Tumblr today and submitted the following piece to it. I wanted to share it here, but also encourage you to follow the Tumblr and some of the great stories there:

 

The year before I left the Bronx for boarding school, I got pregnant.

I was 15.

I’d known since I was 12 that I wanted to become a writer. So, I kept a journal. In this journal, I wrote in painful detail (sometimes in red pen) about sex with my boyfriend at the time. My mother, a devout Catholic who went to Mass daily, read my journal while I was out with said boyfriend, and, after reading my journal entry aloud to my boyfriend and his mother, promptly dragged me to Planned Parenthood near 149th Street in the South Bronx.

The whole time we were there, my mother said her rosary in the waiting room. I distinctly remember throwing up, which almost never happened, which is how I knew that I was pregnant before they told me. I don’t know if how this went down was legal or not, I just remember the doctors noticing that there wasn’t something quite right about my mom (she had bipolar disorder and could be extremely violent — if she found out I was pregnant, she would have probably tried to kill me, and that’s not an exaggeration) telling me privately that I was pregnant and asking me gently what I wanted to do.

I told them I could barely feed myself, and my mother was in the same boat. They scheduled a time for me to come back, but when my mother came into the room, they said that everything looked fine and that I wasn’t pregnant.

If I hadn’t had an abortion, I would never have traveled, made it out of poverty or gone to college when I did. The door of opportunities would have inevitably shut. I pray daily for forgiveness, but I also am deeply thankful and indebted to Planned Parenthood for the important, life-saving and life-changing work it does.

470 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

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