Single, Single, Little Star January 7, 2012
Posted by Onely in Look What Google Barfed Up, Onely B*tchslaps Mother Nature.Tags: singles in nature, supernova
6 comments
Welcome to the latest installment in our series, Onely B*tchslaps Mother Nature, where we rage against mistreatment of singles–whether animals, plants, or extraterrestrials.
Onely’s long-time mission is to fight discrimination against singles. But lately we’re considering abandoning our quest. Why bother, when the very fabric of the universe is stacked against us?
Today we’re examining the super-fast “runaway” stars that streak through the Milky Way. Scientists originally thought that the stars used to be one of a pair of stars. A runaway star, they reasoned, was “fleeing a partner that exploded in a supernova,” according to an article in New Scientist magazine (26 November 2011, p.17).
I liked this theory. The runaways had left their volatile, oppressive partner stars, preferring to zip around the galaxy as single stars. Or I guess you could say maybe the runaways had been dumped–it all depends on how you interpret, And so, then my significant other exploded in a supernova. . .
Either way, I was like “Go Single Star Power! Rah rah!” But then New Scientist burst my bubble. It turns out that runaway stars are actually victims of couplemania, or the privileging of the couple unit. Researchers have recently learned that the runaway stars are not halves of broken-up pairs at all. They are actually single stars that tried to hang out in orbit with a committed star couple. They gained their burst of speed when they were
booted out because the trio was gravitationally unstable.
Well you know the old saying, Two’s company, three’s gravitationally unstable. Or as New Scientist puts it,
Single stars that try to come between a stellar pair are flung away at breakneck speeds
Even though the star was just trying to be friendly. And that’s why Onely is giving Mother Nature a B*tchslap this week.
–Christina
Photo credit: Jem Yoshioka
Single? Then DIE! December 11, 2011
Posted by Onely in Look What Google Barfed Up, Onely B*tchslaps Mother Nature.5 comments
Welcome to the first installment in our new series, Onely B*tchslaps Mother Nature, where we decry instances of discrimination against singles–in the natural world.
Onely’s regular readers know we hate it when couples are privileged over us singles. We hate paying more than couples at the gym. We hate that the beneficiaries of our IRAs have to pay taxes on that money, just because they’re not our spouses. We hate movies where the hero’s life magically becomes all hunky-dory just because she pairs up with someone. We hate singlism, and we’ve encountered a lot of it in our time.
But at least no one has ever tried to kill us because we were single.
No such luck for single cannibal shrimp. According to this article in New Scientist magazine,
Cannibal shrimp are so hell-bent on living in pairs that when placed in groups of three or four, they attack their peers until just one couple remains alive.
No matter what your stance on marital status discrimination, you have to admit that would make a really gripping reality show.
–Christina
Photo credit: oogoom
P.S. Yes, all you taxonomists out there, that photo is not actually of cannibal shrimp. It’s a copulation between two male and one female Amano shrimp, who are apparently much more freespirited and less heteronormative than cannibal shrimp.
Phob-cabulary November 2, 2009
Posted by Onely in Look What Google Barfed Up.Tags: anuptaphobia, fear of being single, fear of marriage, gamophobia, social phobias
2 comments
Anuptaphobia
fear of remaining single
Gamophobia
fear of marriage
Can we count on our Copious Readers to use these words henceforth when discussing issues of single’s rights and the marriage mythology? = ) (It’s an amazing but sadly unsurprising fact that, after 1.5 years of blogging on WordPress, I still don’t know how to insert the yellow smiley-face icon.)
–Christina
Source: Haigh, Gideon. The Uncyclopedia. MJF Books, New York. 2004.
And we thought the U.S. government was obsessed with marriage! October 17, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Look What Google Barfed Up.Tags: malaysia free honeymoons, saudi terrorist rehabilitation
7 comments
Felicia Strehmel, "Open Mind"
The U.S. government gives married couples over one thousand rights that singles don’t receive. I used to think this was matrimaniacal (perpetuating the misguided notion that marriage is unequivocably beneficial for individuals and society). But now I see that matrimania is all relative.
The Malaysian government is giving away free honeymoons to encourage troubled couples to stay together and avoid divorce, which according to Malaysian government official Ashaari Idris has “serious implications on society.” Idris works for the northeastern state of Terengganu, a tourist beach mecca with many island resorts. Couples can apply for a two-night stay at one of these resorts; the process includes an interview in which, I imagine, the pair details their relationship difficulties and how a weekend on the beach would help them:
“If I could just walk with him hand and hand along the sunny strand, I wouldn’t care that he doesn’t listen to me.”
“I’m sure that after we come back from the seaside, she’ll want to have my mother over for dinner more often.”
If I were a single Malaysian, I’d be standing at the desk of some Terengganu official, trying hard as hell to capitalize on this offer too:
“My relationship with myself hasn’t been great lately. I think I need to wade in the surf and reconnect with my core being.”
or
“As a single person, I naturally have very low self-esteem, which has serious implications on society. If I could only go sit in the sun and soak up a sense of self-worth, I won’t end up shooting from a belltower and in fact I might even start having goods-consuming babies.”
And just when I was thinking Malaysia was pretty matrimaniacal, look what Google barfed up: the Saudi government is giving away free wives to rehabilitated terrorists. Historian and writer Robert Lacey visited a terrorist rehabilitation center in Riyadh where he learned that the Ministry of the Interior will buy wives for (supposedly) reformed terrorists, at the cost of sixty thousand Riyals (around US$18,000) each. That’s how much faith the Saudi government has in the power of marriage to make people better!
Discussion questions: Copious Readership, can a weekend on the beach repair a fraying relationship? Can having a wife keep a terrorist from going out at night with the boys to blow things up? Is there merit to these efforts at all?
Additional discussion question (non-rhetorical, per Rachel’s comment below): Does anyone have other examples of matrimania in different countries? Does the matrimania of countries other than the U.S. make the US’ matrimania look less bad, or does it make the U.S. look even worse? Regarding the latter, I think that for the U.S. to offer over 1,000 legal rights to married people at the expense of singles is almost *more* insidiously matrimaniacal than the Saudi government’s wife-selling ideas, because at least the Saudis don’t pretend to have a culture of sexual equality and freedom for all.
Christina
Another Reason Institutionalized Couplehood SUCKS October 7, 2009
Posted by Onely in Academic Alert!, As If!, Just Saying., Look What Google Barfed Up.Tags: american sociological association, marriage and feminism, married name change, take husband's name, university of indiana study
20 comments
Because it breeds sexism!
According to an 11 August 2009 article in USA Today, fifty percent of Americans think that a woman should be required by the federal government to take her husband’s last name!
How. F&king. Scary. The institution of marriage–and I’m talking about the federally sponsored institution–allows people to put men and women in boxes according to roles defined hundreds of years ago, when things were very different in society (no good birth control, no good jobs for women, no IPod Nano).
The study was done by researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah, who asked “about 815 people a combination of multiple choice and open-ended questions to come up with the find”. The USA Today article doesn’t say exactly who the respondents were. My sister–possibly in an attempt to get me to stop hyperventilating–pointed out that given the involvement of U of Utah, there might have been a large number of Mormons participating, which would possibly skew the results toward a more conservative view of gender roles (not that we know much about Mormonism).
I’m afraid it’s more likely that the researchers–presumably not fools themselves–selected from a relatively wide demographic more representative of the nation than, say, Mormon college students. I wanted to do the Bella DePaulo thing and go to the original study, but I couldn’t find it after a search of ASAnet and EBSCO and U of Indiana, and I was too weak from the hyperventilating to continue looking further. If anyone knows where I can go to read the original study write-up, please let me know. Otherwise, I will be forced to continue to view 50 percent of my country’s population as ignorant dinks. Help help!
And lest you think I’m being a little harsh, check out some of these quotes from survey respondents, as related to the New York Daily Mail by lead researcher Linda Hamilton:
When the respondents were asked why they felt women should change their name after the wedding, Hamilton says, “They told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family. This was a reason given by many.”
“They said the mailman would get confused and that society wouldn’t function as well if women did not change their name,” Hamilton says.
“Asked if they thought of a lesbian couple as a family, those who believe that women should take their husband’s name are less likely to say yes,” she says. “If you’re more liberal about the name change issue, you tend to include a larger population in the definition of family.”
According to the USA TODAY article, Hamilton, a sociology researcher at Indiana University, found the finding “really interesting”. She makes an excellent point: “Because [the name change issue] is not politicized, people just answer the question without really thinking about it. It sort of taps into people’s views about all kinds of things.” Did the survey yank back the veil of political correctness and reveal the pock-marked face of America? Ok, that’s a slightly sexist metaphor, but at least I’m not saying the pockmarked bride should be required to take her husband’s name!
My ex-boyfriend R said that if we got married, he’d want me to take his last name as a sign of caring and commitment (or some such). I disagreed and fortunately the conversation–which remained relatively light–wandered to other topics. R was raised in a conservative household (they watched Rush Limbaugh), and although he eventually moved much further leftward, obviously he was not as far left as I was on women’s issues.
Copious Readers, here are your discussion questions: Do you know how to find out who the 800+ study respondents were? Should more women be encouraged to keep their last names? Why don’t more men change their last names to express care and commitment toward their wives? When a gay couple gets married, does one person change their name and if so, how do they decide who? If not, then can we use these gay couples as examples of how to avoid logistical difficulties in a two-name family? If one train leaves from New York travelling west at 50 m.p.h. and another train leaves Houston travelling northeast at. . .
Christina
Nice Try, Nigeria August 28, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Look What Google Barfed Up.Tags: nigeria arranged HIV AIDS marriages, nigerian couples, nigerian singles
1 comment so far
And now, the latest installment in our Look What Google Barfed Up series: Allison McCarthy’s interesting Global Comment article about the efforts by the Nigerian government (specifically, the Bauchi Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Malaria, pithily acronymed BACATMA) to prevent the spread of AIDS:
By marrying off HIV-infected singles to each other! Yes! Because as we all know, the primary vectors for the virus are single people, not dirty needles or the rape-happy Nigerian police (as described in the Amnesty International report cited by McCarthy). According to the Global Comment article:
Single men and women, coming to the agency’s doors as patients in treatment for HIV/AIDS, are viewed as the primary spreaders of the virus. (more…)
Worldwide Onelers: China’s Taiko–Nots. August 3, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Look What Google Barfed Up, Secret Lives of the Happily Single, solo travel.Tags: china's space program, halitosis relationship, spouse forbids something, taikonauts
8 comments
According to this BBC news article, Chinese taikonauts have to meet a series of criteria in order to go into space, including:
No Bad Breath!
No Body Odor!
No Scars That May Burst Open!
I understand the close confines of the spacecraft and fully support these criteria, having dated a guy with halitosis (though not, thank god, with exploding scars). But wait, there’s another requirement for taikonauts:
Your Spouse Must Approve!
Friendshit June 17, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Look What Google Barfed Up.Tags: cnn.com, single girl friendship, single women, singlism, weddings
9 comments
There are two strains of singlism: Type A, where the singlist actively disses single people, and Type B, where the singlist doesn’t even know they are commiting an “ism”. This CNN.com blog post, by a woman who mourns the inevitable death of her single-girl friendships now that she’s coupled, falls into the latter category. Yet somehow the author’s naivete doesn’t make the article any less horrifying–in fact, I would argue that her post is all the more horrifying because the assumptions she makes about single vs. coupled people are so insidious and (to her) unquestionable. She says she’s getting married a couple months, and:
. . . the days of “romancing” my friends — of luxuriating in their company all weekend long and most weekday evenings is (SIC) over. Given the choice — which, thankfully, I have now that my relationship is not a long-distance one — I’d rather spend most of my free time with my fiance. (more…)
