Facebook: Scourge of the Onelers, Part 1 May 4, 2011
Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Just Saying., Singled Out.Tags: facebook, relationship categories, singles and stigma
10 comments
In March 2011, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg posted his relationship status on Facebook for the first time. He is now officially “in a relationship.”
From this, we understand that he is in an exclusive, romantic relationship with one person. We don’t take it to mean that before he was “in a relationship,” this billionaire social networking mogul previously lived a life without any relationships – that is, without any significant social interactions.
That’s because the rhetoric of “relationship” has been hijacked by our obsession with so-called “soulmates.” Nowhere is this more obvious than on Facebook, where the “relationship status” menu contains pre-set choices that all have to do with coupling or sex.
Intrigued and also a little irritated, Lisa and I – both moderate Facebook users – decided to conduct a couple experiments. Lisa changed her relationship status to “in a relationship” out of the blue, and I started a petition on Change.org calling for Facebook to make “relationship status” a write-in field. In this post and the next, we describe what happened:
Several months ago, Lisa suspected that changing her relationship status on Facebook would “garner more attention than anything else I’d ever posted.” And it did. In her post describing the experiment on Onely, she explains:
Not only did my relationship-status-change draw three unqualified “likes” and eleven comments, but I also received three inquiries via text message, five private messages from friends wanting to know the “scoop,” and even one question about it at the end of an otherwise-serious phone call with my little brother. Considering I only have 130 “friends” on Facebook, that’s a pretty decent amount of attention — certainly much more than I’ve ever managed to solicit from anything else I’ve done on Facebook.
What’s more, two of the private messages were sent from friends who I haven’t seen or spoken to in the last six months, and although I replied graciously and honestly to their inquiries (I told them both it was a joke, sorry to disappoint (!!), told them a little bit about my current life and asked them about theirs), I haven’t heard from either of them since. The message I’m getting from this silence? A relationship-status change is everyone’s business.
The problem is, my experiment is flawed because my Facebook friend base is biased (my real-life FB friends know about and appreciate my pro-single status), and some of them even knew I was thinking about the experiment in advance.
To collect a bigger dataset, Lisa asked readers of Onely to do the experiment and report back their results. The results varied. Some readers reported that the relationship-status change didn’t garner any significant response because, as one reader put it: “either my friends know me well enough that my [relationship-status] change was some sort of play/experiment. Or they’re not the frenzy kind.” And others, such as the following reader, reported that breakups garner the most attention: “When i split up from my girlfriend … I … actually found some friends … that’s when I got [the] most comment[s]…. nearly 60 people joined in the conversation – you know what they say, ‘there’s no news like bad news.’”
But most of the readers who participated in the experimented reported impressive results:
So six hours in, I’m already wanting to renig. But I’m staying strong. Here are the results: 6 likes, 8 comments (2 comments also liked), 3 comments are congrats, 5 are wanting details.
“Kim is in a relationship with a hurdy gurdy player ;)” and 24 hours later: 11 likes, 4 comments (4 comments also liked), 4 comments are congrats and who???, 1 text, 2 phone calls.
My FB status was changed to “in a relationship” for about 28 hours or so. During that time I received 2 texts, 2 phone calls, 1 FB message, 11 “likes” and 9 comments.
What’s more, many of our readers noted that the experiment had made them reflective about the attention drawn by the change in status. One wrote, after hiding her relationship status after 24 hours of “being in a relationship,” that “I think that I’ll just tell everyone I am in a relationship with myself, because really I am. I’m in the middle of doing a lot of hard internal work and dating is out of the question during this time.” And another commented that “I felt uncomfortable with all the commentary and deleted the post.”
Given the importance people place on Facebook’s relationship status, and given the influence of the corporation in our culture, Lisa and I were bothered by the fact that “relationship status” focuses only on sexual couplings (or uncouplings). Why, we wondered, can people write anything they want for their “religion” status, but not for relationship status?
*** To Be Continued! ***
— Christina (and Lisa)
Single? Don’t Be! (Or, Christina becomes a Onely Hero) May 1, 2011
Posted by Onely in Dating, Food for Thought, single and happy, Singled Out, STFU.Tags: heart-to-heart dating service, not bitter, single, singlism sucks
5 comments
Since starting Onely, I’ve become attuned to the subtle singlisms of society.
But what I call “attuned,” some people might call “bitter.” Singlists (people who regard singles as less worthy than couples) commonly use “bitter” to describe those of us who question our culture’s unconditionally pro-coupling status quo–whether our tones are calm, vehement, or vituperative.
So I tried very, very hard to keep my voice friendly and upbeat when I called the Heart-to-Heart dating service to tell them that one of their advertisements was singlist. I think I was successful in my efforts to stay nice, but I certainly had no success convincing the representative that the ad was problematic.
Here’s what happened:
While sitting at a stoplight on a busy road, I noticed outside my driver’s side window one of those signs with the little metal sticks for legs, as you might see advertising politicians before an election. But this sign was for a dating service. It said, in big red letters with a heart where the “O” would be (awwww),
“Single? Don’t Be!
Heart-to-Heart (###-###-####)”
If you’re reading this book, you probably already see the problem.
Don’t be single! In common usage, “Don’t” precedes an action/situation that makes your life or others’ lives unsavory. (Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t eat the yellow snow.)
Don’t be single! There are better ways to be!
I don’t hate dating services. They can connect people who want to find life partners or people (like me) who just hope to go out and have fun. But I’d prefer that the services advertise themselves without denigrating any particular group. It would be so easy:
“Single and looking?
Heart to Heart! (###-###-####)”
Easy! So, I called them. To tell them how, by changing two words, they could make the world a little less singlist. The call Did Not Go Well.
As I’ve said, I was so very nice. I greeted the rep and said I wasn’t actually calling for a date, but rather with an idea for their advertising. I said, more or less, that I felt their ad made some uncomfortable assumptions about single people and that there were other ways to communicate their message without assuming that being single is an inherently bad thing. I suggested, “Single and looking to find a partner?” (which isn’t pithy, but that’s why I’m not in advertising).
At first, she didn’t understand. I tried to explain my point several times, in several ways, all of which were perky and positive (I thought). At some point I said something about them “trashing singlehood,” and that resonated with her. She said, “Ohhhh, I see what you’re saying!”
Success! No, wait, not so much. What follows is a loose transcript of the conversation, in which she dug in her heels and defended Heart-to-Heart’s advertisement as if it were her dissertation. I typed as she spoke. (Please note that I couldn’t type fast enough to record all her words, but I got the gist.)
In her first breath, she said: “[The text on the sign] is what we want to say. . . Single is a problem. . . If you’re single and not happy, we can partner you up. . . In today’s economy two incomes are better than one.”
Wow. I had to decide which of these ignorant statements to address. I chose “if you’re single and not happy, we can partner you up.”
Patiently, I tried to explain that the whole problem was that they didn’t specify “single and unhappy,” or “single and looking for someone,” but instead, they just said “single.”
She replied, “If you’re not looking to find anyone, then don’t call us.”
That’s absolutely fine, I said, still optimistic. But they didn’t say “call us if you’re single and looking to find someone.” They said, “don’t be single.” In choosing these words, I explained, they were trashing all single people, even those who didn’t consider their status a problem.
The rest of her words speak for themselves:
“The reason that we trashed [singlehood] is we don’t want people to be single. We want people to think about being single to think about being alone. . . so we are trying to trash it. . . And we are getting tons of calls and people walking through our door – so it’s working for us.”
I took a deep breath, maintaining my cool. I didn’t want to give her a chance to call me bitter. So I said, in the sweetest tone I could muster (while making white-knuckled throttling motions with my hands), “Well, it’s something to think about!”
And she said, “Well, thanks for your input. I’ll pass it on to our management.”
HAHA! Just kidding. No she didn’t. She actually said: “Ok, but it’s working for us so I don’t think we’ll even give it a thought.” (The emphasis this time is mine.)
But it’s too late. My phone call made her think about it. And even though she’ll try to dismiss it (perhaps she’ll complain about “that bitter single woman” to her colleagues and friends), my complaint was voiced. That’s progress, and that’s why I’m not bitter.
Emerging from Hibernation… Onely’s Back!! April 28, 2011
Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, single and happy.Tags: copious readers rock, still single and happy, we love bears
2 comments
Okay, yes. We know. We’ve been gone. We suck.
And we’re sorry!
But we have lots to say and are gearing up for a GREAT summer of posts and news. To keep you happy, here are some teasers:
- Christina and Lisa have more to say about Facebook, including a long-awaited update on the great Facebook experiment!
- Christina tells a dating business what’s wrong with their advertising!
- We recount our Copious Readers’ best responses to the question: “So, Why Are You Still Single?”
- Lisa reports on finishing one great Onely adventure (Hint: she’s a doctor now!) and preparing for her biggest Onely adventure yet! (Hint: It’s international! And it’s semi-permanent!)
- We discuss the economic consequences of being single in America!
We have a bundle of excuses for our relative absence over the last month (or — gasp — more), but we’re sure you, our Copious and Patient Readers, aren’t interested. Instead, we’ll beg for your forgiveness and encourage you to check in again at your leisure this weekend.
In the meantime, please tell us — what have you been up to in your illustrious single-and-happy lives?
— Lisa and Christina
Hard Core Onelers: Hired Hermits March 11, 2011
Posted by Onely in book review, Food for Thought, Great Onelies in History, Reviews.Tags: hermit, victorian england
9 comments
Welcome to the latest installment in our series Hard Core Onelers, where we feature people who take independence to new or interesting extremes. Today’s subject: Hired Hermits.
Copious Readers, what would it take for you to become a hermit?
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Doubleday, 2010. (Onely recommends: Read this book. It’s amazing.)
For a time [at estates in Victorian England] it was highly fashionable to build a hermitage and install in it a live-in hermit. At Painshill in Surrey, one man signed a contract to live seven years in picturesque seclusion, observing a monastic silence, for 100 pounds a year, but was fired after just three weeks when he was spotted drinking in the local pub.
An estate owner in Lancashire promised 50 pounds a year for life to anyone who would pass seven years in an underground dwelling without cutting his hair or toenails or talking to another person. Someone took up the offer and actually lasted four years before deciding he could take no more; whether he was at least given a partial pension for his efforts is sadly unknown.
Queen Caroline had the architect William Kent build for her a hermitage at Richmond into which she installed a poet named Stephen Duck, but that was not quite a success either, for Duck decided he didn’t like the silence or being looked at by strangers, so he quit.
Copious Readers, would you be a hired hermit? For how long? Under what sort of parameters? Before I’d make my decision, I’d need the answers to a few simple questions:
Do people have to journey through the woods and up a mountain to see me? Am I confined to the cave/cottage or can I frolic in the nearby fields too? Does the public come to watch me do my hermitting? Do I get food delivered or must I rely on my gardening and snare-making skills? Am I allowed to trim my nails and nose hairs?
I thought long and hard and decided I could last at least five years under some combination of these conditions. Time to nap! Time to write! Time to do backbends and tree pose! I would only need just a few meager possessions:
–toilet
–tub
–skylight
–warm babbling brook running through the cave floor
–some bags of cashews
–journals
–memory foam mattress
–ceiling fan
–heated floors
–my MacBook
–wifi
–my cats
–$20,000 year stipend (good cat food is expensive)
–make that $60,000 (good cat food is really expensive)
–access to medical care (assuming the doctor makes cave calls)
–visits from my family and friends (depending on the conditions set by the estate owner, these might have to be clandestine, involving parachutes and balaclavas)
Rich estate-owning readers, want to add a touch of whimsy and mystique to your premises? By following the few simple guidelines above, you can have your very own Onely hermit, with crisply groomed nose hairs.
–Christina
Photo credit: aug.edu
Bad Onely Activities: Killer Bats February 23, 2011
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities.Tags: bat in house, I'm bad at tagging posts, single living
20 comments
Welcome to the latest installment in our series Bad Onely Activities, where we muse on those awkward moments when being single–or living alone–seems kind of tough. This week we wonder whether we should join Match.com: “Woman who loves laughs and walks on the beach seeks same, plus a bat wrangler.”
“EEeeEEeeEE click eeEEeeEE click.” My cat Alvin crouches on top of the kitchen buffet looking at something squeaky and flapping. Then the useless feline turns and runs. It’s midnight, and I’m alone and exhausted. I start to cry.
This is my fourth domestic bat. You’d think I’d be a bat-removal expert by now, but no. I have post-traumatic bat disorder.
The first bat trapped me in the bathroom for five minutes. I curled up on the tile floor, a sheet over my head and body, every now and then cracking open the door to see if the supersonic little bugger was gone. And each time he wasn’t. Whenever I peeked into the hall, a smear of swirling black air whooshed past my face, forcing me back under the sheet. (Lest you wonder how I so conveniently happened to have a sheet in the bathroom: I woke up to the bat flapping around in the canopy of my bed, so I dragged the sheet on top of me as I crawled to safety.)
I didn’t remove that bat from the house. Nor did I ever capture the other bat that one night swooped my face so closely I felt the air from its wings. I lost each one in my mess of bookcases and picture frames. I just had to hope they would escape by themselves, before dying and rotting, or before killing me.
The third bat appeared while my mom and uncle were alone in my house. They trapped it in a jar, like a firefly. I didn’t get those genes.
Which is why I’m shaking and whimpering as I stand on a chair peering over the top of the buffet at this brown furry lump, knowing it is about to charge me. Its wings of crinkled black leather can unfold to over three feet, and its mousy mouth hides fangs as long as my pinky. (I estimate here.) It will rush me, and I will fall off the chair and break my skull and lie on the floor for days until they find me, with the engorged bat still attached to my jugular.
I want nothing more than to go upstairs and get my seven-foot-tall boyfriend, the firebreathing one with hydaulic steel forearms. But I’m single and live alone. So I do the next best thing: I call my mom.
“Help help! I’m scared! Tell me how you managed to trap that bat before.”
And she says helpfully, “What bat?”
Seeing that my mom is as useless as my imaginary boyfriend, and also perhaps a little senile (who forgets trapping a bat?) I realize I have to get my Onely on. I must take matters into own hands–once I don my leather work gloves. And a fleece with the hood cinched around my cheeks and chin.
I arm myself with a racquetball racquet, mason jar, and a towel and climb back onto the chair. But my equipment is useless. The creature has cleverly wedged itself between some vases and the raised ledge of the buffet.
The bat jiggles its hips. “EEeeEEeeEE click eeEEeeEE click eeEEeeEEEEEeeEEEeeee click EEEee,” it says, which if I remember my freshman Bat 101 correctly, means something like, “B&tch with the racquet, I’m going to rip out your throat and leave it to rot on your crummy linoleum.”
Point well made. I jump off the chair. What, I think, would my huge, fearless, imaginary boyfriend do when confronted with such a foe? Why of course–he would throw cat toys at it.
I toss some jingle balls. Ding ding ding EEEeeeeEEEclickEEEEeeee ding ding ding. The bat crawls down to the floor behind the buffet. I roll ping-pong balls to dislodge it, thinking that any moment the fiend will swoop me. Instead it waddles backwards into an open corner, where it just sits. I tiptoe forward, sniffling, holding the towel in one hand and a nine-volt flashlight in the other. My goal is to blind the bat into submission while I disable it under the towel.
With a wild scream I toss the towel at the corner, where it–damned areodynamics–parachutes down right next to, but not covering, the bat. EEEEeeeeEEE click EEeeEEEee click! Wailing, I grab the corner of the towel, back up, and throw again. Success. My hand shakes as I put the mason jar over the little lump of cloth and pull away the towel. I feel the cloth pulling at the bat’s body. Because it’s almost as if I’m touching the bat itself, I whimper.
Peering through the glass, I see the bat has a ripped wing. At first I feel sorry for it. Then I realize that only its injury stopped it from whooshing at me and clawing out my eyes. I start to whimper again.
I whimper more as I slide cardboard under the jar opening, and I whimper as I drag the jar and cardboard with my fingertips across the carpet to the porch door. I whimper as I lay down a spiral binder as a bridge to slide the jar over the threshold and into the wild.
Sure, that’s not how Bear Grylls would have dealt with the situation. (He would have grabbed the bat with his bare hand and popped it in his mouth.) But in my own wincing, mincing way, I got the job done.
Once again, I’m reminded that living alone is a great privilege, especially in this economy, but a privilege with a price. Am I independent and resourceful enough to deal with crises? Sure, if I’m allowed to whine.
Copious Readers, have you had Bad Onely interactions with wildlife? How dignified were you?
–Christina
Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons
Singles: Spread the Love this Valentine’s Day February 12, 2011
Posted by Onely in single and happy, Singles Resource, Some Like It Single.Tags: celebrating valentine's, single and happy, singles blogs, singles perspectives, singles' style, spread the love!
3 comments
To Our Copious Readers,
We’ll be the first to admit it: There is no holiday that we feel less enthused about than Valentine’s Day. As bloggers to the single-and-happy population, we’re pretty sure that our readers feel the same.
And yet, precisely because we represent a population that is targeted and often excluded from the holiday, Christina and I face an annual dilemma: What are we supposed to write when it comes to Valentine’s Day?
Do we write about how we simply don’t care about it? Do we compose a brilliant critique of pop culture that illuminates, once and for all, how the holiday is just an overblown, matrimaniacal attempt to generate money for businesses who could care less about “love”? Or should we just ignore the holiday – since, after all, we could care less about it, and giving it our attention seems only to feed into the nasty heteronormative cycle we work so hard to resist?
We’ve vacillated amongst the “best” possible approaches: In past years, we’ve critiqued couples events, renamed the holiday (LGTOWAQAP Day for short), featured the quintessential anti-valentine, Death Bear, and even polled our readers for what we should do about this small annoyance. But this year, we’ve decided to do something different. We thought: So Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about love, right? Who says it has to be romantic, couple-centric love? Why can’t we redefine what we mean by Valentine’s love and instead take this opportunity to “Spread the Love” we feel as bloggers within an ever-expanding and vocal pro-singles movement?
So, in the spirit of “Spreading the Love,” we are featuring six excellent pro-single, pro-happy blogs below that were, until recently, unknown to us. We hope you, our Copious Readers, will not only peruse these blogs with an open mind, but that you’ll also build on our list by promoting your favorite single-and-happy blogs in the comments below, especially if we don’t know about them! Please, also, “Spread the Love” by sharing this post with your friends, family, and strangers (it’ll be up all week)! 😉
Cheers – and have fun spreading the singles’ love this LGTOWAQAP DAY!
— Lisa (and Christina)
In Her Words: I started my blog for several reasons. One, to clarify how I feel about a range of issues, including being a recent (youngish) widow, and how I am surviving – and maybe even thriving- in my new circumstances. I also wanted to be a voice for anyone else out there in similar circumstances.
I have been amazed by the support I’ve received in the blogosphere from other bloggers, followers and readers. It has made me brave enough to reveal the real me and not worry too much that I really don’t fit into anything that resembles “‘normal.” I’ve also enjoyed reading and following other people’s blogs and knowing that we all share some common experiences. So my goals as a blogger are to dare to keep on expressing how I feel, and how I’m coping, or not.
I believe my blog promotes the Onely mindset by acknowledging that it can be tricky and trying being single in our world but also trying to embrace what is great about my world right now. When I first started blogging (I laugh because it wasn’t long ago), Onely was a blog I started following almost immediately, as I thought it offered a fresh, hopeful perspective and visiting there gave me courage to start my own blog while allowing myself to be open and transparent about how I feel.
Why We Love Her: Josie’s perspective is so important to the singles’ blogosphere – her experience as a young widow is not often heard, and yet it represents an experience shared by many. Plus, she’s a wonderful writer and has an adorable dog!
Book of Blue and Planet Waves (by Eric Francis Coppolino)
In His Words: Eric Francis Coppolino, founder and editor of Planet Waves, is a professional astrologer and journalist. A pioneer in the field of new planet discoveries, he has worked with clients and written about astrology for wide audiences since 1995. “The Worlds of Eric Francis,” his first homepage, was one of the first astrology sites on the Internet.
Eric is currently exploring the concept is selfsex so good that it’s worth making it as good as possible. Basically, sexual selfrelating with the realm of a Onely relationship, with emotional vulnerability. I document this in photos; solo, couples, different arrangements of people. There is mirrorgazing alone or with others; and there is masturbation companionship — onely people who get together creating companionship with pleasure sans the intense bond. I have a vision for friends to do this together over a phase of time, taking an m.celibacy journey together. I describe healing processes associated with this mudra, unraveling, setting oneself free. It may be a single article in the first go, for Valentine’s day, and some pictures.
Why We Love Him: Eric brings a much-needed perspective on non-traditional perspectives on sexuality and erotica (especially polyamory and self-love) that we at Onely haven’t discussed. But we think these are pertinent issues to being single and happy (his other blog, Planet Waves, features other subjects and other authors, too), so we hope you’ll take a look around.
In Amy’s and Ellie’s Words: The Pink Kisses girls believe that being in a mediocre relationship is NOT better than being single; in fact, we encourage every girl to spend a stretch of time being purposefully unattached and focus on whatever fulfills her and makes her happy, be it her career, creative pursuits, travel, education, or whatever else leads to her own self-discovery and builds her confidence and self-esteem. We’re not anti-men or anti-relationships by any means; but we make a point of encouraging girls not to settle for less than they deserve — true contentment in life. We’re all about dream-chasing, goal-setting and doing the impossible. In fact, we see all of those things (combined with a dash of adventure) as the very best way to live… and when it comes to past relationships, we believe that moving on is absolutely the best revenge.
Why We Love Them: We usually don’t promote for-profit sites on Onely, but these ladies maintain an amazing (and free) blog that is well-written and empowers women to find ways to shed heteronormative behavior and live happy-and-single lives. Plus, the products they offer (emails, chocolates, text messages, and – my favorite – FREE “burn his photo” e-cards) actually rock.
Hope Leslie Single (if you don’t get the joke, say it out loud!)
In Her Words: Hope Leslie Single is a thirty-five year old freelance writer and blogger living in San Francisco, CA who has been single nine years. She rarely dates, though not by choice. Though her blog, she dissects her thoughts on attraction, dating, love, sex, men, race, (interracial) relationships, and society while exploring the nature of single-hood and learning to fully accept and improve her own life as a single woman. And while the obvious goal of her blog would be to overcome any personal or societal hurdles that may keep her from finding a committed, monogamous relationship with a man, her ultimate goal is to simply be peaceful and content; loving herself fully in order to live happily and healthily – relationship or no relationship.
Why We Love Her: Subtitle Reads: “She’s Single as Hell, and She’s Not Going to Take It Anymore” – what’s not to love about that?
Off the Market and In the Moment
In Her Words: It’s official. I am off the market for a year. Flipped the “switch” to the off position. This cab is not picking up passengers. For those of you still not understanding, this means no trying to find or getting into a relationship for the next 365 days. To clarify, the moral of this year-long mission is two-fold: 1-to break the detrimental relationship habit of trying too hard and subsequently losing myself, and 2-to take a step back so as to keep from looking back. Because when I started thinking about how much time I invest while dating someone, and then analyzing and re-analyzing (and re-analyzing) after the door to our future shuts, and THEN wondering when Cupid would look kindly on me again, I finally realized that I was missing my own moment. So here I am virtually shouting from the no-access rooftop of my walk-up building in the East Village (which is, of course, located next to a porn store): I am a 25-year-old single living in one of the greatest cities in the world!
But more importantly, the focus of the year is to get out of my head and away from my heart long enough to secure the foundation for that fun-loving, confident, doesn’t have a care in the world girl that I lose every time I get what I think I’m looking for.
How does Onely fit in? Well, Onely promotes what I’m in the process of discovering: the pleasures of singledom and finding the joy in every moment, despite your relationship status. I just hope that OTMITM (my blog) will help others realize the same-as well as know they aren’t alone in their journey!
Why We Love Her: We just discovered Off the Market Girl and, although we’ve missed half of the journey (unless, of course, she decides she loves being single so much that she stays that way), we think OTMG’s “experiment” raises awareness (that – duh – singles are happy) but it won’t scare off all those heteronormaholes we can’t quite get through to (I mean, it’s “only” a year, right?).
Singlutionary (She’s Back! And We’re So Excited!)
In Her Words: I am an expert at being single. Oh, I’ve been that single girl who did everything a desperate, horny, lovesick loser does. And I lived to tell about it. Now, I strive to live a happy, healthy, pity-free life and I seek to share my love for single (and desperation free) living with the world. I am also a creator of postcards, realtor, homeowner, graduate student, former actor and a jackass of all trades.
When I began Singlutionary, I was in desperate need of catharsis. I was driven to reconstruct singleness in my life and in my blog from something horrible and lonely and pitiful to something joyful and perfect and whole. At the time, I didn’t have many single friends and the ones I did have were always calling me for sex and dating advice and then asking me why I wasn’t in a relationship. It was fairly awful. The only conversations I had were about single friend’s dating lives and married friend’s marital problems. I was bored and frustrated. But through writing Singlutionary and discovering other wonderful pro-single bloggers, I was able to find a community of people who were single and happy about it — like myself.
Now that I no longer battle any self-doubt in regards to being single, I no longer feel the desperate need to write and so I post less often. Onely does an excellent job of pointing out the political and social stigma that single people face around the world. For my part, I’ll just entertain. I was a miserable single for almost all of my 20s — and so I strive to be the voice that would have comforted me during that time when I felt isolated and alienated and annoyed. I found great comfort and peace in joining this community of thoughtful and engaging singles committed to eliminating singlism and I hope that others will too.
Why We Love Her: She’s funny, articulate, and has been one of our most vocal compatriots in the blogging world. She took a blogging break for a while, but we wanted to feature her here because – look out world – the Singlution is BACK.
Extra Extra — Singles News! 
Seeking Happily Ever After (the documentary) is now available on demand and digitally. Check here for more info. Congrats to Michelle Cove!
Great News for Single Americans! (but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the news) February 6, 2011
Posted by Onely in As If!, Food for Thought, Heteronormativity, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, Singled Out, Singles Resource, We like. . ..Tags: advanced directives, gay rights = singles' rights, hospital visitation rights, know your rights, LGBTQS, Obama pro-single, singles, singles get to redefine family too!, singlism in the media
13 comments
To the delight of LGBTQS (that stands for lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer-single) advocates everywhere, federal regulations now require that hospitals must grant all patients, no matter their marital, sexual or religious status, the right to define who they count as “family.”
Thanks to President Obama, the Code of Federal Regulations 42 CFR 482.13(h) and 42 CFR 485(f) requires that all hospitals in the U.S.:
(1) inform each patient of his or her right to receive visitors whom he or she designates, including a domestic partner, (2) do not restrict or limit visitation rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity, among other factors and (3) ensure that all visitors have full and equal visitation rights, consistent with a patient’s wishes. (– Human Rights Campaign)
Whoo hoo! Great news for singles, right? We certainly think so — but you wouldn’t know it if you relied on the media to explain. According to most reports I read, the major stakeholders are lesbian and gay couples. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but … ummm … what about lesbian and gay singles? Or … ahem … what about all singles (asexual, heterosexual, polyamorous, widowed, divorced, whatever).
Singlist media strikes again! Because it completely ignores the remarkably equalizing ramifications – for all Americans – of this new law, it upholds the couple-centric, heteronormative bias that all LGBTQS folk are trying to overcome. So you can see what I mean, let’s examine the following report posted on ABC’s news site shortly after the regulations came into effect: (more…)
New Years’ Resolutions — It’s Never Too Late! January 26, 2011
Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, single and happy, Your Responses Requested!.Tags: late new year, life transitions, new year's resolutions, thank goodness I'm single, welcoming uncertainty
18 comments
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Onely’s a little slow on the uptake. We’re 26 days past the new year already — duh! But given the maddening developments in my life since the *real* new year, I’m inclined to start from scratch and designate today, January 26th 2011, my official new year.
Since Christina and I began this blog, I’ve been enrolled in a wonderful doctoral program in Louisville, Kentucky. I have enjoyed constant support and intellectual engagement from my peers and mentors. I have grown in so many ways — as a person, as a teacher, as a scholar. In fact, it’s hard for me to imagine the development of Onely in any way separate from my journey in graduate school.
But my formal education is coming to a close — I’m set to graduate in May — and with that closure comes transition. The academic job market hasn’t been easy, and at this point I have no idea where I will be in six months, even in three. I have become comfortable with my life here, but I’ve also been looking forward to moving on and finding some security. I thought I’d be moving toward the ideal – an assistant professor position at a great university – and instead I find myself confronting the reality – the market is glutted with equally qualified candidates who have similar dreams, and I don’t have any control over how they compare to me.
Unfortunately, my “ideal” may not work out after all, and it’s been somewhat unsettling as I identify other “ideals.” The thing is, I’ve begun to remember that there are alternatives to what I thought I’d been aiming for this whole time — there are other “ideals.” Within this academic world I live in, you wouldn’t think there is anything to do but teach college students and publish lengthy papers in academic journals. In fact, that’s what I’ve basically assumed since beginning this program.
But that’s the culture of the academy, not of the world. And as I consider other paths, I’m reminded not only of who I was (what I believed, valued, desired) before this doctoral program, but how far I’ve come — not only professionally, but also personally. My original “self” is still intact; it’s just become a little more nerdy and a lot more satisfied. I’m beginning to wonder why I was dead-set on a particular future when, in fact, there could be many: I have this amazing degree (well, almost have it, knock on wood) and have accumulated years of teaching, research, writing, and editing experience — all of which can be used in new and exciting ways I couldn’t have predicted.
These last few weeks, as I’ve been rejected by institutions and people I unconsciously idealized for the last four years, I have begun to explore — and get excited about! — other options. Admittedly, it’s been difficult to explore these options without feeling like I’m somehow giving up or letting my colleagues down, and so I haven’t felt entirely open to this exploration, in spite of the fact that I keep returning to it. My conclusion: the process of letting go – even if it’s not permanent – is painful, no matter how rich the future promises to be.
So my late-January New Year’s resolution, official on January 26th, 2011, is as follows:
I welcome the uncertainty of the present and open my mind to whatever possibilities inhere in the future. After all, I could not have predicted them without letting go. And I could not be so welcoming if I were not Onely.
Copious Readers, what are your late- (or early!) January resolutions, and how will your Onely mindset help you maintain your resolve?
— Lisa
Who Is Worth Mourning? December 30, 2010
Posted by Onely in As If!.19 comments
Question: Can you guess what this list is?
4.2.1 Spouse (including Same-sex domestic partner);
4.2.2 Child (including foster or step or any child you have raised as your own);
4.2.3 Parent (including foster, step or any persons who raised the employee);
4.2.4 Brother or sister (including foster, step, or half);
4.2.5 Grandchild;
4.2.6 Grandparent;
4.2.7 Parent or step-parent of spouse or same-sex domestic partner;
4.2.8 Brother or sister of spouse or same-sex domestic partner (including step or half);
4.2.9 Grandparent of spouse or same-sex domestic partner;
4.2.10 Son or daughter in-law;
4.2.11 Spouse of employee’s brother or sister.
Answer: It’s a list of people whose deaths matter more than others’.
According to my company (and, presumably, most other large employers), if one of the people on the above list dies, I get several days’ paid bereavement leave. If a loved one not on this list dies, I have to take leave without pay.
Shut up, you ignoramuses and cyber-trolls, the money itself isn’t the issue (although I always like money):
The payout reflects a restrictive hierarchy based on matrimonial/coupling status, imposed on diverse employees by the organization (and sanctioned without question by culture and government). It says that the only important relationships are child-parent-sibling–and the spousal connections thereto.
My married colleagues get at least twice as many bereavement leave options as I do. The funds come out of the company coffers, to which I contribute just as much profit, contractually, as my married coworkers. In effect, I am subsidizing my married coworker’s bereavement leave for his spouses’ brother or his spouse’s grandparent, but I do not receive the same privilege for the deaths of people close to me, if they are outside of the matrimonial/coupling complex.
The list presumes that a SPOUSE’S GRANDPARENT is always more bereavement-worthy than a BEST FRIEND or BOYFRIEND a CLOSE COUSIN or AUNT. Are you kidding me? When I read the policy, I was so offended I could have just spit (but I didn’t, because the office floors are carpeted). In the throes of irritation, I wrote an email to my immediate supervisor decrying the discrimination, but she ignored it.
Employers should allow employees to create, ahead of time, a list of people/relationships that they can receive bereavement for. My goal is to find out how my company acquired this policy, and then go to the appropriate benefits folks and make a huge stink, or more realistically, at least plant the idea in people’s heads that shaping policies around marital/coupling status is BASED ON HABIT, NOT LOGIC OR FAIRNESS.
Copious Readers, have you experienced discrimination based on marital status in the wake of a personal loss? What did you do?
–Christina
P.S. Please consider your comments carefully, as I am in an ALL CAPS mood lately.
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