'It's OK to be single.' I think that's probably the most important message feminism has to offer.

[solidgoldbrass]

That's just It's OK To Be SIngle. It's not 'You can't be a feminist if you have a male partner', nor is it 'Feminism means hating men and never having sex with one again.'
But if you accept and understand that It's OK To Be Single you put up with less crap from men who think the worst thing they can threaten you with is leaving and rendering you single.

I think that's the point though, isn't it? Not that its more desirable to be single our in a relationship or anything, just that if you have good self esteem you're more likely to be happy whichever situation you are in.

I do think that knowing you're okay when you are single is really important, just to avoid the situation where you don't get out of something because being single seems like a much wise option. FWIW I was in the jane situation and it suddenly was so much easier once I wasn't constantly expecting XP's support but not getting it. I was actually really surprised when DP got to the stage of being around more/moving up to moving in, and would do things like tell me to go and have a nap if I was tired, or would go to the shop for me, or was there to watch DS while I went, or was around to help deal with a sick or poo incident or just another myriad everyday things that XP would never have even thought was his business.

High self esteem will stop you falling 'in love' with someone who fills supposed gaps left by others....I guess. High self esteem will make you fall in lovewith someone who values you, not completes you.

Not only is it OK to be single, it's OK to not give a stuff about how men perceive you. In fact I would say that is even more important.

thankyou stripey[11.42]
i think the thing is..women are not told to look at theyre own strenths and to listen to themselves enough.
i feel we are told to rely on others too much[at times]instead of ourselves.
eg...when a woman has a baby its expected that she will have others around to help but this is not always the case.
and then this is seen as a problem when it isnt neccesserily so.
theres lots of ways around all sorts of things but because society says you have to be like this/do it like this....we get stuck.
when i went blind...ok yeah it was bloody scary and i was scared that id be sitting in my chair forevermore.
people around me was saying things like"omg...youll have to get in touch with ss and ask for this/this and this!"....this didnt apeal to me...so i found ways around things....i stopped being scared and i now "see"but in a diffrent way than most people...and i can manage a lot of things...i even go bike riding with dd[dont worry folks...im not on a road near you lol]..we hire bikes in a park and i taught her to ride ahead and shout out"mind the person sparky..theres a dog in front of us...ect"....sorted.
we women are strong...and sometimes we just need to realise this.

sparky

When I was single (so on and off through late-teens and twenties), the minuses were being on your own so much, I love my own company, but every weekend and every evening often got a lot to fill. I was also often out of step with the lives of my coupled up friends so there was a lot of being the only one at a dinner party. I solved this by moving somewhere there were lots of other single people too, and going out a lot, but it always seemed very unstable, as friends would leave work, or meet some new bloke or I'd date a lot and not meet anyone who quite fitted, you always knew that you simply weren't the most important person in anyone's life. And, for me, having a primary romantic relationship was very important in terms of personal fulfilment, I have only ever fallen in love once.

There were masses of pluses as well, I pleased myself, enjoyed my own company, had a higher standard of living, enjoyed lots of more casual relationships. I also preferred living day to day by myself and still do.

But there's a big difference between being single after a terrible marriage with your children to keep you company and the purpose of being a mother (when singledom may be a blessed relief) and not knowing if in your forties you will ever be a mother or ever find a companion again (fine if you like not having children/a partner, not so fine if you don't). I don't envy my single childless friends tbh, nothing to do with the social stigma. The ones in couples who have decided not to have children do very well in terms of companionship and enjoying their lives.

I don't see singledom as a thing to aspire to any more than I do having a relationship at any cost (which I have never done). But I wouldn't teach my children to avoid relationships, only bad ones.

'you always knew that you simply weren't the most important person in anyone's life. And, for me, having a primary romantic relationship was very important in terms of personal fulfilment'

This is a great example of the 'pair bonding urge' to which I referred earlier. I totally lack it myself and couldn't care less that I'm not the most important person in anyone's life, but I think I'm unusual. Having said that, I have enough friends/interests etc that I'm booked up most weekends and evenings (though I agree with the point about finding it hard to have many single friends).

Do other people on this thread (single or coupled) feel the pair bonding urge? I guess many of you have children, so are the most important person in their lives anyway.

In my experience it had been harder being single and having DS, because with a young child your chance of a regular social life are just massively reduced especially if you have no family to do childcare and not a lot of spare money. So if most of y or friends are young, free and single then you find yourself slowly betting pushed out of the group just because they are more often available to go out etc. and any friends you've met since having DCs or who are at the married-with-children stage often don't want to meet up at weekends or in the evenings (or can't leave DCs etc) and it takes a long time if you're making new friends to move from meeting them at a toddler group or the school gate or wherever, to coming for a cup of tea to being able to invite them for a glass of wine or a meal or something. I found it very isolating being a single parent.

YOu are right, if my friend wanted to have children that much, she could go it alone as a single parent. However, she openly says she doesn't think she could hack it, she has elderly parents and no-one else to help out, no big circle of other people who are going to step in to ease the parenting burden. There's a big difference between actively choosing to be a single parent which I think takes a certain kind of certainty/mettle, and becoming one because your husband ran off with someone or you decided to leave your partnership. Single parenting is bloody hard work, I am on my own a lot and I have family to help too, being completely on your own and having to take all the decisions on your own is a hard path even though it can be much better than parenting with a nasty abusive or just lazy partner.

I think the urge to pair-bond must be quite strong given most people do have relationships even when it's not about children. I am not convinced this is all social pressure, there has never been a better time to be a single or independent living woman in history (imagine having to live with your married sister or being given to another man in your tribe if you were widowed jsut to survive economically).

And, I would still have the pair-bonding urge if my marriage broke up, but I don't have the 'living in the same house' urge whatsoever and would always keep my own independent home from now on.

Totally agree it is a fantastic time to be a single/independent woman (though of course this depends on one's personal circumstances to some extent). Interesting article in the Economist recently, looking at the decline of marriage in Asia. Apparently lots of women have started rejecting marriage, not because they're cohabiting instead but because they no longer need a husband for financial support and are turned off by the traditional gender roles still expected within marriage.

'Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours.'

www.economist.com/node/21526350

I am a single parent and the crap I get from professional people sometimes is shocking, whats even more shocking is when I tell them I was once married before I even conceived ds1, and they turn it around, or look at me astonished. Yes I got married too young, yes he was a prick, and yes I divorced him so my young child didn't have to witness daddy hurting mummy, funnily enough since then my trust in men isn't brilliant. Maybe instead of giving single women/mothers shit perhaps they should teach the wanker's who have no respect for women how to treat women right, that might then stop so many of us being single, and enjoying the single life!!

i tottally agree with Gossipwitch[9.21]
ive also experianced crap from professional people sometimes.
theres many a time ive thought"if i was married and i had a fella by my side this wouldnt be happening".....and theres been loads of times ive had to really stand my ground.
it feels like[sometimes]they feel they can take the piss out of you because theres no one else there hearing/seeing.

sparky

I have 2 sons, and both are being raised to respect women and chivalry, I am still shocked when a male runs to open a door for me, its only happened twice, and once by ds1, the other was an older gentleman. I think it would be funny if the younger generation tipped their baseball caps to us (giggles). but i just want my boys to realise that women are equals they deserve the same treatment that they themselves expect, ds1 is being taught how to cook things out of a tin at the mo, and how to use the washing machine etc. He also loves mopping

yes I agree, although I also agree with TrillianAstra in that it's not the most important message has to offer but it's certainly a big one.

I'd go further and say that while we live in a patriarchy (and we do), then an equal relationship with a man is near-on impossible, because regardless of the personalities of each individual in the couple, you can never escape the fact that the man belongs to the dominant caste= male, and the woman to the subordinate caste= female.
If you don't think we live in a two-tier caste system then you should look at the crime statistics where women, for example, are far more likely to get a custodial sentence for a first offence simply because they're women. If women step out of line in any way, society comes down on them like a ton of bricks.

I think it's very difficult for women to come to terms with the fact that their partnerno matter how great, liberated or "equal" he appears to be still benefits enormously from male privilege--- and I don't think there is a man alive who is willing to give up male privilege over females.

As for raising sons, it's a minefield. It annoys me when women say "Well I'm going to raise my son right-- because it implies that for thousands of years women haven't being trying to do just that. OUr foremothers weren't stupid. They've all been trying to raise their boys not to become rapists, war-mongerers and casual murderers.
It doesn't work.
You can'T blame women, namely mothers, for the crimes men choose to commit, although patriarchies certainly do try to blame women for men's crimes, scapegoating mothers in particular.

So all you we can do is change society: ban porn ( patriarchal propaganda which depicts women as sub-human), punish rapists (most rapes aren't even reported so MANY rapists aren't punished, make sure no woman has to live in economic interdependancy with a man.

But yes, "It's OK to be single" or "Daughter, don't get married" are very good mottos for feminists

It really scares the shit out of me that in every. single. war, men mass rape women. IN every culture, throughout time and place. The British have done it, the Germans have done it, the Japanese have done it, the Americans have done it, and nearly every other country in the world has done just this, and continues to today....
It's got nothing to do with whether these men's mothers raised them right.

It's just men.

Men still die younger, Sakura. How does that factor in as an advantage to their caste?

I think you've misunderstood the word "caste" , Hardgoing. "Caste" is a socio-political reference, nothing to do with biology

men kill a hell of a lot of females, for example . two women a week are murdered by their spouse in the UK. This is a societal issuel, especially when men get away with those murders by claiming they were playing sex games (which is the current fashion among perpetrators), or if they get on average only 4 years in jail, whereas a woman gets 16 for murdering a rapist.

So yes, females are biologically superior, absolutely, due to the fact that an X chromozome contains lots of life-preserving DNA, whereas a Y chromozome doesn'T contain much of anything.

But we're not talking about biologically superiority here, we're talking about a caste system

fucking hell, that was an insight into the mind of a member of the dominant caste wasn't it.

is that why the male "caste" tries kill as many members of the female "caste" as possible?

coz they're not only jealous of our life-giving capacities (which is why they created an entire religion pretending a man in the sky created life), but they're also jealous of the fact we live longer

Better kill as many females as possible and even it up, like?

Oh yes, those wars where only women get killed/raped and all the men survive...

Hardgoing, I heard Sakura's question as being "Why do soldiers rape?" rather than "Why do men go to war?" Both questions have been exercising philosophical minds for millenia, but the point here is that rape is not a strategic or tactical action in war.

I have to say I don't understand it either. I know quite a bit about pack mentality, dehumanisation by command: reasons why men who are not usually rapists do this. But I still don't understand why it happens in the beginning.