They Lied About Singlehood So Married Women Would Stay Married
That couldn't have been the point the whole time...right?
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver.
Training people to be afraid of something that isn’t actually scary is something humans are unfortunately very good at. It’s like when I used to spray my cat with the water bottle every time she tried to scratch my furniture, until she stopping trying to scratch my furniture. Except when it comes to actual people, I wonder if we’ve been painting single women as ugly, undesirable spinsters since the dawn of time so that married women would be afraid to leave their husbands. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to any divorced women lately, but they know firsthand that there’s nothing scary about leaving a man who makes you miserable. In other words, scratch the fucking furniture.
I think single women were trained to be ashamed of themselves so that we’d never stand on soap boxes telling married women how much fun it is to never cater to a man’s pissy moods or pick his shit up off our floor. I think we were muzzled by shame and self-loathing so that women at large would continue to think that being “chosen” by a man actually meant something. And I think we shut single women out of society so that we’ll settle for a man who will escort us back in. They want us ashamed, small, and silent. You should also know how fun it is to never, ever give the patriarchy, capitalism, and dating culture what they want. Screw ‘em.