During a recent discussion amongst footloose femails, we bounced around some idea for self-descriptive labels that don’t come with truck-loads of baggage. Single or spinster came up, of course. One woman had the idea to look at thesauruses, which revealed a boatload of singlism. According to Reverso, these are synonyms for unmarried: bachelor, celibate, maiden, on the shelf, single, unattached, unwed, unwedded, virgin Celibate? Virgin? Unattached? Unless I’ve replicated virgin birth, I am obviously no longer a virgin because I have a child. Why does a single person have to be celibate? And what’s up with being on the shelf? … Continue reading »
Despite my stance on marriage, I am appalled that the CA Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, which is a clear violation of the separation of religion and state (name one secular argument against same-sex marriage – I have not heard any!). Therefore, I want to share the press release from Atheists United: LOS ANGELES-Atheists United notes with regret California Supreme Court’s “compromise” decision upholding Proposition 8 and thus requiring the state to use a religious definition of marriage, which has no place in civil law. “Although we are happy for the couples whose marriages are allowed to stand, we do … Continue reading »
May 252009
Watching “Enron: The Smartest Guy in The Room” now – in the midst of the financial crisis – is eerie. The Too Big To Fail banks are all over that one as well. Citibank, JP Morgan, Chase, Credit Swisse, the who’s who of banking loaned money to Enron without questioning, gleefully swallowing the crap they were told as long as they were making money themselves. It almost looks like Enron was just practice. The bigger house of cards was still to be built; only this time it brought down the world economy when the house of cards collapsed. But why … Continue reading »
From the latest issue of Too Much: Love knows no budget, at least not in high-end British wedding planning circles. Now that love knows no privacy. A veteran London wedding planner, Imogen Edwards-Jones, has just penned what her publisher is calling “an insider’s account of how the super-rich tie the knot.” Wedding planners like Edwards-Jones typically handle weddings that run at least $250,000. Their fee: 20 percent of the total cost. How high can that cost go? One recent bash cost $7.6 million. The bride spent $130,000 alone “on trips to New York for dress fittings.” At another gala, a … Continue reading »
May 112009
Why are we doing this to ourselves? We go like cattle to work every morning not questioning the absurdity of our whole lifestyle – how it is destroying our very ability to exist on this planet. As women, we joyfully participate in a patriarchal ritual designed to pass us from our father to another man ensuring that we never become independent. And even the little things: Why do we let men open doors for us, tuck us into our seat? Sure, it’s nice on some level but it’s also disempowering. The message is clear: We are too weak or delicate … Continue reading »
May 052009
It is fairly easy to claim that we’re fighting singlism and matrimania. Yet, what does that exactly mean? And what would a world without it look like? These questions come up when we start digging into this a bit deeper. Would we really want a society where no relationship has any protection unless the parties involved got a legal contract? I’d like to start a conversation about what we’d like society to look like. Let’s start with some definitions. (There are some good documents that do this from a legal perspective: Nancy Polikoff’s book and the Canadian Law Commission’s work … Continue reading »
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