An ad fluttered into my email box with the headline “Single and Searching: A Drama Therapy Group for Women.” I was going to let it slide as run-of-the-mill couplemania when something else caught my eye. It is using the “theatre of the oppressed” as one of the drama therapy techniques. Excuse me?!? Are you suggesting that women who aren’t partnered up are oppressed (which i agree with) and the way to overcome that oppression is to become partnered (which i totally disagree with)? This is a workshop offered by a social justice leader. Since when is perpetuating the status quo – by helping women couple up – part of a social justice fight? It is not. Just like not picking a white male for a job is not “reverse discrimination.”

So, what i find most offensive about this ad for a coupling group: The suggestion that “women with a full life” need to be coupled and if they’re not this is a social justice issue. Social justice includes valuing difference. It means that we can have a full life without longing for one person to fill our needs for intimacy. It means questioning the underlying assumptions of our cultural messages (such as suggesting that a need for intimacy can only be met by a husband…). It means suggesting that our search for more intimacy and love (a search the ad claims we’re on) could lead us to other ways of meeting those needs than those prescribed by cultural messages. It does not mean swallowing the status quo hook, line, and sinker.