Sunday morning ramble

As you know, I spend a lot of time lamenting my pathetic, meaningless single life eating and drinking with friends. It's actually exhausting. I'm serious. And the place we ended up at happy hour--Poste has no vegan options, so we left--had crappy wine, so I ended up getting a margarita. I had to make up for it with extra red wine last night. Gotta keep myself young. On Thursday, I ordered right (pinot noir) but unfortunately my friends did not (Asia Nine apparently has crappy, mix-based mixed drinks). Tuesday worked out, too--Fado's house red has gotten better since I last had it (their prosecco, however, did not impress those who ordered it; it wasn't even bubbly). But I digress, and I'd better get to the point, because I have a series of places I need to be today.

Part of the point is tangentially addressed in the last article I posted a minute ago:

But this does not feel like much of a victory, since the female subjects we meet in passing talk mostly about what is wrong with their relationships and feelings and partners. Surely women could have been found who were not so bored and miserable, and if they had been, the book — which is making a valuable point — would have felt more balanced.

I know married (and otherwise partnered) women who are not miserable, who don't spend every waking moment complaining about their husbands. I also know guys who are not Junot Diaz characters or laundry-ad stereotypes of bumbling idiots. And I would argue that those stereotypes harm men more than they do women (even though there's a belief out there that women are deluding themselves if we don't see guys as naturally promiscuous, commitment-phobic, and shallow).

I would be remiss to leave race out of this discussion, not only because it's such a factor in Diaz's characters, but also because it was a big part of the conversation over dinner the other night. All I can do with that is report to you what other people have told me; I obviously can't speak from experience. My (African-American) friends said that the situation (i.e., commitment-phobia, infidelity, etc.) was even more egregious among African-American men, which made them and other African-American women even more hopeless. [Note: they--and I--are UN daters, but one's own demographic isn't irrelevant to this discussion.] They talked about studies and surveys, and said that there's a general sense of "why bother"? They've also talked in the past about how the higher an African-American woman's academic achievement is, the less likely she is to marry. So they've just about given up. And every time I hear about a woman who have given up because they've had it (myself included), I can't help but think, there's a guy out there who's really missing out. Which is not fair, because that guy is not one of the bumbling, cheating guys who drove us to opt-out.

Dudes. collectively, used to get away with relationship murder, because women needed them more. At least back then, women got some financial support in exchange for being housekeepers and social secretaries (I'll leave parenting out of this, because it's complicated). I don't need to re-post all of the studies and articles about how women are increasingly independent in terms of finances and fertility, among other things, but I'll repeat that that makes it easier for us to say "f* it." Not because we've given up on the idea of a healthy, fulfilling relationship with a great guy, but because that's not what we're seeing on the market, and we're unwilling to settle for less, no matter what what's-her-name tells us.

That's all for now. I'll come back at some point and put some links into that last paragraph, but I have to get going.