I Will Never Apologize for Doing Singles Advocacy

A lot of academic fields devote to marginalized groups possess tensions between those scholars who want to do straight up scholarship and those whose scholarship is informed by advocacy.  Women’s Studies, Fat Studies, and this developing field, Singles Studies. 
​
Anyone who reads my blog knows where my position stands.  And I don’t always love reading work that posits that married/coupled people are better off while they dismiss that singlism, the stereotyping and discrimination that persists against singles, is a real thing. 

Paul Bloom's article, “Why Aren't Professors Braver?” got me thinking about my own role as a “troublemaker” in higher education.  At my university, I follow the rules.  Submit your midterm and final grades on time.  Send your syllabus to the chair.   I serve on university, school, division, and program committees, and I recently became a committee chair for my university’s faculty union.  I publish.  I practice good pedagogy.  I aim to balance compassion with rigor.  These two sentences have contributed to stellar evaluations from students every semester, and I routinely score high on my school’s performance eval metric. 

But there’s a rebel in there.  Most faculty were excellent students in high school and college who followed the rules. 

I did not fall into that category.  In high school, I was smart but disengaged with most of the course material; I saw it as a series of check boxes to fill out before I went into the real world.  And I occasionally cut class, smoked cigarettes on the track during gym class, and I wouldn’t budge as a bus driver told me to leave the bus because I wasn’t on his route; I was only trying to go to a friend’s house.

In college, I discovered my academic strength and love of learning.  But I also cut class occasionally, sipped beer from cafeteria cups during economics class (and earned a B+), and participated in the party scene.

Today, I show up for work, I don’t drink, and I own a home.  By most accounts, I’m a productive member of society.  But I’m not married, and I don’t have a kids.  So, through some lenses, I’m a degenerate – or at least, missing out.

I’m what Bella DePaulo would refer to as a “single at heart,” one who lives their best lives while single.  I’ve dated, been coupled, been domestically partnered, and yet, it could never work out because I was never willing to go the full mile.  I didn’t want to commit.  It was more important for me to travel solo to places like Ireland, Malaysia, and New Orleans.  I also never wanted to place a romantic relationship on a higher tier than that of my friendships.  And after a day of teaching classes, conferencing with students, and meeting with colleagues, the only sounds I want to hear are that of my cat/son Chester purring.

And what’s so wrong with that?  “Everything!” society says.  From the movies that paint singlehood as something to be fixed to the laws that won’t let me leave my Social Security benefits to my brother, but say “Okay” to a woman I meet and marry tomorrow to the advertisements that seem to only show couples enjoying events, as if we singles just like to hide in our rooms with our cats (for the record, I do this occasionally, but concertgoing is a huge part of my self-care regimen).
When I got dumped and was sad about being single, Bella DePaulo’s work saved me.  I devoured her books and articles.  I wrote blogs, which turned into articles, which turned into a book, which turned into tenure at my job. I connected with people on the Facebook group, Community of Single People (CoSP), some of whom are my closest friends today.   

And this all came from a place of anger.  Most advocacy comes from that same place.  And there are times where I’ve written pieces and bumped heads with scholars and other pundits.  Here’s a sample:

1. My piece about marginalization of the childless/childfree being referred to as “straight up bulls__t” on Facebook by a Director of Diversity.
2. This comment on my Writer’s Digest piece.
3. This email from a pundit on a little letter to the editor I wrote to the New York Times.  See below:

 
Dear Dr. Wynne:
 
The state of being "happy" can mean merely being comfortable.  Neurotics maintain a state of comfort by avoiding what they truly need and gravitating toward poor substitutes.
 
I recommend depth psychotherapy for you.  Work on your childhood, especially your relationship with your parents in early life.
 
Good luck.
 
The most recent one was when I went toe-to-toe with a fellow Board member at the International Singles Studies Association (ISSA) regarding extending the deadline for submissions at this summer’s conference.  The conference had thirty-one submissions a week before the deadline, enough for a small conference.  The organizers asked the Board members whether they should extend.  I voted “no” because: 1) we had enough submissions, and my experience as a conference organizer tells me there would have been an onslaught of entries right before the deadline; and 2) extending the submission deadline would likely delay the time for people to make travel arrangements.  Anybody who’s ever traveled internationally knows that flying to another country is expensive, and for a scholar who subsists on one income and is not being funded by a university or lab (i.e., me), that scholar might have to pay more the closer it gets to travel time.  The vote was 4-2 against it, so in my mind, the singles advocates won, even if that wasn’t the intent.

I was nominated to head a diversity committee in order to try to discuss equitable practices as they pertain to items like race, gender, ethnicity, and, yes, marital/relationship status.  A Board member whose research seems to rest on an underlying assumption that married people are better than singles protested, saying that “inclusion is often a way to silence differing opinions.”  I tried to de-escalate, but he just came back.  This is a Board member who voted “yes,” despite my protest that extending would disadvantage singles.  This has troubled me for a while, so I mentioned this to him.  He responded by alluding I was “corrupt.”

After a couple of days of reflection, I de-escalated, but “corrupt?”  For expressing concern around singles being disadvantaged?  I de-escalated, but I did not apologize.  If I see an issue that affects singles disproportionately (or more disproportionately than they already are), I will speak up, even if it upsets someone.

We’re so conditioned to the lionization of marriage/coupling/parenthood/family values that a lot of scholars and non-scholars will become defensive when presented with an idea that pushes back against this current.  In order to advocate for any idea, one must be prepared to accept that not everybody will like it.  And since singlism is one of the last acceptable prejudices (ageism is another), we have an uphill battle.

But that uphill walk is good for the quads, so I’ll keep at it.