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"Despite these drawbacks, the push of increasingly independent women against the barrier of their own fertility has not relented' (270)

Relented- (v.) become less severe
The punishment for violating dress code has not relented. Students will still recieve a detention.

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"Where Are They Now?
Dodai Stewart...
Kitty Curtis...
Ann Friedman" (305-309)

Throughout the book, I've read stories and experiences of numerous women who Rebecca Traister had interviewed throughout the story. We, the readers, had learned about the empowerment that normal women could experience, and how they shaped their lives in big cities, small towns, and everywhere in between. We learned about how they thrived and what led them to make the choice not to get married. By putting this chapter at the end, Traister cleverly reasserts her points about how people can be successful without being married now. She also brings back some of the women that readers felt most inspired by, and wraps up every one of their stories. She talks about the exciting things they are doing now, years after they were interviewed, and we see that they're on many different routes. Some are married, while others are still single, but all of them are successful and are doing what they love.

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"Sweep-you-off-your-feet-debt-free potential mates do not grow on trees. And the fact that our lives can now be full enough without those spectacular others makes our standards soar even higher" (262)

This is interesting because today, we read Joan Didion's essay on the concept of marriage in Vegas, and how it differs from other parts of the world. Traister is saying that in the real world, it is hard to find someone you truly want to be with, and that it's becoming increasingly harder to see the appeals of marriage when there are so many other fulfilling opportunities for people. Years ago, people depended on marriage for status, wealth, and wellbeing, but now, people can live great lives without being married. Marriage is not a huge part of one's identity anymore, and Traister wants to communicate this with logical evidence that makes readers understand what she wants to say. Personally, as the book moves along, I increasingly realize how important it is to pursue an education and build a life for yourself.

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"The sloughing off of marital priority sends shivers down the spines of both entrenched social conservatives and nonideologically offended, but nonetheless, very concerned elders" (226)

I think the way Traister words this is really nice, and I like the diction of it. However, it doesn't quite blend into her other writing, as it doesn't match her voice. Anyways, I think it perfectly illustrated that the idea of not marrying is still a very novel idea, and that it bothers many people. Old people who still live in society today probably do not care for the idea of not marrying because of tradition, and same with conservatives. I like that she uses the word "entrenched" to describe these people, because they aren't able to see the social progress that is brought by new reforms. I also like that she says that this idea "sends shivers down the spines of both entrenched social conservatives". I think this perfectly illustrates how some people feel about this, and many other new and radical ideas. These ideas genuinely disgust them, and there are so many people out there like this. We are so trapped in our social bubbles, that we don't even think about how many different people and mindsets there are in the world. For example, I don't know anyone who opposes not marrying and getting an education instead.

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"Certainly, circumstances are improved compared to what they were two-hundred years ago, or fifty years ago (Women can open their own bank accounts! Get their own mortgages! Marital rape is less legal!). But men's economic and professional dominance has not in fact come to an end" (184)

Traister's sarcastic tone in the parenthetical phrases made me laugh. I like that even though she's talking about a serious topic, she can emphasize it by showing how mundane these "achievements" are. Sure, being able to open bank accounts is a victory, but women should have more power than they have now. Apparently, 80% of Congress is made of men. That's crazy to me, because this is such an important office. Women are severely underrepresented. Besides this, Traister points out that men dominate in the leading industries of the world, such as business, public safety, and healthcare. I don't understand why this is still true, because women are just as capable and intelligent as men. This brings to light how, even with all the reforms, this is still a man's world.

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"Meaghan Ritchie is a twenty-year-old junior at Western Kentucky University... her father has told her that she cannot get married until she graduates. Meaghan's mother was a college sophomore.. dropped out of school" (165)

By bringing in a great variety of women, including Meaghan, Traister shows the new roles of women in this generation. By contrasting Meaghan's life path and that of her mother, Traister is asserting that women have more opportunities than they ever have before, and for the first time, marriage is not the only path for women to go down. Even Meaghan's father wants her to get an education before settling down. This in itself is amazing, since women never had this much opportunity. I think this passage really brings to light how much progress women have made in even the last 30 years. Meaghan doesn't even live in the city, and still, her family values her education more than marriage. Because it is often seen that in small towns, young marriage is more common, it is interesting to see how these views are not accurate anymore.

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"The scene was not a moment of completely unalloyed joy" (170)

Unalloyed-  (adj.) pure, complete
Her unalloyed innocence amazed those around her

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"However, these studies cannot help but reflect the fact that generally healthy people are more likely to be in a position to marry to begin with" (145)

I thought it was interesting that Traister would bring up health in relation to marriage. It was interesting to see how she could poke holes in widely accepted statistics by logically finding a lurking variable that is not measured in traditional studies. To me, it makes sense that healthy people marry more often, and I like how she uses this statistic to show that it is okay not to be married. With the statistic that married people are generally more healthy, people tend to think that they are also happier. This is because, in the minds of many, healthy=happy. However, Traister appeals to readers' logic by proving that marriage does not equal happiness. I like how Traister attacks the problem of marriage from numerous angles to give readers a full view of all the benefits of not marrying and staying single, and it's very clever that she used health/illness as a topic to prove her point.

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""'If you can forget the stultifying concept that there are appropriate years for certain endeavors and appropriate days for being gay and merry anduse these times without embarrassment...'" (117)

Stultify- (verb) to cause to lose initiative and enthusiasm as a result of strict/restrictive conditions.
The police stultified the crowd's protest by using force.

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"Finding a balance between camaraderie, support, and self-interest has remained challenging, especially when we find ourselves, today, working alongside, and becoming close to, women who are also competing with us for raises, for better shifts, for promotions" (110)

An interesting point is brought up in this section. Because of the rise in status of women all across the world, new types of relationships have begun to form. No longer are women submissive beings who exist only for mens' entertainment. Now, women can find opportunities and be successful as well. However, this can have detrimental results, such as increased fighting between women. Traister portrays women who behave this way as petty. I like that (later) Traister offers a solution to this in that being around better people makes you look/feel better. I think this is an important philosophy to keep in mind and learn from, and I like that Traister puts in advice for people in this book, even though its main focus is about single women. I think it's good that Traister acknowledges that it is "challenging", so she doesn't single anybody out. She establishes herself as a peer who understands women who feel that they must deceive to succeed, and this makes her writing very easy to read. She's indirectly giving advice instead of being direct, which is important for the success of the type of radical, forward ideas she presents in the book.

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"Not all the women in these movements were single. But the perceived overlap between singlehood and the antislavery movement was strong enough that some early abolitionist women were accused of wanting to free slaves so that they might marry black men" (49)

This passage outrages and shocks me. Although I know that women are often accused of having ulterior motives when they have unpopular or impactful opinions, I can't even imagine this sexism at this magnitude. Abolitionism was an extremely large movement, and I can't believe that women were targeted for being a part of this movement. In that time, women had it hard enough, with no voting rights or sense of self, and I didn't think they were targeted for believing in freedom for slaves. I'm glad Traister put this section in the book because it really shows how women were treated throughout history. This passage almost says that the only thing women could possibly want is love and sex, and they can't have beliefs that don't forward their motives. I never realized how bad the divide between sexes was in the 1800s, and this really opens my eyes as to how far we have gotten with gender equality.

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"Big cities, with their phallic, skyscraping tributes to man's triumphs over nature and free markets, are designed to make us think of masculinity" (72)

Phallic- (adj.) relating to, or resembling a male penis.

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"When we cast, as we so often do, the choice not to permanently partner as a failure or as a tragedy, we assume partnership as a norm to which everyone should or must aspire. But cities allow those who might have made restless, dissatisfied, always hungry-for-something-else mates who caused their partners unhappiness to exit the marriage highway, veering instead onto paths that take them to places that they'd rather be" (79)

Cities are often seen as places of opportunity, so it makes sense that they would offer opportunity to remain single without being judged. It's interesting how Traister tied these two ideas together, and it's an ingenious suggestion. I loved the way she worded this as well, using a metaphor to illustrate her point ("exit the marriage highway"). I love how she isn't afraid to reject societal norms and common opinions about marriage, and I love how she can talk about this sensitive and radical idea positively and inoffensively with her diction ("aspire", "paths to take them places that they'd rather be")

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Reading Schedule: All the Single Ladies 

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Reading Schedule: All the Single Ladies 

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9/23: pages 1-43
9/30: pages 44-98
10/7: pages 99-147
10/14: pages 148-177
10/21: pages 178-300
10/28: (I finished)

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I chose the book, All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister, because when I was looking through a list of non-fiction books on Goodreads, it stood out to me. First, the title drew me in because of the contemporary nature of it, and it was also rated really well on Goodreads, with 4/5 stars. I also enjoyed the concept, and the day before I decided to read it, I had a really interesting conversation about how men still dominate the world. I don't think the concept of not getting married and how this way of life isn't accepted fully in society yet occurred to me until I saw this book, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about the fight for acceptance that these women are experiencing. Overall, I thought it would be a super different read that could teach me more about the dynamic society that we live in, and that it would give a lot of insight into the structure of today's society.

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"The warning reverberated in many venues, and critics fretted that women's increasing ability to devote portions of their adulthood to things other than marriage and motherhood is diminishing our national prospects" (35).

Reverberate- (v.) to be repeated
The scream of the terrified child reverberated through the long hallway.

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"The journey toward legal marriage for gays and lesbians may seem at odds with what looks like a flight from marriage by heterosexuals. But in fact, they are part of the same project: a dismantling of the institution as it once existed- as a rigid patrolled means by which one sex could exert legal, economic, and sexual power over another- and a reimagining of it as a flexible union to be entered, ideally, on equal terms" (30).

In this passage, Traister is almost twisting the freedoms being single offers by comparing it to the right of legal marriages that gays and lesbians were fighting for until last year. By doing this, Traister is blowing the freedoms of being single out of proportion and making them seem bigger than they actually are. I think her point of view that both remaining unmarried and having the right to marry someone of the same sex are a fight against the rigid structure of traditional marriage is interesting, but a little bit far-fetched, which makes this passage stand out to me. Although she does explain her point very well in that both are contemporary schools of thought that would not have been accepted a few decades ago, I simply don't think the two concepts are in the same realm. The only thing they really have in common is that both revolutions deal with marriage. However, the struggle of gays and lesbians to gain their right to marriage was a much more strenuous of a fight than the desire of women to be accepted as single, independent figures. I feel that Traister is trying to make the struggle of single women seem more difficult than it is in reality, which makes me question her ethos. I do like the idea of a "flexible union to be entered" and I think the way she words this passage is very empowering to women in that it stressed equality, but when I think about it more, I feel that her opinion is almost unwarranted.