Well this is quite the review of Dawn Eden’s book. It sums up a lot of what Dawn writes, so that people like me don’t have to suffer through actually reading a self-help mantra for 30-somethings who are willing to do just about anything to get hitched. To copy something Amanda said, the book essentially comes down to, “All single women are like Dawn. Except Dawn.”
EXAMINING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the lifestyle choices of sex (mostly casual) outside of marriage and the decision to wait until sex can be fully experienced within marriage, Eden identifies two types of women: single women and singular women.
She explains, “A single woman bases her actions on how they will or won’t affect her lacking state.” In other words, if the activity doesn’t apparently bring her immediately closer to her desire of not being single, then she’s not interested. If the party doesn’t guarantee some quality eligible bachelors, forget it. If the fellow asking her out on a date doesn’t fit her ideal of what her mate should be, forget it.
The single woman is excessively utilitarian, and auto-determining; she defines her relationships, her circumstances, and her future, according to her desires. The “other” only comes into the picture insofar as that person is useful to her. She spends her time resenting what she does not have, especially the lack of an intimate relationship, even though she bases her identity on that very lack. Her identity is about what she hasn’t got (a boyfriend or a husband), not who she is.
A singular woman acts integrally. She chooses to do things because they are good in and of themselves, not because they will serve her immediate interests whether they involve dating and romance, getting a job, or any other desire. She allows herself to actually experience what a situation offers, even if she didn’t foresee it. Unlike the single woman, she will go to a party simply to have fun and be with people she enjoys. If she meets someone at the party, it will be all the better. But whether or not she meets someone won’t determine the success of the party.
I’m assuming that Dawn thinks she’s a “singular” woman, and most other unmarried women who aren’t chaste are “single.” But when I read “She spends her time resenting what she does not have, especially the lack of an intimate relationship, even though she bases her identity on that very lack,” I think of, well, Dawn. After all, this is someone who bases her blog, her book, and her entire public persona on being chaste in order to snag a husband, since fucking didn’t get her exactly what she wanted. Talk about utilitarian.
In essence, the difference between the two types of women lies in the direction of their gaze: inward, at one’s self, or outwardly, towards the other?
Most women are navel-gazing selfish bitches. On the other hand, Dawn, despite having a website dedicated entirely to Dawn, and a book based entirely on the assumption that Dawn’s experiences are similar to those of most women and Dawn is right, is gazing… outward.
The lived example of the Sex and the City philosophy happens to be a particularly acute instance of the condition and it affects many people who think that sex without marriage will wipe away their loneliness and ultimately bring them the intimacy of marriage. But the experience of countless men and women proves otherwise.
I don’t get the obsession with Sex & the City. Two of the characters ended up married, and I’m pretty sure the other two turned down proposals at some point — and at the very least, they ended up in relationships. They all ended up happy. Putting aside the fact that Sex & the City is absolutely nothing like most women’s lives and that it’s a friggin TV show and not a case study (and this is coming from someone who was once slurred as “a Carrie Bradshaw wannbe” by a conservative blogger), I still don’t understand why it’s the pinnacle of unhappy single woman examples. None of them end up single. They all end up happy. They have good moments and bad, fabulous moments and depressing ones. Yeah, they’re shallow and materialistic, but as far as I can tell, the “Sex and the City philosophy” — which I think is “fucking because it’s fun, and sometimes having feelings for other human beings which are not contingent on them buying you a wedding ring” — is what most people engage in. And by “most” I mean 95 percent. Count that.
In addition to the well-placed Chesterton quotes in her book, Eden has some memorable lines of her own. Articulating the root of the problem, she writes, “Once you allow yourself to be defined by your loneliness, it’s a small step to violating your most deeply held beliefs.” Precisely this action determines whether an individual woman or man is single or singular. The single person defines the self with her loneliness, i.e. the lack of an intimate relationship in her life.
Would defining the self with the lack of an intimate relationship in life be evidenced by, say, writing a book about how you lack an intimate relationship and really really really want to change that?
EDEN WRITES CONVINCINGLY, “[O]nly through chastity can all the graces that are part of being a woman come to full flower in you.”
You know, graces. Like making sure the greedy bastard buys the cow before he gets all the milk, that little perv. After all, “being a woman” apparently means trading pussy and housework for jewelry, financial support and social status. And if you don’t refuse sex, that wonderful man who you want to marry will treat you like a blow-up doll.
As much as the people involved may think that they are experiencing love, it is not a fully committed and unreserved vulnerable love that can only exist in an exclusive and permanent marriage. In any other type of relationship, there’s always an “out.”
Problem: We can never know if our marriage is permanent. Until we die, that is. We can assume it will be, hope that it is, and believe that it’ll last forever. But there is an “out” (“divorce” for regular readers of the American Spectator), and I think most of us are pretty glad it’s there. So, really, none of us can ever experience real love.
Recently, a friend mentioned a Sex and the City episode where the promiscuous blonde has the flu and has just bought an apartment. She needs someone to install blinds so that she can sleep. She opens her little black book and calls the men from her various dalliances. In the end, nobody wants to install the blinds. She realizes that although she’s had lots of sex, she’s actually very lonely and has no one.
Whereas if you’re married, you can just order your husband to install the blinds for you, and he will. So if you wait for marriage to have sex, you can get yourself a built-in handy-man, or at least someone to buy some stuff for you. What was that about “The single woman is excessively utilitarian, and auto-determining; she defines her relationships, her circumstances, and her future, according to her desires. The “other” only comes into the picture insofar as that person is useful to her”?
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (yes, you read that right) also gives her a glowing review. I link to it only because it contains a direct quote from Dawn’s book, which illustrates her perspective on marriage, and explains why positioning herself as a “singular” woman — you know, one who doesn’t define people in terms of their utility to her, and who isn’t obsessed with her relationship status — is borderline hysterical:
“The other night I had dinner with a male friend, a charming English journalist I would date if he shared my faith (he doesn’t) and if he were interested in getting married (ditto). He peppered me with questions about chastity, even going so far as to suggest that maybe, given that I’d been looking for so long, I might not find the man I was looking for.
‘That’s not true,’ I responded. ‘My chances are better now than they’ve ever been, because before I was chaste, I was looking for love in all the wrong places. It’s only now that I’m truly ready for marriage and have a clear vision of the kind of man I want for my husband.’
’I may be thirty-seven,’ I concluded, ‘but in husband-seeking years, I’m only twenty-two.’”
And in real years, I’m only 23, and my ring finger is pretty nekkid (excuse me, nude and waiting for an expensive purchase from a good man to cover it — being naked is for sluts). If you share my religion and think that $40,000 is a fair price for unlimited baby-making and house-cleaning, call me. I prefer platinum to gold. Blood-free diamonds only, please.
Similar Posts:
- The Thrill of the Chaste, Chapter 3 by zuzu February 12, 2007
- Having Pre-Marital Sex? You’re a Man-Hater. by Jill June 15, 2006
- Walking Wounded by Lauren August 23, 2005
- The Thrill of The Chaste, Introduction by zuzu January 21, 2007
- Dawn Eden explains women by Jill January 14, 2007
As much as the people involved may think that they are experiencing love
False consciousness? Dawn’s a Marxist? Who knew!
I love the insistence that loneliness is only connected to whether you’re married/engaged etc – nothing to do with your friends, work colleagues, family members, etc. And as if married women are never lonely. :rolleyes:
You know, there’s this lovely little thing called “the super.”
Also, “the instruction booklet”.
Or “an eyeshade.”
That episode with the blinds was not typical of the show. Anyway, who doesn’t pay someone to install them? Having a man does not mean having someone who automatically knows how to do shit around the house.
But that’s beside the point. My main point about “Sex and the City” is that I think all the loathing for it stems back to the fact that the characters had really good friendships with each other and were happy being single. They didn’t end up happy; they were happy throughout the show. The dating antics are cast all too often as somem sort of husband hunt, but the truth is that they were more in the old-fashioned comedy of errors tradition. Just, you know, about sex.
Well, that’s kind of my point with the super comment — these are Manhattanites. They have supers. There’s no reason to call your ex-boyfriends unless the writers are being particularly idiotic that day.
$40k? Jesus woman, what kind of money do you think commenters on liberal feminist blogs make?
singular like a black hole.
HA!
Is that 40,000 a one time payment or annually? Because if it’s the former that’s sounds like a pretty good deal.
It’s two months’ salary for a stockbroker. Don’t you pay attention to DeBeers ads?
So if Dawn is a “singular woman” who actually experiences what a situation offers and simply enjoys the company of friends, not a “single woman” who defines her relationships and experiences in terms of whether it will land her a husband, then why, when relating the conversation she had with her journalist friend, did she feel it was necessary to include the entirely irrelevant details about how she would date him if only he shared her faith and was interested in getting married? She described her friend entirely in terms of whether or not he was marriage material.
Dawn has said that she has a “husband-sized hole” in her life. She writes about marriage all of the time. She writes about other women’s “extramarital” sex lives. And a single, sexually active woman like me (who presently has zero interest in getting married) is supposedly the one whose every action is based on snagging a husband and whose identity is defined by my lack of having snagged one? Dawn, honey, I have wildly enjoyed many a party during which I never once thought about looking for a husband.
*snickers* Yeah, I’m geeky enough to have seen that and thought, “But wait, isn’t that’s what at the middle of black holes? Why would you want to be one of those?!”
Anyway, I think a major point Dawn continues to ignore — and it has to be consciously, at this point, because nobody’s that ignorant — is that not all women who have sex outside of marriage are doing it with some ulterior motive like, say, finding a husband, or filling a hole (a black hole?) in their emotional lives. Sometimes girls just wanna have fun, you know? Sheesh.
Sorry, must have missed it. Never really planned on buying diamonds for anyone, as the fact that a non-rare chunk of carbon is for some reason ridiculously expensive irritates me. Unfortunately 40K is more than I make in a year on a military salary, although I’ll be doing alright after (assuming there is an after, of course).
Rather off-topic, but that blinds comment reminds me of a great joke in Annie Hall, when Annie calls Alvy (after they’ve broken up) to come over and kill a large spider in her bathtube. He kills in, then comes back into her bedroom where she’s crying. He says, “What, you’re crying because I killed the spider? What’d you want me to do, capture it and reform it?”
And periodical (and completely genuine) fawning comment: I can’t believe someone as intelligent, thoughtful and well-informed as you is only 23.
wait, is that 40K per annum, or a purchase fee? because if that’s a purchase rate, it might be in my best interest. have you priced domestic slave labor recently? the only adverts I can find are in the back of the local Alt-culture rag, and it’s still that ballpark for a block fee (although I will admit the hourly rates are much better. only marginally worse for landscaping than those hardworking immigrants that stand outside Home Depot)
I do have some concerns, though. I can’t say I’m comfortable owning a human being the same age as me. that seems a bit too close to an equal power relationship, and that will not stand. would there be an extra fee applied so that should any discussion of personal information come up, you respond with a vapid giggle and “I’m seventeen!”
::shakes head::
I saw Dawn Eden speak the other night in a debate with Virgina Vitzthum, and at no point in the evening, did she make a lick of sense.
All of her arguments were based completely in faith and the assertion that what is good for her (which this whole chastity thing arguably isn’t) is going to be good for all women. Excuse me, “all people.”
She kept insisting that her chastity ideas were good for all genders, but she kept coming back the idea of a woman “using herself up” before she married her husband.
The general concensus in the room was tha she needed to see a therapist, not a priest.
“If you share my religion and think that $40,000 is a fair price for unlimited baby-making and house-cleaning, call me. I prefer platinum to gold. Blood-free diamonds only, please.”
$40K for unlimited baby making and house-cleaning?? My eyes are wide open!! Its so disgusting to even think about it!
Same here – although Dawn does often seem to be infintely dense . . . hmm.
On the blinds: what about those three best friends of hers? If I had the flu and couldn’t sleep because I had no blinds, I’d call my friends and ask for help.
I think I’m increasingly of the opinion that Dawn Eden went on a bad trip and ended up watching every episode of Sex and the City, and somehow both a.) flipped it for reality and b.) blamed it for her personal problems.
Dammit! I wanted to go see that, but couldn’t make it.
The whole thing with “Sex and the City” is ridiculously annoying. By and large the show made it pretty clear that they weren’t alone. That throughout their adult lives, their most enduring relationships with were each other. And, despite the fact that they weren’t chaste, their relationships with each other were not utilitarian either. They did a lot of things together. It wasn’t just that Miranda was the smart friend, and Charlotte was the nice friend, and Samantha was the most sexually active friend. Yes, those were the elements of each that the show played up the most. But that isn’t how they viewed each other, and it isn’t how they interacted with each other.
Besides, if I were to rely on my boyfriend to hang blinds for me, I’d never have blinds in my windows. He’s lived in an apartment his whole life. He doesn’t know how to fix things, because he’s never had to and had no interest in learning. As zuzu said, that’s what supers are for. I’m the one in the relationship who can fix things.
Dammit! I wanted to go see that, but couldn’t make it.
It was very interesting.
Also, people voted against chastity 2-to-1.
Also, people voted against chastity 2-to-1.
Well, that’s actually a much better showing for chastity than, you know, the percentage of the population that actually never has sex before marriage.
Oh heavens. I was often lonely during my 19 year marriage. In the 10 years since my divorce, I’m seldom lonely. Marriage doesn’t fix anything; if she feels something is missing in her life, it will STILL be missing when she gets married.
People were pretty impressed at the pro-chastity numbers.
However, and I say this as someone who’s debated in that same series, when you’re debating, you get your friends to come out and support you.
I do in fact like the single/singlular distinction, for men and women, but like you I apply it in a different way than Dawn Eden does.
Dawn sets up the dichotomy as sexually active vs. chaste, when it’s really about relationship-oriented vs. self-oriented. Chaste in the hopes of snagging a husband? That’s single. Chaste because you feel like it? That’s singluar. Sexually active because you feel you have to be to get a date? Single. Sexually active because you enjoy sex? Singular.
As for Sex & the City, I hated what I saw of it because I was living in Manhattan at the time (Columbia student), and it seemed to romanticize the classism I saw there. I think most conservatives hate it because (a) it has “sex” right there in the title, (b) the women are sexual agents, and (c) they can take general criticisms of shallowness and materialism and piggyback their sexual agenda on them.
I actually wonder if Dawn really does position herself as a “singular” woman. We make that assumption because we figure, why would someone write a book and make themselves the “villain”? But that’s because we’re marginally sane. Eden’s bubbling over with self-loathing (especially in that Salon interview…sheesh); it wouldn’t surprise me if all that vituperation against the “single” woman was really just her own internalized rage.
also, woot woot, Columbia.
Singular, eh? You’d think writers of books or their editors would try to think up the implications of coining self-referential terms before people starting making hilarious cracks about black holes, sucking, and being infinitely dense? ;)
Also, I enjoyed Sex & the City and was glad it opened up discussions about female sexuality, but it in no way actually represents my life.
I’ve never seen an episode of Sex and the City; I had no idea I was missing a show that defines everything about being a woman! Gosh.
(And also, let no one speak of the fact that if you’re happy and satisfied with yourself and your life, you’re more likely to be in able to figure out what you want in a relationship and go after that. Because that would be selfish.)
Having read the review of Eden’s book, I have to ask: Where are the men? Or rather, what are they doing? Taking advantage of all those lonely single women in the hopes that the women won’t notice that they’re being taken advantage of? Secretly pining for a woman who will fill the “wife-sized” hole in their heart? And are they supposed to magically transform into great husbands once women start rejecting their sexual advances?
Does this book accomplish anything other than reinforcing stereotypes of (single) women as lonely and pathetic and men as their saving grace? I suppose adding an additional buden for women and absolving men of responsibility is an accomplishment, right?
Problem: Who says that some people care if they’re experiencing love? I mean, I know I’m not the only one who’s been in a relationship that I knew wasn’t going to last forever- where I knew that neither of us was in “True Love” with the other, but where we enjoyed being with each other right then.
Sometimes- and maybe this is just my insanity speaking- sometimes people get involved in relationships knowing full well that there’s an out, just because they’re having a nice time.
*gasp*
Sex without the promise or even without the expectation that it might LAST FOREVER?
Scandalous, I know.
*rolls eyes*
Heh. Black hole.
God, that’s funny.
Seconding what jfpbookworm said — it seemed to me as I read the post that Dawn Eden’s version of chastity is the epitome of being “single” in her distinction rather than “singular”. I am a little confused, though, as to how the distinction relates to “inward gazing” as opposed to “outward gazing” as both states would involve a little of each, nu? It’s just that “singular” refers to a healthy balance whereas “single” refers to an un-healthy on. The idea that one state indicates an excess of navel-gazing while the only balanced state is healthy is the sort of thinking that the Rabbis of the Talmud would call “Hellenist”.
BTW … back in my Nice Guy(TM) days, people would try to explicate this distinction to me (because I was definitely “single” and not “singular”), but I didn’t believe them. But interestingly, it was when I was being singular rather than single that I met my gf. Hmmm … maybe they were right?
I believe in the episode she said that she owned the place, and therefore had no super when one of the friends did come over to at least offer comfort. Still…handymen are a phonecall away.
I’m sorry, but I don’t know who this Dawn person is aside from this b blog. Does she have a big following among the wingnuts? Is she oft quoted on the tube for mass consumption? Although poking at wingers is always good entertainment, I am lost as to why always the focus on this woman.
Please some enlighten me as apparently I am out in left field oblivious.
I’m not so impressed. There are quite a few people who are all in favor of theoretical chastity, especially for other folks. In only having sex when they’re drunk, they don’t have to take responsibility for their having had sex. “I didn’t know what I was doing! I was drunk! *sob*”
Of course, not taking responsibility also tends to go along with not using protection, getting pregnant, catching interesting diseases, and not having particularly good sex. You lose some, you lose some more.
Oh, that’s bull. That’s what the maintenance fees are for. God knows I wouldn’t be forking it over to my co-op if I didn’t get a super out of the deal.
God! At least get the real-estate stuff right!
Is anyone thinking of this exchange from “The Breakfast Club”?
Claire Standish: No. Doesn’t it bother you to sleep around without being in love. I mean, don’t you want any respect?
Allison Reynolds: I don’t screw to get respect. That’s the difference between you and me.
Well, that’s kind of my point with the super comment — these are Manhattanites. They have supers. There’s no reason to call your ex-boyfriends unless the writers are being particularly idiotic that day.
Unless Samantha was trying to be cheap and have someone install them for free, I don’t see why your first instinct wouldn’t be to pick up the Yellow Pages and call, I don’t know, a BLINDS INSTALLER?
Let us be kind and wish that Ms. Eden fill that “husband-sized hole” in her life. She will then be “happy” and, more importantly, out of a job.
The feminism — “sisters” who stuck together no matter what — was threatening to conservatives along with the sexual agency and the words “sex” and “city”. BTW the chart in the middle of this article shows that the salary of the actual Sex and The City columnist was 1/3 of Carrie’s beauty budget alone.
The unabashed embrace of capitalism and materialism of the show bothered me too.
With new technology emerging all the time it is possible that Dawn’s book was not written at all but was in fact projected directly onto the page.
Unless Samantha was trying to be cheap and have someone install them for free, I don’t see why your first instinct wouldn’t be to pick up the Yellow Pages and call, I don’t know, a BLINDS INSTALLER?
I thought everyone installed their own blinds, or else left them sitting around the house till they had time. You mean it’s standard to have other people install blinds for you?
Of course, I’ve never lived in Manhattan, or had a super.
“SEX USED TO HAVE SOMETHING to do with marriage. That was then, this is now. Now, sex happens in more ways and places than perhaps ever before; but people don’t seem much happier for it.”
Happier compared to when? I’ve seen this claim several times before but is it based on anything? Is there any representative study like NHANES, which I think included several cohorts, that assesses some level of happiness?
Personally I like the logic of, we have lots of sex outside of marriage, we are not happier, therefore, sex outside of marriage is bad, as though no other factors (like increasingly precarious economics) could possible be involved.
I have had lots of premarital sex and I am an extremely happy individual. Making monogamy a requirement of marriage reduces marriage to a relationship based solely on sex. It’s supposed to be a commitment to another based on love.
I wonder if I can become famous by writing a book called “The Thrill of Sex” that’s filled with petty sniping about how empty and pitiful is the chaste life.
The unabashed embrace of capitalism and materialism of the show bothered me too.
Not the bad writing and cheap use of 2dimensional stereotypes in lieu of actul characters with actual personalities – the women being defined by their things, job, possessions, apartments, boyfriends?
All of which means that conservatives could click with the show – they weren’t put off by any depth in the scripts which would have caused it all to go wooshing over their heads – but it contained Hot Button Single Issues that conservatives are trained like pavlov’s dog to REACT to when ever they encounter them.
Bad enough they could watch it, cheap attempts at being contentious that made them unable to turn the fuck over and watch everybody loves jebidiah or whatever it is htat conservatives approve of.
“I’m cold. Put on a sweater.”
boundaries are also a god thing, Dawn. just sayin’.
Karolena: go for it.
yupper. and i think that (c) is the real killer, not just with stuff like this but the whole, o, gay men are so much richer than the rest of us! (lesbians don’t exist so much) just look at all these portrayals of Chelsea folk living the high life! see, o hardworking Just Folks out there in the mythical Heartland (because also, all gay folk and “independent” women who like teh sex live in the citay, on the coasts) they don’t need any more rights! in fact, their very existence is taking away from you! “let them eat quiche.”
Hey Jill – Does that offer come with gender requirements? Cuz I could sure use someone to do the housekeeping.
You knew my Grandma Bicki, didn’t you? :D
how long do you think dawn can keep this shtick up? will a chaste single woman looking for a husband really get the conservatives all a flutter when she’s much over 40? I mean, actually, she’s already 37 — aren’t her best baby-making years already over? Why don’t these people hate her for wasting all those precious youthful embryos? shouldn’t she stop being so uppity and just marry somebody already?
hahaha. i think this is actually probably very true.
Yeah, but Dawn’s whole deal, and I think Jill’s alluded to this before, is that your fun is spoiling her fun. See, if all the sluts would quit giving away all that milk, more men would be starving and desperate enough to line up to purchase the truly singular cow, or something. (I am not calling Dawn a cow, by the way; I’m just trying to keep within the bounds of the milk-for-free analogy.)
My usual approach to Eden is “live and let live.” (At worst, I’ll do bad impressions of her on other people’s internet phone widgets.) I have enough ultra-conservative religious folk in my own offline circle to cope with without seeking more of ‘em out online.
But even I get that what’s really irksome about Dawn is that she doesn’t support “live and let live.” Your living is making a husband-sized hole in her heart, see, so it’s got to go.
That may be the greatest distillation of her ideology ever.
The sad thing is, she would disagree with you if you told her that.
Okay, I’m not wholly comfortable with this sort of remark, but again: No one on the right is going to blame Dawn when they can just blame all the unchaste women who like having all that fun-but-meaningless sex instead.
They don’t view Dawn being unmarried (did we have to bring up this at-her-age stuff, really? Did we?) as being Dawn’s problem, and I’m not sure I do either, given that even many of the feminists I know still follow the traditional pattern of “man proposes, woman accepts.” There isn’t much you can do about being unmarried, especially if you’re as conservative as Dawn is, if you don’t even have the agency to propose to a fella. How does a woman take the proactive approach to getting hitched in this life? Nine times out of ten, she doesn’t, because society says she can’t.
But where I’m saying she can’t very well marry a guy who hasn’t asked her to marry him, conservatives are saying she can’t marry because all her potential suitors are too busy banging Carrie Bradshaw to propose to Dawn–and somehow that’s Carrie Bradshaw’s fault, and no reflection whatsoever on the conservative opinion of men as a sex.
Unfortunately, it is a bit her problem.
She’s cast herself into such contradictory classifications. She keeps saying, “I’m chaste, and I’m not seeking affection through physical intimacy,” but openly acknowledges she’s seeking a husband.
During the debate, she kept referring to marriage as an end, not a means, but saying it was the other way around. She said that the love a couple had in marriage was automatically of the agape variety, unending and perfect.
I want to know what the hell marriages she’s looking at.
My parents have been happily married for 40 years, and I would hardly descrive their love with that particular adjective. To further contradict her, and my mother is my father’s second wife, and my mom was engaged to someone else and broke it off before she ever met my father.
Marriage is final? Not even close.
Making monogamy a requirement of marriage reduces marriage to a relationship based solely on sex.
One might as well say that making marriage a relationship in which you’re liable for all of each other’s debts reduces marriage to a relationship based solely on money. Marriage has lots of requirements (some, like the being liable for each other’s debts stuff, legal, and others, like the expectation of monogamy and the expectation that you at least start out in love with each other, social). It doesn’t really reduce to being solely about any one of them.
Let us be kind and wish that Ms. Eden fill that “husband-sized hole” in her life. She will then be “happy” and, more importantly, out of a job.
Not likely out of a job. She can then move on to preaching about the wonders of Christian marriage. And how good it is for your marriage not to use contraception.
Hasn’t she been a columnist since before she was chaste? I think it’s safe to say she’ll go on writing, however her living situation may evolve.
She said that the love a couple had in marriage was automatically of the agape variety, unending and perfect. – Red Stapler
Automatically? I agree with you on this … and if she thinks that all that needs to happen for her to experience love of the agape variety is for The Right Guy(R) to give her a big diamond, let her plan a fancy wedding and then for them to have a heckuva honeymoon, she’s gonna be in for a rude awakening if she does ever get married.
Or perhaps, that’s why she hasn’t found The Right Guy(R). It may be that our society is horribly discouraging of women having agency in relationships, but even the most conservative women at some level must at least accept or reject potential suitors. And it’s one thing to have high standards or to just be “singular” (to use her phrase) … but it’s another thing to reject any relationship because it doesn’t provide instant agape and then complain about not finding any possible marriage mates.
Sounds to me like Ms. Eden might be trying to convince herself (as well as us) she’s singular rather than seriously questioning her expectations …
What I’m interested by is how her wiki has stayed in the shape its in for so long…
it’s, even
I agree with Ilyka. It would likely be viewed as a symptom of Everyting Wrong With Our Culture that a nice, chaste Christian woman like Dawn can’t “find a husband.” Proof that our society just doesn’t value the fine, traditional qualities anymore. Not an indication that there’s something wrong with Dawn. Which I’m not sure her being unmarried at 37 is an indication of either.
The problem with Dawn and her book is that she expects all women to behave and feel like she does and refuses to accept that any woman could be happy if she doesn’t. And if a woman says she’s happy, well clearly she’s either lying to herself or just doesn’t understand what real happiness is.
Also that she says things that categorize her in her own “single” category as she defines it, but insists that she’s in the “singular” category as she defines it.
In other words, exactly what Jill said the problem was.
I’m having a tough time reading that as meaning anything other than “no fuckee, no hubby.” That seems as one-solution-fits-all as Dawn’s “you must be chaste” view. I don’t support telling everyone they must be fucking and I don’t support telling everyone they must not be, either.
Or were you trying to say something else with that?
I was saying something else. :)
To go back to the single/singular definitions, she’s claiming she’s “singular” by being chaste.
By her own admission, she’s seeking a husband, which, to me sounds a lot like being “single,” even if she’s not going to sleep with the person she has her sights on.
AKA, what Lesley just said:
Oh, duh, I’m a moron. Have any of the interviews pinned her down on that? On whether she identifies as “singular” or “single?” That’d be a trip through the logic-o-whirl I might enjoying taking, at least before lunch.
My gut impression is that she’s identifying as a single trying to achieve singularity, but maybe I’m crediting her with too much humility there. “I want a husband, I want a husband” definitely doesn’t meet her own criteria for singular women.
I agree with Ilyka. It would likely be viewed as a symptom of Everyting Wrong With Our Culture that a nice, chaste Christian woman like Dawn can’t “find a husband.”
Dawn Eden sure is a Nice Gal(R). Maybe she’ll be happy as soon as she gets involved with a Nice Guy(R)?
My problem is that she seems to be putting a stipulation on her chastity – almost as if it’s a rabbit’s foot or a bargaining chip with God and not as simply her own decision. And I really, really don’t like it when people write these books saying things like “this is good/bad for all women”.
What about relationships that don’t end in marriage? Personally, I am in a relationship but am not really interested in being married. I’m not saying I won’t ever change my mind, but at this point in time, I don’t really feel a NEED to be married, you know? And one of the other commenters put this forward as well – Marriage doesn’t change loneliness necessarily. I know many people who are extremely lonely in their marriages for various reasons.
And I also believe it’s extremely limiting to say well, I’ll only date guys who believe exactly how I believe and want to get married now and who like the color green. I mean, what’s the point?
I don’t think she ever says in the interview “I am singular,” but I think you can piece it together. In her most recent interview with Rebecca Traister, she references how her friendships have become non-utilitarian since she’s become chaste (in the part where she apologizes for saying that only chaste women can avoid using their friends). By her definition, “single” people have utilitarian relationships. “Singular” people do not.
Also in the American Spectator, the article’s author draws certain conclusions for us from Dawn’s book. For example:
Since Dawn is chaste, presumably she believes that all the graces that are part of being a woman have come to full flower in her and that she’s thinking of the other, not herself.
However, when she admits she has a “husband-sized hole” in her life and that chastity is a way for her to find a husband, since being unchaste didn’t achieve that goal, it really contradicts everything else she says about being chaste.
She’s cast herself into such contradictory classifications.
Which is almost as bad as the old anti-semitic stereotype of the loose jewish woman that dawn paints her pre-catholicism life as.
There’s just so many angles of wrongness to dawny-poo… all so dear I can give up neither, would you call it “shrill” to snark them all?
What the fuck? Unlike the single woman, [the singular woman] will go to a party simply to have fun and be with people she enjoys, but yet it’s the single woman who defines her relationships, circumstances, future, according to HER desires. What the fuck? Going to a party to have fun somehow isn’t acting according to her desires?
And meanwhile the singular woman gives up a very pleasurable and fulfilling part of life to have only upon achieving a marriage, yet it’s the single woman who bases her identity on the lack of said marriage, and is likely to resent that lack?
Hate to tell you this, Dawnie, but a chaste unmarried woman tends to lack the intimacy of a husband as much as a promiscuous woman is likely to—but the promiscuous one can get lots of orgasms and physical intimacy in the meantime, and is perhaps more likely to meet men who view emotional intimacy as a good thing to give and recieve, rather than something one is obligated to give as a marriage exchange in order to get laid.
Jeez, by the above definition I’m “singular.” But wait, a singular woman apparently by definition “saves ‘it’ for marriage,” and since I’m perfectly willing to have sex with people who make it spectacular sex, are attractive to me, and offer me sufficient emotional intimacy and a comfortable level of stability outside of marriage (returned in full measure by me), I guess I’m just “single.” Except for the part where I live life to enjoy myself rather than living it to find a man (or woman) (which apparently doesn’t count because everybody knows that even if gays get “married” they’re really just promiscuous lovers in it just for the physicality, ’cause they’re defective and don’t have normal human emotions or something).
Somebody get this woman a copy of The Feminine Mystique.
And I also believe it’s extremely limiting to say well, I’ll only date guys who believe exactly how I believe and want to get married now and who like the color green.
It’s generally a good idea to be on the same page with the guys you date on at least those beliefs that will immediately impact your life (such as, say, what you think of abortion in the event of birth control failure), and also on whether you’re looking to be married in the really near future. If one of you wants to be married now and the other sees no reason, then that could be a really frustrating relationship.
None of which says that people have to have particularly fixed expectations up front, to begin with, about how eager they are to be married. Just that I’m betting most people in this thread don’t really want to date Dawn Eden :-).
Dawn: “Why do you think you’re cold? I’m not cold. You must have been indoctrinated by the Feminist Police to feel cold; you shouldn’t. You have no reason to feel cold. Perhaps you choose to feel cold because you find it fulfilling, but true fulfillment can only be experienced if you accept the fact that you are really warm, because it’s in your nature to be warm. So wouldn’t you be happier if you stopped being so determined to feel cold and embraced your inner, natural warmness? Come on, now. God is cheering for you.”
And the way the right discourages anyone peeking into that book is by never mentioning it at all, except to say that Betty Friedan was a communist. A pinko, look out! Today you’re reading Betty; tomorrow you’re forming a Sunday school teachers’ union. Pretty soon you aren’t going to church at all and having the dirty dirty sex besides. It’s a KY-ed slippery slope, I’m telling you.
I love this comment.
Betty Friedman, Ilyka. It’s Betty Friedman.
Sometimes I wonder whether you’ve ever spent any time on right-wing blogs.
that’s exactly right.
At the debate, while she never used those terms, she did use the example of “going to the party and wondering who she would meet and go home with.”
Uh-huh. What is she looking for out of marriage, exactly, I wonder? It surely *can’t* be sex, because she could get that from any old person! It must be love or trust or companionship. And I know I’ve never gotten any of those things from my friends or my lovers!
Yeah, but why spread the implied anti-Semitism of always pointing that out any further, I figure. It’s a neat little one-two they’ve got going: Overtly, they say “Betty was a communist.” Covertly, they say “and a Jew besides.”
Yeah, you all are right. If she filled her hole, she probably would just continue to write obnoxious crap rather than shutting the hell up. The solution seemed just too simple.
That’s just the cost of the ring. Naturally, you’ll have to support me and the children after you’re married, which will cost you a minimum of $80,000 per person per year.
You aren’t getting this cow for free.
See, it’s when I read things like this that I wonder whether I’m happy I don’t spend any time on right-wing blogs or whether I’d be better off knowing that they pull anti-Semitic shit like that.
Well, Dawn mentions the age stuff in her interview
I was just being thoughtlessly smarmy, really, I guess. I wasn’t really questioning her lack of marriage at 37, or potential lack of marriage by 47 or 57. its just seems strange to me that the same types of people who hand-wring about women getting married too late and not producing enough children to out-birth the muslims seem to be in the same camp as those who would support dawn eden’s chastity-until-marriage quest, so I was actually quite shocked to learn how old she is. I’d always thought she was in her 20s or so.
has there been any sort of conservative christian speculation about this, i wonder?
When I’m sick and I can’t sleep, and I need to know about the right wing blogs, I get my excellent online friends to check for me. (But I’m utilitarian like that.)
People who make a big deal out of their celibacy aren’t celibate. Eden and her ilk think about sex constantly. They’re so busy actively depriving themselves of hot, shuddering, teeth-chattering, back-arching, sweaty, humping, thigh-aching sex that they can’t just think about anything else.
They need a good orgasm. Literally and metaphorically.
She said that the love a couple had in marriage was automatically of the agape variety, unending and perfect.
And if it isn’t, it’s because the wife is doing something wrong!
I feel bad for Dawn. I think she’s done something right in her life: made an effort to move from centering her life around trying to catch a husband to trying to be the person she would like herself to be. It sounds like the old Dawn didn’t really like sex and was doing it for bad reasons. I think choosing chastity for herself may be a good step on the road to getting her priorities straight. She’s got a long way to go, though, from who she wishes she weren’t to who she would like to be.
But like everyone else, I think she should stop projecting this on the rest of us. What of the women who like sex for nothing but enjoyment, and aren’t seeking a husband? Those people are not single by her definition, and I think fit closer to the “singular” she’s concocted. The choice of whether to have sex or not seems nearly orthogonal to this axis though. One can be promiscuous or chaste, and husband-seeking centered or self-fulfillment centered or somewhere between, and it seems to me these are independent.
She’s been looking for a husband since she was 15?
I’d really like to see her use the “in husband-seeking years, I’m only 22″ line at a bar and see how far it takes her.
For someone who claims she’s chaste, she certainly talks about sex a lot…..
She has a hole in her life. She used to think it was merely penis-sized. Now she’s praying that it’s husband-sized. Given her extremely starry-eyed ideas about what marriage is and what it can do, I fear for her future. And for her prospective hole-filler’s future.
Belledame 222, when I saw that folks were quoting someone who had quoted “I’m cold. Put on a sweater”, I thought it must have been Older (aka Mrs. Nice Guy), because someone she knew actuallly said that, as well as, “put away the food, I’m not hungry.”
And Henry, Gods be with you. Come home safe.
does that include room and board? and how much of that can be credit hours in labor? I’m a bit hard up for liquid assets, but think I can swing something if we’re counting permenent goods.
otherwise, I think I can do better. I don’t suppose there’s a floor model with a couple scratches (a little spit shine those buff right out), or perhaps a factory defect model with extra buttons or something. I think I saw a similar model availible at Loehmann’s. for a fraction of the cost.
there’s no way I’m gonna pay retail, that’s a sucker’s game.
ah! I have it! bulk rates! knock off 20 percent from each unit, and I’ll take 4 gross. that’s 576. I’ll make sure the rest find good homes at a satisfactory rate (with a 7 percent finders fee for myself) which will easily handle any expenses you’re looking at. honestly, how do you expect to turn a profit if you don’t deal in volume? Think woman, think!
See, I think she’s made an effort to move from trying to catch a husband by sleeping around to trying to catch a husband by being the person she would like herself to be. But her decisions still revolve around the “husband-shaped hole,” and wanna bet if she thought “the person she would like herself to be” would end up alone with thirty cats, she’d be someone else in a heartbeat?
I gotta say, it would be amusing if she got married this year, was very happy about sex in her marriage, and promptly had a kid a year until she was 45 or os. Not likely, but certainly possible!:)
Just to be clear, I was quoting the first sentence of the review that Jill linked to.
Well, no, I’m not so certain that they are. In fact, I’m pretty darned sure they’re not. “Fully committed unreserved vulnerable love” is not usually experienced by grown-up people who are into each other. It’s not usually experienced by grown-up people (of either gender) at all. It is, on the other hand, usually experienced by children for their parents, and that’s mostly because the poor kids don’t have any choice (as Dawn Eden puts it, they lack an “out”). Here I could roll down a thoroughly-broken track with which we are all familiar, and talk about men’s infantilization of women, women’s infantilization of men, and women’s infantilization of each other and themselves. But I’m not going to do that. Instead I’m going to ask:
Does this woman Dawn Eden really want to get married? I know she says she does, but she seems to have avoided the yoke thus far, and she’s no longer in her first youth. I’m a woman in the middle of my life, and she’s only seven years younger than I am. She appears to be clever; well, given that clever people can often obtain what they want, how is it she hasn’t yet obtained what she says she wants? She is nice looking; given that pretty women get what they want more often than homely ones do, and given that she (single or singular) does not appear to have any moral scruples about good old-fashioned quid pro quo barganing, how is it that she hasn’t thus far managed to broker her looks more effectively? (Into marriage, in other words, since that’s what she says she wants.) She exalts marriage, which, underneath all the theological underpinnings that ensconce it, is just a good old workaday social arrangement, to ridiculous levels. Is that just because she’s nuts, or is it because she’s being nutty like a fox? Is she setting her bar so high because she’s an expensive piece of goods and not a cheap piece of goods, or because she doesn’t in fact expect or want anyone to be able to pay her price? Just as (analogy alert) our current Chief Executive declines to describe exactly what “victory” in Iraq would look like, because he doesn’t (IMO) expect to be able to achieve it?
Just asking…
I’d like to put this Dawn Eden in a room with Betsy Hart, the my-shit-doesn’t-stink conservative columnist whose husband dumped her last year. I bet they’d have a lot to talk about.
Funny you should say that, bekabot. That’s my theory, too:
Unlimited baby-making sounds a bit disturbing; I love babies, but the house is only so big, after all. Could we compromise on a limit on baby-making, but maybe you could write some guest posts on “Alas” to make up for it?
Frankly, Jill, don’t you think you’re being a wee bit demanding for someone in your situation? If you were eighteen or nineteen, then sure, you could hold out. But now you’re 23; your best years are behind you, and you’re competing with marriage-hungry women who are still in their eighteentotwenty year old primes. You’re practically an old maid, you know, like whatsername in “It’s a Wonderful Life” if she had never met George. Soon you’ll be an unmarried beautiful librarian, just like her, and there is no worse fate imaginable for a woman.
So maybe you should relax the demand for having to share a faith with you. Just sayin’.
Derb? Is that you?
Ampersand, you just made me cry! You are banned for your bad attitude! BANNED!
“I am the only gay in the village! (deep, mournful sigh)…
…there’s only room for one gay in this village, and that’s me! We don’t need another!”
(Daffyd on “Little Britain”)
hmm… a consideration. Amp, you wanna go halfsies? it’ll be easier than for me to swing the financing on the bulk rate, which she still hasn’t agreed to anyway.
I mean, yeah, she’s not an 18 year old, but there is a certain advantage to the “recently chaste” marriage bait. Honestly, I’m more concerned about the cooking and cleaning thing than the unlimited babymaking thing (I’m pretty sure use of babymaking components voids the extended warranty)
Well, that seems a little bit pricey. It’s a good thing you’re hot. Although I’d probably have to go work for a PMC for that kind of money. True, they’ll pay for people with my skill sets, but that might cause a moral issue given your politics.
Oh, and 23 is perfect. Still young, but (hopefully) past the craziness that ensues when a woman turns 21.
hmm… a consideration. Amp, you wanna go halfsies? it’ll be easier than for me to swing the financing on the bulk rate, which she still hasn’t agreed to anyway.
I’ll take on a couple of the unlimited babies, if she’ll marry me in Massachusetts – maybe if enough of us chip in, we could make it a collective purchase.
“She opens her little black book and calls the men from her various dalliances. In the end, nobody wants to install the blinds. She realizes that although she’s had lots of sex, she’s actually very lonely and has no one.”
And how about installing the blinds herself?
And how about installing the blinds herself?
Well, she is sick. And blindfolding herself with some piece of her abundant wardrobe would probably be easier.
Derb? Is that you?
Derb would have said “fifteentotwenty-year-old primes”.
Good point. That’s exactly what she’s done. Trial and error: having bad sex with drunk drummers didn’t work, let’s try chastity! But if she really believed the singular thing, the not-trying-every-moment-to-get-a-husband thing, I think it would be good for her. And I guess I’m at least glad she realizes that.