WEBVTT - 💋 Clementine Ford On Why Being Single 😘 Is Better For You 💋 0:00:01.560 --> 0:00:03.600 Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:07.800 This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast today. 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:09.920 I'm very excited to have our guest on the show. 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:12.280 As we say before every interview with a guest, we 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.960 don't often invite third voices onto the show, mainly because 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:17.720 we do like the sound of our own voices and 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:20.640 we're not afraid to admit it. But today, correct, we 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.959 have an Australian icon, a thought leader, a pioneer in 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:26.479 the field of feminist theory in this country. She's written 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:28.920 three books plus another one that we're going to be 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:30.200 talking about today. 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:31.320 They are best sellers. 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.400 She's a broadcaster and hosts of her own podcast, Dear Clementine. 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:37.680 We have given away who it is right now and 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:40.400 she's here today to tell us about her latest book, 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.000 I Don't The Case Against Marriage. 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:44.440 It is Clementine Ford. 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:48.600 Hi, Hello, Well, thank you both for having me. I 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:51.400 am massive fans of yours. I feel like you are 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.760 both so cool. I often have your things pop up 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.320 on my Instagram feed and I'm like, fuck, I wish 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:01.800 I had been like even half as cool as you both. 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:07.760 It's giving new cover letter for my resume, endorsed to 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:11.520 my Clementine I got my mittens on your new book, Clementine, 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.199 and I took it straight down to Melbourne where my 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:16.480 parents live, and I gave it to my mum and 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:19.560 she spent three hours next to me looking through your 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.840 whole Instagram. So you have a brand new fan in 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:23.759 hell Rooms, the namesake of. 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.560 Free kay Hi frames as mum, she will love that. 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:28.280 Look, we're going to get straight to your book. Can 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:30.920 you please give us the elevated pitch for what your 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:31.399 book is. 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:34.080 I feel like the best elevator pitch for this book 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.440 is the tagline on the cover, which I was so 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:38.160 proud of when I came up with it, which is 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:41.200 a news story about an old lie. And the thing 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.880 about marriage is that it feels to people like it's 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:49.320 this very long standing traditional thing that has gone through 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:52.120 like some changes here and there, just as history has 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:55.440 kind of evolved, but that essentially has always been this 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:59.160 institution where people find someone who they love and they 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.840 marry their best friend. And yes, we sort of know 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.640 that women in history didn't really have any options or rights, 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.640 but we kind of don't really know maybe exactly how 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.799 deep that round or what that really looked like enough 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.320 to the point where we are able to now in 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:19.400 twenty twenty three, gloss over the incredible depth of oppressive history, 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:23.280 specifically in regards to women where marriage is concerned, and 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.200 just see it as being this culmination of some kind 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.320 of life goal where you luckily find the person you're 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.000 meant to spend the rest of your life with and 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.640 have a great, big party together. I think what I 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:36.600 really want people to understand about that is that that's 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.160 not by accident. That is very much deliberate design. And 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.280 it's not like there's big marriage that's out there sitting 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.200 in a boardroom saying, well, how can we get people 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.400 to keep buying into marriage? Marriage, like anything in the 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:50.920 system that we live in, is a function of propping 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.400 up oppressive systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. And 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.600 when I say the latter part about white supremacy, obviously 0:02:57.639 --> 0:02:59.760 I'm not saying it's only white people who get married 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:02.320 that there aren't cultural differences. This book is very much 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.760 looking at a Western cultural history of marriage. There are 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:10.760 lots of historical aspects that still continue today that appeal to, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:15.920 in particular middle class white women's conformity to the system. Basically, 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.960 so you get status, you get class status, you get 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.600 social status, and you get economic status from marrying. What 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.160 do all of those things inherently in the world that 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:25.960 we live in, as we understand, what do they all 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.520 prop up. It's capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. So if 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.720 you're a white middle class woman who is closer to 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.080 being at the top of the pile of those things 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.920 than the more marginalized people in the world, and you 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:40.320 are being appealed to to do the one thing that 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.720 kind of co signs all of that, it's a function 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:48.240 of white supremacy to provide like a little enclave for 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.760 you to kind of be superior to everybody else. And 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:53.680 now I want to be really clear to your listeners, 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.880 particularly the married ones who maybe are white middle class women, 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.680 that I'm not saying you're a cross burning white supremacist 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.480 because went and got married. We all have to become 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.280 a lot better, I think at being aware that our 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:10.920 complicity and systems is very often unconscious and insidiously demanded 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:16.279 of us. Marriage is a historical premise. For many thousands 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.839 of years, was a system in which women had no 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:20.560 choice and no rights. We just married who we were 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:22.640 told because it wasn't about love. We can think of 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:24.880 marriage now as being about this thing where you know, again, 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:26.480 like we find our soulmate and get married and it's 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.040 all very romantic. But for most of human history marriage 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.240 was about and really marriage was just like a community 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.719 kind of bringing together of two groups of people. It 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.279 was about kinship building, it was about empire building, and 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:42.839 it was about economics and safety of the group. How 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:45.479 we still get women to buy into it now, to 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:50.280 continue to support, essentially like systems that aren't good for us, 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.359 is to make us believe that without it we are 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.040 not maybe not nothing that might be like too big 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.560 a step for some people, but that we were just 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.080 kind of It's like living our lives in muted color. 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.960 You know that until we find the one, we'll never 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.960 really know what it's like to be picked, you know, 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:12.240 to be truly happy. In the same way that women 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:14.280 are often told unless you have a baby, you'll never 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.039 know what it's like to feel real love. It's like 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.800 all of those things and all that perpetuation of women's 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.000 role as being just peripheral to other people's role. Like 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.240 we play the wives, we play the mothers. Everything that 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:29.400 is required of us is some kind of sacrifice of 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.800 our own adventure, our own autonomy, our own subjectivity, all 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.039 of that is codified by this idea that unless we 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.080 find the person to get married to and are able 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:39.840 to stand up in front of our friends and family 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.159 and say I do, that we've missed out on something integral. 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:45.640 And I'll just close that off by saying that, you know, 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:47.839 I quote Adrienne Rich in the book, who was a 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.200 nineteen seventies feminist, lesbian poet and liberationist, who said that 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.520 heterosexual romance has been presented as women's great adventure, and 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:58.800 if nothing else, I would ask your listeners to think 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.000 about that and how true that maybe in their own, 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.920 in their own experience of growing up that boys and men, 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:06.799 as I said in Fight Like a Girl, they're taught 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:09.440 to like unfurl into the world and to go out 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.880 and take over the world and conquer the world because 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.160 it's all colonial as well, and to discover things, to explore, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.880 things to go to space, to like be pirates and 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.400 mountain climbers, et cetera, et cetera. And women are the 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.880 ones who are expected to be happy with standing on 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.440 the cliff top or in the tower or on the turret, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:28.960 waiting to see their ship on the horizon for them 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.880 to come home. That's our great adventure. And I just 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.280 want women to have a better and bigger dream for themselves. 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.320 I feel I liked how you wrote. 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:38.200 I can't remember exactly how you said it, but maybe 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.839 it was like on the back of the book about 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:43.359 how it was kind of like a message from the 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:45.840 women that came before us and for the women after us. Oh, 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.000 that was really beautiful and kind of like a nice, 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:50.560 nice way to frame it. In the book, there was 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:52.600 a point where you talked about how in your twenties 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.000 you wanted to take the name of your ex boyfriend. 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.039 You then concluded, and this is a quote from the book, 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:01.479 romance propaganda can impact us all, it seems, even those 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.880 of us who've sworn off marriage. And I want to know, 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:08.200 in your research into romance propaganda, what did you find 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:09.080 the most bizarre. 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.960 Well, firstly, I'll just say how embarrassing for me is okay, 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.040 but I'm really glad that he told me before I 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:18.560 released the book, so it wasn't like, you know, a 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.600 huge humiliation. After the fact, I had genuinely blanked it 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.080 out of my mind. I had completely forgotten that this 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.440 had taken place. I mean, that's the thing is, I 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.880 was in my twenties. I didn't really have a particular 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:31.720 desire to get married, but I was in love and 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:34.800 we did, separately to this sort of marriage question. We 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.760 had a really beautiful love affair for people in their twenties. 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:42.120 It was tumultuous, it was passionate. It was the deepest 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:44.760 love that anyone had ever felt in their entire lives, 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:46.920 you know. And we hurt each other and we got 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:48.840 back together and it was I mean, it was wonderful. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:51.800 It was like a great movie that would star Joseph 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.640 Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel or something like that, you know, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.040 but not quite as bad as Five Hundred Days of Summer. 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.600 And it was meant to stay in our twenties. And 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:03.320 I'm so glad that I didn't foolishly go off and 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:05.800 marry him thinking that it would be romantic because of 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:08.560 the subjection that I, along with everyone else, has to 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.320 this romance propaganda by way of Disney movies like Growing 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.400 Up with fairy Tale Princess narratives, which in the book 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.040 I sort of point out. My theory is that Disney 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.760 released their first three Princess movies in the late thirties 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.960 and then the two in the fifties, and I feel 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:31.160 like they were very deliberate societal responses to women's suffrage 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.680 and the advancement at least for a certain class of 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.080 women of political freedom. And the fact of course that 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.719 after World War Two, a lot of returning soldiers came 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.840 home to find out that women were doing jobs without them, 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.760 like pretty well, you know, so they needed to kind 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.040 of convince women of a particular class again to get 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:50.920 back into the home. 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:52.640 When people kind. 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:56.240 Of glamorize the nineteen fifties as being this era in 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:58.720 which women were so much happier because they were at 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:00.400 home with the children and men went out to work, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.679 and there's a very particular kind of man who I'm 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.160 sure your listeners has had the misfortune of speaking to 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.840 at the pub, who believes that deeply. It's really important 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:11.520 to know that not only was that not true for 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.000 the women who were in that circumstance, like, for example, 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:18.199 valium very quickly became the most prescribed drug in America 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.480 in the nineteen sixties, but that also older married women 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:23.520 were the fastest growing group of employed people in the 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:25.600 nineteen fifties because they were doing all of the jobs 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.079 that men thought were beneath them, like the sort of 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.840 middle class like clerical work, secretarial work, etc. But for 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.360 a whole swathe of women on the bottom levels of 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.319 society and on the margins, the ones who people didn't 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.200 advocate for to stay at home and be quote unquote 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.920 kept women. There was no such thing as the traditional 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.199 marriage where they stayed at home, and they propped up 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.000 this very conservative, again white supremacist idea of the middle 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.280 class white family in suburbia because they were out doing 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:55.880 all of the grunt work as they always had done. 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.240 Women have always worked, and marginalized women, women of color, 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.360 single mothers, they have always worked, and no one has 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.640 advocated for their freedom to stay at home and raise 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:09.480 children in economically secure environments, because without them doing all 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:14.360 of that unappreciated class based labor, how would the world 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.880 actually run and function. It was a conservative failed project 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:20.680 that lasted for about fifteen years because the economic reality 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:22.480 is that the system that we live in does not 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:26.040 want people not working. And the same people now who 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:27.560 are calling for us to return to that, you know, 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.439 like the Fox News pundits, they're the same people who 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.560 don't want to tax billionaires, So where's the money coming from. 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.480 It's actually just all an illusion to try and keep 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:41.920 women suppressed. The romantic fictions and mythologies that we're presented with. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.360 I liken them to like going to the casino. You 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:48.080 know that the house always wins, right, the house is 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.120 designed to win, it's designed the casino to benefit and 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:56.800 profit itself. But there are just enough successful stories around 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.200 the place to make you think that maybe you could 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.800 be one of them. You saw that person putting in 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:05.839 two dollar coins into the pokey machine and whoa lo 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.240 and behold they got twenty thousand dollars spout right out 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.320 to them. So what if that were you? And so 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:11.599 you start putting it in, and you're like, I'll just 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.400 keep going on another date. I'll just keep looking. Finally 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.120 you're like fifty dollars into the pokey machine, and you're like, well, 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.880 I can't give up now, because put fifty bucks in. Like, 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.800 I've got to keep putting my money in the hopes 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:24.560 that somehow I am the lucky winner. 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:25.760 And for a lot of. 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:29.240 Women in particular, especially those who have to do the 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.920 majority of the world's unpaid labor, that kind of is 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:32.960 what marriage ends up being. 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:33.080 Like. 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:35.560 They think when they walk down the aisle on their 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.240 wedding day to marry their best friend, that they are 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.520 putting the one coin into the pokey machine that's going 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:45.120 to spit out a red letter day. But what they 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.240 find is that maybe for the rest of their life, 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:50.120 they're just still putting those coins in, and they're stuck 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:52.760 because they've sunk so much into it now that they 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:54.000 feel like there's no way out. 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:56.680 It's ironic. We were just talking about this concept called 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.080 the prestige trap, and this idea that there's all this 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.880 marketing and proper and pr for all of these particularly 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:08.760 or hypothetically or proposed prestigious roles like a wife or 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.320 a partner, or a business owner or a lawyer or whatever. 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:13.920 And the idea is that if it was so good, 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.040 would it need all of this pr Would it need 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.400 all this propaganda? Would it need everyone to be like 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.280 giving you all this additional messaging from every angle to 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:24.280 make you bypass the party of your says, Oh, I 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:26.600 don't know if this is quite right to do it anyway. 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:28.920 Now, this brings me to the spinster or the cat 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:30.120 lady segment. 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:32.200 I guess of your book, which I loved. 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.200 I want to talk about that idea when you're approaching thirty, 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.720 Like I'm I'm twenty eight, approaching thirty, and they're the 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:38.480 conversation with. 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:39.360 My friend hands. 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:41.600 Yeah, yeah, Oh my god, damn. 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.280 The way Saturn has returned to so heavily this year 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:45.680 is very exciting. 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:46.480 In your sertain return. 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:50.920 Yeah, yes, I am. Oh my god, weird. 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:51.560 Getting ready for it? 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:52.600 Yeah yeah, having up. 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:54.199 What's gonna happen next? 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.200 I've been watching recently, like as part of my research 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.240 for my book, I've been going back and watching early 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.680 two thousands movie these particularly things like Bridget Jones, And 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:04.960 I've noticed that these very specific kind of like pop 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.360 culture references like Bridget Jones have had an effect on 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:12.560 me that maybe I hadn't really like fully reconciled. I guess, 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.080 as much as I intellectually know that that is like 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.600 a hyped up, unfair version of events for a woman 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.319 who's in their thirties, how do you kind of reconcile 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.480 the feeling that you're going to be forever alone? 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.560 So the first thing I'll say is that you're not 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:31.760 going to be alone forever. I just feel the need 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.640 to reassure you of that, and no one listening to 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.720 this is going to be alone forever because probably you've 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:42.880 got beautiful platonic friendships, right, You've got family members, you 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:46.000 have pets, you have things that you love and care 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:50.800 about the idea that women especially it's usually targeted at women. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.760 Even the men are the ones who really suffer the 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.520 dread loneliness of being old and alone because they don't 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.640 have the same encouragement under patriarchal sism to go out 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:02.520 and develop those friendships with each other. I do think 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:04.760 it's changing with younger generations of men, and I think 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:07.160 that's really As the mother of a boy, I find 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.680 that really encouraging to see. But you know, if you 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.080 look at men of our father's generation, your father's generation, 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:17.200 my father's generation, women fulfill the roles of taking care 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:21.840 of men's emotional spectrums, and within that that can feel 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.960 incredibly lonely. It's a useful exercise, I think, to flip 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:31.160 not only that, the idea of having a romantic relationship, 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.160 which is not always a partnership. You know, people use 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.200 the word partners and they're describing people who treat them 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.600 like unpaid servants. You know, when people say things like, oh, oh, 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:42.880 I need a wife. I think I make this joke 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:44.480 in the book, I need a wife, that's what I need. 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:46.360 Even when women say this I need a wife, what 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.680 they mean is I need an unpaid servant. And that 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:53.000 kind of tells you everything that we need to know 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.640 about how people perceive of a wife. When they say 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:57.240 I need a husband, they don't mean I need someone 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:58.880 who's going to do all of my laundry for me. 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:01.680 They mean a woman to do all of that for them. 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.960 So the loneliness that women can feel within that relationship 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:10.560 archetype and within that structure is deeply profound, and actually 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.440 for most women as they age, I think they find 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.520 their deepest connections outside of that. So you're not going 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:19.400 to be alone. But it's interesting that you mentioned Bridget 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.280 Jones as well, because Bridget Jones, you may or may 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:24.720 not know, this is a modern day retelling of pride 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:28.600 and prejudice. And Pride and Prejudice was written in the 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:36.440 Elizabethan era Regency England, and it coincided with a period 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.200 of time which I write about in the book, where 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.680 the term spinster began to be used as a pejorative 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.200 term for the first time in the history of Spencer's 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.320 like Spinster's as a job had existed for three or 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.240 four hundred years, you know, the culture that they lived 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.640 and decided that spinster was an insult. And the reason 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:57.280 that Spinster became an insult was the exact same backlash 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:02.320 that women today experience when men and the dominant structures 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.160 that they live in decide that women are not doing 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.360 their duty, decide that women are not performing their role 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.800 as we are supposed to, which was that at this 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.360 point of time and history in the UK, in particular, 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.360 the Industrial Revolution established a middle class, an economic middle 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:20.520 class of people, and what that meant was that some 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.280 women had money, and they had they didn't have a 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.680 lot of money necessarily, but if they inherited money from there, 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.280 say they had intergeneral, intergenerational wealth, and they inherited it. 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:32.800 The law of curviture, which was the legal doctrine at 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:34.560 the time, that said that they were under the banner 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:37.120 of authority of their father until they got married, in 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:39.280 which point they became under the banner of authority of 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:41.440 their husband and he would get access to everything that 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.880 she had. So if you were a wealthy woman in 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:49.680 seventeen fifty and you inherited, you know, the equivalent of 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.000 like a fifty thousand dollars a year kind of stipend, 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:58.760 and you married John, who you thought was cute or whatever. 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.840 John suddenly owned or fifty thousand dollars, You don't own 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:03.760 it and he can do anything he likes with it 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:07.760 because everything you have belongs to him. So naturally, being 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:09.840 like women of the world, we can understand that there 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:11.840 are a lot of women in that time period who 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.520 were like that noise. I'm not doing that. I'm not 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:16.280 going to give up my identity and I'm not going 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:18.000 to give up my money, and I'm not going to 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:19.359 do it so that I also have to give up 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:22.679 my bodily rights, because conjugal rights as well dictated that 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.000 husbands had access to their wives bodies, and that that's 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.560 the law that didn't. The last place in Australia that 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.880 overturned conjugal rights, which meant that you couldn't prosecute your 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.399 husband for raping you in marriage was the Northern Territory 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.520 in nineteen ninety one, which is as old as ed Cheran. 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.359 That's crazy to think about that, you know, and to 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:47.520 use another Hollywood person as an example. Women in this 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.000 country weren't able to get a bank account by themselves 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:52.720 without a male signatory until nineteen seventy five, which is 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:57.639 twice that's two of Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriends, you know, that 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:00.359 is he was born in nineteen seventy four, Like that 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.280 is still it's not that old. So all of these 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:07.439 women who were you know back in the seventeen hundreds 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:09.720 who were like, I'm not doing this. I'm going to 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.920 stay single and I'm going to manage my own money. Basically, 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:15.720 there were two risks to that, and the first was 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:21.160 that they you know, women weren't counted on the civilister registers, 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:24.040 but if they were taxpayers, they could be counted on 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.439 the civil registers. So the people who kind of controlled 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:28.600 society were like, well, we don't want that to happen 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:30.480 because that will pave the way for women to get 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:32.320 more rights and that is not in our best interest. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.960 The other thing was that Britain was expanding its colonialist 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.399 like imperialist campaigns across the globe. You know, it was 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:45.600 sending armies out to oppress and dominate, you know, the 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.760 global South. And what they needed for that was women 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.000 to have babies. For Britain to be able to expand 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:54.960 its colonialist empire. They needed bodies. They needed bodies to 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:56.800 be working in the factories, and they needed bodies to 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.680 be manning the military. And women who were abstaining marriage 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.880 weren't doing their duty to king and country. And so 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:06.000 how do you make women who have their own money, 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:10.480 who don't rely on men for financial support, how do 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.720 you make them feel bad about their choices? How do 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:18.080 you compel them to sign up to this institution that 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.320 is against their best interests in exactly the same way 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.560 that the descendants of those men are doing it now 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.240 through memes. I mean they were cartoon memes. They weren't 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:31.040 shed on the Internet, but they were ridiculing, mocking, disrespectful, 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:36.119 you know, really like disparaging representations of women that signified 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:40.720 some kind of moral depravity and also esthetic depravity and 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.400 valuelessness in the women who abstained from marriage. It wasn't 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:48.359