Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle met another one last week. An intelligent, well-educated, attractive woman in her late thirties with no prospect of marriage or children. Although she wanted both, she had pretty much given up hope and was resigned to spending the rest of her life alone. It is not true (as Newsweek once infamously claimed) that a 40-year-old woman is more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to marry. But one cannot truthfully say that a forty year old unmarried woman has bright marriage prospects. And the biological clock dictates that most women who have no children by 40 will never have children.

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There is not even an acceptable way to talk about middle-aged, unmarried women. The only choices English provides are spinster and old maid. Neither is particularly savory. The English word spinster is originally the female form of the word spinner, and it referred to women whose occupation was spinning wool. At some point in the 17th century, the word became the legal term for unmarried women and was used mostly in wills. At some point in the 18th century, spinster assumed its current meaning, now something like 'a woman who is unmarried and beyond the age at which women are expected to marry'.

An even less attractive synonym is old maid, probably originally intended to mean 'old for a maiden', where maiden meant 'unmarried woman'. In modern English, hardly anyone would describe herself as an old maid or a spinster because the words have such negative connotations.

But putting aside the question of what to call these gentle ladies, we may also ask who is responsible for their predicament. The women in the group will generally tell you that it is

the fault of heterosexual men. They may bear some of the blame, but Miss Poubelle suspects that we gay men have an even larger role in this heterosexual marriage crisis.

When we talk about homosexuality in America, we often say that 10 percent of the population is gay. That number originally comes from the famous Kinsey report on male sexuality. People forget that Kinsey's report on female sexuality found only two-to-six percent of women were primarily or exclusively gay. Dozens of other surveys have found a similar pattern. Every time you count, there seem to be about twice as many gay men as lesbians.

We don't know why twice as many men are gay. But then nobody knows why anyone is gay. Whatever the causes are, there's no reason to assume that the causes are exactly the same for men and women or that they affect both sexes to the same degree. If it is true that there are twice as many gay men, then this must play a role in the shortage of available husbands. Suppose that 93 percent of males and 97 percent of females are heterosexual. Then there's no way for every straight woman to get a husband, because there aren't enough to go around. It's like musical chairs, where a significant number of the men are off at musicals together.

Identifying a cause, however, doesn't lead to an immediate solution. It's no good to suggest that the gay men should marry the spinsters. That wouldn't make anyone happy. Nor are many American women willing to share a husband. A life of solitude doesn't sound very appealing, and encouraging more lesbianism can only go so far.

Perhaps instead we ought to be thinking more critically about the notion that one person is going to provide economic security, emotional intimacy, sexual satisfaction, and children. Marriage promises all of these things in one neat package. But for some women, perhaps it is possible to make a satisfying life that doesn't include traditional marriage. In the 19th century, many well-educated women entered into Boston marriages, in which two women decided to become a family, share their lives, and set up house together. Such arrangements often did not include a sexual relationship, but the women gained the economic and emotional benefits of marriage. We know that sexual satisfaction doesn't require a husband, and nowadays a child doesn't either. Adoption, fostering, and artificial insemination provide possibilities for parenting outside marriage.

Gay men have been pioneers in finding new ways to combine sex and intimacy. Many gay men live in intimate, long-term relationships that recognize that sexual expression need not be confined to a single partner. And some men have even worked to make children a part of this complex life as well. Those of us excluded from traditional marriage have learned to make fulfilling lives in spite of it. That may be one of the things we need to teach the larger world.