We’re about to comment on yet another interminable sex-related piece from The Atlantic, so let’s start with some comic relief. The article’s co-authors, Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell, run a website called Onely.com. Its slogan is “Single and Happy….”
[The authors]…[are] aggrieved enough to resort to neology, denouncing what they term “institutionalized singlism, the discrimination of [sic] individuals based on marital status.” What they mean is discrimination against individuals based on lack of marital status.
“More than 1,000 laws provide overt legal or financial benefits to married couples,” they complain. “Marital privileging marginalizes the 50 percent of Americans who are single. . . . Marital privilege pervades nearly every facet of our lives.” Income-tax liability is generally (though not always) higher for unmarried earners; married workers more or less automatically have access to spouses’ health insurance; couples can share individual retirement accounts, and so forth.
Wait, the “sin” of singleness now? Just because some ladies pointed out some of the ways singles are charged more? And then the columnist says singles should give marrieds a pass because of the painful spectre of divorce? Lol
Look, it is what it is. Society has long revolved around the marrieds and treated singles as pathetic people who must have something wrong with them. It’s time that singles do speak up for fairness and accommodation. Why should we have to pay a premium for things, especially when we travel, just because there is only one of us?