What Men Are Saying About Women has a post about aging feminist Liz Jones and her poor me piece last December in the Daily Mail: Wish me a lonely Christmas and spare a thought for the millions of women like me. This is the ultimate red meat for the manosphere, including an aging feminist/post-marital spinster who’s social life revolves around her 17 cats. Liz hams it up in the photo for the column, posing with her cat and in rags with massive holes exposing both knees.
She holds herself out as an example, bravely baring her own pain so that others might better understand the plight of lonely older women across the UK:
As you all head home to your families for the holiday, spare a thought for the millions of women like me for whom it’s the hardest time of year
Later in the column she tells us how she has written only three Christmas cards, one of which is to her garbage collectors. Somehow along the way she forgot that she dedicated her life to not only making herself an aging spinster, but all of those other millions of women she mentions as well. As a former editor of British Marie Clare, author, and columnist she has been diligently poisoning the very well she now complains is not fit to drink from.
In August of 2009, her book The Exmoor Files: How I Lost A Husband And Found Rural Bliss was published. Then in December 2009 she published this piece, including:
I moved to the countryside, where I thought there might be more of a community (in London, I never did find out the name of the girl who lived next door).
I was wrong, as it turned out, and have found I can go from one week to the next without speaking to a soul.
Like Sandra Tsing Loh and the author of Marry Him, her life’s epiphany reads more like just another washed up attention whore desperately trying to turn the spotlight back on herself, if only for a brief moment. Following her December 2009 column, she revised the book and retitled the new edition: The Exmoor Files: How I Lost A Husband And Nearly Found Rural Bliss. Of course, before that she wrote Liz Jones’s Diary: How One Single Girl Got Married (2005). In between, she wrote regular columns complaining about her husband.
A healthy rationalization hamster.
But a life of denial of reality and dispensing so much advice with so little wisdom is bound to catch up with someone eventually. Rationalization hamsters are an amazing thing, and if cared for properly they should last a lifetime. No one knows the exact number of revolutions a hamster is rated for, but most scientists agree the number is upwards of over 3.5 million for a western woman.
But Liz has kept her hamster running at full speed for over 50 years. Hamsters need a break, a time when logic and wisdom takes over to provide a period of rest. Her hamster is worn out. He can no longer keep up the pace.
Liz’s hamster is exhausted.
Despite her hamster’s valiant efforts, moments of lucidity periodically break through.
Loneliness is a resilient, persistent little beast. For most of the year, those of us who live alone can rub along pretty well.
But then her hamster somehow finds the strength to spin just a little more, heroically protecting her from her crushing glimpse of her own reality. Surely her vacations alone must be better than the horrible fate of a woman vacationing with her husband and children:
To my mind, having seen the fatigue etched on the faces of parents waiting with their brood by the luggage carousel, this is far superior to the enforced camaraderie of the family holiday that frequently disintegrates into bickering.
That last burst took something out of her hamster. He can’t keep it up, no matter how hard he tries. Her thoughts turn to Christmas time and the grim nature of her reality seeps back:
Everywhere you look, you are reminded you are a pariah, that you have failed to even dampen life’s litmus test of happiness.
There is danger here, and the hamster knows no matter how tired he is he must protect her. He slowly struggles to his feet, and eventually manages another revolution or two:
This year, it is the ad for Coca-Cola that has me burping bile. You know the one: the handsome teenage son on his gap year somewhere far-flung and exotic, homesick for his dear old mum. The handsome dad, who returns home to sweep his long-haired daughter into his arms.
I comfort myself that scenes like these are mostly a lie. Twenty somethings might return to the fold to sleep in their single childhood bed, but they’d probably rather still be travelling or having sex. They have gone back home because they have run out of money and want a hot meal and someone to do their laundry.
Yes, thank you hamster! I had forgotten about all of the pieces I wrote telling women being a wife and mother is thankless and terribly unfulfilling! Inspired by this, her hamster once again finds his legs and trots along with splendor as he did when he was younger:
You know that if a dad did actually just turn up on Christmas Eve, there would be a shrewish woman waiting in the wings, all too ready to heap opprobrium
She smiles at the thought of all of the marriages and childhoods she made miserable by advising women they needed to be shrews to be happy, and drilling husbands that their duty was to put up with it. It must have worked, right? She’s seen it not only on every form of media but in person as well. She dreams wistfully of her handywork:
Through choice or by accident, more women than ever are living alone: the number has doubled in three decades.
Yes! She has made a difference after all! She may die alone and unmourned, but no one can take this triumph away from her!
The column continues, with the hamster periodically losing his footing and then recovering at the last minute. She imagines that her mother misses her deceased father, but then assumes she must really be glad she doesn’t have the bother of caring for a man who is invested in her.
Her hamster somehow musters all of his remaining strength, and comes through for a magnificent finish:
At this time of the year, women far too often regress to a Fifties role of carer and nurturer, which makes the atmosphere do what it always does: simmer with resentfulness and martyrdom. Being alone should be seen as an opportunity: to follow your passion, whatever it might be.
This Christmas, having received not a single invitation to join them from family or friends – I suppose a single, childless, ageing, vegan woman plonked in their midst is not everyone’s cup of eggnog – I am going to attempt to live out the rural ideal and spend the day feeding my animals.
I have 17 cats, all of whom worship at the altar of St Michael, my sheepdog. There will be sheep nestled like something from a nativity play, horses breathing steam with icicles in their manes.
And lonely as I may be, the thought of doing just that will, I’m sure, make many women, who are desperately trying to make everything perfect for a family who remain resolutely ungrateful, turn an appropriately festive shade of red and green.
Fortunately she ends it there, for her hamster has nothing left to give. This Christmas season, say a prayer. Not for the aging feminists and post marital spinsters who will spend it alone, but for their heroic hamsters who have given their all for so many years.
Give him a rest Liz, I beg you!
See Also: The Rationalization Hamster 500!
Standing hamster pic from Love hamster. Hamster in wheel pic from Mylius (license). Sleeping hamster pic from Emuishere Peliculas.
wow! what a rationalizing loser. my instinct is to feel bad for her, but, the damage she cause participated in causing is now upon her. it is well deserved. her life will get worse. i will forego the urge to hope she has a good Christmas, and maybe giggle slightly at her demise. by the way, i just recently came across this blog. it is quite good. keep it up.
[D: Thanks!]
Grerp and J and others have investigated the schadenfreude aspect of posts like this. Some might even implore Christian dignity to not take pleasure in another’s downfall. I don’t have a problem with it.
Maybe you don’t get it unless you’ve been on the wrong side of an ego like hers, but it’s just funny to see these people busted and alone, when they spent their youth smug and self-superior bleating all over town about how “AWESOME!!!” and “FAAABulous” they are. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people.
I find it offensive that she consoles herself by rationalizing that women who made different choices, as I did, must be simmering with resentment. No wonder she hasn’t received a single holiday invitation – can you imagine having this woman at Christmas dinner?
“I moved to the countryside, where I thought there might be more of a community (in London, I never did find out the name of the girl who lived next door).
I was wrong, as it turned out, and have found I can go from one week to the next without speaking to a soul.”
Sounds like Dalrock’s observation that post-marital spinsters often go without even hugs from men. It’s a tenet among the urban chic to romanticize rural living. The famed “community” comes from actual shared experiences and commonality (farmers, miners, whatever). Urban hipsters moving to small towns have nothing upon which to build a community, stock sitcom plots notwithstanding.
You will never experience as much activity and influx of people as you will living in a (non-inner) city. If she didn’t know her neighbor’s name that’s not the fault of the urban living model…I don’t know my next door neighbor’s name but I have a dozen friends within walking distance. Another consequence of careerism is the use of people as tools for advancement and loss of real fraternity.
Susan Walsh writes:
I find it offensive that she consoles herself by rationalizing that women who made different choices, as I did, must be simmering with resentment. No wonder she hasn’t received a single holiday invitation – can you imagine having this woman at Christmas dinner?
The combination of self-righteousness and self pity looks downright toxic, doesn’t it?
For example, do we need to know she’s a vegan? Not really, but she has to push that into the discussion anyway, regardless. Wouldn’t that be special, a “public vegetarian” at a Christmas meal?
As a young man I used to worry about turning into a cranky old person whom no one would want to be around. Sometime in my 30’s I realized that few people just become unpleasant, rasty old people…they were rather older versions of their younger, unpleasant, selves. This feminist is surely the same person now that she was 30 years ago…
Agreed about her attitude. It’s like she wants to keepp relishing in others’ (imagined) misery so she can feel better about herself. Good people wish good fortune on other people, not more unhappiness! But I suppose she has to imagine that all married women with families are unhappy or else she might have to admit that she made the wrong choices/decisions. And women are never wrong… right?
No sympathy, no pity or even schadenfreude here. Just an observation of how awfully pathetic she seems to be as a result of her own choices. Most likely she will die alone. And if the lack of invitations to share the holiday are indicative of how people she knows feel (or don’t feel about her), nobody will give a *amn when she’s gone because they don’t give a *amn about her now.
Oh well. You reap what you sow. I guess she can’t blame the patriarchy for her predicament.
When I read this article, I was so dismayed and disgusted I could barely comment on it. I was waiting for someone to post on it, and this commentary is brilliant.
All Hail the Mighty Hamster, indeed.
(* Warning to all women who would take such advice: Do not end up like this woman).
Goodbye, Eleanor Rigby.
As tight as this article is, I just can’t stop laughing at the last picture.
“I suppose a single, childless, ageing, vegan woman plonked in their midst is not everyone’s cup of eggnog.”
Understatement of the century.
Brilliant piece of writing Dalrock. You really brought out the absurd position this woman has put herself in. Some part of her now realizes that she built her life upon a pack of lies (house of sand?) and encouraged countless other women to do the same. It would take a lot of humility and true character for her to repent now and fess up to the damage she has done with her life’s work. Of course she lacks that humility, hence the need to put up a comically transparent front pretending that she is somehow better off than all those unenlightened women who are spending the holidays with husband and children who love them.
No, I don’t really pity her. Well maybe a little. What could be worse than the position she put herself in–to know that she has wasted her life pushing a philosophy that made the world a worse place. And now she will die alone like Scrooge in his worst-case-scenario vision, with the neighbors who hated her fighting over her things.
And lonely as I may be, the thought of doing just that will, I’m sure, make many women, who are desperately trying to make everything perfect for a family who remain resolutely ungrateful, turn an appropriately festive shade of red and green.
Nice try, Liz, but no. I agree Susan, this is a really ridiculous way to validate yourself and if that’s her attitude, no wonder she’s alone at Christmas. Speaking for myself, I am not “desperately trying to make everything perfect” for a bunch of ingrates known as my family (what?!), I’m trying to keep it relatively simple while ensuring my kids have a fun time. And guess what? It’s rewarding to watch your kids get all crazy over some gifts and spend the day playing with them. Also, when they yell from the bedroom as I’m leaving them to go to bed every night, “You’re the best mom ever!” when I didn’t even do anything special, it beats 17 meowing cats I’m pretty sure, though I could just be trying to make myself feel better.
Still, in spite of that I do feel sorry for her, because I sure know I wouldn’t want to spend Christmas all alone like that, and there but for the Grace of God go I really. I feel like I’m lucky I’m not like her, given how I wasted my youth and made a haphazard mess of my own life. But I’ve observed the older, childless spinsters around me and boy am I glad I’m not like that! I may be single, but I have my kids and some family and friends around and I am not a miserable old hag complaining about everything and wondering where all the dinner invites have got to. But y’know, even if I didn’t have all that, I imagine that rather than wallowing in self-pity, posing for a nauseatingly put on photo in my worst mucking out the shed pants and requesting prayers to a God I probably don’t even believe in, I’d look for some way to make myself useful to the real unfortunates, like serve up dinner at the Salvation Army or local soup kitchen, something like that. I’d probably meet some nice people there too.
Oh, I do envy her her fireplace though. D’oh! I mean, look at that stupid wood burning pile of junk there. I bet she wishes she had a fake one with a light bulb in like me! HA!
Actually, now I think about it, please pray for me and my paltry light bulb fireplace with its wiring from 1973.
OK, I’ll stop now.
As a parent of three young children, it can certainly be a chore to get them marshalled along during a vacation. They can absolutely try your patience around the house. Having your daughter wake you at 3 am to tell you she peed in her bed is no fun. There are nights I feel more like a zombie than a human, so dog tired they can make me.
But those are the rough spots, the times that take a little willpower and inner strength to get through. The other times, the joy and the happiness, and the pleasure of sharing that joy and happiness, that’s the pay-off. What people need is a little encouragement that they can make it through the chores, a little kick in the butt that they need to, and a reminder that a little bit of self-sacrifice now and then has a big payoff down the road.
Instead, here we have Liz Jones, this miserable witch of a creature, who makes a career out of discouraging people about the tough times, of telling them it’s not worth it and dissuading them from making the effort. She’s a propagandist for failure – encouraging selfishness and short-sightedness.
Selfish. That’s the key, isn’t it? Even at this point, it’s all about her. She writes about how lonely she is, but doesn’t mention anything about how maybe her nieces and nephews are missing out having a rich Aunt spoil them a little. She puts the blame for her lack of invitations from friends and family on them – it’s their fault they aren’t tolerant enough to have a vegan scold moping around their holidays. But not a moment’s thought to how much blame she has for the situation – a mea culpa about making such a scene over the ham last year maybe? Or maybe her lack of effort in the relationship? They didn’t invite her to visit for Christmas, but she couldn’t even be bothered to send them a card.
So tell me again about how Womyn have superior innate social skills? More empathy? Are better communicators?
Maybe it’s me, but her rationalizations for staying single don’t seem that bad. Is it really so bad to point out whatever downsides exist if one decides to marry and have a family? Mind you, if you do that, one has to recognize the downsides in one’s choice to stay single, and understand that certain lifestyles may not be for everybody.
As a young man I used to worry about turning into a cranky old person whom no one would want to be around.
Admittedly, I’m approaching that same worry. I’m hope that I won’t turn into a bitter old crank, but I recognize that it’s easy to fall into the trap, so hopefully I’m able to mitigate that in the future. Even if one doesn’t become bitter, I suspect that it may be harder to avoid being sad and depressed from loneliness. My godmother used to be in relatively good spirits, but as she’s seen some of her friends and siblings pass away, while her finances became a mess due to poor investments and income declines which may affect her ability to retire as planned, she’s become far more depressed and pessimistic about the world around her. Based on that, I really can’t dismiss something like that from happening to me, but I don’t think the solution is to go marry somebody.
Having your daughter wake you at 3 am to tell you she peed in her bed is no fun.
Ha! We just went through that night before last. One of the things we say around here is that there is never a dull moment. Optimism is imperative during some stages of parenting.
As for the piece in question, I feel quite sorry for this woman. Her pain is obvious even as she attempts to project her discontent on the rest of us. I hate the thought of people in pain.
I’m very thankful for a family to love, care for, and celebrate Christmas with. I don’t feel any pressure to make things perfect or any accompanying resentment because I don’t have to try to impress folk who love me, faults and all. Her perception of what it means to be wife and mother is textbook rationalization. She has to believe we’re suffering as much as she is despite making vastly different life choices. It really is sad…
Good post, Dalrock.
Correction: Optimism is key during ALL stages of parenting. The teenagers wo drained my wallet this morning are modest girls and excellent students who adore their little sisters and love helping in the kitchen.
I really wouldn’t trade this life for anything.
Holy flaming crapsack, how pathetic….
Well aren’t we blessed! JG, Gorbachev, doug1 are all back.
DA,
“Maybe it’s me, but her rationalizations for staying single don’t seem that bad. Is it really so bad to point out whatever downsides exist if one decides to marry and have a family? Mind you, if you do that, one has to recognize the downsides in one’s choice to stay single, and understand that certain lifestyles may not be for everybody.”
One thing the various don’t-marry advocates, both men and women, need to get straight is that generally speaking most people want to be partners and parents. We wouldn’t survive as a species without it. True MGTOW and fish-bicycles, people for whom that lifestyle is the right one, are a very small percentage of people. Nothing wrong with them doing what they want, but propagandizing other people is social contagion of a lethal sort.
What IS sad is seeing men who could be good husbands and fathers dissuaded from the enterprise because the legal climate for marriage has gotten so abominable,
and women who could have been decent wives and mothers being brainwashed into misandry, pushed onto the cock carousel by their gaggle and ruined.
What IS sad is seeing men who could be good husbands and fathers dissuaded from the enterprise because the legal climate for marriage has gotten so abominable,
and women who could have been decent wives and mothers being brainwashed into misandry, pushed onto the cock carousel by their gaggle and ruined.
You said it Badger. What a mess.
Terry,
“One of the things we say around here is that there is never a dull moment. Optimism is imperative during some stages of parenting.”
You’ve hit on something I’ve been noticing for a while. Our consumerist society and the emo-porn industry (I’m looking at you, chick flicks) encourage people to think of “the relationship” as a challenge that ends with the act of marriage. Today’s people are also deeply prone to fall in love with the image of something instead of its reality. The “husband, house, kids” dream rages on in today’s young people. Rage being the operative word, because too many don’t find out until they are in too deep that they don’t actually want it, they can’t handle the work required, they wish they’d done otherwise, etc.
The archetypes for this are easy to recall – girls who want a wedding and think the game is “won” at that point. And the other side of the coin, guys who get married for sex insurance and/or the social imprimatur.
I hear a lot of arrival-paradox language – “if I only had [blank] I would be happy!” I’ve got news for those people – getting “something” will not “make you happy.” It’s not like you work hard to “get” somewhere and then once you’re there you draw the benefits from it. Marriage and parenting are lifelong commitments to a lot of often-uncomfortable challenges. The question is are you the type to draw fulfillment from those challenges, or one who thinks life is better the “easier” it is?
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“Having your daughter wake you at 3 am to tell you she peed in her bed is no fun.”
That never happened to me, but sometimes a child would be sick and throw up during the night. That was hard work both comforting her and her sister, washing her up, cleaning up the bed and the floor, washing up the bed linen enough be able to put it into the washing machine, changing the bed, getting her to sleep and finally having a shower yourself and then getting the children to school and going to work in the morning.
Lavazza, it’s funny but I find those times far less annoying than the days of constant bickering. I suppose it’s because a kid can’t help it if she throws up all over the bed at night – and because my two share a big bed it means waking the other one up so I can change the sheet and clean up – but silly bickering needn’t go on all day really and that does get pretty annoying to listen to.
Marriage and parenting are lifelong commitments to a lot of often-uncomfortable challenges. The question is are you the type to draw fulfillment from those challenges, or one who thinks life is better the “easier” it is?
I was taught that anything worth having costs something. That nothing good comes easy. Are we no longer teaching and modeling this to the generations coming along after us?
This post answers that question. This blog answers that question quite regularly. What Dalrock has coined the rationalization hamster is really the dulling of our consciences prettied up so that selfishness is considered something noble rather than what it truly is, a disgusting trait that harms children, families, and society as a whole. It is utter madness to try to claim endless rights without accepting any corresponding responsibilities. No one wants to feel “obligated.”
Hence our clinging to cliches such as “to thine own self be true.” And thanks Dalrock, for the education on the true meaningof that!
Please, dude, no more pics like this. Include a link with a warning maybe, but don’t assault us in this way again.
“Please, dude, no more pics like this. Include a link with a warning maybe, but don’t assault us in this way again.”
At least the cat was cute.
@DoBA
Please, dude, no more pics like this. Include a link with a warning maybe, but don’t assault us in this way again.
Haha. Yeah, I probably should have included a NSFYL warning (Not Safe For Your Lunch). But I promise you that you will love the hot babe in this picture though.
I took my 16 y.o. daughter to the Emergency Department last night, just to get a “moonboot” put on a stress fractured foot. It took me literally one hour just to get to the window at reception. There was somebody having a stroke, somebody bleeding on the floor, a woman throwing up into a special hospital issue sick bag, and people saying weird things to the receptionist like, “His name is Kevin, spelt with an “n”. I said to myself, I feel like I am in a painting by Brueghel or Bosch.
Objectively, I was having a shit time. But it gave me a chance to talk to my daughter, we shared some canteen bought dinner, and we had a great chat. She eventually got treated, I thanked God for our great public health system here in Australia, and I felt I had done my duty as a Dad.
The moral is that, despite all the nuisance, boredom and mess, I felt happy afterwards. Pursuing only your own interest, not having children, may look like more fun, but it often just leads to eventual regrets and doubts, as poor Liz Jones feels.
A couple of other points. If she was editor of Marie Claire, that would have been a very prestigious position, and she would once have been an elegant woman, almost certainly. Second thing, stop picking on cats. Cats are great, no matter who ends up with them.
True MGTOW and fish-bicycles, people for whom that lifestyle is the right one, are a very small percentage of people. Nothing wrong with them doing what they want, but propagandizing other people is social contagion of a lethal sort.
To a certain extent, when one opts for a non-conventional lifestyle, not only do they want society to accept it, they also seek to convert others in order to reconfirm the basis for their original choice. Plus, one may seek to convert others in some attempt to save others. It also helps to have some company too as nobody wants to be reminded that they’re a freak when compared to everybody else.
We wouldn’t survive as a species without it.
Maybe we should evolve. 🙂
one who thinks life is better the “easier” it is?
I tend to be one of these people, hence why I tend to be very dismissive of marriage. It’s not as if there aren’t positives in a good marriage, but the problem is that the work needed to maintain a good marriage seems to outweigh any of the benefits.
@David Collard
Now that my own kids are 23 and 21, I find that some of my most treasured memories are of times that were nothing special. Just a great conversation in the car, or sharing an ordinary meal. Those moments are the ones that added up to my knowing them well, and liking them as people.
Absolutely, Susan, some of my sweetest memories are of what were – objectively – very hard times. And we have had some real medical problems with our children, which have helped show me a side of life, and meet a kind of person, that I have learned a lot from.
When you are young, you think that good company and good conversation will go on, as it does in college. But it doesn’t. Often, your family are the only ones you really get to talk to in depth. The best mature conversations I have had in the last several years, IRL, have been with my wife and daughter.
I cannot resist adding that I do feel a bit sorry for Liz Jones. Her end is quite Dickensian. Of course, she does get to share it with millions of readers. Some people don’t even have that.
Won’t anyone think of the poor kitties.
It really is! Her willingness to portray herself as such a sad and lonely creature seems like the stuff of fiction. When I first read this post I thought of the documentary Grey Gardens, those wacky Beale cousins of Jackie O. In fact, they may have been the original “cat ladies.” I wonder whether there’s an element of mental illness here too – those ripped up pants, the rather vacant facial expression.
Hi Dalrock, I have been busy with work but, in a fit of procrastination, thought I would check in on what you have been up to.
Ms. Walsh questions why this woman is willing to cast herself in such a pathetic light. I think the answer is simple. These kinds of stories sell. They fit into the narrative the Daily Male has been flogging now for years. The sad fact is that people are willing to debase themselves for a buck, women too.
That said, this Liz person has nothing but my disdain. I am not sure why anyone is assuming she is a feminist but, if so, she is either profoundly stupid (everyone, certainly everyone in Britain, knows the Daily Male is a woman-hating rag) or a cynical panderer.
While I certainly don’t wish anyone loneliness, she presumably made an informed decisions every step of the way as to what she wanted her life to be like. Obviously, the alternatives were less palatable to her than feeling a little down at Christmas time. That’s life. You make your decisions, then you take your lumps. But the Daily Male would want women to believe that there is only one right way of living for women — which, of course, involves knowing one’s place and attaching oneself to a man at the first opportunity.
Whenever I go to the Daily Mail site I am stunned by the Femail Section, which presumably gives women what they want to read about, and is – no joke – mostly about how much boob various celebrity women are choosing to show off. Sometimes, Doomed Harlot, women are not very good advertisements for their own sex.
David,
The Daily Mail is an idiotic paper. That said, I will happily admit to looking at celebrity fashion from time to time. Why am I supposed to be embarrassed about this? I ask because I am genuinely curious.
DC,
“Whenever I go to the Daily Mail site I am stunned by the Femail Section”
I feel exactly the same way! I read about how it’s a “woman’s nation” and I see the mindless stuff mass-marketed to women on both sides of the Atlantic and I wonder how those two ideas go together.
You could say vapid stuff is marketed to men too, but at least riding a motorcycle or watching a football game doesn’t encourage men to be catty and feel bad about themselves.
DH,
“That said, I will happily admit to looking at celebrity fashion from time to time. Why am I supposed to be embarrassed about this?”
It’s a matter of balance. I know people who consume this stuff as fluff entertainment, for their leisure time. But I personally know women who spend all of their spare time consumed with celebrities and model their lives and wardrobes after these dysfunctional people they’ll never meet. It’s a colossal waste of brainpower and encourages narcissism.
Yes, it surely is a matter of balance! The cult of celebrity is a bit out-of-control in our culture.
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I don’t know what its like for a woman. But I don’t think loneliness is a problem for a guy. I’m married and happily so. However, if I were not to be married, Christmas and New Years would be the time for me to do the “Lonely Planet” adventure travel thing and hand out on the beaches of S.E. Asia or Latin America. The problem with this woman is not that she is lonely. Its that she lacks imagination. People with imagination (and who create their own sense of purpose) do not experience the emotion of loneliness.
Dalrock,
congratulations! This has made it into my ‘Best Ever Posts on the Internet’. Just fantastic!!
http://www.peternolan.com/Forums/tabid/420/forumid/61/threadid/656/scope/posts/Default.aspx
[D: Thanks!]
Update!
http://fightingfeminism.blogspot.com/2010/12/liz-jones-is-bitter-spinster.html
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That sounds wildly overstated. I’d be surprised if it’s even 10%.
Newsflash to Liz: no one minds inviting a single, childless, ageing, vegan woman to Christmas celebrations. But what they don’t want around is one wreathed in bile-burping negativity and family-destructive condescension. Go back and read “A Christmas Carol” again, wench. It’s never too late to rejoin humanity.
I’ve known women like this, who purposely isolate themselves then complain how they don’t have what everyone else has. Not much you can do to help them without getting sucked into their vortex of passive aggression.
I ponder the life that led another entity, not unlike myself and differing in only what she has experienced, to conclude that it is better for her to live a single and maybe unhappy life rather than suffer the weight of tradition and accepted behaviour in a loveless partnership, an accepted assumption that one gender has a binding duty to the other to perform in a certain way, to deny ones own existence. I ponder and feel deep compassion for this other entity and a horror that her experiences, and those shared and imparted by her family and peers in her formative years, led her to feel such pressure and limitation as to what her choices of partner and life style were, pressures that at the time where all but impossible to escape from except by taking some drastic action, i.e. choosing to live a hard life alone rather than have ones own self-agency and sense of an autonomous entity denied or ignored.
I see from the many comments that some or maybe all of you have an understanding that to a greater extent we create the world that we live in (created through what we like to call our choices), but the understanding seems to stop there. How do we come to make those choices? How can one individual have such a different experience from another in the same world? What we choose is very much determined by our experiences, and our experiences are determined by what we choose. It is a loop that many, the majority in fact, never escape from, and it is a loop that has the effect of magnifying our characteristics and the way that we view the world.
When I look at Liz Jones I see a person that has been burnt by her determination and strength, a person that has bravely declared “Life for women must be more than this!” and has done so in the face of thousands of years of accepted roles and dogma, dogma that declares that the male has a soul but that the female does not, that she is for breeding, pleasure, preparing food, and looking after both the male and the children. But after Liz declared publicly to all that she exists as a whole person and not as an accessory or addition to her male partner, that she is not just “the wife of [insert male name] [insert male surname]” and that she too is a person, she alienated those around her, mainly because they are still caught in that old dogma and not able to see past it, and as a result she incurred their vitriol.
How well do you think you could cope with being that alone? Do you think you could cope any better with going against the established ideas of your peers?
Liz Jones grew up in a world not so accepting of the ideas of equality (much of which even in these days is still only lip service, or smoke and mirrors). Her crime, if there is one, is only that she didn’t manage to find a thoughtful partner amongst her own generation that was also able to see clearly how her generation had been programmed to accept that the female is somehow a lesser entity, and indeed often equated to a damaged male (study Greek history and how our current society and laws are based heavily on Greek philosophy).
If you think that the world has changed a lot in the meantime then please consider the following: Do you think there might be an uproar at the thought of a female pope (you may not be religious but a significant proportion of humanity is, this significant proportion seem to share this and other horrible dogma, dogma that is engrained into our society and societies laws), or that studies that show females in the same position of a male are almost always paid less despite doing the same work are somehow fictitious, or how there is a continual flow of what we call sexist jokes undermining, demeaning and predefining the accepted female and male roles?
Am I the only one to see that Liz Jones hides in her words that she is both cynical and an optimist, that she dares the universe to find her a partner while at the same time thinking it is impossible, a partner that will see through the mask and see that she is a whole person… I hope that at some point she is able to look again with fresh youthful eyes in wonder at the world around her.
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That was a nice piece of reading! 🙂 Encantada!
At first i thought this Jones broad was a nutcase, then I read the post of one David R Lambert. Made no f*cking sense to me.
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9 out of 10 Dalrock.
(you lost 1 point for making the rationalisation hamster a male :-))
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you’re so right DRock that it’s like breathing enlightenment, not because I ever didn’t also know what you know but because the vast sea of frantic idiots don’t also know it.
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I should have read the first line better. This is Liz Jones. Well here is special little link about Ms Jones where she wrote about attempting to steal the sperm of a man who adamantly expressed a wish not to have children and she went into the trash can to get the used condom and attempt to impregnate herself with the sperm. It caused quite an uproar on the web when it came out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2056875/Liz-Jones-baby-craving-drove-steal-husbands-sperm-ultimate-deception.html
Oh yes, she deserves lots of help from men. Lots. But at least she did point at that women are lying sperm stealers and that in a stat in the article she states
“A 2001 survey revealed that 42 per cent of women would lie about using contraception in order to get pregnant in spite of their partners’ wishes.”
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17 cats?? That’s INSANE! In a healthier time someone would have called the animal protective services AND a mental health institution to take these poor animals away from having to live under the oppression of an insane person.
But no……… in our current era we prefer to give a person like that a column in a major news outlet so she can give us relationship advice. Beautiful!
First time i ever agree with some of the more pessimistic masculine writers and concur that this is indeed an indicator of degradation of societal standards
Reminds me of a line from the Pink Floyd song Pigs (Three Different Ones):
“You fucked up old hag
Ha ha, charade you are…”
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And she’s a vegan to boot! She must be the life of the party.
Here is a story I read from Richard Wurmbrand, the Christian martyr from Romania who was tortured and spent 11 years in a communist prison and was also imprisoned under the Nazis.
“One day the warden of a communist prison received a call from Moscow and was ordered to arrest the junior warden for political crimes (I almost wrote, ‘political incorrectness”!). The warden called the junior warden in and said, “We are about to receive a new political prisoner. I need you to find a cell for him.” Later that day the junior warden came back, excited to have completed his task and certain his superior would approve. “I have found a cell for the new prisoner,” He said. “Show me the cell,” said the warden. So the junior warden took the warden down the stairs and into the lowest and darkest and dankest part of the prison. He kept walking until they reached the last cell farthest from all the others. The junior warden opened the door to show the warden.”
Wurmbrand then points out, “Not all cells are the same. Some are larger than others. Some are smaller. Some are dry while some are wet. Some get a breeze in the summer time while some are stifling hot all year round and some are like a freezer in winter. But the cell the junior warden found was the worst of them all.”
“The warden said the the junior warden, “Surely you are serious! This is truly a horrible place.” “Oh,” said the junior warden, “But you are took soft, comrade. After all, we are talking about a political prisoner. Surely he deserves the worst we can find!” “You are right,” said the warden. “Now, step inside. This is your cell and you picked it out yourself.”
“Be careful,” Wurmbrand then warned. “How you live today for your are preparing the home you will live in in the future.”
Ms. Jones is truly reaping what she sowed in her younger days, as we all are. Take care today how you build your house of the future.
Curious. Has “Liz” ever commented on this article?