Published September 29, 2023

Way back in the previous decade, after reality cracked open and a new normal had its say before the new normal that began this decade took the baton and ran with it, I stepped way out of my comfort zone to attend a Rebecca Traister book reading.

Got dressed (fun). Drove to Portland (not fun). Took Lyft to my destination (not fun). Sat in Powell’s House of Books and had coffee (fun). Breathed air in the same space with other humans (not exactly fun, but not life-threatening and not too scary). Missed the Season 4 finale of “Better Call Saul” (a no-brainer, really, but a major break in routine). Attended the event (fun).

This evening, 10/8 — ALL THE SINGLE LADIES author Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) returns with GOOD AND MAD, a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger: https://t.co/bLm8m0pXD8 #PowellsEvents pic.twitter.com/M9yWvZX0eV

— Powell's Books (@Powells) October 8, 2018

More on that later. But in short: wonderful fun!

I don’t keep up with her writing as much as I should, so I was grateful that someone put her latest column in front of me a few hours ago. “The Return of the Marriage Plot: Why everyone is so eager for men and women to get hitched” is one of several important stories connected to a number of moral panics, to the surge in concern over “falling birth rates” and “the growing population crisis,” all of which are tied to the rise of white nationalism, facism and thinly veiled racism and the gotta-hear-all-sides platforming of Nazis and their, um, allies.

Every time Rebecca Traister and other women poke holes in the ridiculous essays of the seemingly endless parade of white men given free rein by the biggest of the big news organizations, I am here for it. In case you’ve missed it, there is a concerted effort to making it illegal to speak truth to power, so columns such as Traister’s are not to be taken for granted. The same is true of the writing of so many Black women, a number of whom Traister pays tribute to in her book and other writing.

In her words

The danger in trying to select excerpts to show you here is that I could end up putting her entire column here, but let’s see how I do.

Let’s linger on (Ross) Douthat’s claim: The future of happiness and the human race depends on Barbie, a Mattel doll whose primary cinematic concerns include the looming specter of death, retaining ownership of her home, and gaining access to reproductive-health care … marrying Ken, a man whose interests include horses and beach and whose company — crucially — Barbie does not seem to enjoy. At all. At any point in the movie.

(This is as good a time as any for me to explain my choice of featured image to place atop this blog post. The woman in the photo is enjoying her salad far more than any woman I’ve ever known has enjoyed being stuck in a joyless marriage. Also, I am aware of the genre of woman-laughing-alone-with-salad photos and what they spawned).

Because I don’t know a way to embed them, I will share a few of Traister’s thoughts from after the publication of her column. In one, she takes on David Brooks, another one of the columnists whose output is always too easy to mock.

David Brooks’ column I cite includes this hilarious advice: “Please read books on how to decide whom to marry. Read George Eliot & Jane Austen.” So. Coupla things… 1. Eliot spent years w a man who was married to someone else (& penned some of most memorably awful marriages in English literature)

2. Austen’s a GREAT example…of needing to marry for unhappy reasons: like your family home is entailed to some dismal male cousin & you need a wild stroke of luck to find a tolerable mate. Austen herself never found that person; she turned down at least one proposal & never married.

Since my column, many critics have been sending me images & references to mid-20th c nuclear families as some sentimental/nostalgic ideal: but that was a big aberration, highest marriage rates in history of nation! Also entirely socially engineered thanks to… government handouts to white people!

Post-war, the US government invested in housing (subsidizing race-restricted suburbs) education (GI Bill) & union protection (for largely white union membership). New Deal had massive investment in stability & corp tax rates were at highest levels. This all pumped white marriage rates!

Meanwhile, Black families were barred from those suburbs, couldn’t easily take advantage of GI Bill. New highways cut off Black neighborhoods from jobs & transportation. Starved of resources, Black marriage rates (which since emancipation had been higher than white marriage rates) dropped.

That investment/disinvestment (& resulting impact on marriage patterns) is how you get to Feminine Mystique in 1963 & Moynihan Report in 1965. So if you’re arguing against government playing husband & daddy: actually, when it did play those roles for white people, it boosted marriage rates

She goes on to mention how she’d write one of her earlier books differently in light of what has happened in the world since its publication, and then she makes this point:

As I make clear, I don’t care when/if people marry; I care that individuals & varied family structures have stability & resources to thrive. But if you DO care about marriage rates, you should be pushing for gov to be strengthening unions, subsidizing childcare, housing, healthcare & college.

At this point, I don’t think I need to spoon-feed anyone about how all of this is connected to the far-right panic about birth rates and how any threat to pushing out more white, right-wing-voting babies is met with violent opposition. But I’ll drop one more bit of Traister’s command of the big picture here before moving on:

Waves of family policing/policy-making are so distinct when you look close: they (along w medical diagnoses re homosexuality & “frigidity;” pop media’s invention of hetero “dating” etc) all arrived after period of enormous racial/gendered mixing, progress & sexual liberation.

Anyone inclined to nitpick abbreviations and spelling would do well to note that these excerpts are from one of the alternatives to Twitter, where she posted a huge thread of the same leftovers that didn’t make it into her column. Such is life in the world of writing under the constraints of being allowed no more than 280 (or 300) characters at a time.

In my words (with photos)

So, about that night in October 2018 when I got to see, hear and (yes!) meet her, here is the rest of the story, and why I will now practically double the length of this post.

One day, I happened upon this tweet by her.

I laughed, and I clicked the like button. Then I quote-tweeted it and added a comment.

And how’s this for fun? She liked it. And “liked” it.

You can see that I was in full fangirl mode. But I was just getting warmed up.

Realizing she was coming to Portland, I decided to have two bookmarks made and to give her one if I got to stand in line to have her sign my copy of her book. Here is a view of the two sides of the bookmark.

The day arrived, and I was so excited!

I got a good seat! Her talk was great! So was the Q&A segment!

And I took two photos, just in case (and because I’m a terrible photographer)!

I stood in line (I was one of the last in line!), and when it was my turn, I told her I had something for her and presented her with her bookmark. She smiled and said, “I remember this!” Whether she did or not, it made my day that she said that. I had listened to her on a podcast and maybe audiobook excerpts and asked a couple of questions about the process of her work. I also brought up something that had happened a few days earlier and asked for her thoughts about its relevance in light of the book’s subject matter and where were were headed in that first “new normal.”

Then she personalized my book!

Whether or not I mentioned being trans, I suspect it was obvious. My parting words for her were encouragement to take care of herself, that we needed her, and she said, basically, “same.” It was a lovely way for the evening to end.

And then I got a bonus, which I saw when I got home.

Being followed on Twitter by Rebecca Traister? As big a moment for me as one that soon followed: being thanked on Facebook by Rebecca Solnit after praising one of her stories. Autumn 2018 was quite the Rebecca time for me on social media.

Before doing my trip in reverse and returning home, I stood waiting for another Lyft driver and had a lovely interaction with a woman who came up to me and complimented me on my Wonder Woman purse and on something I was wearing. A necklace, maybe? “I wear it too often,” I told her. “No such thing,” she said. “I’d wear that all the time.”

It’s one of my favorite memories from my favorite month of the year, from a year during an awful time in so many ways, but still before the next “new normal” hit. It’s almost impossible for me to remember what it was like in October 2018, moving freely about in the world. And now that the worst people in the world (and people who consider themselves righteous and proper) have turned against trans people, I don’t think I’d do anything like it here in 2023.

I wasn’t planning to take this trip down memory lane and bring you with me, but I’m grateful for Rebecca Traister, for her writing, for her kindness to me that night and for sparking a sweet memory that added a meaningful layer to an already substantive post.

Thanks for making it all the way to the end!

---

The photo of the woman laughing alone with her salad is by Subbotina Anna via Shutterstock.