[Wamvan] It's Not Feminism That's Ruining Romance: A Fresh Spin on the Dating Dilemma

[Lindsay Miles]

Hi all,

See the Colorlines piece below where Samhita Mukhopadhyay discusses her new
book "Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life." The book seems to
share some common threads with Jaclyn's "What I Really Really Want."

Cheers, Lindsay


*It's Not Feminism That's Ruining Romance: A Fresh Spin on the Dating
Dilemma*

by Noelle de la Paz

Thursday November 17th 2011 10:00EST

In her new book “Outdated: Why Dating Is Ruining Your Love Life,”
Feministing.com Executive Editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay takes everything you
may have read in “Cosmo” or seen on “The Bachelor” and tosses it out the
window, but not without first breaking it down with candor and a sense of
humor. So much more than a dating book, this is a how-to manual for today’s
smart, progressive, self-aware woman, as in: how to undo the damage done by
traditional dating advice, challenge gender expectations and deepen our
understanding of radical love.

Responding to the barrage of conflicting messages about what women should
want from relationships and how they should go about getting it, “Outdated”
points a finger at obsolete notions about men and women’s innate
differences, debunks popular dating myths, and reveals how feminism is not
killing romance; rather, with awareness and persistence, it can only help
our relationships.

Colorlines.com talked with her about finding her voice, the shift in
women’s traditional roles, and what straight people can learn from the
queer community when it comes to dating expectations.
[image: samhita_headshot4-1.jpg]

*The genre of self-help dating books and magazine columns is very popular
in mainstream media. Why did you, as a feminist of color, decide this was
an important discussion to have?*

I think that a lot of self-help books actually might be in the mainstream,
but I do feel like a lot of people of color are drawn to self-help sections
of bookstores as well. If anything there’s this assumption that self-help
sections are a little bit more lowbrow so it really impacts not just
necessarily mainstream audiences but more audiences that may not be
considered super hip, or the most media savvy, or may not have a ton of
access to other types of resources and support structures, that are drawn
to the self-help section of the bookstore.

And also people that have experienced trauma, it’s a really personal thing,
it’s a much more private experience than coming out and talking to a friend
about something, or seeking help which is often expensive. So I just felt
like there was this silent ticking bomb of bad information that was
reaching really vulnerable populations.

*Could you talk a little bit about your process in deciding to write this
book, and actually writing it. What challenges did you come across?*

Writing a book is really hard. But something that I guess I haven’t really
spoken about is that as a woman of color first generation immigrant, a
South Asian immigrant, I grew up in a predominantly middle class to working
class white suburban town, and I wasn’t a particularly good student. That
isn’t really what’s understood as the Asian American or South Asian
American experience. So I had really internalized this belief that I was
not intelligent, because my peers within my ethnic community were
incredibly successful academically and I didn’t have that same kind of
success.

I took a really derivative path to finding my voice. Many years of Women’s
Studies education and having really amazing mentors over the years helped
me cultivate my voice, but the rubber kind of hit the road in the book
writing process. I had to face my demons that I had really internalized
this belief that I wasn’t intelligent and that I didn’t have something
smart to say. Overcoming that was probably the biggest obstacle in writing
a book or even being a woman of color public intellectual, of saying, “What
I have to say has legitimacy” despite the fact that I am internalizing the
[idea] that I am not legitimate.

*We’ve recently
looked<http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/10/black_feminisms.html> at
how there’s a whole industry devoted to telling women, especially women of
color, that they’re doing something wrong. This idea of women being blamed
is also something that comes up in your book. How does your book flip that
idea on its head?*

Part of the [reason] that women are blamed for declining relationships is
because up until this moment in history, or even in the last thirty years,
it was just assumed that men could do whatever they wanted and women had to
compensate for that and they were the people that held family together.
There was this inordinate amount of pressure on women to remedy any marital
problems, to make sure there’s food on the dinner table so that the family
is communicating in the evening, to make sure of any kind of religious
education or any kind of cultural education. All of that has directly tied
into it the identity of being a woman in the family.

And so we have this huge demographic shift where that is not necessarily
the role that women play. They may play that role but they’re also playing
a variety of other roles and deserve the equality and freedom to express
all of those roles to their heart’s desire. So I think that recognizing how
it’s a social pressure really shifts how we look at the family unit and
also shifts the focus to how are men involved in creating relationships, in
supporting family structures, in maintaining tradition. What is their role
in it and how do we shift the focus? Do we abandon a normative family
structure? We are in a completely new place right now so how do we move
forward? That’s the main question that I’m asking.

*When we think about what other voices to consider, how important is it
that our understanding of heterosexual dating be informed by the evolving
discourse on LGBT issues?*

So, I’m trained as an academic feminist, which I think is pretty clear
throughout the book. I reference a lot of academic work that I define. I
use a lot of academic terms which I feel really capture this experience of
what I see as coming out of queer theory. And what I saw in queer theory
was this tremendous potential of de-centering what we understand as normal
when it comes to sexuality, and applying that to the way that we’re dating
as straight people, because I felt like that was the missing link. That all
of this advice was hindering on the belief that all men act one way and all
women act another way. These kind of stereotypes become that much more more
exaggerated when it’s like: all black women act this way and all black men
act this way, and all Asian men act this way and Asian women act this
way—stereotypes that reproduce themselves over and over.

I do think looking at the way that the gay rights movement has shifted the
focus from what’s considered a normal relationship and what’s considered an
acceptable and suitable partner has marginally shifted what’s acceptable.
But the question really is, has it exaggerated the heteronormative
structure because there’s such a deep resistance to this “threat to the
American family”? Has it almost become exaggerated now, if you look at this
overemphasis on white weddings—even through reality television, we are in
this fantasy, exaggerated, obsessed, consumed culture—or is the next ten to
twenty years as most of us in our 30s and 20s are going to see gay marriage
become legal, is it actually going to shift the conversation to include a
broader spectrum of sexual and relationship experiences?
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