“On Spinsters by Briallen Hopper”
I’ve come to realize that I owe an immeasurable debt to the intersecting groups of people who have historically been barred from the privileges of marriage by law and demography, and have learned to create intimate lives apart from it. In other words, I’m indebted to queer people and to African Americans, and to all who have seen their loves and families treated as nonexistent or pathological, and who have had marriage used as a weapon against them or as a compulsory straight and narrow path to equality. These people are more than “awakeners”: they have done the hard work of loving and world-making in defiance of the powers that be…
It was the spinsters who made me. Who made farm-share feasts with me for our family dinners and watched Golden Girls with me every night. Who sent me silver-framed photographs of us at a Houston diner, and glitter-framed photographs of us at Graceland, and magnet-backed photographs to put on my fridge of us sharing a bed at a Palm Springs hotel. Who talked with me for hours on the phone as we lay a thousand miles apart in bed in the dark until one of us finally fell asleep. Who asked me to help them choose their mother’s gravestone. Who told me about their abortions. Who bought me a dress for my yet-to-be-adopted daughter. Who made me the aunt of their one-eyed Chihuahua. Who sat next to me in church.”
I would be interested in the masculine-version of the essay (if that exists; like, the “bachelor” isn’t really the same thing…)
Thinking about that further, there is definitely something about a woman-alone, something where our world still needs women to be owned by some identifiable man/family structure, or else they/we are sort of public and up for grabs and usable. Because they don’t have to struggle with this, maybe men who are spinsters don’t need to find the wisdom and untraditional families that women who are spinsters do.
Related: “The Space between Families”; how the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage positions single people
