Society · Women

The Horrible Life of Spinsters Then and Now

The word “spinster” has an interesting etymology. Today, it is a mildly pejorative way to refer to an unmarried women. Surely, in some circles it is considered politically incorrect as it is “hetero-normative” or “patriarchal”, implying that women need to get married. As we all know, wahmen need no stinkin’ man to be happy. Yet, originally a spinster was simply a woman who spun wool. It was an occupation. You can see why the meaning shifted. Presumably, all the women who managed to lock down a man had no need to work anymore while those who could not do so had to find a way to make a living.

Back in the days, unmarried women who had a hard time supporting themselves were a societal problem. Because women should not suffer any hardship even back then, they had dedicated support networks. Probably all bigger towns had facilities to provide cheap room and board for women but no similar ones for men. We still have them today. They are called “women’s shelters” and the concept goes back centuries. They were originally called “poorhouses” or “almshouses” and some were only accessible to women. The one only men had access to was called “jail”, more or less like today.

Today, thanks to an excessive welfare state, many women have jobs they can live reasonably well off. You, dear bigotted male, pay for them with your taxes. Commonly, those jobs are a net negative that cost society much more than the salaries of those destroyers of society. Just sum up the number of faculties for gender studies at university or the many millions of diversity hires in industry to get a sense of the magnitude of the problem On the other hand, not all women are quite so lucky that they get a cushy diversity job to coast by. Many more women have crappy clerical jobs, maybe not even full-times ones. Surviving on those can be a challenge. Of course, many of those women will tell you that they do not need man, and delude themselves that everything is fine when in reality they rent a tiny room in an apartment in the shitty part of town. This might be acceptable if she is in her mid-20s but a lot of women are stuck with this lifestyle and never get out of it.

I find it hard to believe that today’s spinsters are happy with their lives. Looking at subscription rates to, no, not Netflix but anti-depressants gives a good indication of what is really going on. It would be absurd to say that the spinsters back in the days who spun wool for a meagre living were following their passion or working on their career. Yet, many of today’s HR drones, secretaries, store clerks, or dental assistants who are likewise stuck in dead-end jobs would tell you precisely that.

The absurdity of a (reasonably attractive) woman working a bullshit job and wasting her prime years is hard to fathom. How can it be fulfilling to do that kind of menial drudgery? It is worse in countries in which there are tax benefits for single-income families. If the husband has a nice big paycheck, then the increased pay due to more favorable taxation could easily exceed what the woman could make on her own. In such an arrangement, the woman could stay at home, get all the sleep she wants, take care of the household and her husband’s need, and be much better off. I have a hunch that many more women would want to live exactly that kind of lifestyle but because we have been pushing men out of jobs and burden the relatively few with well-paying jobs with high taxes, there are fewer men around who would be able to finance that kind of lifestyle.


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4 thoughts on “The Horrible Life of Spinsters Then and Now

  1. It is quite funny when leftist women talk about the evils of capitalism and they are completely unaware how much the got brainwashed to be docile worker drones.
    Their purpose in life now is to make power point presentations or “educate” the children of other people, instead of having their own family.
    And god beware you are just a stay at home mum. Without a career life is really terrible!

    1. You ever seen that 1980s movie 9 to 5? I remember a scene where Lily Tomlin’s character is training Jane Fonda’s character for an office job. Tomlin’s character said she had been working for the office for over 10 years. Fonda’s character said, impressed, “Ten years! I’ve only been a housewife.” Then the movie proceeds to show how these women are oppressed by their asshole boss. Feminists need to make up their fucking minds.

    2. Also a good point about teachers. Both of my sisters are feminists, strongly believing that every woman should work and not “depend on a man.” Yet the only jobs they’ve ever chosen were in teaching, tutoring, child care, nannying, etc. Why can’t these women learn to cut out the middleman?

  2. When doing research for a manuscript I wrote, I came across a statistics in Forbes Women Magazine that stated that 86 percent of American married mother’s would stay home with their children if it were economically viable. So I looked up data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to see the percentage of married mother’s who were homemakers in the 1950s. 84 percent were, almost mirroring the percentage who say they would now–lower actually.

    Just have a casual conversation with women at work who have children and they will back up these findings. Women were never told to stay home. They didn’t need any encouragement, they elected to.

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