More Women are Choosing to be Single

“Men behave badly because they can.”

— Joan Kavanaugh (Psychotherapist and author)

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“Oh yeah, blame the men.”

That’s what my friend’s partner said after watching the latest news story about a domestic violence-related murder. The young mother was found dead in her home, murdered by her ex-boyfriend just two weeks after he faced local court charges with other violent offenses against her, including rape and intimidation. He was granted bail. Two weeks later, he tracked her down and brutally beat her to death.

To clarify, my friend’s partner is a man.

And I was confused.

B-but it was a man that killed that woman. It wasn’t an alien or an AI-powered robot. It was a man. Her ex-partner. Who is a man.

By no means is this an isolated case. Gender-based violence has been happening to women since day one, and it’s still going on. Actually, it’s thriving. From systemic discrimination, political oppression, and online misogyny to femicide and domestic abuse. We’re grappling with gender-based violence and still lack robust reporting systems and effective responses.

This is the reality. After a prolonged and challenging struggle spanning nearly a century of conferences, protests, hunger strikes, speeches, court cases, lobbying, organizing, and marches, ultimately secured women’s voting rights a hundred years ago. Nothing much has changed since the days when women were denied many fundamental rights granted to their male counterparts.

Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. Globally, an estimated 736 million women — nearly one in three — have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lifetime.

What’s up with this?

Are we passing it down through the generations?

Do all men turn out like their fathers, even if they deny it? Their fathers model controlling behavior to them, and we do what is modeled to us, not what they tell us, which means that many men are often socialized to control women, which is actually emotional abuse.

All abuse is rooted in control.

Women and girls are still getting punished, intimidated, demeaned, threatened, violated, bullied, used, raped, invalidated, controlled, dismissed, trafficked, and murdered by men in droves.

I daresay we haven’t evolved a whole lot since the witch trial days when they’d do heinous things like tie women to a log before putting them in the river to discover if they were innocent of “witchery.” If a woman drowned, she was innocent. If she lived, she was a witch and burned at the stake. Either way, she was done for.

Yeah, we blame the men.

On April 13, 2024, a 40-year-old man named Joel Cauchi went on a stabbing rampage, killing six people and injuring twelve others at a shopping center in Sydney, Australia. The victims included five women and one man, while the injured included a nine-month-old girl. The penny dropped. The perpetrator had a history of mental health issues. He had wanted a girlfriend but lacked social skills and was “frustrated out of his brain.”

Women were targeted for their gender.

Perpetrators can be strangers, (ex)intimate partners, or known men. Killings occur at home, in public, at work, in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. The common denominator is gender — the perpetrators are men, and the victims are women.

I’m sorry.

Are you sick of women writing about how men are the problem?

Does it trouble you to take men’s lethal violence against women seriously?

The comment section on some of the pieces on this platform provides much insight into how people think and operate. Women. Men. Nonbinary. It makes no difference. Unfortunately, there are a lot of hateful, confused, delusional, and ignorant folks out there. And more to the point, many men refuse to accept what’s right in front of them.

Entitled.

Controlling.

Unfeeling.

Disconnected.

Violent.

Because these incel types are weak, insecure, and pathetic, they fear the power a woman can possess and feel the need to assert superiority in any form they can.

What’s new?

We still live in a patriarchal society that teaches men they are entitled to be in control of women.

There was a particular comment on one piece: an ole mate denounces the idea that the majority of abusers are men, stating that it’s a “small fraction of men,” and yet the stats tell a very different, alarming story.

It’s a stat fact:

• Ninety percent of individuals who commit violent physical assaults are men, and males are responsible for 95% of all severe domestic violence cases.
• The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that men commit 95% of reported assaults on spouses or ex-spouses against women.
• Globally, intimate partners are responsible for as many as 38% of all murders of women.
• On average, more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners every day in the U.S.
• More than half of all cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

Women are being brutalized, controlled, and killed for existing.

She is living in fear, beaten down so many times that she feels inferior to others. Tiptoeing around her partner’s moods, she is grateful for a day he didn’t yell at her. Holding her breath for the cycle to unfold as it always does. She must ask for permission to buy household items or spend money on groceries. She is afraid to say the wrong thing and be herself and suffers in silence.

And you wonder why more women are choosing to be single?

I wish this weren’t true.

I wish women didn’t have to write about these topics to raise awareness. I hope all women can one day be free to walk the Earth, secure in the knowledge that they are safe. I wish all women who choose to be in relationships with men were respected and valued equally.

But the truth is that more and more women are choosing to be single because there is a tiny percentage of women who are happy in heterosexual relationships, and the research confirms it. Single women are much happier than women in relationships.

Believe it.

So many women in relationships end up living like indentured servants, taking on the lion’s share of the emotional labor and housework for a manchild who can’t take care of himself. I saw it during my first marriage, and I’ve seen it with countless other women in my life.

Too bad most women think a man will make them happy. Because they rarely do.

Yeah, we blame the men.