Divorce: It's a Girl Thing! 🐎
why do women initiate 70% of divorces?
Well, we’ve made it through divorce month, aka January! 🎈(And if that really does apply to you, a Goldie Hawn cheers to you and your future!)
Divorce attorney Julia Rueschemeyer explained to Newsweek last month, “I think the holidays are a tipping point for many women.” Notice, Rueschemeyer said women, not couples. That’s because 🥁🥁🥁 in husband-wife marriages, women initiate 70% of divorces.
More surprising is how long that’s been the case. “Women seem to have a predominant role in initiating divorces in the U.S. as far back as there is data from a variety of sources, back to the 1940s,” Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld said. As in, decades before no-fault divorce existed, when the easiest way to un-marry was move to Reno, Nevada, for six weeks. AND WOMEN DID!
tl;dr on the latest Unladies’ Room bonus episode, I investigate wHaT’s GoInG oN hErE?
💗Come on in! 💗and thank you 4ver, new Unladies’ Roomer, Ashley!💗
Uterus and vagina in abensentia
I’d never heard of Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome until unlady/writer/director Molly McGlynn emailed in about her “very UNLADYLIKE experience of being diagnosed with MRKH syndrome when I was 16 and being told I don't have a uterus, will never get my period, And have a nearly absent vagina.”
It’s a rare genetic disorder—1 in every 4500ish female-assigned bbs is born with MRKH type 1 or 2—but that’s less rare than I expected! (And/or I might not understand the medical meaning of rare.)
Molly was diagnosed at 16, which is typical. It often goes undetected as all the external signs of puberty—ie, boobs, pubes, labia—develop, but never a period. Then, on top of processing this bombshell about her own body, Molly was prescribed some v uncomfortable homework:
You're handed this box of really unappetizing-looking sort of medical dildos. You're given a big tube of medical lube and instruction manual. This is pre-Google, pre-TikTok, all of that.
And it's like, go get to work on making a vagina so you can feel normal and so you can have sex.
Q for the group
Free Palestine. End conflict-related sexual violence. Ceasefire now. Release the hostages. GTFO, USA. No, antisemitism. No, islamophobia. NO, Nancy Pelosi.
A couple months ago, an unlady asked me what I was afraid of that I hadn’t meaningfully spoken on the podcast about Palestine and Israel. Good question! It’s not that I’m not afraid of stating my beliefs. What I’m afraid of is being the human equivalent of one of those “In This House” yard signs—all virtue signal and no substance. I’m afraid that facilitating polarized discourse is beyond my capabilities, beyond my current praxis. Or maybe that’s just a fancy word for comfort zone.
There’s also the very real fact that Palestine + Israel + women + feminism = ALL of the intersectional layers at once, and I’m working on Unladylike coverage that hopefully illuminates those complexities and deepens our understandings beyond pithy signs.
So, in lieu of links of this week, a question: Is there anyone you’d recommend as an Unladylike guest to speak on those intersections, present and past? If so, just hit reply to this email, and thank y’all for sharing!
unladies are saying
I’m a late 80s baby, grew up in the 90s, and was proud of the fact that I never owned an American Girl doll. I read the books, subscribed to the magazine, but while my friends played with American Girls, my doll of choice was from a company called Global Friends…Those dolls gave me a peek into world perspectives I probably otherwise would not have discovered until years later, and I felt special to be the only person I knew who had them.
- unlady Carolyn, re: American Girl Dollcore
til next week… that poor gavel
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