For the Ladies

Women unmarried and not hating it.

Good for them! Why should people be married? Besides it's good for Atta J. Turk, because there are more of you to beg or annoy.

Anyhoo, the fact that more woman are unmarried and not obsessed about forcing themselves into a bad marriage with someone who compels, or feels, the same, is not bad in my book (if for no other reason than see above).

Naturally, some just cannot abide by this, like Mona Charen, professional scold. Already knowing that some unmarried people on the staff are already self-loathing over their status (She can only wag that finger at K-Lo so many times before the latter goes all Gollum on her) it is up to Mona, frightenly married Mona, to give the whatfor to women who think themselves content and not bad for being unencombered with a man:

The caption under the picture of the divorced woman reads “A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no. I told him, ‘I’m just beginning to be me. Don’t take that away.’”

This is pure 1970s drivel, when we were all encouraged to free ourselves of the confining terms of bourgeois marriage and “be ourselves.” Since then we’ve learned that both sexes (to say nothing of children, who go largely ignored in this story) are far better off in marriage than outside of it.

Um, yeah. Whatever.

Mona clearly would prefer women live in this kind of happy environment which places a HIGH priority on marriage:

Violence against women increased in every province of Afghanistan last year, according to Women's Affairs Ministry statistics. Those numbers include self-immolations, a relatively new and disturbing trend in Afghanistan in which women set themselves on fire.

The desperation that leads to such acts has been attributed to domestic violence and forced marriages. At least 60 percent of Afghan women are in forced marriages, and 57 percent marry before they reach age 16, according to a report by the international rights group Womankind Worldwide.