A reader sent me this story (below) and agreed to let me share it with you as long as I omitted identifying information. Any suggestions?
“Recently I’ve become aware of a possible example of singlism that is
disturbing me greatly. I have been practicing Aikido (martial art) for several decades. The
club I attended for all these years doesn’t seem able to keep single female
members. I never thought too hard about this until I accidentally overheard a conversation between wives of male members where they referred to a recently divorced female club member as an “unleashed dog”. Since then I have the horrible suspicion that somehow the
wives of our male practitioners are using the powers of gossip to keep any
“unleashed dogs” away from their husbands. I find this very disturbing,
because women who are most likely vulnerable to such intimidation tactics are
also most likely to benefit from joining martial arts classes. But being a
single man I’m not part of the gossip network and don’t really know how it
works, so I have no proof that this is happening and anyway the women doing
it are not club members, so I’m at a complete loss how I could possibly
address such a situation. Any insights you could offer would be welcome.”
