“He’s all puppies and rainbows.”  “She’s so so nice!”  “He’s a reasonable person.” It is getting to be a pattern. When someone is called out for practicing singlism, someone else rushes to their defense, and the argument is something like, “But she’s such a nice person!”

Here are a few examples:

  1. I just talked to a reporter about one of those typical cheater-technique studies that proclaim, based on biased comparisons, that married people do better in life than single people do. I explained to her what was wrong with the methodology and the conclusions. She said she had spoken to one of the authors, and that he was a reasonable person.
  2. A while back, on a different blog, I published a guest post in which the writer was calling out another blogger for his singlist post. The person who practiced the singlism was none too happy about getting challenged for it. He wrote another post filled with even more singlism, then took it down. He also contacted the editors at the site to complain about the post I published that took him to task for his singlism. An editor called me, saying that the person was all sweetness and light, and would I please not mention him anymore.
  3. I read a draft of a paper that I think many single people would find offensive. Another person who knows one of the authors said that she was one of the nicest people imaginable.

I don’t doubt the declarations that each of the persons in question was indeed reasonable or all sweetness and light or one of the nicest persons imaginable. Singlism is so under our radar, and our thinking about singles is so in need of consciousness-raising, that many nice, reasonable people will practice singlism without any ill intent. They just didn’t realize what they were doing. Once alerted, though, the excuses end. You don’t get to qualify as reasonable, or all puppies and rainbows, if you continue to practice singlism after you’ve learned what it’s all about.