What’s a 60-Something Feminist Doing Writing a Book about Dating Men?

What’s a 60-something feminist doing writing a book about dating men?

My debut memoir is about wildly, unabashedly dating men in my late fifties and finding my forever partner. I feel like I’m letting down my younger feminist self.  

What other women are writing 

All around me (literally – my book is one of dozens published this year by She Writes Press (SWP)), women are writing books celebrating middle-aged women and aging—how empowered and creative we are, how we have found our inner strength through overcoming difficult circumstances, and how we can create a life true to ourselves now that we are older. I’m empowered—why didn’t I write a book like that? 

As a twentysomething feminist in the 1970s, I worked in the Berkeley Women’s Health Collective. We were engaged in the Sisyphean task of fighting for women’s rights in health care, control over our own bodies, and sexual knowledge and freedom. We imagined a feminist society that valued women and men equally, provided basic needs, offered choices to all, and encouraged everyone to thrive. We were envisioning the empowered life that SWP authors are writing about now.  

Many of us took feminism to its logical conclusion and declared ourselves lesbians. The lesbian-feminist vision of empowerment included creating a separate women’s culture of women’s writing, music, bookstores, coffeehouses, restaurants, and festivals. In all-women spaces, we could redefine what it meant to be women—the changers and the changed. We wore overalls and cut our hair short. We reveled in our strength and independence, and felt on the forefront of social change. 

One day, Jenny, one of my co-workers, confessed that she was moving in with her boyfriend. “How retro can you get?” she said, “Moving in with a man!” 

Jenny was not alone in relating to men, and I supported her choice, but for the next 18 years, I was happy as a lesbian. My strength and independence grew, along with my immersion in women’s culture. I fixed my own bicycle and maintained my VW Bug. I backpacked alone and led women’s backpacking trips. I learned crisis counseling and taught women how to support other women. Identifying as a lesbian helped me know in my bones that my financial support was up to me, so I proceeded through graduate schools and jobs to a Ph.D. and research career I loved and bought my own house. I felt confident and brave in my choices.

The book I expected to write

So if I’d imagined writing a book in my older years, I would have expected that it would show women becoming more empowered and confident in themselves. Yet here I am, writing about how much fun I had dating men and finding my partner.  How empowering is that? Am I still in the 1950s, looking for a man? Like Jenny, I feel so retro. 

The reason I wrote about dating 

As wonderful as independence was, something was missing in my life. By my mid-forties, I had had only short relationships—with men, then with women, then with men. Friends and lovers sustained me through my career-building years. Once I had a career and a house, I longed for a long-term partner—someone to share my life with. 

But my relationship-building skills were weak. It took lots of trial and error and ten years of personal growth workshops to make me ready to be in a relationship. 

The result was the “Fifty First Dates” project— and my book. I looked for the partner who would match and celebrate my independent self. I had fun dating, found my guy, and I’ve been with him for ten years, reveling in being in a committed relationship for the first time in my life. 

For those of us who never had a long-term relationship or long for a better one, the universal quest for love can be our most compelling project, despite other passions or accomplishments. 

Brave: My younger feminist self

Looking back at my younger feminist self, I see how brave she was. She threw her body, heart, and soul into creating and living a culture counter to the mainstream, and she bequeathed me an empowered life. I am so proud of her. 

Also brave: dating as older women 

Dating as an older woman is brave. Many are longing for a mate, but are too scared or discouraged to try. It takes courage to keep getting out there until you have found him or her, and it helps to have a vision. 

I’m publishing my book because I found ways to combat my fears and discouragement and make dating an enjoyable journey of self-love and self-discovery. I’m offering a vision of “dating the adult way—with effective communication, self-care, emotional responsibility, and joyful sexual freedom.” 

Also brave: publishing a sex-positive book

Publishing a book that celebrates an older woman’s joyful sexual freedom is brave. In the 70s, my younger feminist self worked for the right to not only control our own bodies and sexuality, but to celebrate them. My unabashed sexuality was forged through years of feminist sex education, lesbian loving, and pleasurable experiences with men, culminating in the wild escapades in my dating project. 

I’m publishing my book because I want to celebrate women being sexual during dating. While I’m quaking in my stylish boots about whether the sex is too explicit, I kept it in. I’m offering a vision of a sex-positive older woman. 

So I proudly present my book to the world along with the books of my SWP sisters that empower girls and women. Mine is dedicated to women who want a loving relationship, inspiration to date, and a vision of sexuality as a natural part of dating. Maybe that’s not so retro after all.  I think my younger feminist self would be proud.

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CAROLYN LEE ARNOLD drew upon her 30 years as a social science researcher and 10 years as a relationship workshop assistant to create the dating project in “Fifty First Dates after Fifty.”
A native Californian from Los Angeles with a New England education, Arnold found her true home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she prepared for dating and life by attending spiritual ceremonies, working in free clinics, leading women’s backpacking trips, hiking the local green hills, identifying as a lesbian-feminist in the 1970s and ’80s, and earning graduate degrees in women’s studies, statistics and educational research.

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