Sex and the Island”

“Sex and the Island”: Lives of Single Women in Prince Edward Island, a 2011 Island Studies Journal article by Kristie Collins:

This article considers the significance attributed to Prince Edward Island in managing a marginalized single female identity, as presented by accounts of thirty never-married and previously-married Island women, aged twenty-seven through sixty-five. As popular media and social narratives overwhelmingly position contemporary single women against an urban backdrop, the question arises as to whether unmarried Island women feel “marooned” in ways their urban counterparts may not. In accordance with feminist aims to produce research for, rather than about, women’s lives, the paper focuses on two themes from fieldwork interviews that were of particular interest to participants. The first theme relates to negotiating female singleness within the Island’s family-centered culture, and the second theme presents participants’ talk around advantages and disadvantages of living in Prince Edward Island, Canada, as single women. The paper concludes with a summary of other findings from the study and suggestions for future research on female singleness and island locales.

Comments

Juliane's picture
Juliane on May 15, 2021 - 09:21 Permalink

For a paper with that title, it's striking that the entire text only mentions sexual orientation in passing and speaks of, well: sex zero times.

Oliver FS's picture
Oliver FS on May 16, 2021 - 04:11 Permalink

The “sex” the title seems to refers to is female. I guess the declaration of being “for, rather than about, women’s lives” is sort of an apology/buck passing re: sex in the other common sense receiving no mention in the summary or with regard to the study aims. Presumably it came up quite a bit in what the female subjects had to say about their lives as single women.