A Revolution In Gender Identity: How Solo Living And Celibacy Are Reshaping Society

‘Happy to be alone’ seems to be the new mantra with more than two billion single people living happily worldwide. Falling birth rates, a rise in solo living, the decline in marriages, and now, voluntary celibacy, may lead to several socio-economic issues that all governments would have to tackle, but the current culture is a celebration of individualism – the right of the individual to pursue their happiness and dreams independent of societal expectations surrounding gender and sexual behaviour. That’s what Dr Stephen Whitehead feels.

Speaking to Bizz Buzz, exclusively, Dr Stephen Whitehead, Lecturer at Leeds University Business School and Keele University, an internationally acclaimed social scientist, author of several well-researched books and an expert on gender identity, explains his thoughts from sociological perspectives

Solo living is on the rise, globally, And you propagate an idea which suggests that the reason for the rise in solo living, decline in marriage, rise in celibacy and the corresponding decline in births, is not simply because of economics pressures – most of us are far better off than our ancestors of a 100 years ago – it is because of choice and culture. How do you describe the situation?

Let’s take the case of Japan, for instance. In Japan, they have a name for “all the lonely people” - ‘Ohitorisama’, which translates as being single and not caring about, or for, anyone else. No surprise, then, at last week’s report of 40,000 people dying alone in their homes in Japan during the first half of 2024.

However, it would be unwise to take that statistic as evidence of Japanese ‘otherness’; something rather incomprehensible to Western minds and Western experience. Those 40,000 lonely deaths are further evidence of a global revolution, one which, I argue, links the Ohitorisama with transformations in gender identity. It is a revolution now impacting every individual, every family, every organisation, and every country.

What about India?

India, a country of tradition and heritage, has looked at marriage more as a socio religious obligation or duty than a union of male and female to value add to the world. But this is changing and changing at a steady, irreversible pace, and this is – let me tell you – a part of a global trend for the youth to veer towards single living.

As a result of these trends, the proportion of single adults aged 15-49 years, which was 26.7 per cent for women and 21.4 per cent for men in the 2001 census, rose to 30.9 per cent for women and 25.1 per cent for men, in the last census.

The trend of deliberately delaying or avoiding marriage is particularly seen among urban Indians. In urban areas, the proportion of single adults aged 15-49 years is 37.8 per cent for women and 32.4 per cent for men. This is against the stats of 26.2 per cent for women and 20.8 per cent for men in rural areas.

Indian males and females are trying to redefine their lives in a new way. They are discovering singleness not as a rebellion to tradition or to avoid taking responsibilities but to find a new meaning and taste in life. It’s more a value change in holistic human terms. Singleness does not denote nor deny gender identities like male, female or LGBTQ. Singleness lights up your signature as an individual.

Do you think it has got something to do with the spiritual lineage of Indians?

Interestingly this concept has been embedded – though in different arrangement or style – in the spiritual lineage of some ancient or mediaeval communities as well. The monks and nuns and nomadic communities outside settled, traditional, well defined mainstream gender identity blocks have been an evidence of men and women’s search for single or individual happiness.

Yes the modern single people are not always celibate but the tendency of singleness is indeed reflective of life with less sex or in another way we can say that the traditional obsession with sex is giving way to a more egalitarian and win-win lifestyle.

Is the scenario same or similar more or less, across the world?

Across the world, younger generations are defying traditional social norms and deciding on solo living. In China, the singles population reached a record 239 million in 2021. Today, more than half of Chinese aged 25-29 are living solo lives. In the USA, 46.4 per cent of the adult population are single, up from just 22 per cent in 1950. The UK has seen singletons rise to 30 per cent of all households, 8.4 million people. A staggering 42 per cent of all households in South Korea are now single-person, with over half of all men in their 30s living solo lives. Even countries with a traditionally strong marriage culture, such as Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Nigeria, India and Pakistan, are seeing a rise in singletons. It is an unstoppable trend, cutting across class, religious, racial and ethnic lines.

Globally, there are now over 2 billion single people – a quarter of the world’s population and about a third of all people over 15 years of age. Ohitorisama has become a global phenomenon – the ‘super solo’ society is well and truly with us. Yet while that leaves singles with plenty of choice, not many of them seem keen to hitch up anytime soon. And certainly not in order to reproduce. Because another global trend is aligning with the rise in singletons, and that is celibacy. The rise of ‘VCs’ – voluntary celibates – has been evident in Japan and South Korea for over a decade, but now we are seeing it go worldwide.

Are the governments around the world aware of the problems, these new trends would lead to?

Governments have been well aware of the problems that come with falling birth rates, a rise in solo living, the decline in marriages, and now, voluntary celibacy. What they don’t know is how to solve them.

For sure, the usual suspects are being trotted out by (mostly old male) politicians as the cause; variously, housing costs, childcare costs; education costs, social media, Covid, urbanisation, contraception, taxation, globalisation, even feminism. But the truth is, governments are at a loss. As China is now discovering, pushing money at single people won’t encourage them to get married and have babies.

While governments and agencies around the world scratch their collective head and fret over something they can see but barely understand, they might want to take a closer look at the decades-long evolution in gender identities.

When was this new trend first noticed?

Sociologists first noted a shift in dominant male and female identities back in the 1950s. This was when the first rumblings of a ‘sex/gender role crisis’ started to emerge with researchers such as Joseph Pleck and Ruth Hartley warning of an impending male crisis as ‘traditional’ society crumbled in the wake of post-war social and economic transformation. In other words, women were starting to change leaving men with some catching up to do.

Over the next few decades, that identity crisis ceased to be a crisis and became normalised. Society learned to accept that women were not all born with a maternal instinct nor were they happiest cleaning the kitchen and preparing dad’s evening dinner after he returned home from a hard day in the factory. Surprise, surprise, some women could even be scientists and politicians! Fast-forward 70 years and those indicators and predictions of a new gender order, while perhaps forgotten by most, are now with us in stark and unforgiving reality – manifested as an independent, assertive and self-confident global femininity.

The people who have felt this evolution the hardest are those who stubbornly hang on to the notion of an immutable gender binary and sex as destiny. For them, the world is truly confusing and threatening. All that once appeared as solid has been transformed into an LGBTQ+ Alice in Wonderland.

One doesn’t have to be a sociologist to realise that as far as women and men are concerned, nothing is fixed, nothing is determined, and nothing is predictable. Increasingly, we accept there are as many differences within the category male as there are between the categories of male and female. We recognise the multiplicity of femininity and masculinity. We understand that brains are plastic, evolving and adaptable, not pre-ordained at birth. And we no longer assume that genitalia predict behaviour. While none of this solves the ‘problem’ of the ohitorisama, it does at least explain it.

So how do you see the current trend?

The current culture is a celebration of individualism – the right of the individual to pursue their happiness and dreams independent of societal expectations surrounding gender and sexual behaviour. My female ancestors, like yours, didn’t enjoy that choice nor were they living in that culture. But my five children – aged between 25 and 50, none of them parents and only one of them married – certainly are doing. As are most of their peers. This is the new gender reality, which I and many other sociologists term a revolution – arguably the greatest and most profound revolution ever to impact humanity.

Politicians, policy makers, indeed anyone trying to understand what is happening today across global society regards our changing society, needs to recognise this fundamental transformation in how women perceive themselves and their possibilities. It is not men who are driving this revolution, this consequential shift in demographics, birth rates, relationships and marriage, it is women. Women are, for the first time in history, declaring independence from men. Many women may still want to build their lives around a man, but not under the terms of the old gender order. Which raises very important, unavoidable questions for men. Not least, how quickly can they catch up with this new gender reality – indeed are they capable of doing so? Because, for sure, they cannot stop it.

There will be those who despair at the new solo society, the rise of the ohitorisama, and the decline of traditional male and female identities, especially traditional notions of masculinity. As we are seeing, there will be men who try and push women back into their patriarchal box. Personally, I welcome the change.