100% of the women in the country have already rejected you.
The continuing series of rants from Dr. Helen about how women need to settle into marriage with anyone who asks, because men are men and like entitled and stuff, has been getting some attention around the blogosphere. (I briefly blogged it here.) For those who don’t want to click the link, the staunch economic conservatives over there have a really odd attitude about women—not that women are subhuman commodities that are exchanged on an open market (people all over the political map believe that), but that unlike every other good on the market in the libertarian eyes, communist principles should apply in the pussy market. The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can. Anyway, I’ll get back to that in a bit, because Lindsay makes the good point about how there is a link between the declining fortunes of the rest of us (compared to the rising fortunes of the rich in what looks to be like a direct wealth transfer from labor to the elite) does in fact influence the marriage rate negatively.
I wish liberals would talk more about how increasing relative economic inequality might be affecting people’s day-to-day lives. Abject material deprivation is only part of the problem. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a lot of young people are priced out of marriage–not because they can’t find a willing partner, but because they don’t have enough financial stability to “justify” getting married.
If you don’t have substantial assets in common, or a job that would give benefits to a spouse, marriage just isn’t as practically alluring as it might have been.
That seems like it makes sense. For instance, if a couple is doing well enough to be saving money and perhaps getting assets like real estate, then marriage makes good sense, because it gives you a quick and dirty way to legally share your assets going forward. But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur. As more and more Americans are going into debt and fewer and fewer are saving money all the time, we can probably expect that formula to kick in and marriage rates to decline.
Like Lindsay, I don’t care if the marriage rate declines to zero, even. But as it works as a rough measure of how well people are doing, since it can measure (to a degree) levels of hopefulness for the future, but for its own sake, who cares? Honestly, I think the marriage rate going down some would be a good thing, if it indicated that people were really thinking about it and only going into it if they really want to, instead of getting married because that’s just what you do or the TV told you that if you don’t cross that line by the time you’re 30, no one will have you. But as an economic indicator, declining marriage rates are probably part of the larger problem of the vanishing middle class.
The sexual communists who bemoan the high price of high priced potential wives cracked me up, I must say. Like the guy from Dr. Helen’s blog:
Most men are simply priced out of the marriage and dating market. If you dropped a mere $100K in the yearly bank account of those lonely, “shy” men women would be all around and over them. Because the men would have higher RELATIVE status. Which would make them sexy instead of losers.
And this guy from the comments at Majikthise:
well, it certainly is my experience that American women in particular are obsessed with status. I have a friend/ ex-GF who blathers on all the time about how much she cares about the poor, but somehow all her friends and ex-BFs are from Fairfield County and Ivy educated. She insists she doesn’t care about money and social class, but doesn’t get it that speaking French fluently and having a breezy familarity with Victorian literature and a noble indifference to having a career and making money are related to upper-class privilege. When I was a dishwasher, with no high school diploma, I crtainly knew no woman would give me the time of day. Nor an Ivy school, for that matter. With a 1500 sat I had an admissions officer laugh in my face for even inquiring about applying. (compare JFK, Jr, a guy dumb as a brick, but welcome at Brown and NYU Law). Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.
The continuing theme of extremely shallow men seeking out trophies for girlfriends/wives and then whining when the very kind of women they seek turn out to be exactly how you’d expect such women to be never ceases to amuse me. What’s less amusing is the way that “woman” is defined by both these commenters in very narrow way, which is “woman who spends plenty of time in the tanning bed, the gym, the plastic surgeon’s office, the salon, and the make-up chair to prep herself for a role of rich husband-snagging trophy”. To be fair, the second guy also expanded his definition to include women auditioning for the role of high society wives, looking to get some old money instead of more new money. There are, in fact, other women out there, and in fact, I’d say the vast majority of American women do not fit the narrow definitions of “woman” offered by these assholes.
But I feel vaguely guilty pointing that out, because what if one of these guys, on an off-chance one day, actually listens to me and thinks, “Huh, good point. Maybe I should start looking at less shallow women if less shallow is what I want.” And then they’ll start imposing their shallow, worthless hides on perfectly nice women in bars and coffee shops across the nation, and then I’d be partially responsible for that minor uptick in the misery of the sisterhood. Extremely minor, true—being hit on by Republican-voting asswipes who’d probably hit you up with a line like, “You know, if you did your hair and wore some make-up, you’d be pretty,” is a small irritation in the grand scheme of things, but still. I ‘d feel guilty. But luckily, exactly 0% of the whiners are going to listen to a self-avowed feminist, so I shouldn’t worry about it.
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This might have been OT but in fact, I think it’s got some bearing on the Frau Doktor Helen discussion. Did you know that women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce?
Found at Fundies Say The Darndest Things.” The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can.”
Exactly! And I think there is some strange seven degrees of separation with your post below about wives and stay-at-homes.
I’m a single, childless woman, and many conservatives around me covertly believe that I ought to be at higher risk in a lay off and they ought to be a higher raise, because “they suppport a wife and kids.” I’m in a male majority profession, near the top — in high technology. You don’t necessarily notice this at the entry level of my profession. But there is some sort of strange socialism that kicks in when dividing up the pie of wages with these largely liberterian or conservative men. Many at this level have stay at home wives.
With me, it’s not about the cat fight of stay at home wives versus “working women.” It’s about my pocketbook. I have more education and experience than some men around me, but they thrust pictures of their wives and kids in front to compete for salary and promotions. What is out of the usual cat fight equation is the picture of these men and their part in it.
And the teary eyed sense of entitlement of “buying a woman” in a sense as written here. Please write about that.
“If you don’t have substantial assets in common, or a job that would give benefits to a spouse, marriage just isn’t as practically alluring as it might have been”
right now im flat broke; busted down to the working poor, basically. i dont even have enough money to save in my checking let alone a plan. yeah, i basically rule out nearly everyone i meet who has two dollars to rub together as being unsuitable –like i have the mark of cain on me.
and this is michigan, so things are NOT looking up any time soon.
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
1) wtf does this even mean?
2) who are these losers who always gripe specifically about “american” women? are they american creeps who cant get laid & so are saving up for a mailorder bride from a 3rd world country? are they creeps from other countries that came here & cant get laid & so are looking to save up for a mailorder bride from another 3rd world country? or are they just your average asshole dreamer, addicted to asian porn or some ethnic niche where they only see a woman open her mouth to service a man & nothing else?
whatever the case, they must die.
and when i say “unsuitable”, i mean as in, unsuitable for a relationship, period.
I’ve read that some poor couples won’t marry because they can’t afford the monstrosity that we call a wedding these days. Some people feel that if they can’t have a DJ and a Vera Wang dress they can’t get married. And others (including lots and lots of middle class people) go into massive debt to have the big wedding and destroy their marriage in its infancy.
My cousin says he won’t marry until he has enough in the bank to put on a big wedding and put a down payment on a house. He lives in the DC area. How long do you think it’s going to take him to save that kind of money?
But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur.
Oh, my God, yes. I could go on at great length about that one.
Amanda wrote:
All of which brings marriage to the level of an economic transaction.
Marriage was supposed to be the legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing.
When our “modern” culture removed the bias against sex outside of marriage, ceased seeing illegitimacy as something to be avoided, and removed any strong assumption of permanenc from marriage, what was left but the economic calculation?
Even there, your sentence, “But if you’re both in debt (or if only one of you is), you sure as hell don’t want to get married and share the responsibility for debts you personally didn’t incur,” is a sentence with a bias toward separateness: even if you live together without marriage, the debts of one will be incurred by both, because while perhaps only one is paying the debt (out of his doubtlessly separate checking account), the total household income is diminished for both. Your sentence makes sense only if there is an underlying assumption that the partners’ relationship is not permanent, and that one can bail out, leaving the other to cope with the debt he incurred.
I totally understand the debt “deal-breaker” when it comes to marriage. The different between living together and getting married, is that if you live together, your credit history is not ruined and you can still get favorable rates and offers (by the way, ruined credit effects your job prospects when they do a credit check on you AND your health insurance rates in some places - why ruin yourself?), you don’t get pursued by debt collectors if you merely live together, and upon divorce, you don’t spend years and years repaying a debt you didn’t even get or enjoy the fruits of.
It used to be this was a problem of older marriages, now with the credit extended to students, you can find yourself strattled with over a hundred thousand in debt marrying someone in their twenties.
The best advice I think is to run a credit and legal history on someone you are thinking of marrying. Don’t think you can’t be fooled.
It’s a little bit selfish to say that if anyone rejects you due to debt that they are “separatists.” If you love someone you’ll clear up your debt situation before getting married.
Dana,
YOu are mistaken about the history of marriage. It is only recently that it has been about “personal relationships”. Its history is as an institutional framework for perpetuating kinship and economic structures regardless of the “personal” feelings of the individuals involved. By pointing out that marriage has an economic dimension, Amanda is actually *refreshing* our historical memory, not confusing it.
(& yeah, I do realize I am just going to be among the legions to point this out)
All of which brings marriage to the level of an economic transaction.
Of course it is. It’s definitely not about love and romance—you can have the former without marriage and marriage is kind of a romance-killer. It’s far more romantic to live in sin, with your love being too pure for tedious bourgeois nonsense like marriage and a picket fence.
Since marriage is not about love or romance, it appears to be about a familial/economic partnership.
Your belief that people should have artificial constraints that make them unhappy put upon them in order to force them into marriages that will mainly turn out to be unhappy because they didn’t test drive the relationship before making a commitment is baffling. Why should the institution of marriage be continued if it makes people unhappy, Dana? Why do you think institutions are more important than the people in them? I put people first. If marriage is not working for people, they should be encouraged to choose their happiness over the institution. You only live once; why do you insist that people squander their precious and short lives on institutions that will leave them unhappy?
Marriage has always been economic. The notion that marriage is “romantic” was a brief capitalist blip on the radar, a snow job to convince people to part with hard-earned money on ridiculously expensive weddings, because it’s “romantic”. No, it’s not. And the fact that a lot of people are desperately casting around for a way to individualize their weddings/conformity with heterosexist capitalism shows how people really do grasp that weddings are a lot of things, but romantic is not one of them.
As more and more Americans are going into debt …marriage rates to decline.
I know that was a sub-point to the overall article but
I’d also add future birth rates, which some also use as a rough measure of how well people are doing.(that’s not assuming that marriage and babies need to go together) When my wife and I got married, she had crushing student loans from undergrad and law school. We worked our asses off paying these out, and consequently had to wait years after we wanted to have kids. None of that even takes into account the future cost of schooling, health care etc.etc. after we had the kids.
Moreover and to me, most importantly, having to wait to be somewhat financially stable, put my wife’s and child’s health at greater risk because of the age we had our children. Should a women have to risk a stroke on the birthing table because she wanted to go to school and have kids?
That’s something I’d like to hear liberals, and I’m talking about candidates for President, address.
Did you know that women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce?
I’d be curious to see if there are (a) any actual statistics to back them up and (b) if it means that women who keep their own names are more likely to divorce overall or if someone pulled this out of their ass hoping no one would check.
Ah, the lovely smell of right-wing bullshit in the air ….
As more and more Americans are going into debt …marriage rates to decline.
I know this was a sub-point to the overall article but
I’d also add future birth rates, which some also use as a rough measure of how well people are doing.(that’s not assuming that marriage and babies need to go together) When my wife and I got married, she had crushing student loans from undergrad and law school. We worked our asses off paying these out, and consequently had to wait years after we wanted to have kids. None of that even takes into account the future cost of schooling, health care etc.etc. after we had the kids.
Moreover and to me, most importantly, having to wait to be somewhat financially stable , put my wife’s and child’s health at greater risk because of the age we had our children. Should a women have to risk a stroke on the birthing table because she wanted to go to school and have kids?
That’s something I’d like to hear liberals, and I’m talking about candidates for President, address.
speaking of economics, I wanted to know what you all think of these men with their stay at home wives who come to work with a sense that they are entitled to more than the unmarried. It’s like an entitlement still in place in upper rung jobs that they are owed that sort of woman at home. And the unmarried can just be laid off or not get the money when raises come around. It’s a wierd communism that kicks in with these conservatives.
Well, initiate divorce, which women already do a lot more than men. I think the anti-feminist panic attacks over the divorce rate need to be understood in this context—if divorce was largely a male-driven thing, it wouldn’t raise concerns. I agree with the fundie nut that women initiate divorce a lot more because women are, um, insufficiently submissive. There is a rainbow of reasons for divorce, but the plurality of them seems to be women who get tired of doing most of the emotional work, child care, housework, and just generally being treated like a second class citizen in their own marriage and ending it.
Are women who keep their own names likelier to be impatient with a sexist marriage where they get the short end of the stick? I’d be gobsmacked if the answer was no.
Dana, I couldn’t make you up if I tried.
I’ve been a broke-ass asset-free college student living with two other broke-ass asset-free college students, and I spent a year engaged to one of them. And our financial situation when we were engaged was definitely not the sum of its parts.
And the important thing that you neglect in your two-can-live-as-cheaply-as-one fantasy is that by not marrying your debt-riddled partner, you can legally walk away when you feel tapped out. If you love someone who is financially self-destructive, that’s a major plus.
“Are women who keep their own names likelier to be impatient with a sexist marriage where they get the short end of the stick? I’d be gobsmacked if the answer was no.”
Yeah. You’re bucking the norm already when you don’t take your husband’s name, so it would stand to reason that women who don’t will tend to have more invested in their own individual identity vs. the wife-and-mother identity than the average. Having gone against the gradient of social pressure in that would also seem to indicate that you’d be more willing to go against it in other situations, particularly when called to make a choice between what’s best for you and what society tries to pass off as your duty as a womb-bearer.
@d
I totally hear you on the “I have a wife and kids to support and therefore should get the raises and benefits.” The most disgusting part is these are the same guys who will say, “Of course women earn less. They spend less time at work. They’re always running off to have babies.” Personally I like the idea of corporations that respect families. But I think the standard should be evenly applied to women and men.
Pussy Tourmaline wrote:
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
1) wtf does this even mean?
2) who are these losers who always gripe specifically about “american” women? are they american creeps who cant get laid & so are saving up for a mailorder bride from a 3rd world country? are they creeps from other countries that came here & cant get laid & so are looking to save up for a mailorder bride from another 3rd world country? or are they just your average asshole dreamer, addicted to asian porn or some ethnic niche where they only see a woman open her mouth to service a man & nothing else?
whatever the case, they must die.
__________________________________________
Actually, these “losers” don’t even put in the effort to get a mail order bride. There is a disturbing trend these days for men to save and expatriate to live in her country where all of sudden he is rich (due to exchange rates) and elevated to god-like status. Most disgusting and very disturbing.
Because it’s RIGHT, by God. People aren’t SUPPOSED to be happy. They’re supposed to do their bloody duty, mind their masters (in whatever form those masters take), then die. They’ll get their reward in heaven.
Why should people who are doing something WRONG (like seeking happiness) actually be happy without being punished, when those who do RIGHT, like Dana does, get no reward?
/snark
Kyso:
Well, if two can’t live quite as cheaply as one, they can live far more cheaply than two.
Actually, I did mention that:
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
“being hit on by Republican-voting asswipes who’d probably hit you up with a line like, “You know, if you did your hair and wore some make-up, you’d be pretty,”
I get this shit ALL THE TIME. Guys will literally stop me in the street with the “Smile honey. You’d be so pretty if you smiled.” or “You should let your hair down. You’d be so pretty.” That shit makes me want to punch them in the face. Where does it come from? At the very least, don’t they realize that walking in front of a woman and stopping so that she has to go around you is a threatening if not violent gesture.
@pussy tourmaline
The emphasis on *American* women always gets me too. Has there been some discussion of that on these here blogs? I’d be interested in hearing other peoples theory of why “American”.
The BEST part of the comments at Dr. Helen’s is that they all keep insisting that it’s MEN that don’t want marriage, and how much men have to lose by marriage thanks to the legal system.
So the reason that women initiate divorce more than men is why? Because men are so afraid of the legal system? The legal system that has been created and run by men in this country over the last 200 years?
“That shit makes me want to punch them in the face. Where does it come from?”
Massive sense of entitlement, desire to push someone lower on the social chain around, and belief that the alpha and omega of female existence is to be decorative?
You are obviously not a student of anthropology. Marriage until recently, in the west, has ALWAYS been an economic calculation. And usually not even an economic calculation performed by the marriage partners, but by their PARENTS.
I could provide you with a reading list, to disabuse you of your romantic notions about marriage.
And there has NEVER been a bias against sex outside of marriage - as long as it’s been only men doing it.
You do realize that we are living on top of thousands of years of partriarchy, don’t you?
Welll, I have no doubt that our slow-witted troll would swear he’s happy, which just makes his willingness to make other people unhappy even worse, because he’s gloating and not just doing the “misery loves company” maneuver.
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
That’s so beautiful. My ex’s parents married poor almost 30 years ago, and it took awhile, but his mother’s complicated propensity to run up massive amounts of credit card debt finally exceeded his father’s ability to arrange repayment in such a way as to avoid bankruptcy. That was game over for that marriage, because it is possible to love someone but not be able to live with them anymore because you simply can’t take another round.
Love does not, in fact, conquer all. If you’ve got a lot of debt and no assets, and you’re with another person who is in the same position, then you have to be careful. Student debt or credit card debt is not the same as merely having no money, or having a mortgage.
Oh, never mind. I just took a look at your right-wing libertarian web site. You are utterly clueless.
@preying mantis
of course you’re right. i knew that. i was just using this comment section to blow off some steam, as i’ve been repeatedly hit with this asswipe gesture in the past 2 weeks. sorry for using ya’ll as my vent.
Amanda wrote:
Far more romantic to live in sin? That strikes me as a rather strange comment: it’s as though you are saying that there’s an added thrill from doing something wrong, yet you’ve stated many times that you don’t think it’s wrong in the least.
As for marriage being a romance-killer, no, no way. If you live with someone, regardless of whether you are married or not, the same situations occur: dirty dishes, sick children, unexpected bills and clogged toilets. If those things are what you meant by romance-killers, then they are going to exist just as much for POSSLQs as married couples.
“With a 1500 sat I had an admissions officer laugh in my face for even inquiring about applying. ”
I take it he means on the new 2400 scale?
“Anyway, I find all American checks to be dull and mostly chinky to boot.”
Emphasis mine…VERY curious Freudian slip.
Know your troll people.
Here’s where Dana Pico is coming from - I got this from the blog:
Hey Dana, I thought you were AGAINST government telling us what to do. Why do you want the government to declare ownership of my reproductive system?
AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! I literally LAUGHED OUT LAUD!!!
Me: “But if I don’t do my hair and wear makeup, I automatically weed out all the entitled, sexist assholes who think a woman has to spend a shitload of time and money changing her appearance in order to be pretty.”
Seriously, Amanda, it’s not a big imposition if you inadvartently cause guys to come up and say this. It’s so damned fun when they walk into it that perfectly.
“i was just using this comment section to blow off some steam, as i’ve been repeatedly hit with this asswipe gesture in the past 2 weeks. sorry for using ya’ll as my vent.”
No need to apologize. The world would be a much better place if everybody recognized the douchebaggery inherent in the behavior.
There’s a number of mail order bride companies out there, and that’s basically their pitch—American women have been “ruined” by feminism/economic independence, and women from (fill in country that’s recently seen an economic collapse that sent the majority of its citizens into abject poverty) know how to treat a man. A lot of these men spend a LOT of time reading Russian mail order bride sites and fantasizing about getting a wife who has to be submissive to your abuse because you hid her green card. The “American women” rant is a sure sign that the commenter is a fan of imperialist fantasies about exploiting women’s poverty to get dominance that non-desperate women would reject.
ummm.. the rather quaint sentiment of “living in sin” does not neccessarily apply to those of us who are, above all, practical.
i, for instance, live in an urban area, i have a graduate degree and modest debt. i work three part-time jobs and my rent runs about 1050 per month. the person with whom i’m living in sin works in middle management and recently paid off his credit-card debt. we live together and we are slowly merging all aspects of our lives lives together.
essentially, marriage is something we are working toward.
sounds pretty sinful.
Far more romantic to live in sin? That strikes me as a rather strange comment: it’s as though you are saying that there’s an added thrill from doing something wrong, yet you’ve stated many times that you don’t think it’s wrong in the least.
Oh, there’s nothing wrong about making uptight pricks like yourself whiny, but it’s certainly thrilling and romantic to see morons scramble to justify their unjustifiable urge to conform brainlessly. It’s telling that you literally can’t tell the difference between “rejecting unjust authoritarian standards” and “wrong”. I would say that it would be very romantic to be a part of the anti-Nazi resistance, for instance, for roughly the same reason that it’s fun to live in sin. Would you consider being an anti-Nazi fighter “wrong” because it’s resistance to unjust cultural norms?
Dana, just for the record, there are plenty of reasons not to get married when one partner is in deep financial trouble. It frees up the partner who isn’t in trouble to buy houses wihthout having to explain why one partner won’t be on the deed or loan, have bank accounts that can’t be touched by garnishments . . . In community property states, I can’t really imagine why I’d want to get married - it seems so dangerous, even if you’re planning on being together forever.
“Hey Dana, I thought you were AGAINST government telling us what to do. Why do you want the government to declare ownership of my reproductive system?”
Dana wants the government completely out of all ECONOMIC aspects of human life.
Outside of the economic sphere, everything else is fair game. Dana feels those things are far too important to allow for individual “choice”, especially if that individual is a mere woman.
All patriarchy all the time for the Dana’s of the world…
I used to work for a guy who calculated what he was willing to pay his employees by whether they had families and how many children they had. I’m glad I don’t work for him anymore, since I’m unmarried and don’t have any children, and don’t want to have a husband or children. (I do want Amanda to save me a spot at the Disco Ball Memorial Old Spinsters’ Home, though.)
The place where I work now seems to understand that just because you don’t have a spouse and rugrats at home doesn’t mean you don’t have a use for money and/or time off, amen.
HE might well be happy, on his level.
As long as his belly’s full and his wife lies still when he requires it, he’s happy. But if we evil feminists get a few minutes with his wife, and SHE starts to see other women surviving (without having to put up with a clueless dink in order to feed their kids), that’s a direct threat to ol’ Dana’s way of life. Of course he wants us to shut up.
Those who are truly happy tend to have a “live and let live” attitude. The happily married could care less what other people do as long as they’re not hurting anyone.
We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
This is an attitude I hear alot from my parents generation. “Oh honey, you’ll never get married if you wait till you can afford it.” or “When you first buy a house it seems like so much money and then over the years it gets better.” or “I worked my way through college.” All of these attitudes ignore very basic economic realities. We’re living in a society where property values are not necessarily going to continue to grow. Where college prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation which leaves many young people just starting out with the equivalant of a house payment without the equity. A young couple who buys a house right now will very likely buy an inflated albatross that isn’t even worth half of what they put into it. Only very recently did I realize that the money I was making in the late 90’s could possibly be the most I will ever make in my life. My grandmother who came into adulthood during the depression actually understands these things.
Keith and I are poor enough to be able to say we haven’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and we are married. We love each other and we are romantic as much as two children, two (sometimes more) jobs and stress will allow.
We married for economic reasons, though. We were just as happy, just as much in love and just as romantic without the legal trappings of marriage, but we couldn’t cover each other on health insurance.
Yes, we married so Keith could put me on his health insurance.
The simple truth is that we were just as “married”, as in commitment, love, asset sharing and all the rest when we didn’t have the stupid piece of paper. It was the legal issues that forced us to get it formalized.
Oh, yes, the hypocrisy just drips from that. And not only is it indeed oddly socialist/communist for an otherwise conservative person, it’s also decidedly misplaced by income level. I’m assuming that this argument is the province of middle-to-upper-class (level?) employees, because that’s where promotions and salary negotiations tend to happen—this is not, I feel safe in saying, something that is utilized by janitors and fry cooks and other low-wage workers.
But low-wage workers are the only place that it really has validity as an argument. Certainly a person is entitled for a full-time job to pay enough to support that person’s family. But at the level that such things can be negotiated for, this is generally not an issue—the husband and father gunning for a six-figure management position is not struggling to make the rent payments and keep food on the table. He doesn’t need the damned promotion.
Every job should pay enough for a person’s basic needs to be taken care of. Every job, in an ideal world, would also sufficiently make sure its holder’s family was supported. But once that basic living wage has been provided, anything above that, you’re not entitled to. You get paid for the job, not for what you do with the money. If Mr. Joe Republican’s priorities include a stay-at-home wife to make sure all of his dealings with his kids are of the fun, sweet kind, that’s something he’s decided it’s worthwhile to spend money on, and it’s not something he deserves reimbursement for in the form of promotions and salary increases. Rather, like Ms. Jane Childfree-Liberal’s reef-diving expiditions to the Caribbean, they are the expenditures of money from the same job on the stuff the employee finds fulfilling. Paying one employee extra because of a values judgment on what it’s being spent on is the height of ridiculous.
Since no one has brought this up yet, do we agree that Dr. Helen has the compositional skills of an eighth grader?
Okay a few points:
1. Who says there is a *causal* link between declining marriage rates and increasing income inequality. This sounds more like correlation to me. Sure marriage is an economic transaction. But most of the economic benefits of marriage are now available outside of marriage (you can share space and expenses), so the increasing income inequality shouldn’t have a large impact on a couple’s decision to marry.
2. The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can.
Are you kidding me? Are you now saying that men want to marry? What happened to the conventional wisdom that women go around trapping men into marriage? What a crazy reversal.
3. well, it certainly is my experience that American women in particular are obsessed with status. I have a friend/ ex-GF
Can we all as people agree that we should not judge entire groups of people by our exes? Otherwise all men are stupid, uneducated, threatened by intelligent women, selfish in bed, expect me to clean their bathrooms, spend hours each day surfing, eat lots of bean burritos (ugh, don’t remind me), and are obsessed with breasts, oral sex and hot tubs.
Hope this doesn’t post twice. My internets are acting up.
@Interrobang
I both agree and disagree with you. I’m very much a woman with no desire to have children. But at the same time I believe that as a society we have some responsibility for healthy families. I also think that an attitude of employers making room for people with children will be better for women, as women are often the primary care-givers of children..
bahh, I’m not even making complete thoughts here. But I do think there’s some larger things to be thought about other than, “It’s not fair that I don’t get compensated as much as they do.”
Amanda wrote:
There’s a number of mail order bride companies out there, and that’s basically their pitch—American women have been “ruined” by feminism/economic independence, and women from (fill in country that’s recently seen an economic collapse that sent the majority of its citizens into abject poverty) know how to treat a man.
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The lie being fed on these mail order bride sites - American women bad, foreign women good - is reaching the mainstream population. I don’t believe they are being read by just fringe weirdos anymore. This message is morphed into social propaganda and has manifest into some recent articles including that nasty Forbes article about not marrying career women.
This propaganda not only causes social disrespect for American women. It inflates the egos of American men and puts foreign women into potentially comprimising circumstances.
American men, armed with the Internet as their guide, cheap plane tickets and a passport, now have quick and unrestricted access to millions of these poverty-sticken women. When the men return home, just how do they view their American female peers? Likely to not want to date them or worse yet, expect them to kneel at their feet?
Forbes has always been an anti-feminist publication; just look who it’s run by, for heaven’s sake. I’m afraid the “American women bad, foreign women good” thing isn’t new either. Back when the US troops came home from WWII, American women were constantly told how wonderfully submissive the Axis women were, how “they even scrubbed our backs for us.” All part of dragging the US gals back to home and hearth, boys.
@Kyra
Thanks so much for your point that this is primarily an upper to upper-middle class concern. You’re absolutely right.
I really disagree that my employer should have the right to decide who’s personal choices are more important and should be factored into bonuses, time off, etc. I had a coworker say to me that people with children should get priority for time off during the Summer because that’s when the kids are out of school I’m sorry, but that is some first-class, grade A donkey shit. So let’s say I need time off to take care of an ailing parent. Who gets priority there?
Let the benefits/perks/pay be decided on merit and performance. I believe in flexibility of hours and location for everyone, whatever their needs maybe. But to say men and women who have kids should get priority consideration over everyone else for their personal choice is all kinds of wrong to me.
Blue Jean wrote:
I’m afraid the “American women bad, foreign women good” thing isn’t new either. Back when the US troops came home from WWII, American women were constantly told how wonderfully submissive the Axis women were, how “they even scrubbed our backs for us.” All part of dragging the US gals back to home and hearth, boys.
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Interesting history. But this time around I does not seem like the men are interested in dragging the US gals back to the home. The foreign woman is the goal - to have a foreign girlfriend or wife is the new status symbol. Its suddenly cool and the Internet and those international dating websites are certainly a contributing factor. Throw in the MRA sites and the mainstream press discussing scary (for men) divorce settlements and you have a formula for a potentially major social shift in US male mating patterns. The men can “Buy A Girl Like That” (title of this thread) but she may not speak English.
I was in Panama this past summer. It was shocking to see the number of American (and German) men staying for extended periods and living with their girlfriends. Some even had children. These men earn American money for most of the year but keep a residence and raise a family in Panama. Just 5 years ago, I did not see any of this in Panama.
@Shasta MacNasty
That very much feels like the same sort of libretarian meritocracy attitude that came out during the schip debate. Remember? “How dare that woman *choose* to have a baby, when she had no health insurance?” Of course you should get time off to care for a sick parent. I’m proposing employers should make more room for their employees personal lives across the board.
What you describe isn’t new. It’s THE defacto standard of male-female relationships for the past thousand years - men have the money, they’ll share it with women in exchange for sex.
The only difference in the situation you describe is that in some parts of the world, women have their own money, and men have to look farther afield for women to exploit.
Our goal as feminists is to create a world in which no women are expoited.
The goal of MRA is to increase the number of exploitable women. This is also Dr. Helen’s goal - she advises American women to adopt an exploit-me mindset in spite of our relative economic power.
Many more feminists are needed to spread the word and create a world in which no women are exploited. Although the number of women who are feminist is increasing in the West, it seems that the number of non-feminist women is increasing globally. In addition, it will more difficult to spread feminism (Western style feminism) abroad if more of our male peers are off supporting and propagating their desired breed of women.
Does “Dr” Helen have ANY posters/trolls who go against the tide over there? (I’ll not sully my monitor, I’ve done my time.)
women who don’t take their husband’s names are more likely to initiate divorce
In addition to the psychological reasons other people mentioned, there may be an economic aspect to this (if it’s true, that is): Among the people I know, the most common reason expressed by women who didn’t take their husband’s name is that they have established some kind of professional reputation, and they didn’t want to lose the credentials they had gained under their maiden names.
If that’s also common outside of the artistic and academic fields, then the women who didn’t take their husband’s name had some kind of job or economic independence when they got married, which would certainly increase the likelihood of them initiating a divorce.
What makes you think it seems so?
Desired “breed” of women?
Unless they manage to change the laws of the countries in which they reproduce, the children of those sex imperialists will be their heirs. Once their daughters start inheriting that sweet American wealth, bet your ass they’re going to want personal independence. Maybe a chance to go to college in the US.
There goes that plan for a dependent female zombie sex-slave empire.
Hee. Riffing off the “foreign mail-brides” bit, I have to say I’m always highly amused when I run into some dingbat who raves on and on about “submissive Oriental women.” A stereotype which could only be dreamed up by someone who has never seen how those societies really work. (Or talked to any “Oriental woman”, for that matter.)
i love how the good dr can just make shit up, i mean, she reads an article that has some pretty good explanations of why people don’t date, low self esteem, shyness, lack of opportunity, and she goes “eff that, you can take your research and shove it cos I KNOW THE TRUTH and the truth is men arent marrying cos american women are teh bitchez”
the woman is obviously unhinged.
frankly, i wish i lived somewhere with these wonderful declining marriage rates, i live in a rural/outer-suburban area in the midwest and pretty much everyone i went to highschool with, outside of my crowd of quirky art kids and LGBT kids, is already married with children, and when i see them around they all look downright miserable. i’m 26 and i can’t imagine being a wife or mother right now, i mean, who the hell can decide at 20 who theyre going to be at 80, and then plan their entire life accordingly.
Very nice indeed to see Shasta MacNasty back and kicking, very nice indeed.
The question that I’d have for you, Shaz, is this: at what point does a setup like the one that you posit become a punitive system towards parents? Your suggestion, taken to its logical outcome, has been tried: it was part of the glass ceiling, as women took time off to raise children and men did not. Moreover, since patriarchal structures are very egalitarian when it comes to keeping people down, business used to extend (free of charge!) this ceiling over women who didn’t have and wouldn’t have kids.
This dingbat never mentioned submissiveness. What goes on between a man and woman in their household is their business (excepting abuse). My concern is how the desire and attainment of foreign women as a backlash against American women will (or has) affected the feminist paradigm of equality between the sexes in the US. International dating sites (aka mail order bride sites) have an impact by opening up channels of commincation between US men and the foreign women they seek to date and perhaps establish families with.
One thing that I notice about the MRAs: the increasing tendency to use recent British divorce examples about why North American men should not get married. This is more than a bit paranoid. The highest British court has recently come down with some two very odd divorce decisions which, in one case, make great headway in ensuring that longterm contributory partners can’t be tossed aside, (a LONG overdue holding) and, in the other case, treat short-term non-contributory trophy spouses to a lottery win from the marriage, (a retrograde holding dressed up in pseudo-feminist finery). While it is the latter which should be disturbing to MRAs and feminists alike, it is more interesting and not unexpected that the MRAs see both as troublesome.
The last time I checked, however, decisions from the House of Lords, whether brilliant or stupid, ceased to be binding on American jurisdictions in 1776.
Regarding that one British case, lawyers for both sides commented:
The female lawyer who won the ruling for the wife-
“The ruling will serve as a deterrent to marriage. But prenuptial agreements will provide a good degree of protection — and I predict it will not be long before they are made binding. It’s not if, it’s when.”
The male lawyer who lost for the husband-
“It will have the effect of discouraging successful guys from getting married at all. You get these young women, in their thirties, the body clock starts ticking, and they are looking for someone to have their babies — then the marriage breaks up after a short while. I am already advising these kinds of men that they would be better off not marrying.”
Failing that, he would urge prenuptial agreements. “My advice is: 1, don’t marry; 2, if you do make sure your other half is as wealthy as you are and 3, do a prenuptial agreement and keep your fingers crossed.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2196058,00.html
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Maybe now an IMBRA for Britain should be passed to slow down the potential exodus of blokes seeking to establish families with women in Eastern Europe and South America.
regarding Lindsay’s original point .
Republican policies that have [1] let the top 1% of incomes gather an ever larger share of all the income there is to be had and [2] made sure via spending for useless war instead of domestic needs and infrastructure that the lowering tide of US prosperity is leaving more and more working households to run aground.
That is not new or news. And it is also why marriage rates among the growing poorer class [yes, they that fell out of the middle class and those with no hope of joining it] can’t afford marriage.
Your sentence makes sense only if there is an underlying assumption that the partners’ relationship is not permanent…
And that would be quite a realistic assumption given current divorce rates, no? Why should people who aren’t yet married commit themselves to bolstering the institution and illusion of life-long marriage?
Let’s say a person who already has children to support has a boy- or girlfriend who is in some financial trouble. What is more important in this case, getting married to show how committed you are to a permanent relationship, or protecting your ability to care for the children? What Would Dana Do?
The British divorce article states right up front
“Family lawyers said that wealthy young men and women would be better off not marrying at all after Britain’s highest court ruled that a wife may be entitled to half the assets created during even a short marriage.”
Unfortuntely, American MRA’s see this and go ballistic. Seems that British papers are a bit direct. Maybe that is why the MRA’s look to Britain to justify their causes.
Dana is, as usual, ignorant of even the simplest things, and furthers this by trying vainly to find some sort of contradiction in Amanda’s statements, like a low-class, low-rent, low-intelligence Phoenix Wright.
But remember, conservatives have more class.
And there’s the rub. British courts have traditionally had a near-fetishistic respect for contracts except for domestic contracts, which have been condescendingly treated as if they were the silly scribbles of children. There must be either judicial or legislative movement in the UK to allowing people to plan their domestic affairs.We were both poor when we married 28 years, 6 months and 28 days ago, and it really was a marriage for love. It took a while, but we finally stopped being poor.
And how much debt were you in when you got married? The median student debt upon graduating college these days is $17,120,and it keeps going up. That’s strictly tuition/housing, no car or credit card debt run up during those years.
Half of the assets created during a marriage does not mean half of everything one spouse owns prior to the marriage.
If you own a house, for instance, before you marry, the spouse is entitled not to half the value of the house but half of any increase in value of the house measured from the date of the marriage to the date of the divorce.
Prenups are a good idea that have been dismissed as “unromantic.”
Jaffe, iirc from my reading at the time of the decision, the problem re the short term marriage was that it gave the wife a very large share of all the husband’s assets, hence my lottery analogy; it’s why the decision freaked out so many people. “Half of assets gained during the marriage” would be quite in keeping with fair distribution schemes in many jurisdictions (Canada and California, for example).Correct, regarding half the assets. However, when most people read stuff like this, they tend to react and assume the worst. They go off all kneejerk and start taking trips overseas to find “better” or “less greedy” women. The men do, that is. The preception of the divorce industry is very negative and get moresee each year. I don’t know how it could be made better and it seems that the men who are now landing in Manila, Bankok, Rio, Kiev are not waiting around to find out.
“its why the decision freaked out so many people”
I suppose you mean it freaked out many men. This is the crux of the problem. For feminism to really succeed at home and globally, men need to be on board. Especially men in the West and the US. I am not talking about MRA’s - just the average guy. That guy - your co-worker, boss, assistant, your neighbor, and maybe one day your husband. If they are not brought into the fold, they will remain single, go into isolation or get on a plane and leave. They will continue to join mail order bride sites in droves. They will leave American women to themselves and maybe that is fine for some women. But not all.
Amanda wrote:
I had no idea that any objections I might have to whatever your living arrangements are would make your life more romantic; that is far, far more influence than I ever thought I had!
For some reason I am reminded of campus life in the early 1970s, when it was a badge of non-conformity and rebellion for men to wear their hair longer — and almost all of the men on campus conformed to that standard of non-conformity and rebellion.
Wish I had the link to an article by a writer who took one of those Mail Order Bride trips to the Ukraine: he wasn’t looking, but recording the real deal.
And to a man, his companions on the trip were either social retards or nasty bastards.
Not normal men frightened of the divorce penalty: off-putting idiots and totally nasty bastards who would seem to have earned whatever rejections they’d received from “American” women.
The mail-order company arranged events with local Ukranian women that spelled out the cash exchange basis of any relationships.
Some young women stopped by the events for the food and drink,or to win cash prizes, and then had enough self-esteem to leave before the uglies could test the merchandise.
And the men were furious! furious! that the young and beautiful should have free will in the matter of being bought by the old, ugly and nasty.
Jaffee, I wouldn’t narrow it that way. Amongst other things, feminist thought opposes the notion that retrograde social compulsions should provide disproportionate benefits to one gender which has, almost entirely to this point, been men. It is at its heart a progressive and egalitarian doctrine which is why many men are already feminists. I personally don’t see any rationale for impliedly blaming feminism for dumbass unfairness going the other way, especially in a decision like the British short-term-marriage case. This is especially so given that the decision in question was just traditional old patriarchal “reward for the pretty pussy putting out!” nonsense made all the more foul by being dressed up in modern phraseology.
“For some reason I am reminded of campus life in the early 1970s, when it was a badge of non-conformity and rebellion for men to wear their hair longer — and almost all of the men on campus conformed to that standard of non-conformity and rebellion.”
Shorter Dana: “Ha! Those idiots wanted to be ‘different’ and they all ended up being the same! Dolts!”
…unless what they were rebelling against, and refusing to conform to, wasn’t the environment on campus - but the suit-wearing automatons who blindly supported the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, and the mindless military-industrial complex behind them both.
But to Dana, they were all DFH’s and therefore easily ignored. Dana was probably thrilled when he heard about Kent State…
This is a great thread, overall, with a lot of attention to the really interesting political and economic issues underlying “romance” and “marriage.” But I’m puzzled by Jaffe’s concern that there is a serious drain of non-marrying males to other countries. Why is that serious? Because there won’t be enough “real” american men for “real” american women? Because feminism in the US depends on biological replication and not social replication? Because we can presume that just because these american men married foreign wives that their marriages, inheritance and divorce laws are also (somehow) foreign? The problem that mail order grooms are having is that the wives *gain all the rights* of american citizens eventually including the right to divorce and to support for themselves and their children. To the extent that they can’t work to support themselves (like the evil feminist women rejected by their husbands) this is a short lived victory for the patriarchy.
And what are the numbers really like anyway? American society is and always has been one in which women marry up, socially, if they could. That has *always* left men at the bottom of the heap with fewer choices of wives and they have *always* gone outside their own location–importing foreign brides of their own culture? marrying or common law living with women from another minority? *never* marrying. At the upper end of the social scale the same problem manifests itself for the daughters of the highest class–they have had to marry out or remain celibate if no suitable mates can be found for them.
And yet we roll merrily along. I dont think we need to worry about the semen drain to russia or whatever other fantasy-bride-location the MRA’s are touting. Its no loss to the rest of us if these losers, unable to achieve an erection with a woman of their own society and class, have to pay for a bride. They pretty much have always had that opportunity. There’s nothing new under the sun.
aimai
I think that aimai wins best line of the day with “semen drain to russia”.
Not really, Dana. I’m mostly horsing around. But my point is that the entire attempt to make “conforming to stifling social norms” romantic is silly; everyone knows that it’s more romantic to be rebellious and think for yourself, instead of show automatic fidelity to oppressive social institutions. Which is a different thing than “doing right”—people like yourself who conflate what’s right with oppressive social norms are the ones who find themselves turning the hoses and dogs on people for resisting racial oppression, etc.
But yeah, I do what I want because I want to. It’s just the fancy sprinkles on the cupcake to know that my ability to think for myself bothers assholes like yourself to the point that you hang out at this blog non-stop, obsessing over this phenomenon of people who don’t get that it’s so much easier to just flip the brain off and do as you’re told. But yeah, as good sense about things like racial justice and feminism become the social norms, the pleasure of rebellion recedes. But what’s left behind is the pleasure of still doing what’s right because it’s right, not because some appointed authority told you to do it and quit asking troubling questions. I realize that all that’s waaaaaaaaay above your head; you have my pity.
And do you count yourself among the feminist men, Jaffe? Or are you the one who’s “hopping on board”?
Since you’re on this site, I’m guessing the former. But the idea that “if you gals don’t submit and give men all the control over the money, then we’ll just hop a plane to find more pliable women!” sounds like a slightly more mature version of Jr’s old threat “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m gonna hold my breath ’till my face turns blue!”
Of course, somebody inevitably calls Jr.’s bluff, so he holds his breath, his face turns blue, he passes out, breathes again, and wakes up with a headache. I suspect that most of the guys who say they’re going abroad to look for a zombie sex slave either a) never do it, or b) do it, and find (surprise! surprise!) very, very few women are desparate enough to put up with a self centered jerk, no matter how “foreign” said women are.
When my folks tried to get me to eat cauliflower by saying there were starving children in (fill in the blank nation), I always said “Fine. Pack it up and send the cauliflower to them. I bet they won’t eat it either.” If the sexist pigs want to jump on board to find submissive women somewhere else, that’s fine by me. Just don’t be hurt when the “submissive foreign” woman rejects you as well.
Dana:
Thank you, Dana, for confirming my suspicion that you’re not even smart enough to know when you’re being made fun of.
Actually, I think I’ve said this to you at least once before.
Now “Midnight Train to Georgia” is in my head.
I agree it doesn’t matter much. I saw a documentary about some control-freak American guy who got a Russian bride and brought her home. You could tell she was just WAITING for the time to be up so she could divorce him and take off. Her whole demeanor and body language were expressing, “Oh, GOD, sit still, you have to let him touch you, smile, smile, oh, UGH.”
Of course, he was clueless. He had the nerve to criticize her for being too tall.
All that will happen is these idiots will lose even more money supporting dependent women until they get a degree and bail out–then they’ll get to pay spousal support for a while because their wives didn’t work. Their misogyny will be further reinforced, because of course if a woman leaves it’s not because the guy’s a creep or anything but because wimmen are bitchez.
Oh, I so want to see these he-man-woman-haters marry Eastern European and Russian women and bring them to America. Every last one of them. It can’t happen fast enough for me.
They think American women gain weight after marriage? Wait until they bring a woman who has been starving most of her life AND likely has a genetic tendency to gain serious poundage (hello? remember your Aunt Dorothy?) and let her loose on even small portions of American food. They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
They think American women win lots of alimony? Well, no, not really, because most of them work during the marriage (those eeeeevil feminists!) and thus aren’t normally awarded alimony much anymore. But a girl who has never had a paying job AND was whisked from her homeland, suing him for divorce? BOOM! You’ll be driving a cab after hours for the rest of your unnatural life, sucka.
They think American women are out to screw them? Oh no, it’s just not possible that your darling Tatiana was only pretending to be sweet and submissive so she could get a green card out of you. Never happens. Never. Hahahahaha. Oh, and also…hahahahaha.
My only hope is that these women are also carrying video phones while all this is going on. This shit needs to be YouTubed big time.
I disagree with the folks that think that employers who pay their employees with children and wife at home more is just a problem of the rich. If you are a line employee at Walmart or the burger place, it’s likely you’ll see promotions based on who has a wife and kids to support, passing over extraordinary single females.
Once females get out of the ghetto jobs or the entry level jobs or the “mascot wacky design” jobs (that are low paid), in fields with men competing for the same job- like high technology and software development, it’s not funny anymore and you find all the creepy crawly sexism coming to the fore.
It is not alright to give pay and promotions outside of merit.
But in my situation, it is in high technology on the tech side. Women are few and far between on the upper level. I would say that I am “entry-level” on the upper level. There are a large number of libertarians and conservatives.
I was making a connection between the weeping for men who can’t find a decent, low priced woman and the “family picture thrusting” of men who have wives at home and the expectation that in the “boy’s club” that bitching about the wife at home, being weary about the wife at home, will get you the raises and promotions. And they surely do in many cases. There’s an implied argument that you can’t lay Bob off, because he has a wife and kids to support. He needs the money. A strange sort of conservative socialism kicks in and these are the same people who applaud Bush for not supporting extensions of child medical care.
You can’t destroy his life by not giving him the bonus and the raise, the connection I’m making here is the same entitlement as the pitiful man who can’t afford a proper display wife who stays at home. They feel a man is owed this, especially the higher you go.
I’m reminded of a story a friend told me. He said when he was in Bosnia he met a bunch of girls who were laughing at him because he was from America. They told him that one of their girlfriends had just married an American soldier thinking she was going to be rich and have a big house in America. But then when she got to his hometown in Alabama she was like, “Oh shit, what have I done?! This place is a hell hole.” The funniest part is when the giggling girls asked him if it was true that you couldn’t buy wine in America.
These mail-order-bride fans need to be referred again to BigBadChineseMama.com.
Mrs Nice Guy
Now there’s another sense of entitlement. They honestly think they’re so special that someone would spend all of their precious little time scheming against them. Really?! We evil American women and feminists spend every waking moment down in our lairs–overrun by cats– wringing our hands, and conspiring against the American male…really?! Pfft! Everybody knows we’re far too busy planning our next Abortion-Party-Rave. Duh! They flatter themselves.
I am really confused. I don’t want to click the link, but are they arguing that marriage rates are declining because American women are shallow bitches who refuse to marry poor men?
Or that marriage rates are declining because American women are shallow bitches so men refuse to marry them?
It sorta sounds like they are trying to argue both, at the same time. Which is hilarious. You’d think they’d try to be a bit less transparent.
I disagree with the folks that think that employers who pay their employees with children and wife at home more is just a problem of the rich. If you are a line employee at Walmart or the burger place, it’s likely you’ll see promotions based on who has a wife and kids to support, passing over extraordinary single females.
Once females get out of the ghetto jobs or the entry level jobs or the “mascot wacky design” jobs (that are low paid), in fields with men competing for the same job- like high technology and software development, it’s not funny anymore and you find all the creepy crawly sexism coming to the fore.
It is not alright to give pay and promotions outside of merit.
But in my situation, it is in high technology on the tech side. Women are few and far between on the upper level. I would say that I am “entry-level” on the upper level. There are a large number of libertarians and conservatives.
I was making a connection between the weeping for men who can’t find a decent, low priced woman and the “family picture thrusting” of men who have wives at home and the expectation that in the “boy’s club” that bitching about the wife at home, being weary about the wife at home, will get you the raises and promotions. And they surely do in many cases. There’s an implied argument that you can’t lay Bob off, because he has a wife and kids to support. He needs the money. A strange sort of conservative socialism kicks in and these are the same people who applaud Bush for not supporting extensions of child medical care.
You can’t destroy his life by not giving him the bonus and the raise, the connection I’m making here is the same entitlement as the pitiful man who can’t afford a proper display wife who stays at home.
Cara, it’s why the MRAs are all up in arms about the new laws allowing women that have been sex trafficked into the U.S. to have special visas instead of getting deported. Mail order brides are properly considered sex trafficked, at least if they are subject to domestic violence from their new husbands. You beat your mail order bride, or steal her passport so she can’t escape, or deny her the right to seek outside activities or abuse her in some other way, she now has a right to get a special visa and doesn’t have to wait for her citizenship process to be complete in order to file for divorce. It’s a very good thing; now you don’t have to wait years, just until he hits you.
heh, my husband was a dishwasher in KFC when I married him. Yeah, all women are gold-diggers, right.
But even those who are, who can blame them? When it’s that much harder to be promoted to high-paying positions, the obvious alternative is to marry a man already in one and thereby reap the same benefits. When a man has his eye on a promotion, he’s showing drive. When a woman does, she’s a gold-digging slut.
COOL.
Well, not being hit, but if she can bail out if he’s a control freak that’s absolutely ideal.
Dana, you’ll find that most people are who decide to lay aside “cultural norms” when it comes to marriage do so not because they have a desire to “rebel” but because they realize that following those norms will make them unhappy. Look, I want to be married as much as the next guy (poor and all, as I was when some opportunities arose), but what stopped me was not a desire to conform to my peers by discarding culture norms, but rather because I realized that getting married wasn’t going to make me happy at the time with the people whom I could have married.
And, as unpopular as it may be to articulate this particular fact, it is true that financial stress and strains that could crop up in a marriage can cause unhappiness.
It is interesting that your explanation for the incentives to marry that existed in the past were not specific benefits of marriage, but rather punishments that existed for being single. You want more people to get married? Think: more carrot, less stick.
The second that we mention mail order brides, of course, the moderation queue fills up with a bunch of obsessive nutters who apparently have *nothing* better to do than troll around the internet pretending that the fact that they have to pay someone desperately poor to have sex with them, much less marry them is actually a sign of female desperation. A sample rant that’s not being allowed through:
In short: I the MRA have to pay women to have sex with me. This proves that I’m actually very desireable and you all want me and are just angry that you can’t have me. I can tell women are desperate to have me, because why else would they refuse to have anything to do with me without cash up front?
I suppose if you have to pay women to pretend they find you acceptable as sex partners, you have to spend a lot of time trying to get your ego back by running around bashing women. I mean, they call it “compensation” for a reason, do they not?
Well, not being hit, but if she can bail out if he’s a control freak that’s absolutely ideal.
Well, there’s also the prevention aspects of the IMBRA that our non-moderated friend above disapproves of. Basically, the law says that marriage brokers have to provide potential brides with the criminal records of the potential grooms—i.e., they have to disclose his domestic violence past. The MRAs really don’t like this, an attitude you pretty much would only have if you’re a wife-beater who wants your next wife to enter the marriage unaware. Considering that domestic violence is a) common and b) one of the big denialist hobbyhorses of the “men’s rights movement”, it becomes hard to avoid guessing that a majority, probably a vast majority, of men who are attracted to the movement are abusers who are very angry that radical feminism has shone a light onto their ugly little secret and made it that much harder to control a woman through abuse and violence in peace. Which puts a pallor over the laughter at them for idealizing a “submissive” foreign woman, since that means, for many if not most of them, a woman who takes her beatings without calling the police or fussing. Which is probably true to a large extent if said women are afraid of being deported if they seek help.
Domestic violence enablers and promoters—that’s who Dr. Helen is cozying up to.
He doesn’t get that we’re “bitching” on the other women’s behalf, because we feel so bad for them and believe having to fuck these guys amounts to a civil rights violation.
What a maroon.
Oh, and I absolutely agree that the MRA’s are big on whining about “false” accusations of abuse. It’s their big (”Judges listen to women and children now, can you believe that shit?”) issue.
I think foreign men certainly deserve to know the violent histories of the American golddigers who are interested in them. Don’t you agree?
This is so beautiful. I love so many things about it, particularly that he thinks that people here are going to disagree that this rule should be applied to both genders. Project much?
And also, that he is talking about mail order brides and he thinks the gold diggers are American women.* Like, hi, guy, America is still a rich country, your “real” women come from poor countries; what direction do you think the gold digging is most likely to go in? If he keeps his head in the sand this way then reality is seriously going to kick his ass.
*Not that I agree with using “gold digger” as a pejorative. People do what they have to do when they don’t have access to any other source of income.
I didn’t realize Fabio had to approve every marriage between an American and a foreigner. That is beyond The Pale.
BTW, all that information these guys have to provide is pretty much the standard for anyone who wants a job in a school. I’ve had to fill all that stuff out just to be a subcontractor in a school.
Why is “Dr.” Helen (there’s real doctorates, then there’s “real” doctorates) upset about this anyway? “Lack of desire for marriage” is surely just an example of the market governing behaviour, and I’m sure she’s in favor of market solutions generally.
Why the HELL is she such an enabler of bad male behaviour?
Note her response to someone suggesting girls have ambition:
Apparently, encouraging women & girls ist Teh Bad.
Hang on, boys are told they’re scum and they turn to video games who don’t let them down? I always played video games with my GFs. Mrs. F and I have so far resisted buying a Wii because we know we would never leave the house again.
Wow. Just wow. I mean, this thread has been one of the best.
I spend every summer in an exotic foreign country and I meet a lot more American women who come there for sex with local men than I meet American men looking for submissive brides. The women are a very specific demographic: 35-45, bachelor’s degrees, decent if not upwardly mobile jobs, restless personalities. I meet a lot of them due to the specifics of my job and the fac that I speak both local languages fluently, so I get to hear their stories.
Almost to a person, they’re looking for a man who’s a MAN, who will be very much the aggressor romantically and sexually — this happens to turn their particular crank. Then they get to fly back across the ocean and never see the guy again, tho of course he always wants to return with her and marry her — she finds this risible. If she talks about this part of the story, the reason she’s come so far is that most of the American men she knows are educated and tend to be gentle, not wanting to come on too strong for fear of fulfilling stereotypes about loser men.
I would be interested in seeing Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfessor address this issue, but I can’t bear to visit her blog for fear of feeling polluted for the rest of the week. But Big Bad Chinese Mama was awfully entertaining.
Yes, according to Dr. Helen, the massive success of Halo 3 was all because feminists are teaching men to hate themselves! The whole “it’s fun” thing is just kind of an addendum. Ditto for World of Warcraft.
The “golddigger” stuff is particularly rich coming from MRAs who prattle about sociobiology: if you buy pop evo-psych, then a woman can no more cast aside her interest in a man’s wallet than a man can stop being interested in boobies.
And it is funny (in a grim sort of way) to see how angry they get when you point out that Miss Foreign Cutie may not just be interested in their manly good looks. Hello, in traditional cultures, women’s status comes from her husband, therefore a rich guy with a prestigious job is high on the list. Yet they are incensed at the notion that the woman they marry expects something other than the honor of sucking his cock and doing his laundry.
“When our “modern” culture removed the bias against sex outside of marriage, ceased seeing illegitimacy as something to be avoided, and removed any strong assumption of permanenc from marriage, what was left but the economic calculation?”
The idea that marriage is purely economic is not new. Way back in the 1850s Karl Marx wrote “The difference between a wife and a prostitute is that the one sells herself wholesale, while the other sells herself retail.” One can disagree with Marx while still seeing that the argument Marcotte is making has been around for a long time.
“Your sentence makes sense only if there is an underlying assumption that the partners’ relationship is not permanent, and that one can bail out, leaving the other to cope with the debt he incurred.”
You’ve quoted Marcotte, but the quote you choose can be read as being descriptive, rather than normative. Certainly, I’d be happy to argue that point as purely descriptive. That is, you don’t have to read the statement as saying “This is the way things should be”, you can instead read it as “This is the way things are.”
Carter and Glick, in their 1970 study on marriage and divorce, point out that men’s wages is the single strongest predictor of the marriage rate. This was in an era before women had joined the labor force to the degree to which they now have. Historically, years when men’s wages go up are also years when the marriage rate goes up, and years when men’s wages go down, are also years when the marriage rate goes down.
This (the point made by Carter and Glick) is a descriptive statement, not a normative one. They weren’t saying “This is the way things should be”, they were saying “This is the way things are.” However, you could also argue that there are rational reasons why people should postpone marriage if their wages are down. So I think, in this case, it would be wise to argue from the descriptive to the normative.
I really live in a liberal echo chamber. I hadn’t heard any of this anti-IMBRA sentiment until I read that crap message Amanda posted. So I did a little google search. OMG those guys are nasty. I even read one guy who claimed that domestic violence should be a “states rights” issue.
It was disgusting. I’ve decided to go back to my echo chamber and stay there or I’ll start being afraid to leave the house.
Thank you Amanda for reading the moderation queue so we don’t have to. Truly a tremendous service you do for your readers.
“Half of the assets created during a marriage does not mean half of everything one spouse owns prior to the marriage.”
I didn’t know that. Is that true in all US states or just a few?
Amanda,
I know I am not posting from the most enlightened spot on the planet. That being said you might be happier if you moved out of Texas and the South.
It sounds like the ratio of “a**hole redneck, MRA, and Nice Guy(tm)” is pretty high down there.
I am not saying they do not exist everywhere it just sounds like the ratio is a tad high down there.
Amanda - do you ever feel the urge to visit LUSH to buy some Ocean Salt to scrub yourself after reading your moderation queue? Sheesharoonie. That message is a piece of work.
Speaking of history, do you know who I’m reminded of reading this thread? William Collins. That’s right, Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice was probably the ORIGINAL Nice Guy ™. But the Collinses of today can’t get a Charlotte Lucas with no other options in the US, so they have to go overseas to where the local economy is bad. And then, watch Charlotte take a powder once she gets her green card.
IMBRA got the MRA’s Jockeys in a wad precisely because they have something to fear from it. I read that Harper’s article (that a poster upthread was referencing when s/he talked about the utter creeps who sought MOB’s); it’s surprising more MOB’s haven’t suffered the fate of Anastasia King.
Incidentally, I’ve known several American women who have married European (usually British, Scandinavian or German) men - thus proving we’re not the pariahs MRA’s like to think we are.
The ones I’ve known have either been consultants or their husbands were consultants and met through travel, or they met online via another interest (gaming, food, Harry Potter). I mention this because this talk of American men “having other options” thanks to the Internet, etc. really goes both ways. Teh wimminz have passports and internet connections, too.
Oh, Dave, Austin is full of great guys. Despite all the talk of my unmarried status, I’m actually blissfully partnered—because my man is not my husband doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. He has a blog and everything! Austin is a really good town for single women—maybe even better than San Fran or NYC or any blue state haven. I write about this stuff because it resonates, which makes me suspect that it’s not a Texas problem, but a life-as-a-woman problem. A lot of women think their problems are personal, not just a fact of being a woman, so maybe they don’t talk about this stuff much because they think it’s them. But thanks to consciousness raising on the blogs, you learn that it’s not a personal problem, but there really are a lot of assholes out there.
Lawrence, divorce laws vary state to state. Texas has no alimony, but I know they define “communal property” very broadly. We also have common law marriage that’s so widely defined you can be married and not want to be in some circumstances, just by living together and collecting enough communal property over time. I’ve known people who never legally married, but when they started to squabble over assets after a break-up, had to get divorced.
If you girls want to meet a Canadian man or have the hots for Italian, French, etc. guys, YOU will have to provide a record of ALL your criminal arrests (including drug abuse, DUIs, prostitution arrests, child abuse, welfare fraud, etc.) as well as every where you have lived since the age of 18
What the hell does it say about this guy that he thinks such information would give us pause? The majority of people DON’T have an arrest record peppered with misdemeanors and low-level felonies and can see where someone traveling to a new land to marry a near-stranger deserves this kind of information, especially if a third party is profiting from the trafficking. We can’t just let people get rich selling uninformed women to convicted wife beaters.
Actually, for a friend of mine, the “everywhere you’ve lived since you where 18″ bit was kind of a pain in the ass, because she moved so much during college, but it was hardly insurmountable. But sure, any exotic foreign guy who is lucky enough to be othered by me and taken on that magical journey to citizenship deserves to know if I am a heroin-trafficking prostitute child abusing welfare fraud.
MRAs don’t really think American women *are* pariahs. They just have this fantasy that if they can spread the MRA gospel, all American men will marry hot little submissive foreign girls and THEN THOSE BITCHES WILL BE SORRY!
They actually do not grasp the fact that “I don’t want to have sex with you!” is met with a big yawn, rather than a panicked rush to stock up on boob jobs and copies of How to Submit to Your Man.
It would be funny, except for the number of foreign women who are victims of domestic violence and murder when they turn out not to be quite the obedient little Cherry Blossoms that their MRA buyers fantasized.
Texas has no alimony, but I know they define “communal property” very broadly. We also have common law marriage that’s so widely defined you can be married and not want to be in some circumstances, just by living together and collecting enough communal property over time. I’ve known people who never legally married, but when they started to squabble over assets after a break-up, had to get divorced.
Um. Not to digress, but common-law marriage has specific requirements, and living together may or may not give you rights you want. Anyone thinking of just shackin’ up and expecting or not expecting to be obligated thereby ought to go talk to a Texas family lawyer. In the middle of a crisis is not the time to find out things like “What do you mean, I’m not considered ‘family’ and his crazy stepfather is?!” or “The HELL you say he gets half of my bank account?!”
I don’t think that common law marriage is a good thing, necessarily. Honestly, the only time I’ve ever heard of it even coming up is if a judge decides it’s an easier way to handle a contentious break-up that involved a lot of intertwined responsibility and property. Thus, by definition it’s almost always going to feel like you’re getting the screws—I wasn’t trying to imply otherwise. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone speak positively about the flexibility of the common law marriage laws in Texas, because it’s almost always a fucked up thing when they come into play.
I don’t know why the sarcastic “Um”. I’m trying to figure out where I said, “Common law marriage is great! Everyone should do it!” From everything I understand, the law’s a throwback.
From the Bar Exam review:
Three elements must be present to form a common law marriage in Texas: (1) you must have “agreed to be married; (2) you must have “held yourselves out” as husband and wife. You must have represented to others that you were married to each other. As an example of this, you may have introduced you partner socially as “my husband,” or you may have filed a joint income tax return; (3) you must have lived together in this state as husband and wife.
Most people do #3 and maybe #1, but #2 is a rarity.
“I don’t know why the sarcastic “Um”. I’m trying to figure out where I said, “Common law marriage is great! Everyone should do it!” From everything I understand, the law’s a throwback.”
It probably is a throwback at this point. In regions controlled by the British monarchy, common law marriage functioned as relief for the poor during the period that that the English government decided to make marriage licenses expensive (1660 till the late 1700s). During that period, a marriage license became a status symbol for the middle and upper classes, and it was outside the price range of the vast majority of the population.
texas has no automatic alimony, but people still get it according to individual judgment
i think that just like free agency doesn’t ruin sports, if women want to hook up with a guy for money, so be it. i do think that whatever anna nicole types can get, more power to them. the msn agreed to it, and if marriage is what he agreed to and they live in a community property state where thay have to half everything…so be it. if you don’t like that deal, and don’t want to part with any of your property…live together, date.
if a woman is a golddigger and the man falls for it, he needs to deal with the disappointment and move on.
Anyone can be fooled, I’ve been fooled, but if you shop in a mail order bride catalog ya could be in for it. Just a hint. I wouldn’t even buy a car on ebay.
Live by the sword and die by the sword. If you are hung up on the materiality of getting a pretty, slim, young thing be prepared for greed to face you in exchange for not being a hot thing yourself.
I don’t know why the sarcastic “Um”.
Probably because it wasn’t sarcastic. I don’t know why you thought so, or why you assumed I was jumping down your throat about common-law marriage. The post was meant to be a footnote: hey, if you’re concerned or thinking about doing this, be sure to talk to a lawyer so you don’t run into trouble, now back to our regularly scheduled blog. (I believe norbizness is correct, but I’m not licensed to practice law in Texas so didn’t want to throw out specifics.)
What the hell does it say about this guy that he thinks such information would give us pause? The majority of people DON’T have an arrest record peppered with misdemeanors and low-level felonies
Exactly, Kyso. Good heavens. I don’t, and I don’t know anyone who does, either. But then, I do my best to avoid hanging out with Nice Guys ™ (and, btw, what is “nice” about having a criminal record - yeeeeessssh). It goes a long way to show why these men have to buy a green-card bride, because “criminal record” is rarely on the list of desirable qualities in the marriage market.
Most of the time, you have to show you don’t have a criminal record to get a visa. What IMBRA would do would be to have that go both ways.
“Half of the assets created during a marriage does not mean half of everything one spouse owns prior to the marriage.”
I didn’t know that. Is that true in all US states or just a few?
It’s true everywhere, because the important distinction is “assets created during the marriage” versus “assets owned before the marriage” The first is usually considered marital property.
Whether your state considers just marital property to be up for grabs or all property owned by both parties prior to the marriage as well is another story.
Having a criminal record may disqualify you from your mail order bride, but if you confess you’ve been “saved”, Huckabee will commute your sentence, no matter what you’ve done.
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, maybe right now they could. But once they start eating every day? (And no, you’re not going to be able to stop them, sorry.) They’ll be coming to Torrid with me before you know it, pal. Learn to like it. My boyfriend does.
Judi -
Wish I had the link to an article by a writer who took one of those Mail Order Bride trips to the Ukraine: he wasn’t looking, but recording the real deal.
I think you’re talking about this heartwarming tale of comuppance:
http://www.wunrn.com/news/2006/07_17_06/072306_ukraine_mail.htm
Thanks for the link, Kyso; that was the Harper’s article I was remembering.
From the article: “Nice, watching the stock come in” (from one of the Nice Guy ™ charmers referring to the Ukranian women) - that just says it all right there, doesn’t it?
How could anybody possibly disagree with Marx on that issue, since it is so manifestly true?
And George Bernard Shaw concurred, especially in Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
Awww…. couldn’t we at least let one or two through? What could be more fun than humiliating some right-wing misogynist fucktard trolls? Dana and some of the others here are too timid for a truly satisfying battle.
Just one little “rational” libertarian? Or how about a condescending ev-psych?
That particular one is too stupid. A proper MRA would say that this blog has always been a man-hating lesbian bitchfest, not just now that we’re dashing their fantasies of getting to buy a woman wholesale, instead of going to an illicit massage parlor and paying by the act.
(Re “community property” - those states that have it, as zuzu noted, broadly speaking consider a marriage to be a ‘joint economic enterprise’, so everything acquired DURING the marriage is joint property. You can see how this would infuriate an MRA who thinks that if he leaves the wifey at home to clean the house and care for the kids while he’s off writing software, any money he earns is “his money” because she “doesn’t work”.)
I even read one guy who claimed that domestic violence should be a “states rights” issue.
Er, am I missing something? I thought crimes such as assault and murder were “states rights” - prosecuted at a state level with different penalties.
Right - but the feds handle immigration and issue visas. Like the U visa. *whistles innocently*
@Phonician
This guy was claiming that laws like the marriage broker act and the violence against women act were a violation of states rights.
Because providing services for victims of violence is violating the states right to… well he didn’t say it directly but basically choose to let their men beat women.
As far as I know the VAWA doesn’t offer any sentancing minimums (or even guidelines) for dv. I could be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure it just offers grants for training and stuff. I’ll look it up tomorrow when I’m not so sleepy. Or maybe some helpful Pandagonian will leave an answer in the night.
Thus the turn to video games etc. who don’t let them down and of course, they are also fun.
Women should be just like video games ? Yet another glimpse of the MRA totally-detached-from-reality mentality.
Another one who couldn’t make it into our free-wheeling community, but whose prose was so beautiful I had to share:
It’s fascinating how guys who literally have to pay women to have sex with them, flirt with them, and marry them feel like they can tell anyone that they’re ugly. That’s not the pot calling the kettle black, that’s the pot calling the stainless steel cookware black. (Is there a cliche that could be substituted for that one that doesn’t have the potential for racist interpretation?) But male privilege doesn’t exist, no. If it did, you’d see wretched men who think that just because they have a penis, they’re better than half the human race, though by any objective account, they’re the grease drippings of humanity. Oh, wait.
You do kind of pity them. They’ve been told their whole lives that it’s women who should be desperate, women who want to get married to anyone who asks, and have attention at any cost from the opposite sex, women who are too ugly and unlikeable to ever have anyone really love them, and then they look around and see women who are eager to reject them and their seething misogyny, because it turns out that women are not as desperate as advertised, they are as desperate as women are supposed to be. That’s got to be emasculating.
There’s a cure of course, called feminism. Consider women full human beings, instead of just objects for trade on the pussy market, and suddenly a lot stuff starts making sense. Being a feminist male doesn’t mean you get to buy a bride, of course, but it does mean that you become a better person, and you don’t have to hate yourself as much. As long as you’re flipping through mail order bride catalogs and fantasizing about buying a woman of your very own, you’re going to boil with self-hate, as you should, since everyone else hates you, too.
Probably because it wasn’t sarcastic. I don’t know why you thought so, or why you assumed I was jumping down your throat about common-law marriage. The post was meant to be a footnote: hey, if you’re concerned or thinking about doing this, be sure to talk to a lawyer so you don’t run into trouble, now back to our regularly scheduled blog. (I believe norbizness is correct, but I’m not licensed to practice law in Texas so didn’t want to throw out specifics.)
Sorry, I never have seen a non-sarcastic “Um” on the internet. It’s kind of become the universal sign of sarcasm—so I saw it and assumed. My apologies. I can see that it should function as a footnote thing, but I’ve never seen it outside of the sarcastic usage. They even banned the word at TWOP, because it was so thoroughly associated with condescending sarcasm. I get that it should be used outside of that, but yours is the first that I’ve seen it actually used that way.
Er, am I missing something? I thought crimes such as assault and murder were “states rights” - prosecuted at a state level with different penalties.
Good evidence that “states rights” is just a dog whistle that means “an end to government interference with oppression, except of course to further it”.
I think Dana’s just uptight cause he’s had a lifetime of anxious masculinity issues due to his sissy name.
I can hear the schoolyard taunts now. Ahhh…
The second culling from the moderation queue actually looked to me like he started out openly admitting he was pathetic, in a “once you’re old and unattractive like me, you will be less likely to laugh at people desperate to find someone”, but then he got all into his rant about how the women he’s looking into buying marrying will be all happy homemaker and bear him babies and smile while cleaning the diaper pail, not like femimarxist meanies and you could see that moment of self-evaluation had passed without leaving a mark on his facade, his attempt to sound confident and happy, lest he break into tears about how he can’t keep any female friends, even, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong, asking for the link to Feminism 101 so he could perhaps grab a clue how to function in mixed society.
The part about raising HIS children is particularly telling. He’s not even looking for a woman who wants to be a stay-at-home mother to “our children”; he wants a fuckable nanny/housekeeper who, being brown and from a poor country, goddamn well knows her place. Which is not to have any ambitions for a husband who is a hottie, but to allow herself to be bought by a scrawny-chested middle-aged man with anger issues.
I imagine that Filipina/Pinay activists have a few things to say about the sexual-tourism fantasies of guys like Banboy.
I won’t even bother to go into the rest of the guy’s rant to “defend” myself, looks, boyfriend status (and, the actual “status” of my boyfriend) or otherwise.
Honestly, this guy is making me a little sad. He really doesn’t get it. He’s been fed shit for so long he thinks it’s ice cream and won’t give it up.
Listen, bucko: the “loser” part comes in the “entitlement” you feel. Get it? Women love men of all shapes, sizes and incomes. But the man has to be a decent man who’s worthy to be loved. That means he can’t sit back on his ass and whine about teh bitchez. He has to work at being a worthwhile human being, which means he’s aware of other people (and really, truly believes with all his heart that “people” includes “women”).
If you see women as nothing more than commodities who unfortunately have been given agency and can say NO, you’re a loser. That’s how it is.
Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to add: Also, did you see where I said the guy I saw with the Russian bride was a control freak who was criticizing her height, for God’s sake? How “loving” does that sound? OF COURSE she didn’t really love him. WHO COULD?
I just feel so sorry for men who don’t get their God-given right to have Woman As Chattel anymore.
Mythago - FWIW, a Filipina friend told me that the Philippines, pre-colonial, were gender-egalitarian. There were women queens and chiefs, and women religious leaders. Married couples lived with her mother’s family (matrilocal).
And did Banboy know that the country with the highest percentage of women executives (57% IIRC) is the Philippines? I think most Filipinas would as soon kick Banboy in the goolies as look at him.
@ailurophile
The Philippines also has some of the worst economic disparity and social inequity in the world. I doubt very seriously that any of the mail-order brides come from the executive class.
What kills me about these guys is that so many of them think that they’re actually doing these women a favor by taking them out of their living conditions. Well maybe so if you weren’t expecting a submissive sex-slave and domestic servant in return for your “kindness.” How very Nice Guy ™ of you.
“Where do you come off thinking that men who seek foreign women for companionship are just out to “buy” a bride whom they can control? These services that you call “marriage brokers” are nothing more than “personals columns”, like you see every week in your local newspaper.”
I don’t know much about this business, but don’t the guys pay a bunch of money for the service, where the women don’t? That would make it quite different from personal columns.
I’ve also gotten the impression that some domestic online dating services are free for women, which is similarly appalling but perhaps less in degree.
I think #2 may be less rare than you think. Every time you deal with a utility account or some other kind of business relationship that’s in the other person’s name, you’re implicitly or explicitly holding yourself out as married. (Long before my spouse and I invited the sozzled JP over to the house, the easiest way to get the phone or the cable or the gas or electric or oil company to do the right thing was just to say, “I’m his/her wife/husband”. Obviously documenting this might be complicated, but it’s both an example of marital privilege and a potential way to end up in common-law marriage.)
But at the same time I believe that as a society we have some responsibility for healthy families. I also think that an attitude of employers making room for people with children will be better for women, as women are often the primary care-givers of children.
That’s absolutely fine. I said I used to work for a guy who calculated what he was willing to pay his employees based on whether or not they had spouses and children. (He also gave the married/childed ones a lot more latitude in terms of attendance, lates, time off, etc., but that wasn’t the point.) And, sorry, that is blatantly discriminatory (if not provable). (I was also only making $12/hr, which is hardly upper-class wages.)
I’m probably a bit of a hard-liner on the subject, but I think the priority shouldn’t be “making room for people with children”; I think it should be “making room for people,” period. Life happens, whether you have kids or not. If you have kids, you’re also more likely to have someone at home with whom you can divide labour (not always, but more so). If I need to have the plumber or the gasfitter come, I can’t get my husband to take the day off instead of me; I don’t have one.
It’s interesting how that MRA from the mod queue seems to think that any woman in a relationship with a foreign man must perforce be working through a marriage broker; that’s how they all did it, so we’d have to do it the same way. That seems to be the regulation which he’s talking about, which, unless I’m very much mistaken, applies only to marriage brokers. I’m in a relationship with an English guy, and I didn’t use a marriage broker to get that way; I did it the newfangled way — by using the internet to convince someone that I’m likeable enough to be in a relationship with me.
It’s a real interesting example of ye ol’ interlocking systems of oppression. The reason there’s a Russian bride market/Russian sex trafficking and slavery market is because an international capitalist structure, led by the U.S., backed Boris Yeltsin and the criminal uber-capitalist set in their post-communist takeover of the country. Had democracy prevailed and the dreaded socialism taken hold, the country quite probably wouldn’t have plunged into the massive poverty that drives women to desperate moves like peddling themselves to men that are otherwise unmarriageable from sheer assholery, nor would they be so ripe for the picking in the illegal sex trade. The vulture economy on the macro and micro level is evident here.
The same people who’ll mock you if you don’t have enough money for food or shelter suddenly get teary-eyed and sentimental at the idea of some poor middle class white guy who can’t buy himself a model to marry like Donald Trump can
You just can’t get any good consevatives these days. Being not allowed to marry until you owned enough to support a family is about as traditional as you can get, and they whine about it. Next thing you know, they’ll be against cholera epidemics, unlikely as it sounds.
Interro, I don’t think Banboy really grasps the idea of voluntary sexual relationships that don’t involve financial compensation. MRAs spend a lot of time convincing themselves all women are whores—look, even the American women want presents/diamonds/child support—so to them it’s not a matter of whether or not you buy a woman. It’s just a price negotiation, and foreign brides from poverty-stricken countries are basically scab labor. They don’t see feminism as women’s liberation, but more as a union designed to raise our compensation for touching their pee-pees. Thus the scab brides are supposed to scare us, because it’s assumed that it gives them more leverage against the feminist marriage strike and we’ll have to lower prices. The idea that women openly seek relationships because they want companionship and sex themselves, and that they don’t exchange those things plus some household labor for a salary, is kind of beyond their grasp.
And from the perspective of someone who probably can’t get someone to like them just because, it probably does seem that the only sex available is the kind you buy.
Dana, Marriage was supposed to be the legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing.
What I see about old-time marriages, they were intended to faciliate the transfer of resources between families and between generations. The “personal relationship” just had to happen, because children were part of the contract.
Regarding marriage as anything but economics with a veneer of religion is a rather modern idea.
I can’t figure out where the fantasy comes from that men in this country have any reluctance to marry — every date I go on turns into the guy giving me a sales pitch for long-term commitment with him.
True that, Helen. A bunch of my girlfriends have dated guys who were jonesing to settle down, marry and have babies while they were less eager. I’m 25, and my friends are all around the same age.
They don’t see feminism as women’s liberation, but more as a union designed to raise our compensation for touching their pee-pees.
Chai, meet keyboard.
I wonder if this POV (and I agree with Amanda on how these MRA Nice Guy ™ types see feminism) comes from the fact that so many Nice Guys ™ are libertarians. Libertarianism, IME, is a sinkhole full of Nice Guys ™. This view that the market is everything carries over into how they see relationships - that, and if all they know of sex is transactional, they can’t comprehend things like love, affection, or even a friendly roll in the hay.
These days, if anyone says “I’m a libertarian” I run screaming the other way.
Sarah, tell them to get used to it. I’ve been getting the marry-me-sales-pitches without letup since I was about 25. I’m now 38, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
I’ve tried just plain asking men who do this why they feel the need to give that kind of sales pitch to someone they barely know, and without exception they express a level of terror that having gotten attention of a “good one” for an hour or two, if they don’t get a promise of commitment with all possible speed, she might get away / notice he’s not all that great / notice someone “better”.
It’s sad that these guys think I couldn’t like them for themselves, and must somehow be hoodwinked or caught into putting up with them for more than a date or two.
Even sadder is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — I’ve learned that there’s nothing more miserable than dating a man who thinks I couldn’t possibly choose to spend time with him for the simple pleasure of his company, so a commitment sales pitch from someone I don’t know well is one of the fastest ways to get rid of me.
What’s funny about this is he’s so sure that this is a “gotcha”, that we would be outraged when Jaffe’s Terrible Secret was revealed. I imagine he’s terribly disappointed at the responses of “Sure, that makes perfect sense.” “Yeah, I’ve got nothing to hide. You?” “Nope. Makes me wonder what he has to hide.” that he’s gotten.
You just know that he sees feminism as a Women’s Supremacy movement, and assumed we’d be furious to discover that one of our efforts to oppress men had backfired and made it theoretically possible to inconvenience women, too.
Gotta love the projection.
What’s funny about this is he’s so sure that this is a “gotcha”, that we would be outraged when Jaffe’s Terrible Secret was revealed. I imagine he’s terribly disappointed at the responses of “Sure, that makes perfect sense.” “Yeah, I’ve got nothing to hide. You?” “Nope. Makes me wonder what he has to hide.” that he’s gotten.
You just know that he sees feminism as a Women’s Supremacy movement, and assumed we’d be furious to discover that one of our efforts to oppress men had backfired and made it theoretically possible to inconvenience women, too.
Gotta love the projection.
Women should be just like video games ?
Video games don’t get jealous when you play around with other video games, video games let you start over when you make a mistake, and video games allow you to pretend to be a STUDLY CONQUERER taking over the WORLD with your MIGHTY SWORD without LAUGHING themselves BLUE and telling all the OTHER video games they’re FRIENDS with what a DORK you are!!!
I’m sorry - got a bit distracted there. Where was I?
d wrote:
A friend of mine bought three Cleveland golf clubs on ebay, and when he got them, discovered that they were knock-offs. Me, I wouldn’t by anything on ebay.
Amanda wrote:
You mean that y’all let me in but deny entrance to others? I figured that if you let someone like me, who would challenge almost anything Amanda wrote more controversial than 2+2=4, participate, it was open admissions!
SarahMC, part of the thing is that men when they’re young actually want to settle down because it’s a means of “locking in” their gains early at an age where they typically are unlikely to have access to lots of casual relationships.
Also, men have been taught through pop culture that it is the women who want commitment and the men who are reluctant, so they figure that one of their big “selling points” that will differentiate them from the competition is their desire for commitment.
Anyway– on the topic of the NG who can’t get a woman to like him as “more than a friend”– true liberation comes when you realize that you “have enough friends,” so if a woman isn’t interested in you romantically, well, your time is better spent with your friends, not with someone who’s not one of your close friends. Your friends are the people you’re close to and loyal to and know you well– not the good looking person you keep lusting after to no avail.
I’m probably a bit of a hard-liner on the subject, but I think the priority shouldn’t be “making room for people with children”; I think it should be “making room for people,” period. Life happens, whether you have kids or not. If you have kids, you’re also more likely to have someone at home with whom you can divide labour (not always, but more so). If I need to have the plumber or the gasfitter come, I can’t get my husband to take the day off instead of me; I don’t have one.
The obvious answer would be to have the workplace as a meritocracy, and support for famalies be a social responsibility through taxes and subsidies or progranmmes aimed specifically at them. In a sensible society.
Sorta like the craziness of providing medical care primarily through workplace plans…
Hell, I’ve had the “Marry me” sales pitch - and I’m already married. The dude - who went on to get a mail-order bride from the Phillipines - was seriously incapable of understanding that I had no interest in leaving my husband. He seemed to think that because we were financially strapped, and he was rich, I should be leaping to pack my bags as soon as he expressed interest.
This is someone I had known fairly well for about a year - he had never previously expressed any interest in me - possibly because we only saw each other in company. The first time we were together without witnesses, the proposal was trotted out, and he was shocked, shocked that I was insulted. But, but - he could give me $3000 a month as a personal allowance! (About what my husband made in a month at that time) And all he would expect was me to cook, clean, and have regular sex! Wasn’t that a bargain? And he’d even be thrilled for me to have my (2 month old!) baby along.
Dude never knew how close he came to getting something broken when I threw him out of the house. Or how lucky that I never mentioned the incident to my husband.
Dana, the only things items too risky to buy on ebay are items that are easily forged, whose value is embedded primarily in its value as an authentic item, and whose forgery is too difficult to detect to all but a specialized eye– eg, designer clothing and jewelry.
Music, electronics, computer equipment, and clothes whose largest value is not embedded in the designer label from established sellers are things you can buy pretty safely.
I do have some self-interest involved here– I occasionally sell things on ebay.
It doesn’t look like anyone picked up on Felagund’s comment (above, early 100s) but the whole phenomenon of Western women getting third-world boyfriends kind of puts the mail-order-bride “take that, feminazis!” argument to rest (as if it needed it, but anyway). The fact that it is so easily inverted (and, like Felagund, I’ve spent a lot of time abroad in poor countries and seen it over and over and OVER) is demonstrable proof that the operative dynamic in the mail-order situation is economic inequality, not he-man meets girly-girl, result LUVVVV.
I mean, there’s not a catalog service in the reverse situation. But trust me, ladies: travel to any super poor country and you will have men eating out of your hand. And you will see Western women delusional enough to think it’s because back in America, no-one appreciates them like the “real men” of the poor country do. It’s the absolute complement to mail order brides, it is just as exploitative and deeply sad, but it does tend conclusively to demonstrate that the operative dynamic in both cases is money, not gender.
Tyro: My friend is a pretty decent golfer (though not a pro), and he can spot things like that — and is, in fact, a fanatic about it. Cleveland golf clubs are apparently one of the most ripped off brands out there.
Wasn’t there a whole chapter in Backlash devoted to this concept? The idea of “nesting” and “man shortages” as tools for shaming and/or scaring women back into the kitchen?
Oh, and “semen drain”? Classic.
Thank you. That’s exactly how I feel about it. This emphasis on special exceptions/policies/programs for families is so heteronormative it makes me want to scream. It effectively tells workers: you better get married and have kids or you’re going to be an unappreciated cubicle monkey for your entire life.
Well, you know what? Many of those women would probably be expected to be submissive sex slaves and servants in their home countries. This probably explains why some women in the third world are willing to be mail order brides. If they’re going to spend their lives being subservient to men, they might get running water and health care in the bargain, not to mention better opportunities for their children.
Helen, do you think it could be more of the same crap about showing you how unlike other men they are by proposing right away? Because, as you pointed out, that behavior just smacks of being a screwball and chases off any healthy woman. (I’ve had the same experiences and never took any of those guys’ calls again). A woman who’s a little needier might be flattered, though, and give him more attention than she might otherwise.
I’m wondering if it really shows a deep desire to be married, or just a deep desire to try to control the situation with a woman by offering what he THINKS all women want until he gets what HE wants (which he assumes a woman wouldn’t like him enough to give).
@Erika
I can’t think of anybody here that was questioning the motives of the brides. Certainly not I. Yes, of course, they are seeking better lives for themselves. I’m questioning the motives of a man who seeks out desperate women to marry him.
Fantastic post and thread. Just wanted to add: if you’re the type of insecure scumbag who thinks they will attain magical domestic happiness through a mail order bride - please whatever you do, don’t breed.
YOUR KIDS WILL HATE YOU. They will know you for who you are: the man who bought their mother when she was poor and desperate, and kept her in bondage through childbearing. Because unlike you, the children will see their mother as a full human being - and will therefore see you as something less.
How do I know? One of my high school teacher, an insecure scumbag, had a daughter roughly our age with his mail-order bride. Hate is a kind word for the way the daughter felt about her dad.
People who get mail order brides are not very feminist by western standards. What I wonder is how feminist are they by the standards of the countries the mail order brides are leaving. They may not be at the top end of egalitarian relationships so far as the we go, but they might still have (comparatively) egalitarian relationships by global standards and those of the countries they come from. For example: I knew someone who married someone from the middle east. You would not be happy with the state of their marriage - he was the breadwinner she stayed at home. But she said it was very equal compared to what she would have expected back home.
The other point I wish to make is that the people you’re fulminating against are a minority of weirdos. It is thought of as strange for a westerner to marry someone from the third world. Most immigrant brides are from the immigrants home countries and wed immigrants - something which no feminists seem to get worked up about - is this only an awful crime against gender relations if a white person does it?
“Helen, do you think it could be more of the same crap about showing you how unlike other men they are by proposing right away?”
Oh sure, I think that’s part of it. “I’m being a Nice Guy ™ by talking about commitment, so that should get me something.”
I haven’t run into any instant-proposers. I have run into ones who bring up the topic of marriage and children right away, and argue when I say I’m not interested. I find this hilarious, especially when I start asking what on earth that sort of behavior is supposed to accomplish. “What you already know about my career commitments makes it clear I have no interest in childbearing any time soon; why would you think that’s even on the table? Wouldn’t you be better served by finding a woman who is looking to marry and have children, instead of arguing with one who isn’t?”
This invariably gets, “But I don’t like that kind of woman!!!! I want one like you!”
“But I’m not interested in raising a family.”
Cue bizarro meltdown about how unfair it is that his superwoman fantasy doesn’t magically appear and make his life wonderful. As soon as I can stop laughing enough to breathe, I take my exit.
More often I run into men who treat me to an instant and insistent sales pitch on how they want a committed relationship with me, how great my life would be if they were in it, and repeat that last bit 500 times. This could be Nice Guy ™-itis, but I also believe what they’re telling me their motivations are to be at least part of it.
Picking a minor nit: this is not true. There have been societies, even western ones, which were harsh towards male adulterers as well as female, and societies that were fine with female nonmarital affairs.
That being said, the overall point that human civilization is and has always been a patriarchy, generally speaking, is completely valid.
The pushback here by women against feminist causes is deeply troubling. It gives freedom to continue their behaviors. Further, it creates more victims of the women who belive this tripe. Finally, non-misogynistic men get a bad impression when dealing with women who buy into this crap: this is no excuse for misogyny in turn, but it may turn them off feminist causes. A little propaganda goes a long way.
Japan’s birth rate has gone down as women have realized being slaves really does suck. Average age of females having their first baby there has also gone up.
Now there’s another sense of entitlement. They honestly think they’re so special that someone would spend all of their precious little time scheming against them. Really?!
Yes. They think the blacks are out to get them, the latinos are plotting against them, and women secretly resent them. They think this way because they think that way about everyone else. That’s why our country’s aristocracy is asking if we’re “ready” a woman or black president: our elites know that if they were marginalized as minorities or women are, they would act with utter vindicitiveness. Thieves expect others to steal.
. . . which is why the asshole that Amanda quoted in #97 gave a “retort” that women under the IMBRA would have any possible violent history of their own used against them. In other words, he expects women to be just as shitty a human being as he himself is.
Yep, again, he is a selfish asshole so he looks for our self-interest in everything we say.
These weirdoes, as you put it, are politically influential, very vocal, and are spewing some very vile, inhuman notions. They are following very nicely in a tradition of sex slavery that took root in the U.S. as the result of more typical economic slavery (e.g. of blacks). I’ve seen nothing to suggest that the offenders are in the minority, and even if they were, that would not be reason to not call them out. I would be similarly incensed by those defending gun murderers, although very few people, as a proportion of the population, actually murder each other with guns.
These people really are investing in prostitutes. I have no doubt women and men both are shallow in the U.S., because humans are shallow everywhere. However, the need to go abroad for women makes it clear they’re looking for a difference in power. They could find women to accept them here, but they wouldn’t be able to control the lives of their would-be bride/victim. The only way they can get that control is by importing a woman who speaks no english and has no money. This impulse drove the slave trade in this country; I am not pleased to see it return. I will skip dinner.
I’m not really talking about guys who tell women on the first or second date that they want to marry; the women I know were in LTRs with guys who were antsy to “make it official.” But the women were not in the same hurry. So the relationships ended.
I don’t know if they actually want to marry and have children, Helen, as much as they want you to give up your career for them. (or at least, keep bringing in a high income while the children…appear at the wave of a wand, or something, yes, and are tended by pixies or something. I doubt those guys think that far ahead.)
“We” couldn’t care less who stays home or who doesn’t in a marriage. You have us confused with the anti-feminists.
Maybe in the short term, but over time as people get poorer and poorer the birth rate will probably increase, because women will be less able to afford things like birth control and abortion.
Adding: I mean to say, the indicator of how well people are doing is not strictly the number of kids they’re having but rather their ability to plan those kids the way they want to, meaning both that they are able to keep from having kids they don’t want and that they are able to have kids when they want them without worrying about being financially unfit.
james - I am a stay-at-home-mom. My husband currently earns the income, while I raise kids. I doubt it will be this way forever, but I certainly don’t object if that’s what other women want. I object to guys who think of a woman as their property - even if they treat her like valuable property, it’s still insulting.
The guy I mentioned above was about the best (nicest/ least misogynistic or weird) person I have ever seen or heard of looking for a mail-order bride - and I wouldn’t have married him if I were single and dirt-broke. He had at least graduated from women-as-property to wife-as-employee for a model. He wanted to hire a housekeeper and cook with sexual benefits, and found the US market too pricey - those finicky American women kept wanting him to evince some actual interest in them. He was startled as hell when his bride got herself trained as a telephone operator, got a job, and took off as soon as she possibly could.
And the teary eyed sense of entitlement of “buying a woman” in a sense as written here. Please write about that.
I wrote about it here
Apparently, though, I do not have enough empathy with misogynists??
I find that strange.
At the very least, don’t they realize that walking in front of a woman and stopping so that she has to go around you is a threatening if not violent gesture.
That’s funny!
It doesn’t happen to me any more since I honed my martial arts gesture. If someone stopped in front of me, I would also stop within a fraction of my seconds in my tracks. I would automatically be in a fighting stance (not a low martial arts one, but a natural one, as in boxing). I would immediately be seizing up the openings in their position. It would not be a comfortable state to be in, for the person stopping me in my tracks!
is this only an awful crime against gender relations if a white person does it?
Darling, your slip is showing. (All immigrants are not “white”? De facto slavery is merely a crime against “gender relations”?)
I’m sure james is very, very concerned about the plight of women in developing nations, who often live in very sexist cultures. After all, if those women’s situations improved, where would he and his buddies go shopping for pussy?
Amanda: In short: I the MRA have to pay women to have sex with me. This proves that I’m actually very desireable
Yeah, well, they only want to be loved for their money.
inge: Yeah, well, they only want to be loved for their money.
Of course. It’s much easier than being a decent person. And even a lazy slob without MUCH money can get pussy if women remain the sex class. If women turn into people it just raises the bar too high. What’s a lazy selfish pig to do?
I see that there are a lot of posts about mail-order brides. Tyra Banks actually did a show about how international women are expolited (and even killed) by their American husbands (her show was then in Los Angeles).
And Jennifer Armstrong — you’re a natural blackbelt! Maybe you should kick some Nice Guys®’ ass so badly, he’ll think twice about bothering you or the rest of us Pandagonians.
Dana wrote: Marriage was supposed to be the legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing.
Sure, but then the anti-marriage types - like you, Dana - started arguing that couples who aren’t interfertile shouldn’t be allowed marriage as a legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing.
Since you yourself have argued consistently that marriage is solely about the ability of two people to be interfertile, that marriage is not for people who want “a legal, economic and cultural cementing of personal relationships, to aid in their stability, assist in their permanence, and provide a recognized and stable structure for procreation and child-rearing” but is all about a couple being physically able to conceive children together, it is ironic that you complain now.
Odd, isn’t it? Same-sex couples who want to get married would agree wholeheartedly what marriage is for. Yet you yourself, Dana, have argued that marriage is not for these couples - because though many same-sex couples have children, you insist that a couple must be interfertile before they can marry: merely having children by adoption, fostering, a previous marriage, or AID is not good enough for you.
Ad at the top of the front page for beautiful Chinese wives! Topical!
After which they will often “jokingly” ask you if you are ever going to work again. Unless, of course, you’ve made the proper choice and simply given up your career, but still work outside the home in a job that is only slightly less dull than cleaning house.
(sorry, Thanksgiving with the family was fun, but my brother-in-law still gets on my nerves on a regular basis)
Yeah, what IS your obsession with Amanda anyway? I’ve addressed you several times and even suggested that you’re timid, yet you won’t respond.
What’s the matter McFly? Chicken?
Examples please.
Something that still bothers the hell out of me when it resurfaces in my mind - maybe it’ll go away if I tell the anecdote enough times - is a brief exchange I had with a coworker. It started out as a discussion of a local fancy restaurant, which I’d said I’d recently had a chance to try out because a couple of friends were taking us all out to dinner to celebrate their recent marriage. Since they’d gotten married overseas, this was their first opportunity to celebrate with their US friends. In any case, as part of explaining the situation (which was probably a mistake on my part) I mentioned that the wife was Russian.
“Oh!” says my coworker, with a smile halfway between delight and wink-wink nudge-nudge smugness, “Is she a mail-order bride?”
“No!” I busted out, stammering. “No! God no! They met while he was living in Europe! Fell in love, dated, etc., in the normal social human sort of way! Mail-order bride? No!”
Which probably came out as the lady doth protest too much, but the thought that only tact kept me from voicing (coworker, remember; burning bridges at work not a good idea) was, “My God, woman, what kind of man do you think my friend is that you’d suggest he’d patronize a mail-order bride outfit? What kind of person do you think I am that you think I’d be friends with such a man? What kind of person are you that you seem so delighted by the idea?”
Until then I hadn’t realized that once you put the words “wife” and “from Russia” in the same sentence, people assume “mail-order bride”. It’s not fringe anymore. Which is damn scary.
You think that is scary? Just read this regarding foreign women -
Breeding a Brave New World
American men can make a difference for themselves and the next generation. Practice self-genocide and honor the marriage strike at home and stop the transfer of wealth to American women. Earn locally. Then marry and breed globally.
http://www.online-dating-rights.com/forum/index.php?topic=1274.0
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There are photos at that link that really bring this nutjob’s message together