I may not be a Clinton supporter, but when you have this level of misogyny floating out on the airwaves, all women are being slimed and it has to be called out. From the O’Reilly Factor, guest Marc Rudov, author of Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze, or Jumper Cables (no lie) said this:
Is this akin to the Homosexual Agenda? Do any of you gals out there have a copy of the plan for world domination?O’REILLY: Tonight, we begin a brand new segment called, “He Said, She Said,” where we’ll deal with issues from a gender-based point of view. The segment will run every Friday, but we wanted to debut it tonight with a very provocative question: What is the downside of having a woman become president of the United States?
…RUDOV: You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings, right?
O’REILLY: But guys have mood swings, Marc. And you know —
RUDOV: Right.
O’REILLY: — they have other control issues, as we just heard with Governor Spitzer and we saw with various presidents. So come on now, let’s be fair.
RUDOV: Well, you know, I’m joking. Of course, the main problem I have is if a woman has a female agenda. If she doesn’t have a female agenda, if she just wants to be an executive for all the people, then all I care about is if she’s qualified. And I have no qualms about having a female president.
But if we take Hillary Clinton, she specifically does have a female agenda.
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Even IF there were any sense whatsoever in his comment, and a female President DID have a specifically female agenda, she’d still be representing 55% of the population by definition, right?
Even that assumes no overlap whatsoever between a female agenda and a male agenda.
I’m not a particular fan of Senator Clinton, but WTF?
As loathe as I am to give Falafel boy any credit, he did at least offer a token argument against the idea that women are incompetent because their tiny minds are slaves to their hormones.
I mean, the man is still scum and it wasn’t actually the response that was required (which would have been, in a perfect world, “‘PMS and mood swings?’ Did the last five decades just roll by unnoticed in your tiny head or what?”), but, I dunno, I think that means he scores 2.4 out of a hundred on gender issues or something.
The female agenda is pink. And scented.
Oh, God, Mark Rudov. He’s on Men’s News Daily with the rest of the MRAs. I can’t read his tripe without my eyes rolling into the back of my head. His PMS comment didn’t surprise me in the least.
Of course, white men don’t have a “male agenda” or a “white agenda.” Indeed, we have a long tradition of white male presidents serving as excellent “executives for all the people.”
Female agenda? Is that anything like my Franklin Covey?
Wow, O’Reilly calling someone on (part of) their BS. I’m impressed?
From Amazon.com
“Marc Rudov is an investment banker and business consultant residing in Silicon Valley (Bay Area), California. Although formally educated in engineering and business, he possesses a vast informal education in relationships with women.”
Bwaahaahaa. That last sentence has to be one of the funniest I’ve read in a while.
The female agenda is pink. And scented.
Ismone’s right about the pink and scented thing. And the female agenda costs three times as much as the male agenda.
Other than that, it’s exactly the same.
Of course, white men don’t have a “male agenda” or a “white agenda.” Indeed, we have a long tradition of white male presidents serving as excellent “executives for all the people.”
Snide comment from a fiction writer’s workshop years ago:
“Women should only write female characters because they can’t write believable, convincing non-female characters. It’s the same way minorities can’s write convincing whites and gays can’t believable straight characters.
Straight white males, however, can write any kind of character and be perfectly convincing at every one.”
Must be the power of the pale penis, or something.
Why yes indeed, because all those other bipeds you see aren’t really “people,” you know.
They’re some kind of aliens with non-people-relevent “agendas”.
I saw O’Reilly’s reply as more of a way to throw a softball at Rudov, not actually taking on Rudov’s nonsense, which would have been easy enough to slap out of the park for anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
Dang it! I think I left my copy of The Female Agenda on the bus with The Gay Agenda! No wonder I miss all the meetings.
When Bill O’Rielly calls you out as sexist, you’re in a sad, sad place.
It’s interesting that “all the people” can’t include half of the people, or else it’s a “female agenda”. My admittedly Marxist radical feminazi view believes that women are part of “all the people”.
Oh, that Rudov. Below is a section from a diatribe he wrote recently. Where does he get this stuff?
_______________________________
Why were radical feminists from Tahirih (Tahirih Justice Center) so bothered about American-foreign romances that they felt compelled to create and lobby for IMBRA? The scuttlebutt is that they resent American men bypassing them — and the shackles of American feminism — for foreign women, who don’t seem to possess that unique American-style hatred of men.
Plainly said: Men are becoming increasingly sick and tired of American women, and they are looking elsewhere for romance. I get a fair number of e-mails from men saying that they have given up altogether on American women. Tom Leykis frequently mentions on his daily radio show that, for the same reason, he also has forsaken American women.
Let’s look at the cauldron of left-wing thinking — the American gynoversity — and how it breeds the radical feminism that drives men away from American women. There is no better example than Antioch College, nestled in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1991, the “Womyn of Antioch” designed the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy (SOPP), which requires that a man and woman seek mutual consent at every stage of intimacy.
Source: http://thenononsenseman.mensnewsdaily.com/2007/05/13/unhook-that-bra/
Which is scary when you realize that Men’s News Daily thinks Glenn Sacks is a pansy, feminist-hugging lefty.
“My admittedly Marxist radical feminazi view believes that women are part of “all the people”.”
Don’t you realize 9/11 changed EVERYTHING?!?!?
Racism, sexism, bigotry against LGBT people, and religious bigotry are not just tolerated, they’re in high demand!
It’s a whole new world of hate!…
I got my female agenda as a tear-out appendix in my copy of The Feminine Mystique; if you bought a used copy of the book you probably didn’t get one. Mine didn’t come scented though (boo!) so I had to spritz it with some perfume. Now it’s perfect! I sleep with it under my pillow.
Oh god, the Antioch College canard. As teenagers, my boy and I jokingly had sex to those guidelines occasionally- it was hot.
That was half my lifetime ago. Dosen’t this stooge have anything more recent to illustrate how AWFUL consenting sex partners are?
Yes, I admit it. I’ve been leaking copies of the Female Agenda. Here’s todays:
- Fix a healthy breakfast
- Vacuum the living room
- Secretly replace Playboys with Oprah magazines
- Get a manicure
- Spike the water cooler at Fox News with estrogen pills
- Go shopping for new shoes
- Submit plans for world domination to my Jane Austen book club
- Bake brownies.
I had a copy of the female agenda but I menstruated all over it. Can someone help a sister out?
And it isn’t like all the old white dudes we’ve had so far haven’t had a “male agenda”. Because that seems to be the default for everything. That Rudov guy seems like a complete asshole and it’s a wonder he can even get a woman to speak civilly to him, much less anything else, as he seems to think we’re not part of “the people”.
I swear by Female Agenda Feminine Deodorant Spray, but I understand there are health reasons to eschew the Female Agenda Disposable Douche product line.
(Rudov: king of the disposable douches!)
@Floyd: Ha! You win.
I don’t suppose anyone else here has ever played INWO, because “The Feminist Agenda” would be an extremely useful addition…
… at what ’stage of intimacy’ does Mr. Rudov believe consent is no longer required?
Hmmm… maybe if I payed my Smith College Alumnae Association dues this year, they’d send me a copy of the Female Agenda. Cause if they don’t have it, I’m probably shit out of luck.
As for that bit up there at #13, about American women and Antioch… My paternal grandparents met during their first year of college at Antioch and got married that summer. Decades of marriage, 5 kids, 16 grandkids, 1.5 great grandkids, and a masters degree held by granny later… That’s one American man who was perfectly happy with an American woman.
ithaqua, the real dogwhistle in that is the bit about men being driven away from “American women”. Wingnut MRAs have this fantasy that men will simply go buy themselves mail-order brides (because dark-skinned women are all submissive little cherry blossoms) and then we’ll be sorry!
lol I’m curious to know what exactly the female agenda entails- I mean at least the gay agenda is supposed to mean gay people are “recruiting” helpless straight souls, but what are these gangs of women going to do? Perform sex changes on men while they sleep?
I have a copy of the Female Agenda, too. It comes with baking yeast and OB tampons just to confuse matters.
Wingnut MRAs have this fantasy that men will simply go buy themselves mail-order brides (because dark-skinned women are all submissive little cherry blossoms) and then we’ll be sorry!
Or they’ll go to Russia, the Ukraine, or one of the former Soviet republics, where they can get a woman white as the proverbial driven snow yet who “knows how to treat a man.”
Anyhow, men like these, to paraphrase what Amanda wrote in another thread, think that feminism is all about teh wimminz getting together and raising the compensation they exact for touching men’s pee-pees. Of course, feminism HAS meant that women don’t have to marry choads in order to live apart from their parents, have sex, and support themselves, so men who choose to remain choads have fewer options.
Oh, and the title of Rudov’s book? I pray thee, WTF? Did he crib it from the Onion or something?
“Female agenda”?
Apart from the lack of acknowledgement of the “male agenda”…don’t women make up 51% of the population anyhow? And didn’t Bush carry the country in 2004 with less than a 1% popular vote margin and call it a “mandate”?
mister falafel again. didn’t he get sued for harassment or something?
mythago wrote:
ithaqua, the real dogwhistle in that is the bit about men being driven away from “American women”. Wingnut MRAs have this fantasy that men will simply go buy themselves mail-order brides (because dark-skinned women are all submissive little cherry blossoms) and then we’ll be sorry!
___________________________________
Rudov is promoting this fantasy along with hundreds of legal international dating websites. American men with the financial means (and there are many) who don’t want to “put up” with an equal dating relationship can (and do) fly a few hours south to Central and South America for care-free escapades. Yes, Rudov is a clown, a bafoon, but putting foreign women on some superiority pedastel is bad for both American and foreign women.
murcielago:
Wait! By that logic, we women have a mandate! To advance the female agenda! Woohoo!
Heather:
Methinks it is worse for the foreign women than the American ones. A friend of mine born in the former soviet union was asked by client two decades older than her (she was a trainer at a gym) what “race” she was so that he could get a mail order bride “from her country.” Ewwww. She was so shocked she actually told him.
As Carol Tavris long ago pointed out in The Mismeasure of Woman, this is pretty much the opposite of the truth, because women have had to study men throughout their lives, just in order to keep afloat. Anyone in a lower-rank position in a hierarchy has to study the behavior, thoughts and desires of the dominant class, or else they’ll get clobbered.
So all of this is just another great example of projection — rich white males have ignored everyone else’s interests for so long that they can’t imagine anyone in power doing anything else.
Most directly, it is worse for the foreign women. However, the messages promoted by the foreign matchmaking industry may justify, in the minds of American men, a new-found disrespect for American-born women and expectations of equality. In addition, men who travel to arranged parties in the third world (arranged by US companies!) may return with a very different view of women they date and work with. It has take five decades for men to come around at least a little and pushing supposedly “non-feminist” foreign-based women into the dating mix seems like a setback.
Ismone, wouldn’t our “mandate” include switching this word to “WO-mandate”?
Here- take a pink Sharpie and just write “WO” in front of every word starting with “man-” in your dictionary.
womanners, womanual, womanifest, womanipulate, etc.
BTW, does anyone else have this at the top of their page over the Pandagon logo?
Not on your life, sport!
And didn’t Bush carry the country in 2004 with less than a 1% popular vote margin and call it a “mandate”?
Technically, he *lost* the popular vote, and still declared that he had a mandate. That is a fabulously low bar.
No no, louise, you’re doing it wrong. Not only do you have to write “wo” in front of all words that begin with “man,” you have to change the a to a y. Ex: womyndate. Granted, that does sound like a 1980s lesbian dating service, but them’s the breaks.
Um, what? Not in Clinton’s case, unless the “PM” in PMS stands for “post-menopausal”…
Heather wrote: …but putting foreign women on some superiority pedastel is bad for both American and foreign women.
Is it really a “superiority pedestal” when the main reason such women are theoretically superior is because they’re easier to subjugate?
The disconnect in thinking like this — America is superior, but I want a non-American wife because she’ll be more like the 1950s era American fantasy I’m looking for in a wife, and she’ll do a good job of teaching our many children how to hate those filthy communist foreigners — just boggles my mind.
(headslap) Thanks, Betsy… also, I just realized we gotta rearrange the dictionary pages, too! Skaters reverse; Z is now first so W is way before M…
Um, what? Not in Clinton’s case, unless the “PM” in PMS stands for “post-menopausal”…
Seriously, every time someone brings up Ye Olde PMS Explanation for anti-Clinton views drives me crazy. Other than the duh fact that PMS does not inhibit a woman from effectively performing her job, there’s the fact that this woman in particular is 60. While I am not privy to the innermechanics of her uterus, I’m going to take a shot and say that PMS is probably not an actual factor in her life at this point.
Marc Rudov seems to be a little tiny gigantic bit of an arrogant controlling douchebag to me. But I’m a PMSing woman, so disregard my opinion completely.
The snide comment from writing class reminds me of Dorothy’s Sayers’ wry essay, where a man asked her how she could write such convincing male characters when she’d gone to an all girls’ school and hadn’t had much contact with men until she’d turned 21. She just said “I didn’t think of my male characters as men. I thought of them as human beings, so it was easy to write about them.”
Back to the subject, here’s a fun link for those who are wondering about whether sexism or racism is stronger in Presidential preference. Apparently, women voters prefer either Democrat to McCain, while male voters prefer McCain to either Democrat.
Hilary’s “female agenda” is to become president while female.
If we could get a female candidate without that agenda, I’m sure everything would be fine.
Brian @ 11
You’re probably right. After listening to O’Reilly spout reactionary gibberish, you kinda grasp at the tiny semblances of quasi-lucidity like a drowning man clutching at driftwood, though. It’s odd enough that he even makes sense that anything that seems reasonable at first glance, even if it’s just a softball, can shine like a star of reason in a dark miasma of bullshit.
I was pleasantly surprised that woman who spoke in response to Rudov did a pretty good job hitting all the right points (except for a couple of weak moments when she accused Hillary of playing the gender card.)
I wouldn’t give O’Reilly too much credit. After all, this was his segment. Even asking whether there is a downside to having a woman president gives credence to the idea that this is a debatable point.
I always think it’s funny how MRA’s think American women have problems getting married. They actually buy all that patriarchal crap about it being easier to be killed by a terrorist than find a mate after 30 and that your eggs have all aged off by then anyway.
Funny how the facts show that American women are still getting married.
My copy of the Female Agenda has
“Castrate Marc Rudov”
as the first item.
Must be why he fears it so: he knows we’re after him….
@Ali:
Wow, O’Reilly calling someone on (part of) their BS. I’m impressed?
Yeah, he used to do that more often before he degenerated into the worthless bigshot windbag phase of the political journalist’s lifecycle.
@Betsy:
I thought GWB only lost the popular vote in 2000. Could you point me to evidence that he lost the popular vote in ‘04? At any rate, all this mandate stuff is crap; if an action is correct lawful and in the public interest, it shouldn’t matter whether the president has a “mandate” or not. Similarly, if it is incorrect, unlawful, and against the public interest.
All I can say is thank god for this segment, because if there’s one person I want to hear talk about gender issues, it’s Bill O’Reilly.
I’m still shocked at the thought of O Really having a segment on gender issues. Is this some kind of bizzaro mirror universe I’ve entered?
Whoa…interesting thread.
First of all, Heather, Marc Rudov has steadfastly refused to mention IMBRA or VAWA on national TV.
He told me that he was scared to do so…that the conservative men on Fox News might agree with the IMBRA law out of misguided chivalry and “would be too stupid to understand” VAWA before turning the channel to sports.
Then he told me, the number 1 fighter of IMBRA, that he never wanted to talk to me again as long as he lived, because I insisted he was wrong.
So, by not mentioning IMBRA or VAWA on television, he is basically doing your work for you.
You have him in your pocket when all he says on TV is that Hillary might have a PMS attack.
He is a great comedian. Don’t knock it considering he has the IQ and the knowledge to be a lot harder on feminists…simply by mentioning the actual legislation they have gotten passed recently and by mentioning the illegal funding mechanisms such as the Office on Violence Against Women at the DOJ funded secretly via the Commerce, Science & Justice Appropriations Bill every October.
If he only used the opportunity he now has by being promoted to being on OReilly as well as Cavuto…to say light hearted thngs like “Hillary Clinton will probably institute background checks for men to get Passports”…then maybe he would do the victim-feminist movement some damage (as opposed to the equity feminist movement which is cool.
While there is a VAWA lawsuit going on in NY, Rudov doesn’t mention it on TV. Then again, maybe OReilly and Cavuto won’t let him get serious.
VAWA was, of course, struck down by the Rehnquist Supreme Court in US vs Morrison because you cannot have a law that says that violence against women is a federal hate crime while men are dying left and right from violence and that just remains a state’s right’s issue.
Only a matriachy/gynocracy, facilitated by eunuchs singing in the Castrati choir could have such a law as VAWA.
If Rudov were to mention IMBRA on national TV, there would be hell to pay for the Tahirih Justice Center and their unconstitutional funding…not to mention the federal funding of most feminist groups that don’t deserve it.
Heather explains why IMBRA was passed: Feminists have an insecurity about the foreign women and they use the words of a few arrogant men to console themselves that only “jerks” go to Europe and date the competition.
Russia has two universities that equal Harvard in international estimation. I date a student at one of them.
Do you want to know what foreign women think of the concept that American men who date them are losers? Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihW4P8Bcrxc
You tell our girlfriends that we chose them because they are BENEATH you…and then you have the nerve to say you represent them and feel sorry for them.
Do you understand the extreme depth of your arrogance when you do that?!
IMBRA prevents foreign women from exercising the basic human right of giving out their contact information and accepting a “hello” based on their OWN terms, not the US Government telling them that they are not allowed to receive a man’s letter or call or text message until they have background checked him to the bone.
Plus IMBRA deliberately makes it so women without email can NEVER be contacted because they will not be able to “sign in writing” that they read a man’s background check.
People are going to go to jail for having pushed through IMBRA dishonestly.
I would like everyone here to seriously examine this law and join the fight to get at least part of this vicious law overturned. Check out OnlineDatingRights dot com for more details and, if you want to ridicule the ideas there, then start an argument and see if you win intellectually.
Another thing about IMBRA is it is the mangina Congress arrogantly ignoring what the Supreme Court already upheld, which is the right of Americans to be anonymous in contact with others.
Also, reread “1984″ by George Orwell (the anonymous screenname-knickname for Eric Blair).
“1984″ was about the government interfering with a personal relationship. They felt they needed to disclose to Julia that Winston had betrayed her under torture. She broke up with him based on the information. Orwell meant to say that it was the government that was evil for doing that, even though the information was enough to cause Julia to break up with him.
The book ends with Winston cheering for his country’s attack on a new enemy seen on TV. He has forgotten what his government did to him and he believes that the enemy his country is attacking is his enemy. The reader is inclined to think otherwise.
And by the way, MRAs often love American women. Some of the best even post at MND. Look at Dr. Helen. There is no reason to be insecure about the foreign competition. Yes, it is brutal competition because, with cheap airfares and Internet, there will always be someone younger, smarter, prettier waiting in the wings. But that is certainly no reason to make up stories about how the men who travel don’t respect you enough so you are going to say they tend towards “domestic violence” and get them regulated as the first subgroup of American men to be regulated since blacks had no rights.
IMBRA is not being complied with by the way. Cherry Blossoms is ignoring the law. Others just pretend to follow it. Clinton will have to replace her own retiring Supreme Court justices before working into the other 5.
Only a matriachy/gynocracy, facilitated by eunuchs singing in the Castrati choir could have such a law as VAWA.
It always comes down to balls with these guys.
Rudov’s point that HRC will be the woman’s candidate:
“As president, Hillary will continue her lifelong fight to ensure that all Americans are treated with respect and dignity.”
But HRConly mentions one gender - that she will stand for the rights of women. Other leaders represent their constituents; no need to tell one group they will be represented by her.
I want a president that will not give preferential policy planks to one group or the other. I want a president that will represent ALL Americans, and representing women and mentioniing NOTHING about men is not leadership.
It’s advocacy.
““1984″ was about the government interfering with a personal relationship.”
…okay, along with a lot of other important stuff, like constant government spying, government torture, continuous warfare, etc.
And most of all, the need of authoritarians to diminish/eliminate the individual. On the extreme left, that would be called “collectivism”, and on the extreme right, it would be called “patriotism”, or “love for the homeland”, etc. In either case, it is an unremitting evil…
“They felt they needed to disclose to Julia that Winston had betrayed her under torture. She broke up with him based on the information.”
Now we have a problem. Winston and Julia were in the middle of one of their trysts, when they were both arrested and taken away. They only saw each other again after the torture each endured had completely broken them as human beings. They never “broke up”, they were forcibly separated. Any communication given to either one about the other was just another mindfuck…
Are you sure you actually read 1984?…
“Orwell meant to say that it was the government that was evil for doing that…”
I don’t know why it’s necessary to put words in Orwell’s mouth that are already quite explicit on the page, but…
“…even though the information was enough to cause Julia to break up with him.”
Huh? Still doesn’t look like you actually read the book.
I do find it fascinating that all you got from the book is the government depicted in 1984 doesn’t want you to have any relationships.
What that has to do with the American government, and this thread, and Loofa Billo, I’m not sure. Perhaps when your buzz has worn off, you can explain a little more lucidly…
You mean this Marc Rudov?
Discuss.
His style is deliberately confrontational, but he’s not completely full of shit.
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
don’t feed the don’t feed the don’t feed the - damn it just once
cause it’s all about younger and prettier - heh
don’t feed the don’t feed the
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
aahh yeaa
Considering that the Castrati, who agree with everything the radfems say even when contradicting, don’t have them anymore. The rest of us would like to keep them.
And then there are the macho guys who think they “don’t need to go abroad to get a broad” (usually the guys who are to dense to learn other languages - lower class men poll for Clinton):
Imagine being a rooster in a pen (cage) with 10 hens. You know there are 1000 hens outside the pen but you are satisfied knowing you will spend the rest of your short life with those 10 hens. A man who would accept being regulated (technically blocked in most cases) in his communications with foreign women is, at best, like a macho rooster who feels that at least there are plenty of hens inside the cage he’s just been locked in.
Or he is like the wimps in Braveheart who didn’t want to fight the English who let them have their land as long as they paid taxes.
Taking the analogy further. The rooster in the cage with 10 hens has 12 other roosters in the cage as well and those roosters seem more desperate to impress the 10 hens.
Is he still going to say “Gee, I don’t mind being forced to choose from the 10 hens inside the cage I have just been locked into”?
After being free the first years of his life, is he going to be OK, in general, with learning he must now be caged or put on a leash?
That is a better analogy to what IMBRA tries to do to men.
If there are 50 million American single women, there are 500 million foreign single women.
Smart roosters don’t appreciate being penned up in a cage with only a small fraction of the possibilities.
Nothing in this analogy says that there is necessarily anything wrong with American women (the 10 hens).
In fact, a man who learns other languages and travels the world and dates in other cultures, often does better with and appreciates American women more.
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
I for one am amazed that not a single one of the comments above address the iniquities that have created the need for Marc in the first place. Has a single one of you looked at his site and tried to place yourself in the opposite sex’s shoes? What happened to the famous female compassion? Has it too, gone the way of Bambi’s mom? If you cannot say anything nice use a baseball bat? There is enough inequallity to go around for all sexes, races, and ages, why head hunt someone (even if he does make bad jokes) who is trying to bring to light that our justice system might be headed too far toward inequality for others. As far as I could tell he blames (Marc) male legislators for doing stupid things too (that includes GWB), to unbalance equality for all. Or is it just that you have to have revenge for YOUR victimization of a hundred million years? BTW I am not a “rich white male”, but I do see the inequality of laws being pumped out by the educated idiots in congess! I think all of govenment should be run like “jury duty”, that way we would eliminate lobbiest, NRA, NOW, and others vernight. Plus replace the current deadbeats, losers and retired scabs with real ones in government
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
Oh, come on…Rudov said that if a woman were qualified, he’d have no problem with her presidential candidacy.
Plus he seriously said that Clinton has a woman’s agenda, and for that reason he wouldn’t want her as president. The woman on that episode pointed out that Clinton’s woman’s agenda make her unattractive to her, too.
I love Marc Rudov. He says what I want to hear. I rarely agree with O’Reilly.
bombadil1977
I for one am amazed that not a single one of the comments above address the iniquities that have created the need for Marc in the first place. Has a single one of you looked at his site and tried to place yourself in the opposite sex’s shoes? What happened to the famous female compassion? Has it too, gone the way of Bambi’s mom? If you cannot say anything nice use a baseball bat? There is enough inequallity to go around for all sexes, races, and ages, why head hunt someone (even if he does make bad jokes) who is trying to bring to light that our justice system might be headed too far toward inequality for others. As far as I could tell he blames (Marc) male legislators for doing stupid things too (that includes GWB), to unbalance equality for all. Or is it just that you have to have revenge for YOUR victimization of a hundred million years? BTW I am not a “rich white male”, but I do see the inequality of laws being pumped out by the educated idiots in congess! I think all of govenment should be run like “jury duty”, that way we would eliminate lobbiest, NRA, NOW, and others vernight. Plus replace the current deadbeats, losers and retired scabs with real ones in government
God, my blog is going to be swamped by whiny, humorless MRAs. These people think PMS jokes are the cutting edge of humor. Really, the should be so personally ashamed of their lack of intelligence or perspective as to shut up until they grow up, but that’ll never happen.
So…all those leaders through the centuries who proclaim their love for “mankind” and “man” were really only interested in men? After all, they don’t explicitly mention women, so those guys must not have been real leaders.
Benquo - of course, you’re totally correct. My apologies. i was thinking 2000, even as I read 2004. Maybe my brain doesn’t want to remember that one.
Has a single one of you looked at his site and tried to place yourself in the opposite sex’s shoes?
Yeah, ladies! Haven’t you ever thought about THE MENZ? God knows they have no one to look out for their interests.
You know, a lot of Southern neo-Confederate types see the Civil War as a grotesque imposition. They’ll talk or type for hours about states’ rights, about liberty, about unConstitutional power grabs and how federal law has unjustly limited their freedom of association, and so on, and so forth. And they’re correct. The Civil War was fought over states’ rights: specifically, the ‘right’ of white men and women to own darker-skinned men and women as slaves. And the same people who will talk for hours about how the Civil War deprived their (white) ancestors of their basic rights don’t spend even a second considering the rights - say, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - that the Union victory granted (or began the process of granting, at least) to Southern blacks. The idea that a law might justifiably limit their actions in order to protect the rights of other people is inconceivable, they think; they have a ‘right’ to oppress and exploit others, especially non-white, non-male others, and any law that prevents that strips them of their ‘God-given rights’.
The relevance of this analogy to the comments of Mr. Peterson, et al, I will leave as an exercise to the readers.
(Also, I apologize if this posts twice.)
dude, if you’re blaming some kind of international law i’ve never even heard of for your inability to get laid, eeeevil feminists are not your problem.
Jess, the disconnect is even more apparent when you realize the other half of the ‘perfect 1950s wife’ - she was supposed to be a gold-digger. Oops.
Dorothy,
Surely, please, surely this was sarcastic, no???
Damn, who turned on the MRA tap?
For manly men, they sure whine a lot.
Presumably, the female agenda would involve stuff like childcare, health care, stronger health and safety regulations, paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, reproductive freedom, etc. You know, girl stuff.
As a man, and a father, I think we need more of that. Bring on the female agenda!
(I mean, Jeez, how could it be any worse than what we have now?)
Well he said it 5 or 6 times, so let’s say:
Yeah, but he also said he wouldn’t vote for a woman who has a “female agenda”. Which is so loosely defined that it could rule out all women except for ones who are blatantly anti-woman. So, no, that’s not a good faith argument. Thanks for playing.
Regarding Rudov’s use of the word “female agenda” instead of “victim feminist agenda”…I am as shocked as anyone here about that.
Did OReilly tell him he could NOT use the word feminist?
It doesn’t make sense to use the word female instead of feminist unless you want to be over the top confrontational.
But show-biz is show-biz. Rudov is in the enterntainment industry more than he is an MRA.
If he was an MRA, he would launch a federal challenge against federal funding of women’s shelters based on the fact that the Constitution prohibits the feds from getting involved in state police matters.
Then he could report on TV how dense some of the judges are.
To the guy who thinks that men who fight for their rights are doing so “because they can’t get laid”, you are like the rooster in a cage with 10 hens. You are OK with the 10 hens and don’t mind that you are in a cage and would be regulated if you wanted to date any of the good looking hens outside the cage.
That is not freedom.
The idea that a man who, like me, likes dating American women but wants more variety, is greedy…is pathetic.
A man should want to date both American and foreign women…and slowly decide whom to marry based on having seen a variety of options.
I have as much contempt as anyone here for those people, men or women, who marry someone after meeting them once or twice.
[“…even though the information was enough to cause Julia to break up with him.”
Huh? Still doesn’t look like you actually read the book.]
It sounds like you have neither read the IMBRA law or “1984″. And stop calling him Orwell. The IMBRA law requires that men be identified and background checked by their real names, in this case the Englishman Eric Blair.
IMBRA interferes in relationships from the moment two people try to say hello.
And a Republican judge (Bush lackey Thomas Rose) commented about IMBRA saying “The Supreme Court has never held that there is a fundamental liberty interest in an American contacting a foreigner”.
Does anyone here agree with this Republican judge?
Do you feel that American women have no fundamental right to say hello to a foreign male?
And for the person who made that bizarre comment about guys like Peterson somehow wanting outdated patriarchal rights and not “considering the rights of foreign women”…the worst thing about IMBRA is the way it takes away the rights of the foreign women!
They have the right to broadcast their contact information and to be approached in real life on the street or in chat rooms. They have that right and they are lined up to testify before a US federal court that IMBRA takes this away from them.
These women know that Americans might come to their city or village for a few days or hours and want to contact them ASAP…not after a website owner gets the chance, during California business hours, to do a background check and not after the woman signs on to a website with a password she might have forgotten so she can click a button that she read a background check.
It is really bizarre to say that the right to say hello to someone is akin to the southern white males feeling they had the right to own slaves.
It is the feminists who consider the foreign women their slaves: IMBRA is the US Government (feminists) FORCING foreign women to do something they have not asked to be forced to do,
And it is supposedly for their own good.
This is where the modern Democrat mentality breaks down.
This “positivist concept” of democratic government, discussed well in the book “The Constitution in Exile” says that a majority vote CAN take other’s rights away if it is for the common good.
The problem with the Republicans and the media is that they keep harping about how their choice of judges should be based on the abortion issue.
Bush and Clinton are really the same in wanting big government to make more and more laws.
Do I have to repost the link I made above to foreign women commenting on IMBRA?
Never mind because here is ANOTHER video of the foreign women discussing how idiotic Congress was for assuming that IMBRA deals with their rights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6dfxZ-5eQ
You cannot win the argument that foreign women’s rights are helped at the cost of men’s rights. IMBRA only helps aging feminists in the US spite the men who wouldn’t have anything to do with a woman who could support IMBRA.
So, in the end, IMBRA only helps older women in the US who pretend that they are against this law, but benefit from the fact that the competition has been effectively removed from the Internet (many sites have deleted the profiles of all women who don’t have email addresses).
But IMBRA is only going to be effective as long as the feminist allies in the press refuse to discuss its ramifications and as long as Marc Rudov fails to discuss it on TV.
IMBRA was passed for political purposes. As Baby Boomer women get older and their husbands, like the sex crime fighter Eliot Spitzer, seek out younger women (Spitzer chose the 22 year old prostitute route like the weak mangina he is), then the older women are going to seek out legislation to stop the men from dating or seeing the competition.
Correction: I mean to say that Elito Spitzer was famous as the big “sex trafficking” fighter.
At least until he “sex trafficked” a 22 year old from New York to Washington.
Today on CNN there was a woman from Equality Now crying about how “we thought he was on our side but he was a perpetrator all along”.
Darned right: the men who side with feminists against other men are often trying to overcompensate for some dark secrets. Spitzer wanted to go without a condom and do some really bizarre stuff, which was all caught on the type of wiretap that Democrats like him loved to use to investigate the personal lives of white male patriarchs.
The guy who tried to earn brownie points above by pretending that anti-victim-feminists have a problem with maternity leave and other equity feminist concerns: You REALLY need to start reading books and the Internet regarding the difference between victim (or gender) feminism and equity feminism.
Start with Christine Hoff Somer’s book “Who Stole Feminism” and then maybe Naomi Wolff’s “Fire With Fire” and then move on to “Misandry”, etc.
On an educated forum like Amanda’s you can get away with pretending that there are not competing forms of feminism.
In fact, Marc Rudov is a friend of real feminists.
When Rudov says that women should pay for themselves on the first date, he is openly saying that he would REJECT most foreign women and non-feminist women.
Plus Marc, at 53, says he prefers women 40 and above. He, like me, recognizes that many older women can be gorgeous and really have their head together.
Think about that.
You have yet another ally on television.
Don’t knock Rudov because he likes real feminists and plays softball with the rest of you (silly PMS jokes about a postmenopausal Clinton are actually like playing Nerfball).
Wow. I just did a little on-line research on IMBRA. And it’s fascinating. Apparently, IMBRA (among many other provisions) provides a process for foreign women to obtain legal status in the U.S. if they are being abused by the men they came here to be with. This means foreign women are less likely to feel they need to stay with an abuser for fear of losing residency. What a kick ass idea!
(And when the hot foreign chick leaves her abuser, that frees him up to date me! Bonus for me!)
Margaret - Yes that is a great, kick ass idea. Women no longer have to fear reporting the abuse. That provision is also great for foreign women who seek a “back door” route into US society since it is very difficult these days for any foreigner to enter and remain here, let alone legally work. Most of the foreign brides are not stupid - they know the law (and IMBRA makes sure that they know) and VAWA states that abuse does not have to be physical. The newly arrived foreign bride only needs to claim, without much evidence, that she is being abused and she will then be granted a taxpayer-funded place to live and allowed to stay and work. Being awarded half the man’s assets via the divorce industry is a convenient added benefit.
VAWA/IMBRA works on so many levels. Hats off to Layli Miller Muro of the Tahirih Justice Center and the good folks at Legal Momentum (legal arm of the National Organization for Women).
There are many other great provisions in IMBRA. I have to get to work now but if I had the time, I would go through all of them for discussion.
When someone calls the pen name or “nom de plume” of a pre-internet author a “screen name”, he makes it VERY hard to take the rest of his rant seriously.
Strangely enough, happily married women support the idea that women in long-distance relationships should know if their date beats or rapes women. So,gee, maybe this isn’t about wanting to keep all the abusive mens for our desperate selves.
And I loved the book 1984. It’s about Winston and the State. Anyone getting a futuristic Romeo & Juliet vibe off it has failed their literature courses.
Sorry. Under IMBRA Eric Blair would not be allowed to send a woman his books without indicating his real name instead of George Orwell.
He would also have to get her to approve of his background check BEFORE she was allowed to see the text of the book.
That is Winston and the State. Your double-talk does not change this reality.
IMBRA and “1984″ go together hand in glove. So please reread the book.
Talking about this book is to my advantage. Keep it up if you want to lose any argument you are trying to make in favor of background checking men because “it is a long distance relationship”.
IMBRA interferes with Americans when they are in other countries where the women have their language and support systems. It violates the rights of the American and it surely violates the rights of the foreign women who do not want to have to always check email.
For instance, on a Saturday morning, a woman might not see email until she is at work on Monday. If an American is in her town just for the weekend and she wants all Americans to have her easily replacable cell phone number, IMBRA violates her rights by forcing her NOT to get his phone call.
Did you see the foreign women in the above links complaining about IMBRA?
Obfuscating and ignoring what is above only causes repetition.
Eric,
Surely, please, surely this was sarcastic, no???
Yes, it was a snide sarcastic response from a female writer who had been told she shouldn’t use a male protagonist, because…well, I guess it was the girl cooties.
Wait, you mean a guest on Bill O’Reilly’s show hates women in power?!?! No way. I refuse to believe that.
[happily married women support the idea that women in long-distance relationships should know if their date beats or rapes women. So,gee, maybe this isn’t about wanting to keep all the abusive mens for our desperate selves.]
Most American women would be appalled if they were allowed to hear about the details of this law. Any plaintiff could pull female witnesses off the street to tell the judge that this is a fascist law.
If you would support that this be law for all American men who want to talk with American women…then you would be advocating complete fascism.
But, because Americans simply do not date and marry internationally so much, and because the media is astonishingly in the tank for the radical feminists…nobody knows about IMBRA yet.
Too many idiots also think that these dating services actually marry people over the mail.
Has Rudov ever considered that his hatred of empowered women could interfere with his stated goal of cranking women’s engines & whatnot?
bombadil1977
March 12, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Could you say that about twelve more times? I don’t think I got it the first five.
[should know if their date beats or rapes women.]
In “1984″ the government could have just told Julia that Winston beat up his ex-wife and produced forged papers to prove it.
But they chose to tell her that he said “do it to her” when they tried to torture him.
That information ended the relationship.
You are saying that it would have been OK for the government to inform Julia of Winston’s past, at least as far as the Ministry of Truth could credibly produce evidence, correct?
Maybe someone should produce a movie remake of “1984″ where the government simply tells Julia that Winston was arrested for raping someone 5 years ago (no conviction, but who cares).
Then feminists will see the movie as an example of how a government is supposed to be, correct?
Correct?
I am waiting for the answer to that.
Then feminists will see the movie as an example of how a government is supposed to be, correct?
Correct?
I am waiting for the answer to that.
Wow, are all antifeminists seriously this dumb?
“Considering that the Castrati, who agree with everything the radfems say even when contradicting, don’t have them anymore. The rest of us would like to keep them.”
Personally, my right one seems to itch a bit when I read some ranting nut (pun intended) who can’t understand “1984″ trying to enforce how I should think or act cause we’ve got the same plumbing. Sorry, chuckles, never asked, nor needed, your approval.
But good luck with your sad bastard liberation front.
[Has Rudov ever considered that his hatred of empowered women could interfere with his stated goal of cranking women’s engines & whatnot?]
Actually, Rudov loves empowered women. He is the biggest feminist-lover of them all.
He just does not think that women who expect men to pay on the first date are empowered.
Many feminists agree with him on that.
Many men would agree with you that what would turn women OFF about Rudov is his unwillingness to pay on a blind date.
But that would be a defense of the patriarchal system.
Rudov would turn tradional women off…or more likely confuse them a bit. In the end, his sense of humor and looks would determine how well he got along with any given woman.
Most women do not get turned off at the mention of the word feminism or the criticism of a radical feminist idea. Statistics show that the word feminist is a pejorative among most women.
In other words, a man cannot be kept in line by the mass withholding of admiration and attention unless he remains politically correct all the time.
I realize that manginas think otherwise. They, like Eliot Spitzer, feel they have to say what women want to hear all the time.
Spitzer kept saying “Sex trafficking is wrong and I am going to be the crusader to stop it”.
We all know now that he was only saying what he thought women wanted to hear.
Conceptually, criticism of Rudov is confused here. He dates women CEOs and lawyers. I am the one who dates college students. You should hate me more.
Normally, I would try not to go along with the derailment, but this is now a rapidly aging thread, so what the hell…
“Sorry. Under IMBRA Eric Blair would not be allowed to send a woman his books without indicating his real name instead of George Orwell.”
…sounds good to me. Why should he be allowed to solicit a relationship with her under an assumed name? Now, sending her - blind - a copy of his book IS a little weird…
“He would also have to get her to approve of his background check…”
…so far, so good…
“…BEFORE she was allowed to see the text of the book.”
He could be sending her rape pr0n, or some other hideously misogynistic crap, and he himself could be some kind of stalker/pervert/sex-offender/etc. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to know those things up front?…
“That is Winston and the State. Your double-talk does not change this reality.”
Dude, 1984 is not about some creep trying to buy a foreign bride, with the cruel State preventing him. You seem to have entirely missed the point(s) of the book…
“IMBRA and “1984″ go together hand in glove.”
…just like the EPA and 1984 go hand-in-glove, and the IRS and 1984 go hand-in-glove, and the DHS, and the FBI, and the NSA, and the CIA, and the DOD, etc., etc., etc.
Are you 12-years old or something? Are you some kind of mindless Randroid? Does your mother let you walk to the store alone?…
“So please reread the book.”
Seems like SOMEONE needs to follow his own advice. Maybe buy the Cliff Notes for it too, so you can actually learn what the book is about…
“Talking about this book is to my advantage.”
Other than the thread derailment, I hardly think exposing your own ignorance by making asinine observations about 1984 really helps your “cause”…
[who can’t understand “1984″ trying]
If “1984″ had a movie remake where Julia was told officially by the government that Winston was arrested for raping a woman 5 years ago, would you say the government did her right?
And Witless: Do you know all about IMBRA and agree with it?
In other words, a man cannot be kept in line by the mass withholding of admiration and attention unless he remains politically correct all the time.
I realize that manginas think otherwise. They, like Eliot Spitzer, feel they have to say what women want to hear all the time.
Spitzer kept saying “Sex trafficking is wrong and I am going to be the crusader to stop it”.
We all know now that he was only saying what he thought women wanted to hear.
Are you actually as whiny and stupid in real life as you are trying to sound here?
I am waiting for the answer to that.
[sounds good to me. Why should he be allowed to solicit a relationship with her under an assumed name? Now, sending her - blind - a copy of his book IS a little weird…]
Where is it your right to decide that contact between two people is soliciting of a relatíonship?
Whether weird or not, Blair probably sent his manuscript to a lot of people unsolicited.
[“He would also have to get her to approve of his background check…”
…so far, so good…]
So gay men should be forced to provide affidavits of an AIDS test before they communicate on Gay.com?
Would you be OK with Match.com and Adultfriendfinder implementing IMBRA?
Black men who have been to a liquor store should be so regulated before being allowed in Harlem churches…because studies show that black men who frequent liquor stores commit DV more often?
Remember that a woman who has stated that everyone and anyone should have her cell phone number (which costs $5 to replace), has the right to have her wishes honored.
If a foreign woman only uses email at work and an American is in Moscow on a Saturday and wants to phone her…should she forgo ever meeting him because some US law stretches all the way to her own country and prevents anything from happening until Monday afternoon when some California webmaster gets up early and does a background check?
Is she allowed to sign a waiver asking for this nonsense to be waived?
[“…BEFORE she was allowed to see the text of the book.”
He could be sending her rape pr0n, or some other hideously misogynistic crap,]
I see. And you are a Democrat? You want the Nanny State to apply this to the US domestically as well?
[and he himself could be some kind of stalker/pervert/sex-offender/etc. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to know those things up front?]
By federal mandate right? Would you like this applied to the US domestically as well?
If Congress decides it is necessary, correct?
[“That is Winston and the State. Your double-talk does not change this reality.”
Dude, 1984 is not about some creep trying to buy a foreign bride,]
What about CEOs and other businessmen and US State Dept officials who want to meet someone nice for coffee? That is “buying”? Do you think, after 6 years of high oil prices, that Russia is still a third world country?
[ with the cruel State preventing him. You seem to have entirely missed the point(s) of the book…]
Do you honestly think that Supreme Court justices would describe the book “1984″ as having nothing to do with IMBRA’s desire for the government to interfere in the relationship of two people?
You have entirely missed everything the book is trying to say about the Nanny State.
I’ll just repost my comment about IMBRA from another thread:
“but, but but…she can just accuse me of abuse and get a green card, even if I didn’t do anything!!”
This is a common complaint of the MRA. Notice how the complaint boils down to horror at the impossibility of marrying a foreign woman who actually likes you.
She doesn’t even have to love you, just find a couple years of marriage preferable to going through the legal system with groundless abuse accusations, which even MRAs know is no picnic for the accuser.
Not only do these men think, deep down, that they are totally unlovable, they think the women they intend to marry would do just about anything to get away from them.
Atheist,
MRAs would gladly debate you publicly in real life.
Name the city. They would love to see what someone is like in real life who agrees with everything the feminists say…and when the feminists disagree (as with Wendy McElroy and Christine Hoff Somers disagreeing with radicals) agree with the radicals.
Be prepared for the MRA to bring maybe his educated foreign-born wife who can let you know that you don’t speak for her.
Let her say this in front of an audience of college coeds.
Seriously, if you think you would come across OK in front of college coeds, it should be good for you.
But if you go to OnlineDatingRights dot com, you will see that TV shows where they try to humiliate men and foreign-born wives, always backfire.
The audience always goes to the side of the married couple being attacked by the ideologue who has a stick up the backside, for no good reason, about Americans marrying foreigners.
In the end, buddy, you are only here because you think you are impressing the women with your chivalry.
We won’t have guys like you in government anymore.
Spitzer was one of you on Friday.
He was the feminist’s best gofor boy.
Boston.
I’ll debate you anytime, anywhere, dearie.
Marry foreigners, with my blessing.
But. y’know, if they do really like you, and aren’t coerced into it for money and/or citizenship, you won’t have to lie to them.
Jim Peterson, you are indeed a treasure.
Sometimes it’s difficult to get people who don’t regularly browse blogs to understand just how weird and unhinged some of you guys really are.
Fortunately, if Amanda keeps this stuff around, we can always point to your comments.
One small criticism: If you added some stuff about Black Helicopters, secretly implanted chips, alien abduction and probing, your rants would be perfect. Oh, and don’t forget to slather on a good portion of racism too…
The audience always goes to the side of the married couple being attacked by the ideologue who has a stick up the backside, for no good reason, about Americans marrying foreigners.
In the end, buddy, you are only here because you think you are impressing the women with your chivalry.
We won’t have guys like you in government anymore.
It truly amazing what you think you know about me, government, feminists, and the book 1984. My question still stands, are you actually like this in real life or is this some kind of bizzarre act?
Sometimes it’s difficult to get people who don’t regularly browse blogs to understand just how weird and unhinged some of you guys really are.
The tendency to try to bring every single issue under the sun into a debate about one issue is often a tell.
[But. y’know, if they do really like you, and aren’t coerced into it for money and/or citizenship, you won’t have to lie to them. ]
It is not about preserving the Constitutional right to lie (free speech, 9th amendment, etc).
It is not even about the right to anonymity already upheld when the Communications Decency Act was overturned.
Well, it is about all that…
But the worst part of IMBRA is when an American is in Moscow on a Saturday and the woman will not see her email until Monday morning when he is gone home.
She has given permission that her cell phone number, easily replacable for $5, be given out to anyone and everyone (nobody stalks these women).
But the US Government, like the government in “1984″ has taken on the Nanny State function of saying that HER DESIRE to be phoned in real time when American businessmen are in town…is to be completely ignored.
Would you be OK with an IMBRA waiver, where a woman signs before a notary that she wishes NOT to have to approve of everyone in writing?
Do you see the danger that someday you, as a woman, will not be allowed to give out your contact information, even for business purposes, because you are a woman who could be stalked as a result?
Do you see the danger if IMBRA ever goes domestic?
Now realize that the judiciary, if it approves of IMBRA, will be saying that it would in fact be OK if it were domestic.
Liberal judges uphold US vs Corpolene Products of 1937 that says Congress can pass whatever it considers reasonable.
A Republican judge already said of IMBRA “The Supreme Court has never held that there is a fundamental liberty interest in an American contacting a foreigner.”
Do you agree with that?
First, I would be thrilled if Match and many of the online dating sites had IMBRA-like protections. It would have saved me the trouble of doing a lot of “checking” first before I went on dates with the six men I dated through match. (I’m marrying the sixth, so color me happy.) I would also be okay if those protections applied to me. My dates should be protected too.
Second, the reason to apply these protections to foreign women (and clearly they only apply if you are getting a fiance visa, so what is your beef?) is because they do not have the same rights as citizens, and do not have the same understanding of the rights they do have. Many of them speak foreign languages. In fact, outside of the foreign spouse community, language and cultural barriers are a real problem with regard to law enforcement. In certain communities, robberies happen where the victims know who stole their stuff, and yet they don’t report it because they are afraid of the police. I see that as a bad thing.
Third, how many of you who are seeking brides in other countries actually have the respect to learn your intended’s language. I speak Russian. Why can’t you? Also, if you don’t want this government’s interference, why don’t you live in your bride’s country, or another country?
Fourth, why would it bother you if these women still want citizenship? Why insist on “sending them back to their support structure?” If they want to stay, they should be allowed to do so. As someone pointed out upthread, if these are legitimate marriages, there is no reason to fear manipulative behavior of the type you describe.
Fifth, WRT to all of this nonsense about VAWA and federal funding, the federal government provides funds to all sorts of state agencies, not just law enforcement, and there law enforcement funding spans beyond domestic violence. And only part of VAWA was struck down, the part allowing women to require rape/DV prosecutions to be brought. While a somewhat novel idea, it was not without precedent, as in the earlier part of this country’s history (and in England) there were no public prosecutors; private individuals (with the court’s approval, e.g., indictment) could bring prosecutions on their own.
By the way, it is a long flight to Moscow. Just make sure she gets the background check on Thursday or Friday. Many times agencies are involved. Or fax it. Or bring a hard copy and have it delivered by messenger.
Faint hearts never won fair ladies. (Yes, that is from the animated version of “Robin Hood and Little John.” Whatevs.)
Mike and Atheist,
Should gays be forced to give each other results of AIDs tests before being allowed to communicate? Tragic results could happen when an older man befriends a younger one and lies to him. You are Democrats right? So this law would be OK?
You do feel that there is no right of assembly correct?
Or do you feel that the right of women to be forced to see background checks of men, even when they want to sign a waiver telling the US federal government to go blow, is more important?
What about the young gay man’s right to know if the older guy has AIDs?
You would want to stop them from ever saying hello until the paperwork was cleared up, correct?
Did one notice that feminist men are far less reasonable than the actual women who support radical laws?
Miss Pink in Boston is reasonable and she is willing to debate an MRA in Boston, which can be arranged.
How about the pro-radical males? What city should we organize a debate in?
Can you call your local station to arrange it to be televised?
Keep in mind that the media knows that the couples always win when these debates are televised. Thus, the scandal talk show hosts have all learned not to try to do any “Mail Order Bride” shows anymore. The message always gets out that these marriages, mostly between two people born to the upper middle class of their respective countries, are mostly stable and great for both parties.
Margaret–
Yeah, IMBRA does sound awesome. And I can see why the MRAs would oppose it–if they’re bringing women from other countries to be their perfect submissive wives, then no way do they actually want them to be able to stand up for themselves and decide “hey, America’s cool, but my husband/fiance’s a jackass.” If they’re going to make the effort to bring a woman to America, they want the ‘full rights’ they would have had before the American feminists started ‘taking them away.’ I say we keep IMBRA. Protect women in other countries.
If you want to read a book about foreign mail-order brides, Anya Ulinich’s Petropolis is awesome–it’s a novel, and it doesn’t get into any legal elements, but it’s just a damn good book, in my opinion.
Sigh…you know it’s going to be a long day when you see the words “mangina” and “coeds” used non-ironically.
Jim, honey, we radfemnazibots really and truly don’t think men should beat or rape women.
When you come from that POV, it’s really hard to see what’s so bad about VAWA or IMBRA. If you don’t beat or rape, what’s the problem?
We can argue over whether or not the State should mandate disclosure, but I really don’t see any downside to rapists/beaters having a harder time getting a date. Consequences for your actions, you know? Responsibility?
If I weren’t married, and chose to use some internet dating service, I would WILLINGLY pay more for my profile to be shown ONLY to men who had passed a basic criminal background check, and to show my profile only to men who had passed it. (It should go without saying that I would also be willing to take such a background check and allow it to be viewed).
Would that make you happier? If it were more voluntary? Is your only problem the State?
Or is it the disclosure at all that’s problematic to you?
You may be invisioning some poor guy who’s ex- made up lies about him having a hard time getting a date. He’s already suffered, so why should a new relationship be made more difficult.
I’m envisioning Ted Bundy. Forewarned is forearmed. If you believe a guy has really changed, feel free to take a chance. Unfortunately, rapists usually repeat themselves, which is why it’d be nice to get a ‘heads up’ about the potential harm.
Should gays be forced to give each other results of AIDs tests before being allowed to communicate? Tragic results could happen when an older man befriends a younger one and lies to him. You are Democrats right? So this law would be OK?
You do feel that there is no right of assembly correct?
What the fuck does that have to do with anything, you dumb-ass whiny fuck? Try to communicate like a normal human being for a second. What are you trying to say?
Of course I believe in a right to assembly, it’s in the Bill Of Rights. I believe in a right to assembly to have sex. I believe in a right to talk to foreigners, even if the Sup. Court does not. What does it have to do with anything?
I came in when you accused feminists of wanting a totalitarian state, to tell you that you were out of your mind.
So, where exactly IS my “mangina”? Do I need to have a “Mynacologist” to look after its health? Are there sick people in some parts of the world that cut off certain parts of the mangina and then sew up the rest?
And why the hell were we not told about the mangina in high school?!?!?
I’m with Caren. I’m currently engaged, but if I was single, I would be willing to pay more money to ensure that my profile was being only being shown to men who had passed a basic criminal background check. Things like civil disobediance or even minor drug offenses I could handle, but domestic violence and/or rape is a dealbreaker for reals. I’d be willingly to bet that a lot of women would agree with me, give or take on the minor drug offense angle.
And hey, Jim Peterson, you may have plenty of pretty, young coeds waiting breathlessly for the attentions and ministrations from your manly self, but I’m happy over here with my healthy and adult relationship.
Don’t dating sites also ask if you’re widowed, single and never married or divorced? You get to veto divorces if you want, so why not be allowed to veto former rapists?
I come late to this thread - and what a humdinger. Back to the beginning though - one of the top items on the female agenda is to paint the white house pink. a nice pale shade. also, make every woman’s restroom three times as large as the men’s. and make our work day half that of men’s so we can fit in the necessary shoe shopping.
Well, lookie, lookie, the immigrant fiance(e)s have to get CIA background checks, and medical examinations, including testing for HIV and some other STDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-1_visa
Hmmm, maybe the american fiance(e)s should have to be screened as well.
People have the right to lie about their marital status, their age, etc. Free speech protects this.
The women here who want to use dating sites that have a background check policy…that is fine. I would gladly join such a site if someone’s profile looked really cool and I would be background checked (it takes 2 seconds for the sex offender check) without a problem.
But keep in mind that men with perfect background checks, can still lie…and women will lie as well.
You cannot get the government involved in forcing truth in people assemblying with each other. The Ministry of Truth might inject their own truth down the road if you allow this.
Some are implying that they would only join double blind anonymous webmail sites. You have embraced high tech as possibly the only way you would meet strangers. Maybe or maybe not.
I met my 26 year old girlfriend at McDonalds.
My problem is the federal state getting involved and not making this universal to Match.com and AdultFriendFinder…which would cause a revolt in the streets. Bad precedent.
The sad thing is that, the judicial decisions that would uphold IMBRA, would seal the fate of the right to assemble with others for dating purposes inside the US.
And Thomas Rose said “No fundamental liberty interest in an American contacting a foreigner”.
That is scary. Everyone here needs to condemn that decision even if they want IMBRA upheld with some other argument.
And, in this case, the biggest issue for me is the logistical element in IMBRA that blocks communication completely with all women who want to be phoned or snail mailed (it would take months for background check papers to be mailed to someone, signed and sent back to a website whereas a man can send a telegram in Russia in 5 minutes and the woman would call him at his hotel 10 minutes later).
American paranoia must not be forced on other societies. Here in Europe, women still give men they just met their phone numbers and last names.
Seriously. Europeans did not allow Ted Bundy stories to ruin their way of life.
Ismone,
It is great to meet someone willing to discuss IMBRA and VAWA knowledgeably. You and the other woman are into reasonable debate. The Spitzer wannabees just want to throw insults as if they will get brownie points with unseen women and somehow get a date for being a hero.
MRAs disrespect mainly the males who are clearly trying to preen in front of females on such issues. Spitzer really was like this. He was the darling of the Democrats and most earnest fighter of “sex trafficking”. Brownback is another one like this. Brownback will be the next to fall under such a scandal.
[First, I would be thrilled if Match and many of the online dating sites had IMBRA-like protections.]
The courts will find that women who WANT dating sites that do background checks, can GO to sites that do such checks.
But note that True.com has tons of complaints from the BBB because they bill people after they try to quit. Dating sites do that when people are leaving in droves.
Here in Europe, there are some sites where a man can have a check next to his profile indicating he was checked out by the service. Women tell me that this is a neglible factor in his desirabiity. A nerd with no job but a great security check result, cannot beat a good looking guy with a good job and no background check done.
These sites charge $40 for men to get themselves background checked.
Because it costs so much money, people just forgo that avenue.
But it would not be a big problem if these socalled marriage agencies did general background checks where only guys with good results got to contact women. The problem is in forcing a written approval for every hello in a world where women are generally not on the Internet all the time and where women prefer phone calls or even snail mail or telegrams (Russia still lives by telegram). IMBRA can only be implemented with email or webmail. That is not fair to those who do not live online.
You would agree that educated foreign women who speak English should be allowed to sign a waiver saying they want real-time communication with Americans.
And the definition of “Marriage Broker” is deranged. We can easily get a judge to define it down to something that doesn’t really exist.
For instance, the law says something about an exception being a site that “allows everyone to pay the same fees for the same service regardless of gender or nationality.”
Since the dating business has already established that “inititiating first contact” is something to pay for and “receiving first contact” is something women generally do NOT pay for, a judge can state that a site is not a marriage broker if a woman can pay to initiate contact with an American man.
Also, a site can say “We worship the goddess Tahirih” and be excluded under the clause that says religious oriented sites are exempt.
Remember, most sites are ignoring IMBRA.
[Second, the reason to apply these protections to foreign women (and clearly they only apply if you are getting a fiance visa, so what is your beef?)]
Not true. IMBRA says that a dating site must not allow two people to say hello on chat or anywhere else until a background is done and it is read and checked by the foreigner.
It stops two people from communicating when the woman does not have access to email.
Your remark about planning ahead and emailing on Thursday instead of Saturday…is the state telling me when and how I am allowed to communicate with others.
And what if I have a date Friday night with one woman and decide on Saturday morning that I want to meet someone else? This is what causes the constant cases of men being harmed by IMBRA for those sites that quasi-comply. The government cannot decide the timetable of when and how people meet.
[is because they do not have the same rights as citizens, and do not have the same understanding of the rights they do have.]
You have it right that Washington lawyers have told me that foreign women do not have the right to challenge IMBRA as unfair to them.
Human beings understand their natural law and home country rights very well, and all of it points to men being allowed to say hello to them when they are open to contact from anyone and everyone.
Did you see this video of foreign women reacting to IMBRA?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6dfxZ-5eQ
Would you say these women are naive and do not really understand their rights?
I started talking to them as a stranger in McDonalds.
They did not know me from Adam when they said this.
[Many of them speak foreign languages. In fact, outside of the foreign spouse community, language and cultural barriers are a real problem with regard to law enforcement. In certain communities, robberies happen where the victims know who stole their stuff, and yet they don’t report it because they are afraid of the police. I see that as a bad thing.]
So we should bring American laws to everyone, especially by assuming jurisdiction of the US government over the Internet, correct?
[Third, how many of you who are seeking brides in other countries actually have the respect to learn your intended’s language. I speak Russian. Why can’t you?]
C tex por vy dumaite shto tolko xochu vstretitsa s inostrankami?
Lublu Amerikanek!
So you would agree that foreign women who speak English can sign an IMBRA waiver correct?
Or that American men who speak Russian can be exempt correct?
[Also, if you don’t want this government’s interference, why don’t you live in your bride’s country, or another country?]
That is what I do. I must because American laws say that we have to promise to marry Russian women if we want to vacation with them or live with them for a month.
The Fiance Visa system is insane because many men just want to live with their girlfriend in the place where they work, which for most Americans is inside the USA.
I cannot live in the USA because of these sick laws.
It is true that a German woman could visit me for 3 months in the US and then just become an illegal, but Russians cannot do this unless they lie about being on a business visa (not hard to get if the woman speaks excellent English).
[Fourth, why would it bother you if these women still want citizenship? Why insist on “sending them back to their support structure?”]
It depends on whether she is a scammer or not. The USA should not want to have dishonest people join. This has now become political. Feminists know that Russian women who love their husbands hate the feminists (and know all about this nonsense) and vote Republican. Feminists know the scammers join their ranks as “victims” and help them fill their coffers with Congressional funding when they lie about fake abuse.
Natalia Fox of the Encounters Case is a good example of a scammer who has yet to be brought to justice because Tahirih’s funding was founded on this woman’s lies.
[If they want to stay, they should be allowed to do so. As someone pointed out upthread, if these are legitimate marriages, there is no reason to fear manipulative behavior of the type you describe.]
I agree with this. If a man was abusive, we should be very nice to the woman and help her out. But VAWA is not the answer. State laws can do this.
[And only part of VAWA was struck down, the part allowing women to require rape/DV prosecutions to be brought.]
You know your material, which is good.
Maybe you can help get the only thing that really irks me removed from IMBRA, and that is the part that stops the initial “hello” from happening without a background check being signed by the woman instead of maybe posted to an email address she gave.
You could say that, this way, a serial killer can deliberately call women on Saturday so they don’t get to read their email until Monday, but it is the only compromise that could be defended as not grossly interfering with the right of two people to say hello to each other in real time as they want to meet others.
Just for the record, I checked this morning and my husband’s balls are still there. I know it’s hard for Jim to believe that an American woman would willingly look at or touch her husband’s balls, but maybe it’s because I’m 1/4 Japanese. Everyone knows Asian women are more submissive, right?
I gave into my curiosity and read the text of IMBRA, which is part of a much a larger bill that mostly involves healthcare providers and reporting abuse. IMBRA doesn’t say a word about slowing down messages until the background check is provided. The marriage broker or dating site can’t provide personal contact info for the foreigner until the background check is completed. She could give it to you herself if she wanted to. You could meet women without a dating service and exchange whatever information you wanted. You could meet through a non-profit local matchmaking service (India, in particular has these, I know) and they would be specifically exempted from the law. Come on, Jim, get creative! There are still plenty of ways for you to find naive foreign women who don’t have to be told anything about you.
Until the actual visa process. Then she gets a pamphlet telling her about her rights, and she’ll even learn if she’s your third mail-order bride in less than ten years. Gosh, that might hurt some men. I mean, if you can’t keep a wife for a couple years then send her home and get a younger model, what’s the point?
Seriously, I don’t get the problem. Since on most dating services, you exchange a few messages before you get to the part about meeting and exchanging contact info, there’s plenty of time for a background check. If you don’t care about getting to know the person, you just want to hook up for sex the moment you’re in Moscow, just go to a bar, don’t bother with a dating service.
First:
1) Additional requirements for those seeking to obtain visas for their fiance(e)s are okay because you have no right to bring anyone else into this country. Compared to the limitations on other types of visas, those seeking fiance visas have it pretty sweet. My grandfather can love his foreign relatives with all of his heart, and still not get them visas.
2) IMB’s are different than match (at least between U.S. citizens) because two U.S. citizens have exactly the same legal rights to remain in the country. This is the difference in legal rights that I am speaking of.
3) The immigrants have to get background checks in order to get the visa, and be tested for disease. Why doesn’t equal protection require the same for the Americans?
4) If you want any other visa, you have to plan ahead. Like I said, bring copies. And the law requires the brokers to disseminate the information, so if you get the stuff to your broker(s), you are in the clear.
5) The American government always has jurisdiction over its own citizens, wherever we are.
6) Why should foreign spouses, regardless of what language they speak, be required to waive background checks for their intended, when they have to go through them themselves? Why should anyone want them to waive getting a copy of the pamphlet, which tells them (a) about rape and DV and this country’s laws and (b) that visa fraud is a crime (which protects the Americans).
7) Just because some women on youtube are either willing to sign waivers and seem aware does not mean that all are aware or willing to sign waivers.
8) I prefer to use youtube to watch the “trunk monkey” videos, myself.
9) Good for you. I asked how many overall. (And I’m having a hard time getting exactly what you’re saying, problem with putting cyrillic languages in our alphabet, but I get the part about loving an American.)
10) You don’t get free visas. Not for your best friend, not for your girlfriend, not for your relatives. Sorry.
11) Natalia Fox was beaten to a pulp. She went to the hospital with injuries. Based on that statement, about her, I am really starting to doubt your honesty. Foreigners can be prosecuted for visa abuse already.
12) State laws cannot trump federal immigration laws. In order to give the woman immigration status, the federal government must be involved. State laws can only control state marriage licenses, and divorce.
13) If you want to even up IMBRA, by requiring the foreign person’s background to be checked at the time of contact, instead of at the time the visa is applied for, I would have no problem with that, at all.
For those interested, this is what happened to Natalia Spivack/Fox:
“The ambulance took Plaintiff to the local hospital where she was treated by Air Force Lt. Col. Marilyn Perry, M.D. Plaintiff had numerous physical injuries including contusions and swelling on her face; hand marks on her arms (indicating that she was violently grabbed and/or shaken); a human bite to her hand; and contusions on her chest. Dr. Perry — board certified with substantial experience with domestic abuse — also testified that it was clear to her that Plaintiff had been terrorized and was a victim of domestic abuse.”
This is taken from the Fourth Circuit’s unpublised decision, p. 8–9, affirming Ms. Spivack’s damages award.
That’s right, an Air Force Lt. Col. and Doctor testified to her injuries. He abused her while she was pregnant with his child. What a monster.
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/051139.U.pdf
Correction: The plaintiff was Natalia Derkach/Fox, the defendant was Natasha Spivack, a marriage broker who encouraged Fox to remain with her husband after Fox reported the abuse and showed her injuries to Spivack.
So I looked up Nataliya Fox. Turns out Nataliya Fox was a mail-order bride from the Ukraine, who was beaten repeatedly by her American husband to the point where she was hospitalized (four months pregnant!), and she didn’t know she wouldn’t be deported if she left him. I’m not sure how her story supports your case at all.
Ohh, I see. Because she eventually managed to find out that it was OK to ditch the scumbag, is that it?
And…lies? Beat herself up repeatedly as an excuse to get divorced, did she?
okay so i skipped a whole damn lot in this thread, but:
since when did “i’m cool with women paying for themselves on dates” become definitive proof of being a super-awesome feminist empowerful dude? is it seriously being claimed that this, and this alone, is enough to make some asshat who makes a living making sexist jokes “a friend to women”? because, wtf.
All this dirvel of the white male agenda derives from the misguided rabblerousing Jacksonian strain of thought that would dilute the essence of the American experiment by extending the franchise to include white males whose sole qualification was the ability to reach the age of majority…to speak of a white male perogative is to promote a populist agenda contrary to the intent of the framers…
Avogadro: IMBRA does not have to say its intent is to slow down and stop communication with women who do not have email. The effect is a natural result of what the law says about written approval. That part of the law really does have to go because it assumes that all women use anonymous webmail services. If the women do not have email, communication is totally blocked. This is illegal. That is why most sites are ignoring IMBRA or pretending to comply.
Ismone: Since you and I are among the 10 people on Earth who saw the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unpublished decision, you are clearly at the Tahirih Justice Center or close to it.
If that is the case you know well about how IMBRA blocks communication at the hello stage if the woman is not signing on to the Internet every day when a man can be in her city.
This is the most frightening thing you said:
5) The American government always has jurisdiction over its own citizens, wherever we are.
Let us discuss this in court.
Hundreds of years ago, that kind of comment from the government itself would be grounds for a civil war. Today, the government could say that and the pathetic media would fail to report on it.
Natasha Spivack has plenty of photos of a happy Natalia and James Fox AFTER the healthy baby was born.
The 4th Circuit said: “95% of these international matchmakers do NOT promise that they would take care of the woman forever. Encounters apparently did that so we find them liable not for the introduction but for Natasha Spivack not advising Natalia of her options”.
This ruling will work in our favor when it is folded into Supreme Court procedings in the future.
JP,
I found the decision because I googled her name. As it happens, I’m not associ. with them. Do you dispute the testimony of the Air Force light colonel about Ms. Fox’s injuries?
If you think someone cannot fake a smile, I don’t get you at all.
The jurisdictional decision, while you may consider it frightening, had something to do (if I remember) with compelling an American citizen in France to return to the U.S. to testify. Renouncing citizenship = no jurisdiction.
Natalia showed that woman injuries. I do not understand why you defend her.
Finally, you don’t answer most of my points. I’ll leave that be, but level one question at you:
1) If immigrant fiance(e)s have to have background checks and HIV and other medical tests in order to get admission in the US, and according to your understanding of the law, equal protection either does or should apply to alienage WHY SHOULDN’T US CITIZENS BE HELD TO THE SAME BACKGROUND CHECK/STD STANDARD?
(Not yelling, just so you don’t miss the q. since I don’t know how to bold.)
Hi Ismone,
I did answer all your points in detail but this blog did not publish it. I believe that all long postings are just deleted as spam. Only the short postings stick.
So I will have to go back and answer briefly when I have time.
I am glad you care about others answering you point by point. I am the same way. It is frustrating to see unserious people say “You are a ranting fool” instead of answering really good questions honestly.
I did not know the unpublished decision was online. Then again, maybe I put it online. That shows that I am so busy with my own life and career that my time to think about IMBRA and VAWA is limited.
About Natalia…that Air Force doctor’s testimony is probably enough to damn James Fox forever and the Supreme Court will assume something bad happened that day.
Tahirih, however, had a lot at stake with something like this and they are funded because of that one beating and IMBRA passed because of that beating and a murder in Seattle a decade ago.
Anecdotes should not get laws passed and there was a conflict of interest going between the feminists and others in government that I won’t talk about here. Also, the first judge that threw out the case died and a new judge was eager to take the case. That was double jeopardy to my mind.
The marriage went on and the baby was born healthy. Few people can know what was really going on in that marriage or any other. I do know that Natasha is good friends with James Fox and says she thought the marriage was fine long past the baby was born. Natasha could be lying to me, but I doubt that. The baby was born healthy anyway, so the “horrific beating” didn’t cause a miscarriage if it happened that way. A millionaire does not bite his wife unless she’s got her hands around his neck or something. I just cannot explain this case but I we are gathering DV experts who know how women can fake things.
She had a history of faking things in order to become a US citizen. James Fox is ready to prove this although the 4th Circuit already acknowledged this as well.
She entered the US on a visa with a man other than James Fox. She broke the law when she did not go back and get a new visa.The 4th Circuit guys believed the garbage that her homeland was too poor to send her back to.
In any event, she was convicted of not telling the woman about how to become a citizen by claiming abuse…which can be overturned because the court did agree that 95% of other services are not liable on such matters.
It all comes down to whether the conservatives in the court recognize these nonsense laws as feminist.
Again, I fail to see how a dating site would be liable for that not why men should lose their right to be anonymous and meet others without their backgrounds being revealed.
A woman recently tried to sue a Colorado police department for not saving her daughters from an estranged ex-husband who killed them.
The 5 conservative members of the Supremes said that the feds could not interfere with stalking situations.
But then these 5 also said that Americans can be asked for their ID by the police anytime anywhere…while the left wing justices furiously dissented.
So I see the US judiciary system as schizophrenic and corrupt and politically motivated case by case.
When a case is obviously about feminism, such as US vs Morrison (VAWA rape case) or the Colorado Estranged Murder Case…the 5 conservatives vote against the feminists. The ACLU makes itself scarce or sides with the feminists.
However, when the case is obviously about just civil rights, the ACLU steps in and the left wing judges all vote for civil rights while the right wingers dissent.
If you have a link to that decision about US citizens being subject to US jurisdiction in France, please show me.
Renouncing one’s citizenship would carry other factors however.
An American can say that IMBRA so damages the social contact between him and his country, that he would have to renounce, but then the government would have to give him the future value of the veterans administration health services plus the social security earned, etc.
Plus he would have to be allowed into the US on the passport and terms of whatever country he does become a citizen of.
Plus I would attach millions to the value of being an American….so the government ought to just remove the blemish to the social contract.
Men refuse to be background checked by federal mandate to say hello to women, especially when they are smart enough to realize that women without email are never able to read and thus approve of those checks.
Dishonest websites sometimes want to comply with IMBRA because it enables them to take money from men who write letters into black holes. Most men do not know this. Maybe the woman discontinued her email and forgot to change that on a site buut would love to get a phone call from some American (it happens so rarely). When that never happens, the woman never gets married and her profile stays up forever, generating cash now and then.
Site owners like the idea that IMBRA keeps their databases frozen, with no women quitting the service because they are not meeting anyone and thus not falling in love or getting engaged.
It is the men who do know the logistics of blocked communication who might preen like peacocks or knights in shining armor and say they don’t mind the restrictions on their right to assemble freely without government encumbrance.
And of course, guys like Spitzer really hated all other men because he wanted to be seen as the protector of women.
You should see on other blogs how much men on the left and right hated Spitzer for what he wanted to do to his fellow man, just to look like a hero to Democrat women.
Um excuse me, but when we adopted overseas, we had to go through TONS of paperwork, background checks by our own government (including getting fingerprints taken). That doesn’t even include the paperwork done overseas to make sure that our child was really an orphan, and we had to take her for a medical exam. Why in the world do you think the process should be freaking easier for you?
Dude- go date a gal named Brevity. Look her up and see what’s she’s about. OMFG, and they say we evul womin talk too fucking much…
What? No one came up with simply telling this asswipe to shut the pluck up?? Oh, where are the punsters of the world when you need them…
Because foreign adult women are neither babies nor children.
This is the weakest link in the feminist argument for such laws.
Also, we Americans go to their countries and try to speak their languages and then the feminists come up with arguments about how the foreign women sometimes can’t speak English and they mumble about the women being far from home and family and support networks…when it is the American in their country hoping to say hello to them who is disadvantaged by all this.
He is feared to be putting THEM in danger in their country and with their language and their possibly mean police force.
And then…to really top off the bizarre humor…after saying the 1% of women who DO happen to marry their American friend and come to America are “far from their support network of friends and family” and thus “vulnerable” they then turn around and say that, whether fraudulently claiming abuse or not, these women should not be punished by being sent back to their support network of friends and family.
They should be rewarded by being forced to remain vulnerable and far from friends and family.
All out of a jingoistic sense of American superiority and an ideology that says that they must have wanted more than anything else to become Americans because why else would they have chosen to marry an American loser.
God, is Jim Peterson the longest-winded troll around or what? Does he get a prize?
Ismone, to “bold” something, you…
Type:
then whatever you want to bold, then
.
To blockquote, same procedure but type in “blockquote” instead of “strong”. What you’re doing is bracketting the command in to start it, then by putting the same with a backslash at the end of the phrase, you’re ending the command.
Hope this makes sense; it’s easy once you get the hang of it but took me awhile to learn.
>b<
>B<
Notice he still hasn’t answered my equal protection argument.
Nice.
OK, Ismone, so you type:
<b>
Then type what you want bold
then you type:
</b>
I also notice, JP, that you don’t question the Lt. Col.’s testimony.
If she was telling the truth, regardless of whether he kissed Natalia’s feet for the rest of the marriage, Natalia was entitled to citizenship.
Finally, wrt to arugments you view as inconsistent re:IMBRA. They matter if someone here makes them. I’m not saddling you with all the stupid arguments other opponents of IMBRA make, because I’m a nice person and because it isn’t valid argumentation.
If you can answer my equal protection argument, I’d love to hear it.
Oh, and James Fox, like Natalia, had another woman in the US on a fiance visa before Natalia. She went back home. So why does that make Natalia any more suspect?
If you really think he beat her up in self-defense, I think you are out of touch with reality. Why didn’t he go to the hospital?
Do you really think Natasha would say the Fox was abusing his wife? I’ve sat across the table from a murderer and a serial rapist. Even having read their files and confessions I never would have believed it. Goes to show our knowledge of other people’s truthfulness only goes so far.
Oh, and re: the horrific beating, usually women don’t miscarry from a broken leg, or a husband who was trying to break their leg. Or being hit in the face. Usually doesn’t cause miscarriage. That is what she alleged.
wow, it works!
many thanks, atheist!
and now… I know the rest of the story… so cool.
Oh- sorry, atheist! I forgot that up-posts, this is “smiley face” equals “get cancer and die” day… my bad.
Ok, not to be a nit-picking asshole, but Jim Peterson wrote:
Liberal judges uphold US vs Corpolene Products of 1937 that says Congress can pass whatever it considers reasonable.
which is just plain wrong. That case is called United States v. Carolene (not Corpolene) Products, it was decided in 1938, and it does not say that Congress can pass whatever it considers reasonable. What it says (badly paraphrased) is that the SCOTUS will use a rational relationship standard of review in cases of alleged economic overstepping by Congress, BUT that the standard of review will be higher in cases that seem to violate the Bill of Rights or to impinge on the rights of minorities.
I mean, Jesus Christ, Jim, could you at least try to sound like you know what you’re talking about? Not that you weren’t already laughably ill-informed.
Um do you know what people have to do to become citizens here? Hoops and ladders hon. Lots of paperwork. Remember Ellis Island? I’m sorry, but I think you’re smoking some good stuff if you think we as citizens think you should just be able to sprinkle magic dust on the woman of your choice and “poof” she’s a citizen. Come on, put a little work into it for God’s sake. If you love each other it’s worth it.
And just as an aside, Mongolian are talking about how to deal with foreign marriages. “Some Mongolian women who enter into marriages with foreign husbands, mainly South Koreans, have discovered conditions of involuntary servitude after moving to their husbands’ homeland” and “The Government has reached an agreement with the Association of Mongolian Television and Mongolian Newspapers’ Association over the changes to the law. The media organizations are also obliged not to print advertisements for any suspect activity like those from visa mediators and marriage go-betweens with foreigners.” from the UB Post. Doesn’t sound like a small problem eh?
this is “smiley face” equals “get cancer and die” day… my bad.
No prob.. I was not taking what you wrote in any way like that.
Thanx Ophelia for pointing out that about Carolene. The part about impinging on the Bill of Rights should help when the Commerce Clause is brought up as the main reason why the courts can regulate dating websites. IMBRA regulates the customers more than the sites.
The desire to keep the government out of the process of two people saying “hello” is not “laughably ill-informed”.
I have seen about 3 cases personally upfront where Russian women tried hard to hit their husband into making a swing at her, because they knew about laws like this that could give them a fast track to citizenship. A trend of fraud resulting from VAWA is easy to prove.
I testified in one case and the judge took my advice and let a woman know she could not gain citizenship by trying to get her husband to hit her. She went on to have 2 kids and a happy marriage 15 years later.
As Heather said above: Russian women know their options very well and plenty of Russian witnesses can attest to a subculture of fraudsters (maybe 10% of these brides) who deliberately marry a loser to exploit this way.
The DV discussion on Amanda’s blog would be tiresome, because of the idealogues here, but women really do hit men more than visa versa, but men hit harder.
I have had a woman try to kick me in the nuts because I didn’t want to take her picture anymore on a bridge. I just put my hand down to stop the foot from hurting me badly and her shin got bruised from the hand stopping the leg.
And you know how much a bruised shin hurts? Boy did she cry. People were looking at us. Fortunately we were in a country where people knew she probably tried to kick me in the nuts and I stopped her leg.
A fraudster would go straight to the hospital on that.
A lot rides on whether Natalia Fox received evil advice before the incident. But it is really irrelevant because it was not THAT incident where she alledgedly told Natasha at a Christmas Party that they were arguing all the time.
I believe Natasha when she says that she did not see the marriage as needing advice for a divorce at that time. The feminists insist that advice on divorce was needed.
But even then: the 4th Circuit said that Natasha was only guilty because of a supposed PROMISE to take care of the women forever like a mom.
American business owners would have seen liability written all over the idea of staying involved like that.
That was based on Russian culture. Natasha did not know how to think liability like an American businessperson.
Anyway, here is the answer you wanted:
[1) Additional requirements for those seeking to obtain visas for their fiance(e)s are okay because you have no right to bring anyone else into this country. ]
True, because elements now control Congress who have no interest in letting men have their girlfriends come visit their families.
It is sheer political weakness of males, exacerbated by the 2 party system that allows only to help send the Republican Party into oblivion in November like much of it was in 2006.
Other democracies have a parliamentary system where libertarian parties become the kingmakers.
The US is very, very flawed this way, but so be it. Other countries allow Americans to have their girlfriends come visit. Earning dollars is not so hot now as well anyway.
[2) IMB’s are different than match (at least between U.S. citizens) because two U.S. citizens have exactly the same legal rights to remain in the country.]
Here you are making the mistake of associating a dating site with immigration. Only 1% of people who meet each other ever get married and even less immigrate to the US. The part of the law that regulates introductions has NOTHING to do with immigration.
Bizarrely, the Georgia IMBRA case had the plaintiff accepting that there somehow was a connection. That whole case will, therefore, be of no use in future cases for either side.
Equally bizarrely, the AG’s office tried hard in the Georgia IMBRA case to show that the specific plaintiff dating site FACILITATED in the immigration process in ADDITION to introducing people online.
This means that sites might not be IMBs if they do not also facilitate with immigration.
Match introduces Americans to foreigners and so do the sex dating sites. They are exempt as are all sites that use an easy to find loophole. The problem is that some sites WANT IMBRA to keep their databases frozen while the owners just mumble about how the law is a violation of men’s rights.
[3) The immigrants have to get background checks in order to get the visa, and be tested for disease. Why doesn’t equal protection require the same for the Americans?]
This, again, has nothing to do with the part of the law that forces background checks on the American just to say hello. And remember that it isn’t even those unconstitutional background checks for social hellos that bother me so much as the logistical nightmare created by forcing women to read email and make electronic signatures when they want to meet men by means OTHER than email.
But to answer your Equal Protection argument regarding the Visa Application stage to the US: the American already HAS a right to live in the USA. He or she does not need permission to live there.
A lot of American women are ticked off by how this part of IMBRA slows down their applications considerably…but Homeland Security then speeds those applications up because a woman complaining makes bad press.
His or her government, that works for him or her (not just the feminist groups), doesn’t need to make chivalry and feminism or any newfangled sense of “fairness” more important than their obligation to work for him as his government. His background is not necessarily relevant to whether she is a terrorist or a fraud (but the Bushies might disagree in which case men are screwed here). They can try to determine if a marriage is fraudulent however and some SORT of check on the American might be warranted to see if this guy or American gal might be trying to do something illegal.
This is an unprecedented and progressive law that assumes that societies were all primitive in the past and this was so necessary and urgent.
But the Democrat Supreme Court justices believe in progressivism so they will surely uphold this part of IMBRA.
Thankfully, I am not so concerned about this part of the law anyway.
I have seen about 3 cases personally upfront where Russian women tried hard to hit their husband into making a swing at her, because they knew about laws like this that could give them a fast track to citizenship. A trend of fraud resulting from VAWA is easy to prove.
This sounds like bullshit to me, frankly. (1) You “personally seeing” three cases does not equal “proof” of a trend of fraud resulting from VAWA. (2) You do realize you can’t actually make someone hit you, right? (3) This really seems to fly in the face of your previous argument that foreign women really want to come here and marry these American men, and that the government is cruelly separating people from the loves of their lives. Which is it, Jim? Are foreign women just powerless against the charms of manly American dudes like you, or are they just looking for a “fast track to citizenship”? Also, if these women were so abusive and terrible, why the hell didn’t the husbands leave? Because they had paid good money for these brides, dammit, and they were going to get what they paid for?
Wait–are you talking about the woman who not only had sole-custody but also restraining orders against her ex. Said ex threatened to kill the kids.
Even bringing the proper paperwork, those asshole cops wouldn’t do their jobs. Those kids died as a result.
That case? And you’re using it as an example of evil feminist scamming?
Dude.
and you still haven’t said one word about why dating should be made easier for rapists. Anyone who’s seriously looking for a match shouldn’t be discouraged by having to jump through a hoop or two–especially since bringing yoru fiance back to the US can be an utter nightmare of paperwork.
Far from being BS, MRAs now have several former government officials as expert witnesses on the trend of about maybe aroun 1 in 12 (8%) of foreign women who marry American men via dating sites for fraudulent purposes.
I won’t quibble over the exact percentage but it is high enough to allow feminist groups like Tahirih (whose funding requires having a problem) to pretend the real rate of abuse, otherwise pegged at around 1%, to be exaggerated.
Women can easily get bruised by flailing at some guy and all he has to do is put is arms up to block the blows and the woman ends up with bruises while he does not. I already noted that I blocked a kick to my groin, because I wouldn’t take a photo, and the woman ended up with a bruised shin.
Only on this blog would people deny this.
You probably don’t want a conservative Supreme Court listening to this kind of argument because they recognize this to be feminist ideology.
In Silicon Valley there are a lot of Russian women married to engineers, etc. I knew the community well. I have seen this fraud taking place.
Since the majority of marriages work well, the fact that IMBRA blocks many people from meeting at all has probably caused a 1000 good marriages not to happen. But I cannot measure this.
Keep in mind that nobody is seriously complying with IMBRA so the number of good marriages that never happened might be less than otherwise.
Bottom line is that there is no contradiction in talking about a 90/10 or 80/20 ratio of good marriages to fraudulent marriages with maybe 1-5% marriages where the woman is innocent but the man abusive.
Only the fraudulent marriages are the federal government’s business after immigration.
1) But why should they be willing to let people bring in girlfriends/boyfriends? It seems very unstable (in terms of people coming in/going out).
2) If they are just “dating sites” with equal fees for both sides, they aren’t covered by IMBRA. I’m not seeing a problem. (Although perhaps they should be covered by IMBRA.) So where people have an equal financial stake in the means that lets them begin the relationship, no IMBRA. They aren’t called marriage brokers for nothing. And most of them make it clear (openly or tacitly) that marriage is the goal. I don’t understand your point about the Georgia case.
3) Snail mail works. If the American clients want it enough, the IMBRAs will do it. You can say social hellos on myspace, facebook, and all those personal websites. But if a business falls within the definition of the statute, they are going to be regulated. Adoption agencies are regulated as well. (And no, I’m not saying women = children, I’m saying we regulate businesses that get involved in our immigration policy.)
Equal protection: But we were talking about YOUR understanding of equal protection. You were saying it was a violation of equal protection to apply these rules to the American, but not the foreigner, because alienage is a suspect class. If so, it cuts both ways.
Also, the person is sponsoring someone for a visa. As a result, the government vets the foreigner being sponsored. It seems unfair to not vet the American as well.
This discussion of “fairness” is in tension with your argument that aliens are a suspect class.
With regard to your preamble: You aren’t doing a good job of making these marriages look good. And you now seem to be conceding that Ms. Spivack did a few things wrong. The point is, if she gives advice, and holds herself out as a counselor (when it is to her financial advantage) and that advice goes wrong, she is oh so liable it isn’t funny.
Immigration is the federal government’s business. From start to finish.
But saying hello on a dating site has nothing to do with immigration.
Natasha did make herself liable probably, but her cultural background made it so Natasha could not be expected to have known how Americans like to sue each other. Layli of Tahirih offered Natasha a deal where she would speak out against the dating industry as well. When Natasha refused, she was screwed. These are now very powerful people…however they have not managed to get more than $10,000 out of Natasha of the $341,000 ruling. I guess they know that Natasha does have some stuff on them. They only care about getting federal funding to “enforce IMBRA”. They are going to lose this funding soon if they are not careful.
It is all politics.
They cut Natasha no slack because the Encounters Case was politically motivated and motivated by greed for funding the TJC that Layli is now enjoying with her $78K salary. They have to understand that forces are building to expose this fraud.
On equal protection, it is wrong for the American to be stigmatized for political reasons despite the Congress supposed plenary power over immigration.
By email I can send a major legal review that says that this part of IMBRA is not really about immigration but about messing with other people’s marriages. This part of IMBRA does not concern me so much.
Regarding the Colorado case:
I was saying that the Colorado case was dismissed by the Supreme Court. It was considered a state’s rights issue even if the state didn’t do its job,
Violence against women is not a federal issue.
[and you still haven’t said one word about why dating should be made easier for rapists.]
Because people are presumed innocent until proven guilty by others they meet. This is the principle of anonymity that only Hitler broke when he decided to put yellow stars on Jews.
You cannot put yellow stars on ex-convicts.
The Bushies, however, have really hurt the Republican Party and they might agree with you.
[Anyone who’s seriously looking for a match shouldn’t be discouraged by having to jump through a hoop or two–especially since bringing yoru fiance back to the US can be an utter nightmare of paperwork.]
But we are talking about saying hello to someone whom you will probably not marry.
These are dating websites. There is nothing serious about the intentions necessarily. It is just pure social interaction.
Again, Tahirih may hang in the next challenge because of the dishonest way they portray these sites as if meeting someone automatically leads to marriage.
But European Connections owner, in his challenge, behaved astonishingly and seemed to deliberately lose his case by talking in his unpublished trial transcripts like each introduction led to a marriage and then he put his foot consistently into his mouth by trying to look like the father figure who took care of his ladies after marriage.
He did not realize how he was digging himself into a legal grave by talking this way. He had wanted to give the impression he cared about the women who used his dating service but it backfired bigtime.
Match.com doesn’t know about nor care what happens after people say hi. The courts want to hear about that.
The socalled “marriage brokers” bring it on with the feminists because of their marketing methods…but the men largely want to just meet some people and say hi.
Actually, Mr. Peterson’s rants make a tad more sense (or maybe an iota, not much more sense, mind you) if you substitute the word “fuck” for “date.”
Try this one from comment 83:
“The idea that a man who, like me, likes dating fucking American women but wants more variety, is greedy…is pathetic. A man should want to date fuck both American and foreign women…and slowly decide whom to marry based on having seen (fucked) a variety of options.”
Apparently Mr. P couldn’t get laid on a trip to Moscow…like rightnowicantwaittillmonday!…and it really bummed him out. Svetlana doesn’t know how lucky she really is.
Especially when you get the the part about the rooster. Don’t know why Mr. P wants to fuck “hens”
Actually, the funny thing is that match does not let you post personal information on your profile. (Address, number, email address, etc.)
And, sadly, feminists mainly have men with foul mouths to date.
Just about all men who support IMBRA, also have foul mouths and an obvious desire to impress the females around him whom he sees as accepting of his hip speech pattern.
Eliot Spitzer had the same personality profile and foul mouth.
Funny…Spitzer thought he was so feminist-friendly when he raised the jail sentence for men who use prostitutes (sex trafficking) from 3 months to 1 year a few months ago.
Mr. P, I’m not the one who goes on about having carnal knowledge of a wide variety of domesticated fowl. There are lots of ways to “say hello” (another euphemism for erotic intimate intercourse?) to foreign women that don’t involve services of an international “marriage broker” or a requirement to fess up to a criminal record.
But matrimony isn’t necessarily what this is all about, is it? You yourself have referred to these as “sex” sites.
Seriously, what is it with the chickens?
happen to marry their American friend and come to America are “far from their support network of friends and family” and thus “vulnerable” they then turn around and say that, whether fraudulently claiming abuse or not, these women should not be punished by being sent back to their support network of friends and family.
Ok, can we separate the idea of friends and family from the idea of the country they live in? When my grandparents fled murderous antisemitism around Kiev pre-WWI, they left behind their entire family - all their support network. On the other hand, they never would have chosen, under any circumstances, to go back to Kiev. Russian women might be leaving their support networks, but they’re coming to greater economic opportunity and potential. Immigrants from all over the world consider the chance to live in the US worth leaving their support network. It’s not being sent back to their friends and family that’s the punishment. It’s being sent back to whatever circumstances they were leaving in the first place. Which, in this case, includes a dearth of men they consider marriageable.
Hmmm. These guys are really all about a loving foreign bride and happy marriage. This from http://www.imbra.org/fraud.html which suprisingly has nearly an identical design as Mr. P’s site.
Then there’s this timely advice on how to treat your loving wife:
Let’s recap: Don’t give your new loving foreign bride anything, especially money; force her to go into debt and live off her; don’t leave any marks on her; and if she balks at any of this generous treatment, annul the marriage in the most vicious way possible. Because if she really loves you after all this, she’ll remarry you.
Yup. These guys are real finds. It’s a darn shame that American women can’t see them for the manly stand-up guys they are.
Can you feel the love tonight? Man I see swirly pink hearts everywhere.
Hey BTW how about addressing my post about the fact that some countries (like Mongolia) see foreign marriages as a problem that has to be dealt with? I mean not even the countries the women are coming from sees this as a “good deal”.
Not my site. Borrowed the graphics two years ago.
I am going to ask that site’s owner to do some heavy editting on some of that crap. The warning signs thing was OK, but the other stuff is clearly written by a bitter guy who was used by a fraudster.
By the way, what the Hell are grown men doing hanging around the most well-known radical feminist site talking about swirly pink hearts?
Are you gay or something? Do you think you are going to get laid because you were on the feminists’ side? Do you think the foul language impresses them (maybe so)?
I mean, damn. I just know you wouldn’t go face to face with an MRA in person. No male has EVER defended IMBRA to me in person (in fact, in person no woman has ever shown that she thought federally mandated background checks for dating sites was reasonable):
But, in the end, what I’ve realized today is that this really is a political free speech issue. Where pandering males who think they need to hang around the most radical feminist blog to get some admiration, most men ould not think of a more hellish place to hang out day in and day out.
Whether it is the Ron Paul blogs or some of the conservative blogs where they don’t like McCain, talk of VAWA and the feminists yields ZERO male attackers. It takes a liberal male who values his pornography more than dating avenues to get all hot and bothered about men who might prefer meating non-prostitutes and non-feminists.
On Youtube, you will find the occasional foul mouthed young male trying to make like being macho means not knowing the difference between various kinds of feminism and just accepting them all.
In the end, politics, pure politics. These international dating sites: they make anti-feminist remarks in their marketing and they are attacked, politically, by feminists who flock to collectivist government jobs.
These are the political enemies of conservative men.
So what I have learned today here at Pandagon is that Political Free Speech is yet another argument for getting IMBRA overturned. The Russian women who are not scammers, know all about how the American feminists are trying to stop them. That we can meet each other is political. And that kind of speech has been found to be the strongest Constitutional right of all.
Avogadro: American men love it when others say that American men are the most marriageable. How can I argue with that?
But I do not agree that Russia in 2008 has less opportunities than the USA. Things are going very, very well there now while the US dollar crashes and the US goes into recession.
I am glad you like where you are. It is important that people be happy in their chosen environment.
I realize that it will be hard to convince American judges not to have the same idea about how America is supposed to still be the land of milk and honey.
In any event, it is a political opinion to say that America is a better place to live than Russia. It must not be used to say that foreign women are all just looking for losers to exploit because, of course, they really want to just live in the US.
That goes against the idea that women are looking to live in a place where the men are more marriagable.
Unless you surmise that the women want to marry losers who speak Russian and earn enough to travel…so they can divorce them and find some foul mouth like Atheist or Sailor who would be preferable as a partner (after all Sailor was such a hero gentleman for researching Mike Schmidt’s site and finding some politically incorrect text).
The feminists say: Yes, these women want to meet American men but somehow the ones who learn their language and come to visit them are the inferior ones whom they will just use in order to get citizenship so they can meet the good foul mouthed guys to live with happily ever after.
Don’t laugh: This is exactly what a Newsweek Reporter said in his article about Natalia Fox. The male journalist, who himself could not AFFORD to travel overseas, wanted to build himself and other home boys up to be the superior ones whom the Russian and Ukrainian women really want to meet.
Sailor: If you are OK with feminists shutting down avenues of meeting others simply because they don’t like the political free speech of those sites, then good for you. There are indeed plenty of other avenues. If you did not understand that it is unconstitutional to force people to wait from Saturday until Monday to meet…than so be it.
If, like Eliot Spitzer, you want to condemn the concept that a man might want to have sex with someone on Saturday and not wait until Monday, then condemn certain A Level Hollywood stars who always visit the Safari Club in Moscow where the prostitutes hang out.
[Actually, the funny thing is that match does not let you post personal information on your profile. (Address, number, email address, etc.) ]
But this must not become federal law.
Match and others have a strong financial incentive to make sure people do not “cheat” and meet without paying, and that rule is there for that reason. It would be bizarre to make this practice federal law because a judge thinks the reason for this policy is to prevent stalkers.
Although in the feminist legal climate of the current US, that is probably another reason why Match does that. You cannot make that federal law however.
Women, at least the 20 somethings, do not pay at Match.com if they want to just sit back and let men initiate contact with them.
So the whole equity in paying argument is blown away by simple knowledge of how the industry works. It is feminist ideology to make people pay equally in dating.
Rudov might be on your side on this.
The amounts are small anyway. A man will pay $30 to be on Match for a month and then he meets a woman who has paid nothing. On an international dating site, a man might pay $15 for contact.
He is not going to beat her up because he thinks he owns her because he paid $15 to meet her.
Encounters, surprisingly, charged $1800 for men and nothing for women. That even caused the 4th Circuit judges to raise their eyebrows but I think these judges did note that the other services were mostly $15 to meet someone.
It is probable that Encounters might lose the final appeal while all other sites are let off the feminist ideological hook, at least by a technicality where the judge presents the loophole text that they have to put on their front page about offering the same level of service to men and women.
You know, these are softball questions. What I am learning all over again, is that a court challenge against IMBRA will only require comprehensively covering all the things that Americans apparently do not know about their own dating industry (Match’s policy of charging only contact initiators) and the lack of knowledge about the low price of international dating, how Encounters was an exception to the rule and the logistics of what it is like to be in a foreign city for 2 days where there is no time for two people to adopt the paranoid strategy of getting to know each other for 4 or 5 emails over a course of a week.
Jim Peterson you’re amusing, in a homeless guy mumbling to himself kind of way.
I suppose as long as you stick to this thread, the damage is minimal.
But we’re going to have to keep a very close eye on you…
“By the way, what the Hell are grown men doing hanging around the most well-known radical feminist site talking about swirly pink hearts?
Are you gay or something? Do you think you are going to get laid because you were on the feminists’ side? Do you think the foul language impresses them (maybe so)?”
BTW, if you’re so all-fired-up about “foul” language, you might want to wake up and realize this is a women and LGBT-friendly blog. That language is not acceptable around here…
The warning signs thing was OK, but the other stuff is clearly written by a bitter guy who was used by a fraudster.
You do realize that the woman you call a “fraudster” was probably someone just going through marriage like any other woman, and eventually deciding to get out of it exactly like millions of American men and women do all the time, right? In other words, if you held Americans, male or female, to the standard you are holding that woman to, you would probably consider almost any American to be a fraud. You do realize that, don’t you?
Men cannot contact you on match if you do not pay. They can send an email, but you won’t be able to view it.
I know about match because I was on the service 3x. Third time was the charm.
I am perfectly happy with Russian and other foreign women coming here after they get this information if they are going through a marriage broker. If you contacted them any other way–through a religious broker, through a website where you both paid the same amount for the service, through a site anyone can join like myspace, you would not run afoul of IMBRA.
If you think things aren’t bad in the former Soviet Union, I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with your observational powers. I’m not talking cultural superiority/inferiority, I am talking about the ability to be safe and obtain work. Guess what, if it were legal, you could advertise for young women in Russia to come over to the U.S. as prostitutes. As recently as five years ago, Russian and other former soviet block prostitutes so flooded the market in the middle east that all prostitutes began to be referred to as “Natashas.”
Your own negative comments about “fraudsters” makes me seriously doubt that you respect these women enough to be dating them. Ditto for your friends.
It shoudn’t be on your site if you don’t believe in it. And a lot of the advice is of questionable legality.
Um Jim…I don’t know where you got the idea that I was male… Should I feel flattered?
BTW you still haven’t addressed the fact that the countries that these women are coming from see foreign marriages as a problem.
See, this is bullshit. I bruise like a fucking peach, I mean I get asked by strangers on the bus about it, my BF and I play fight and wrestle all the time, it does not leave bruises.
Bruises are left by either incredibly hard walking into things, or incredibly hard violence by someone else. It is not caused by ‘flailing at someone else’. They have to be intending very specifically to cause harm or hit at really hard levels to cause bruises. If they are hitting that way not on purpose, they have some really fucking violent tendencies.
No country wants to see its citizens leave en masse. That is why I am glad Russia’s economy has soared in the past 5 years.
I am seriously considering having babies in Russia.
Ismone,
That website referred to above was NOT my site and I find the material as offensive as anyone here.
Four men wrote to me this morning to say that this blog blocked anything they tried to write. One tried to say that Marc Rudov had less business saying “Female Agenda” so much as “Anti-Male Agenda”.
It appears that I have been allowed into the lions’ den to fight alone.
I thought we agreed that “marriage broker” is just a strange term for a site that has unequal payment terms and which primarily introduces Americans to foreigners (the official definition). Best to refer to them as IMBs or socalled IMBs because the word “marriage broker” is such a misleading and dishonest description that it raises the blood pressure of men who have to listen to a dating site called that.
It should be called an “Unequal Pay Dating Site”.
These sites are dating sites (a number have now taken the word marriage off the marketing angle) and, NO, dating sites must not be forced into a federal regulation where men and women must pay equally.
It has already become very clear that the Democrats on this “LBGT-friendly site” are OK with the idea of federal regulation of ALL domestic dating sites so they fit this mold as well.
Whatever happened to Democrats being overly concerned about civil rights? Hitler made a lot of policies the purpose of which was supposed to “protect women and children”. Hitler was serious about regulating who dated each other.
The idea that women should pay the same for access to dating opportunities, especially when the difference is less than $30, is especially absurd when one notes that the feminist theory to justify equal payment is that the man might then feel he owns the woman he met and later get violent if she wants to leave him.
The real reason is that older women know they can pay anything while 22 year olds might not have the money or the desire for $25 to answer a guy.
Marc Rudov may very well be on YOUR side here because he wants to ban “Ladies Night” at bars, albeit at the individual state level not federal level.
But Marc Rudov argues that making women pay nothing makes them more “valued” and helps them think that men exist to pay for them at all stages of life.
I disagree with this fervently: Did I manage to post my description of the New York City black tie ball scene? This blog makes it hard to post.
Young single women are granted immediate membership in the Greeting Committee. They pay 0$ while older women and all men pay $300 per person or whatever.
All intelligent single men ask, before they pay $300 for a charity ball, if single women also have to pay $300 per ticket.
If the answer is Yes the men politely hang up the phone and DO NOT ATTEND the ball.
They KNOW from experience that the best looking young women will probably not pay their own money to attend a ball. At best, an heiress will be there whose daddy paid or there will be a gorgeous 35 year old single doctor…but the odds will be low on that.
My advice to men: Bail out if the charity ball forces everyone to pay equally without using the ruse of putting single women on the greeting committee (also called the Junior Committee in that scene).
I have already noted that a judge can agree to language whereby foreign women can opt to pay for initiating contact because Match.com used to have the policy of only charging for doing that.
Sites can say that foreign women CAN pay to fly to the USA to attend a BBQ where 200 American men vie for their attention (Russia is so rich now that there could be some takers).
But it must be fought tooth and nail if federal judges are asked to rule that even a price difference of $12 for the man (compared to 0$ for the woman) is too much of a difference.
Because this would damage international dating as well as domestic dating.
If Match.com has changed its policy to force women to pay to read an email, that would be a disaster for Match.com’s male members.
Hetero males generally want to date younger women. Sure, guys like Eliot Spitzer will SAY otherwise, but we all know that older men married to feminist Harvard grads their own age might very well be spending $4300 of taxpayer money to bang 22 year olds in a luxury suite the night before they need to testify before Congress about needing to stop “sex trafficking”.
My new article on Spitzer has been published all over the Internet. Do a Google search for “Did Hillary Clinton Spitzer Spitzer - Do All Politicians Now Pay $4300 for Sex”.
On Match.com, the 18-30 year old American women will get the most attention as is the way of the world. It won’t be because of their age but because of the photos most likely (there are gorgeous women on the Internet into their 60s).
These younger women won’t be as financially ready nor as needy to spend money on answering a man.
Men will experience, under such a policy, a considerable drop in responses compared to otherwise, especially if, to them, the average attractive profile is of a 23 year old.
Many men who can date women of that age in real life (off the Internet) will then quit the service and live their lives off the Internet.
MRAs are determined not to let feminists thus ruin the Internet with their political idealogy.
If Match.com owners want to be feminist friendly (or bow to the demands of the older women members to hamper the younger compeititon by forcing them to pay to answer men), that is their business. I can chose to ignore Match.com as a result.
The feds themselves, however, need to keep their grubby hands off the Internet.
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Many people who slam Russia’s opportunities have not been there since 2004 when things really started to take off.
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I am one of the world’s experts on “Natashas”.
Most carry cell phones and travel back and forth on their own desire.
They do worry about the small-time mafia types who sometimes kidnap women who have no family to look for them. Everyone, feminists and MRAs should work together to stop these kidnappers.
But this “sex slavery” situation is horribly hyped for political purposes by guys like Eliot Spitzer.
You can read plenty on this by Googling for Sex Trafficking and Feminism. Check out the Washington Post (left wing rag) which admits that the statistics are blown up 1000 times higher than the actual problem.
In Istanbul’s Taksim Square neighborhood, white male westerners are more likely to be victimized than Natashas who are used to lure them into violent robberies.
The claim that Germany has 50,000 sex slaves stems from the feminist theory that willing prostitutes are “sex trafficked” if they cross national or state boundaries. What they mean is that 50,000 prostitutes in Germany are not German-born.
The biggest sex trafficker I know is a strip bar in Myrtle Beach South Carolina called the Dollhouse that trafficks Russian women in on college student visas (I think only women 18-23 are allowed to get these).
I call them a sex trafficking organization because the policy is that the men CANNOT exchange personal info with the slaves, meaning the slaves are NOT allowed to accept a man’s phone number.
This, of course, is not to protect the woman’s safety (she has the right to give out or accept other’s info).
It is because the traffickers invested money into getting the fake student visas and they do not want to lose the gorgeous young women into, say, a marriage with a local man.
This is why the passing of notes or cards to these women is strictly forbidden.
Democrat feminists will not try to save such strippers, because they honestly believe that a woman has better control of her life as a stripper than as a wife.
Let me make a challenge here:
Rather than argue with me about “sex trafficking”, why don’t you DO something about the Dollhouse in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Tell them that they cannot wall up their Russian citizen employees like that.
I bet some of you won’t want to because, if you force the management to end their policy of blocking info exchange with the men who come into the place, then some of these women will leave their stripping careers to opt for marriage and children in South Carolina.
Wrong yet again…
1. Some feminists do not date men.
2. Some feminists are quite nice and are involved with equally nice people.
3. Some feminists have foul mouths themselves and do not NEED to have a man swear for them.
Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck…
(it sez so, right on his badge that he made himself)
Margaret, WTF did you FEED this troll? Some sort of mutant Miracle-Gro?
I am seriously considering having babies in Russia.
You’ll need to get one of them wombs, I’m assuming, if you, yourself, are going to have babies in Russia.
Oh, I know what you mean, though. You’re going to buy yourself a woman somewhere in Russia. It doesn’t make it any less disgusting, though.
Anyone else notice how much he mentions money? It’s like blah blah money blah blah money blah blah. I really think that’s the root of this troll’s mental illness. I have the money therefor I should have the power!!!
BTW I don’t think these countries are worried about loosing their people “en masse.” Most people for example don’t even know Mongolia is it’s own country and is a parliamentary government so I don’t think lots of guys are flocking to Mongolia to find a wife. These people care about what is happening to their citizens.
Here’s something about Vietnamese women and foreign marriages.
http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/390
JP,
I’m not arguing about sex trafficking. And I would agree that different cultures/different people have different attitudes re: prostitution. But I’m having a really hard time following your logic re: trafficking.
My point about prostitution is that just because we can get foreign women to agree to something, does not mean it is a good thing, or they are happy, or it is consistent with our policy. It also goes to show the financial desparation.
RE: Differential pay. Here’s the deal, these marriage brokers (and that’s what they are, we’ve already established that is their goal) are advertising to foreign men for native women. It is a targeted market that has immigration consequences, and it is NOT the same as a site where only say, 10% of the membership is foreign, and for the most part, is focused on dating eachother. Fiance visas used to be for those who just met and fell in love, blah, blah. When an entire industry sprung up around it, the industry needed to be regulated. This need became particularly obvious after three women’s murders made national news. If citizens from other countries are coming over here and getting murdered by our citizens, THIS IS A PROBLEM. Particularly because they do not have the same amount of power as a citizen does.
I am horrified by anyone being held against their will anywhere. I can’t stop any nonsense at brothels or stripper establishments or whatever you call them, because I won’t be let in. If you think this is a serious problem, and you have information, you should go to law enforcement.
You’re a veteran, right? I’m guessing that for you, as for me, the oath you took about supporting and defending the constitution and laws of this country still has meaning. All you have to do is contact the US Attorney. I urge you to do so. If marriage, or going to school, or returning home should make them happy, and they are being abused in this country, they should get the remedy that they want.
Match has been that way for quite some time. I think when I first joined, in 2004, you could receive but not reply to messages if your profile was posted but you had not paid. But, by 2006, when I joined the second time, you cannot view messages, including old messages, when you have not paid. This was still true in 2007. Even in 2004, men had the option of posting their profile and receiving messages. So it was never a gendered system. I don’t know of a single one of the dating “for pay” sites that charges less for women than for men.
And I think your concept of dating is a little inconsistent with the experience of people “my age.” (Between 18-30). I and my female friends have been perfectly happy to pay for things like match, because we get a degree of anonymity, and we meet men who we wouldn’t meet because our profession(s) are kind of narrow. My baby sister met her husband on MySpace. (They were attending the same undergrad.) I have asked out just about as many men who have asked me out. Out of my six serious relationships, I initiated two, two grew out of friendship, and two were initiated by the guy. I pay for half of the dates. I don’t go to ladies’ nights because I don’t like to be ogled. I would not go to an event that cost the men $300 and me nothing. I would probably just donate money to the cause, if I thought it was worthy.
The dating market has changed. More women than men are now going to college. Women are happier to take the initiative (although it still weirds our parents out, to some degree).
But I don’t object to those things, or feel like they are a threat to feminism or other such nonsense. I just think they are uncommonly silly relics.
The reason it is relevant is that in the context of fiance visas, it is a business meant to allow people to meet marriage partners on an accelerated schedule. Most of the time, in this country, it is rare for people to decide to marry after 1 year of dating. (I am one of the exceptions.)
Oh, and re: LGBT people. There really is no need to disrespect people based on sexual orientation. None at all. It is ridiculous, unthinking and deeply unkind for you to stereotype men who agree with me as being weak or whatever word you happen to think is a synonym for that. My opinions don’t come from the fact I have two X chromosomes, and despite your vested interest in this whole marriage broker thing, I have yet to suggest that yours come from your Y chromosome. And with don’t ask don’t tell and all that–one of the best superiors I had in the military–let’s say no one asked, and no one told, but everyone knew. Great guy.
Sailor: If you are OK with feminists shutting down avenues of meeting others simply because they don’t like the political free speech of those sites, then good for you. There are indeed plenty of other avenues. If you did not understand that it is unconstitutional to force people to wait from Saturday until Monday to meet…than so be it.
You have absolutely no constitutional right to meet someone right now!. In fact your constitutional rights are not being impaired in any way. You are quite free to talk to any foreign person at virtually any time. However, this is not what you are seeking to do. You are seeking to talk to foreign women who are unknown to you. You seem to have confused the right to say what you want without restriction with a non-existent right to speak to a particular person at the particular moment you choose.
thought we agreed that “marriage broker” is just a strange term for a site that has unequal payment terms and which primarily introduces Americans to foreigners (the official definition). Best to refer to them as IMBs or socalled IMBs because the word “marriage broker” is such a misleading and dishonest description that it raises the blood pressure of men who have to listen to a dating site called that.
Well, Mr. P, there you do indeed have a problem. Since these sites can’t really advertise themselves truthfully as “pimp” sites, they went the route of purporting to be sites that arrange and facilitate matrimony between American men and foreign women. They only have themselves to blame if Congress adopted their preferred terminology. As for calling them “dating” sites, please refer to my previous comment on that word.
These sites are dating sites (a number have now taken the word marriage off the marketing angle) and, NO, dating sites must not be forced into a federal regulation where men and women must pay equally.
The legislation says nothing about what you or anyone else pays. A site can charge whatever it wants, even different rates for men and women. You may have heard of “market forces” and “free enterprise”.
Let’s face it: you want to use the internet to troll for young foreign women for purposes of Facilitating Unbridled Carnal Knowledge and IMBRA puts a very small stumbling block on the immediate gratification of your lust. Sorry, but you have no constitutional right to the immediate gratification of your carnal desires. Nor does the law impact the civil rights of foreign nationals residing outside of the United States, since those folks don’t actually have any rights under U.S. law because they are not under the jurisdiction of U.S. law.
And anyway, you never addressed your fetish for chickens. What’s the deal with that?
Oh, JackGoff; you got there first. I was gonna ask if he would record the blessed events of himself giving birth and post on YouTube!
BTW, It is interesting to note that around a hundred thousand spouses immigrate to the U.S. every year that are women, and about sixty thousand that are men.
Those covered by IMBRA are only a drop in the bucket. (I think the estimate was 4,000-6,000 per year.)
So if we were really worried about, um, “foreign competition,” boy are we dumb.
Gee, a man with a chicken fetish… it’s the South Park Librarian! His plan worked perfectly; don’t you see?
In defense of Marc Rudov, he is simply stating that he wouldn’t have a problem with Hillary Clinton being our president as long as she governs for all Americans.
A feminist agenda on the other hand (if Hillary wants to promote this), would probably entail infringing on some of the civil rights of American men. I think Mr. Rudov is concerned about that happening. He simply wants our laws to treat people equally.
Sorry, exactly what mainstream feminist organizations that you know of want to do anything to harm “men’s rights”? All we want is equality. Political, social, and economic equality. It is not that freakin’ out there.
And more to the point, exactly what policies has Sen. Clinton ever endorsed that would benefit women at men’s expense?
Unbelievable how out of touch with reality you lot are.
If two people want to meet each other in real time (as in right now), the US government has zero right to interfere.
If foreign women say they want no delay, the US government cannot morally gainsay this desire by implying they know better how to secure their welfare.
IMBRA has nothing to do with stopping men who want instant sex because there is no instant sex potential in the sites affected. IMBRA does not affect the many sex-dating sites nor does it stop Americans who go to the thousands of brothels in various countries around the world (very few in Russia by the way except maybe the Safari Club in Moscow).
And, on top of that, and as a separate issue, American men actually DO have the right to visit prostitutes in other countries as well as Nevada. Nevada can take away that right and other countries can individually take that right but the US government cannot.
Regarding the “3 murdered brides”: if 6000 American brides are murdered per year, then a total of 3 foreign Internet brides in 15 years is indicative that it must be the SAFEST occupation to be a foreign Internet bride in the US.
Hillary Clinton’s loss will be seen as a strike against the feminist wing of the Democratic Party.
I think Ted Kennedy is partly motivated in this way.
[You seem to have confused the right to say what you want without restriction with a non-existent right to speak to a particular person at the particular moment you choose.]
This right exists already with total strangers on the street. A woman can indicate at that moment that she does not wish to be further spoken to by that particular man, but he did have the initial right to say hello or ask anything else deemed by local customs to be polite and non-threatening.
Nobody ever got arrested anywhere for saying hello.
This right especially exists when the other person is a woman who has asked that any and all men contact her by phone (if a woman is phone stalked on her special dating cell phone, she could always buy a new number for $5 - it is her choice how much risk she will put on a phone number becoming unusable).
To Jim Peterson:
You have indicated to me that you are aware of people being held illegally in this country. In your eyes, even, this seems to be a crime. And yet your only concern is not for these women, it is that they are not free to marry men such as yourself.
I urge you again, since you have stated you have knowledge, to take it to the authorities. Until you have, I have nothing more to say to you.
I do not call men courageous who know of other people’s suffering, have the power to stop it, and yet stand silent. Courage means doing the right thing, especially if it puts you in harm’s way. You, sir, have demonstrated none.
[You seem to have confused the right to say what you want without restriction with a non-existent right to speak to a particular person at the particular moment you choose.]
This right exists already with total strangers on the street. A woman can indicate at that moment that she does not wish to be further spoken to by that particular man, but he did have the initial right to say hello or ask anything else deemed by local customs to be polite and non-threatening.
You are still confused. There are all sorts of legal restrictions on your “right” to talk to a particular person at any time of your choosing. Your right to free speech does not include shouting about IMBRA on a public street outside my window at 2am. Your approaching women you don’t know on the street to “say hello” could easily be interpreted as harassment, subjecting you to arrest.
Your first amendment right of free speech protects only the content of your speech from government suppression or interference, and even that right is not absolute.
You don’t really have a leg to stand on here, but your desperation is showing.
Now…what about those chickens?
“Now…what about those chickens?”
What happens in the henhouse, stays in the henhouse…
What happens in the henhouse, stays in the henhouse…
Ah, but Mr. P doesn’t want to be confined to the henhouse. He’s a free-range type “Little Red Rooster.”
Oh, here is a real twist. These American guys are not importing foreign women. Oh no. They are setting up slave camps in the third world; a safe haven not subject to our laws. This is getting out of control.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1580052010/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?%5Fencoding=UTF8&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1V37LUZSND00L