Feminists versus Mail-Order Brides

First off, the term "mail-order bride" is generally criticized by both owners and customers of international marriage agencies, but is still used by them as an easily recognizable term, particularly in an internet search engine.  The term may have originated in 19th century North America as men migrated west.  As very few women lived there at this time, the men sought to find women back East by writing letters to churches and publishing personal advertisements in magazines and newspapers. Courtship proceeded via the mail.  The same thing occurred among Japanese immigrants, as illustrated in the movie Picture Bride, and among European immigrants, as portrayed in the movie Sweet Land.

Cherry Blossoms, perhaps the best known of the international marriage agencies, started in 1973 with a monthly magazine that featured pictures of women (mostly from the Philippines) who were seeking husbands primarily in the United States.  Since 2001, Cherry Blossoms switched to an entirely web-based format.

TLC broadcast a fascinating television show called 90 Day Fiancé, which featured the stories of 4 international couples (4 American men and their foreign fiancées, who were in the United States on K-1 visas).  The couples had 90 days to get married, or the fiancée had to return to her home country.  When Tonya, the ex-wife of Louis (one of the men), asked him whether his fiancée (from the Philippines) was a "mail-order bride", he looked away uncomfortably, and said "No, she's not a mail-order bride", and then explained how he had found her on an internet dating site.  "Mail-order bride" is a sensitive term, but it will do, here, for now.

 
As previously mentioned, many American Feminists are quite hostile to the concept of heterosexual monogamous marriage.  "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" is a well-known Steinemism.  And, of those Feminists who are up for heterosexual marriage, the demands on the husband can be quite rigorous.  For example, Pamela Clark published a list of 35 stipulations for men to support Feminism:

1. Do 50% (or more) of housework.
2. Do 50% (or more) of emotional support work in your intimate relationships and friendships.
3. Consume cultural products produced by women.
4. Give women space.
5. … but insert yourself into spaces where you can use your maleness to interrupt sexism.
6. When a woman tells you something is sexist, believe her.
7. Educate yourself about sexual consent and make sure there is clear, unambiguous communication of consent in all your sexual relationships.
8. Be responsible for contraception.
9. Get the HPV vaccine.
10. Have progressive name politics.

If you and your female partner decide that the institution of marriage is something you want to be involved with, be willing to both keep your existing surnames. If having a common surname with your spouse is important to you, be willing to change your surname and treat this as a preferable option to your spouse changing hers.

11. If you have children, be an equal parent.
12. Pay attention to and challenge informal instances of gender role enforcement.
13. Be mindful of implicit and explicit gendered power differentials in your intimate/domestic relationships with women…whether a partner or family members or roommates.
14. Make sure that honesty and respect guide your romantic and sexual relationships with women.
15. Don’t be an online bystander in the face of sexism.
16. Be responsible with money in domestic/romantic relationships.
17. Be responsible for your own health.
18. Don’t ogle or make comments about women. (i.e., Keep your tongue in your mouth and comments to yourself.)
19. Pay attention to the sex of experts and key figures presenting information to you in the media.
20. Ensure that some of your heroes and role models are women.
21. Praise the virtues and accomplishments of women in your life to others.
22. Have integrity with your male friends. (i.e., Don’t be a “bro.”)
23. Don’t treat your spouse like a “nag.” If she is “nagging,” you are probably lagging.
24. Know that acknowledging your own sexist opinions and stereotypes you hold is not enough. Do something about them.
25. Befriend women.
26. Find female mentors/leaders. (i.e., Be subordinate to women.)
27. When in a romantic relationship, be responsible for events and special dates associated with your side of the family.
28. Don’t police women’s appearance.
29. Offer to accompany female friends if they have to walk home alone at night…or in a public space where they may be likely to feel unsafe.
30. Inject feminism into your daily conversations with other men.
31. If you have a tendency to behave inappropriately toward women when you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, do not consume drugs or alcohol.
32. Be aware of the physical and emotional space you occupy, and don’t take up more space than you need.
33. Walk the walk about income inequality.
34. Get in the habit of treating your maleness as an unearned privilege that you have to actively work to cede rather than femaleness being an unearned disadvantage that women have to work to overcome.
35. Self-identify as a feminist.

Why don't they just tell us to wear a leash and to pee sitting down?  A lot of the international marriage agencies cite Feminism as a reason for men to seek wives abroad.  For example, from Hand-in-Hand, which offers Czech brides:

This program is designed for single men looking for a true life partner who is beautiful, significantly younger, educated, is unspoiled by feminism and whose culture is one of support & respect.

"Unspoiled by Feminism" is a fairly decent selling point.  From Thai Professional Introductions:

"If you are, "sick to the back teeth" (as I was) with the new breed of twenty-first century woman.  Disillusioned with the kind of de-feminised, over-sized, overbearing, self centred, mercenary minded lady available on the Western singles scene, whose middle name, should be "What have you done for me lately?"! Who is only out for what she can get - Perhaps you are not "Gods gift to women", (or perhaps you are; and are not appreciated!) feel that you may be past your sell-by date, or are a workaholic, young or old, with no time to socialise, or when you do experience the single scene you are completely disillusioned with it all. Whatever has been the final "Straw to break the camels back" in your mind - There IS an answer T.P.I. SERVICES ARE FOR YOU! - Let us make your dreams and aspirations a reality - WE DELIVER!!" Lawrence Lynch (Proprietor)

And, some advice from Thai Personal Connections: on dating a genuine Thai lady:

Do understand that caring for you in cooking, cleaning and washing your clothes gives her pleasure and she is happy caring for you in this way. She will want you to know and feel she will make you a good wife. 50/50 sharing the chores has not yet arrived in Thailand try not to impose that on her it may confuse her and if her mother finds out you are doing the washing it may get her some grief from the family.

Well, that does seem refreshing.  Some further guidance from the site:

Do respect who and what she is. Be careful how much you change her. Don't try to make her the same as you in all things western. You fell in love with whom and what she is. You may not like what you change her into. If you want a western lady there are many where you came from.

Very good point, indeed.  Here is a brief extract from Marek Lenarcik's book, This is Thailand: A Story of Love, Sex and Betrayal in the Tropics:

Mali is a tall, black-haired 30 year-old with a nice smile. We exchanged formalities, caught a quick breakfast on the street and began the journey back to my apartment....We entered my modest flat and I was pleased at her lack of reaction when she saw that there was only one bed. After a short trip to the bathroom, I came out to find that she had made the bed and had put two of my t-shirts into the cabinet.  "Thank you, Mali. You are my guest. You don't have to do that."
"No problem. Every woman should look after her man", she answered with a smile.
"Wow. I guess we should organize some special training here for European women."
"The women in Europe don't act like this?"
"Not at all."
"I think it's natural."
"I think so, too.".......I put on my emergency set of elegant clothes thing about all of my European ex-girlfriends who, in comparison to Thai women, acted like men in skirts.

I've similarly heard men from Latin America describe our women as "men with tits."  A lot of American women don't wear skirts, but do generally seek to emphasize, and even exaggerate the appearance of the breasts.  So, "men with tits" is probably a more apt description than "men in skirts", at least for the American ladies.  Here is one woman's perspective on cultural differences:

In the Comment Section below this YouTube video, a user wrote:

As a man who now has a really good relationship with an Asian woman, I can shed a bit of light on why more men are deserting western women. I don't claim that my view is the only view, there are many reasons but generally I think its because more and more western men perceive relationships with western women as a zero sum game. By that I mean, sensible men tend to make calculated risks, not impulsive risks. And relationships with a significant portion of western women carry far greater risks to a point where he essentially has to enter a high stakes gamble with the odds firmly against him at the outset. And what he gambles is his future, his reputation, his identity and his sense of personal values and integrity. Asian women on the other hand will at least meet you halfway. Most Western women bring into a relationship three things. 1. Unreasonable Demands, 2. Unreasonable Conditions 3. Unreasonable ultimatums. And these three things are designed by western women to result in the highest probable rate of failure for men. Conversely, they demand from men that women be excluded from the same three things.

More insanely most western women aren't self-reflective, they are self centered and entitled-minded. Notice how they run off an endless list of what they expect a man to be and what a man must have that they never feel the need to be or have themselves. An example: Western women automatically default to the usual answer to the question of why men go for Asian women. "Its because they are intimidated by a strong independent woman." Right there they kill any measure of self-reflection and mock the man as if he were operating on fear and an inferiority complex. In the one answer they don't realize they've supplied the real answer but are too self-absorbed and narcissistic to conceptualize it.

For decades most western women have been told they were special and that men couldn't live without them and so they didn't feel like they had to meet him halfway. So they treat their boyfriends and husbands more like personal assistants and barely paid day laborers than human beings. Asian women in my experience have not forgotten that men are human beings and we have value independent of a need for validation from them. They encourage our potential and can empathize with us when hard times arrive. They can also see beyond a selfish need to make everything about them and in doing so land men willing to listen to them and want to elevate them on merit and emotion.

Of course, the Feminists didn't care much for the "Unspoiled by Feminism" and "Culture of Support & Respect" memes used in Hand-in-Hand's marketing:

--Me thinks they don't mean respect of each other as equals. Subservient is probably what they're looking for.
--I just don't see how they mixed up those words. At the very least they could be honest about the "respect" they're selling!
--They would say that men and women are equal, but different. God and/or nature designed different roles for the sexes to play, and a good man respects his barefoot, pregnant, blowjob-giving, from-an-"exotic"-culture wife just fine.
--She births his children, raises them to his specifications, keeps house the way he likes, fucks how and when he likes, cooks foods he enjoys and has the dishes cleaned away promptly. And he occasionally compliments her for being "not like those ugly feminist bitches who don't know their place.
--What would be the female equivalent of this? I really think someone selling this should be smacked.  I mean clearly they didn't make it in the human trafficking business... or did they and this is their subtle(not so subtle) way of selling them off? I can't look anymore at it or I am going to try and spam that email with hate. SPOILED FEMINIST HATE!
--Oh gawd I went to the website and now I feel like crying.

AnastasiaDate developed a fairly nice video advertisement about a couple (Nathan Adams from Utah, and Elena Adamchiyk from Ukraine) that the service had helped bring together last year:

The Salt Lake City Tribune wrote a piece on the couple:

 Sick of Utah Women, Dad is Poster Boy for Overseas Dating

Nathan Adams, a 45-year-old aircraft mechanic who hates dating, makes an odd poster boy for international online dating. But that’s what he’s literally become since he turned to AnastasiaDate.com out of frustration with women in Utah. After a romance via letters and Skype, he and Elena Adamchiyk, a native of Ukraine, are planning to marry before her 90-day fiancée visa runs out.

Adams feels like he hit the jackpot. "Dating Elena is like dating a model … who has the values of my grandmother," he says. "If somebody had told me a year ago what my life would be like today, I wouldn’t believe them."...

..."I want marriage. I don’t want Russian marriage," says Adamchiyk, 34, who was married twice before in the former Soviet republic to men who cheated, a behavior she asserts is not uncommon there. This time around, she was looking for a man who would be loyal, who didn’t drink or do drugs, and who would treat her with respect. "This was my dream," Adamchiyk says. "I want to take care of Nate and Nessa [Vanessa’s nickname]. This is first."

"I’d had enough." Divorced for several years from Vanessa’s mother (who has since died), Adams says he dated women who either didn’t want to help him rear his daughter or were mostly interested in his money. He ran into a fair amount of bitterness and anger toward men. It was, " ‘I want this. I want that. I won’t tolerate this, I won’t tolerate that,’ " he says. "I told my friend I’d had enough. I wanted no more dating around here."

A friend suggested international women via online dating sites; five of his friends at Hill Air Force Base are married to women from other countries, and he liked the idea. So he bought a home computer. At first, he tried a website that connects Western men with Asian women, but was scammed by someone he believed was a model.  When he began hearing good things about Ukrainian women — that they are both beautiful and traditional — he tried AnastasiaDate.com....

...‘This was my dream’ » Adams says he "thought long and hard about the kind of person I wanted to meet. No matter how beautiful they are, they had to be interested in being a family."  He didn’t want women age 30 or younger because, in his experience, they’re interested in clubbing. He didn’t want a woman older than 36 because he believes most have already reared children and aren’t interested in mothering a young child....

..."If you’re dating someone local and … your relationship starts out with having sex with them, you’re not really their friend." Online, he says, "You have to take the time to sit and write a letter."...

...In September 2012, Adams traveled to Odessa to meet Adamchiyk. He went back in May for several weeks....Adamchiyk, who was 32 and managing a department store when she met Adams, says she was attracted to his eyes, which struck her as kind and loyal. But there was something more. "You want truth?" she says. "First, when I saw Nessa, I fall in love with her. This was my dream," she says. "She is my daughter."

Katie Baker of Jezebel, of course, didn't care much for the story:

One Utah man has bravely gone where no man has gone before: online, in search of a foreign bride who looks like a model but has the values of his grandmother. These matrimony-worthy prizes do not exist in the den of iniquity that is the United States, so he found her in Ukraine, and is now, happily, the King of overseas dating....

...both Adams and Adamchiyk seem to have found what they were looking for: Adamchiyk was married twice before to men who cheated (apparently, men don't cheat in America, and the streets are paved with cheese), and wanted a loyal spouse who would treat her with respect. She yearned to be a mother, and said she first fell in love with Adams when she saw his 6-year-old daughter, Vanessa.

Adams, on the other hand, was looking for a wife/mother who wasn't interested in his money or harboring "a fair amount of bitterness and anger" towards men (apparently, there are no misandrists overseas). First, he was scammed by someone he believed was a model (shucks). Then, he heard that Ukranian women were both beautiful and respectable: jackpot!! Eventually, he found Adamchiyk.

I'd like to keep ribbing on Adams, who was clearly searching for a compliant, deferential wife, not an equal — why else use a site where women don't have to pay? — and being so goddamn picky about it. ("He didn’t want women age 30 or younger because, in his experience, they’re interested in clubbing. He didn’t want a woman older than 36 because he believes most have already reared children and aren’t interested in mothering a young child.")...

...If he turns out to be a controlling dick, let's hope she's just in it for the visa. Ah, romance!

Well, in the Comment Section to the above YouTube video, Mr. Adams wrote:

After spending many months on Anastasia's Dating Sight, using chat, video cam, and letters. I meet many interesting ladies from the Ukraine. Ukraine ladies are very interesting to say the very least. Very beautiful, strong will, but even stronger .... a love and desire to have a family. They are very different than ladies in the United States. I was very lucky to meet Elena...the only lady I ever meet in the Ukraine. I hit the lottery!!!!! Good luck to all that try International Dating...try it).

So, I imagine that things are still going fine for them. Based upon Miss Clark's list (above), a man might be a "controlling dick" if he asked his wife not to nag him too much, or did something else that she regarded as a sign of insubordination.  It looks like Mr. Adams didn't change his surname to Adamchiyk, which must make him a misogynist at the very least.  As long as Mrs. Adams doesn't have any Feminists telling her how awful she has it, then they should be fine.

Getting back to TLC's 90 Day Fiancé television show, here are the four couples:

Clockwise from the top left:
--Mike (31) and Aziza (21, from Russia)
--Russ (27) and Paula (26, from Colombia)
--Louis (33) and Aya (30, from the Philippines)
--Alan (29) and Kirlyam (21, from Brazil)

A fair question might be: if these men wanted to get married so badly, then why didn't they work harder to get themselves an American wife, with good, Feminist values?  I don't mean to speak for them (they are all such cute couples), but I think that most men would find Miss Clark's list of 35 stipulations to be not only discouraging, but a major boner-deflater.  Moreover, as I understand it, Feminists are not supposed to reward men for being "good." They might punish men who failed to live up to the Feminist standards of goodness. If a man is interested in a little hanky-panky: Feminists will have coitus with men to whom they are sexually attracted, and are not going to give it to anyone as a reward for being "good."  No man should feel "entitled", for any reason whatsoever.  As previously discussed, an American woman typically doesn't care for the "sweet, sensitive, respectful boyfriend in the new mold who asks her what she wants in bed", because "she is bored out of her mind and irritated by him."  American women generally prefer men who are sexually aggressive, which seems rather paradoxical given the Feminists' demand for compliance with their list of stipulations.

As to what these four gents might have encountered, had they pursued romantic relationships with American women, here are some comments about these men from Lipstick Alley:

--All of these men are ugly and these women have these fake smiles on. Hot mess.

--All the men are ugly White dudes with foreign fiancés. These men are dumb ass hell if they think these girls actually like them.

--All the dudes are delusional, and the big chubby guy.. smh

--I think guys in these situations like being in relationships where the other person is totally dependent on them. None of this is about love - only power and control. It won't end well for the guys once the woman gets established and americanized.

--And those women would be fools to think that these nigs dont want nothing more then their own personal sex/housekeeping slaves. Did you see that scene where that bish was scrubbing her clothes in that sink, and that negro was like, will you miss this? This is your last chance to decide...... She was like nigga, just get me to America, I'll take it from there.

--Anyway, Kirylam is very beautiful. Her beau (Alan?) knows she is way too good looking for him, and he could never get an American girl that looks like her. He better try to marry her and knock her up before she gets wise to the fact that she could do much better.

--Holy Mother of God, I am just seeing this show for the first time---am I crazy or are at least 2 of these dudes gay? The one with the tattooed ex-wife--I just looked up his name--LOUIS. That one is gay.

--Russ from OK seems gay to me also.

According to our women, these gents are ugly, dumb as Hell, delusional, and gay.  And, their fiancées are much too pretty for them, so their fiancées are obviously faking it until their immigration status is settled.
   
Probably the only American women who would have been at all interested in any of these men would have been women who had hit "The Wall", and who were well aware of it.

Women who knew that their residual reproductive value was quickly approaching zero, and who were finally ready to swallow Lori Gottlieb's advice:

...Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go...

American women who are the same age as (or younger than) the men who were in 90 Day Fiancé aren't about to "settle."  And, as these men seem interested in having children, there really would have been little point in risking everything on an old hag whose time had nearly expired.  Generally speaking:

1. Most men, regardless of how old they might be, how ugly or handsome they might be, how much attention they pay to their own personal hygiene, or how much wealth they might possess, are attracted to healthy, nubile, attractive women between the ages of 18 and 29.

2. Healthy, nubile, attractive women between the ages of 18 and 29 know that most men are attracted to them, and can afford to flaunt it.

3. Where demand greatly outstrips supply, the market price is going to rise.  See my article on economics.

If you're a billionaire, like Flavio Briatore,

or a famous actor, like James Woods,

or some sort of sports star,

then you've got the pick of the litter. Women over 30 who remain sexually active are called "cougars", and guys may be creeped out when approached by a cougar. There are probably plenty of older and fatter women who are hungry for a bit of attention.  I'd be very surprised if James Woods' first wife was getting any wood at all these days.

If your target remains healthy, nubile, attractive women between the ages of 18 and 29, then you might want to take honest stock of what you have to offer them. You have a lot of competition, and if you think that you are coming up short, then you might consider seeking a bride abroad, where a woman who meets your requirements will be thrilled at what you have to offer. Or, give some thought to loosening your standards for potential partners in your home country.

Relevant movies that may interest you include:

Teddy Bear (2012)
Je Vous Trouve Très Beau (2005)
My Darling is a Foreigner (2010)
The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
The Civilization of Maxwell Bright (2005)
Bride and Prejudice (2004)
Birthday Girl (2001)
Closer to Home (1995)
Bitter/Sweet (2009)
Outsourced (2010)
Seeking Asian Female (2012)
Father Figures (2013)
Mail Order Wife (2004)

A website that has a lot of information: HappierAbroad.com