Reading this article just made me feel dirty.
“These are not American women,” our guide was telling us. “They do not care about your age, looks, or money. And you are not going to have to talk to them for half an hour and then have your testicles handed back to you! Let me tell you: over here, you’re the commodity; you’re the piece of meat. I’ve lived in St. Petersburg for two years, and I wouldn’t date an American woman right now if you paid me!”
It was three weeks before Christmas, and I was sitting in a Ukrainian business hotel with perhaps thirty men, mostly American and mostly on the later side of middle age, listening as a muscular, impossibly loud ex‒radio D.J. who answers to “Dan the Man” promised that our lives were about to change forever. We were all strangers, but I knew at least one thing about these men: each was there because he was frustrated, angry, and tired of being alone. Each had decided that his best chance at happiness was to pay nearly $4,000 to a company called A Foreign Affair, which would ferry him through Ukraine on a two-week bride hunt, “like an alpha-male wolf,” as one testimonial for the tour giddily assured us, “having the sheep brought in.”
Essentially, American men go to the Ukraine, which remains quite poor, and they take their pick of women who are desperate for a new life.
“Now, take everything you know about dating and throw it away. After a few days, you guys are going to become like American women! A woman you would have killed to have lunch with back in the U.S., she’ll be wanting to go out with you, but you’ll start noticing little faults—her ankles are too big, you don’t like the shape of her earlobes. And you will throw her back, because you have so many choices.”
Just like livestock, I suppose.
But these groups aren’t just harmless fun for guys looking for dates — they often ignore, or even condone, domestic violence, and they don’t do anything to protect the women who are being offered up to these men:
Historically, IMBs have declined to provide any information about their male clients to the women with whom they seek to match them; and, in fact, this one-sidedness has been a selling point. A New York‒based advocacy group called Equality Now demonstrated it in stark terms in 1999, when they sent a blanket email inquiry to dozens of IMBs, purporting to be from a physician who had assaulted two ex-wives; his email asked whether this history would be an issue. Out of sixty-six responses, only three IMBs turned him down, and only two others expressed serious reservations about taking him on as a client; a few actually praised him and commiserated regarding the occasional need for violence when it comes to keeping women in line. Among the responses:
“Having also been accused of asult by western women, who are usually the instigaters of domestic violence I can tell you: A) don’t let it bother you and B) most Thais avoid confrontation, Buddhist philosophy, so they are not likely to start something that may end in violence.” (www.loveasia.com)
“Thank you for your open and honest letter. I believe we all have skeletons in the closet and do not let them fall out when we meet someone. When I look into my past it also does not look too rosy. In heated arguments we all say and do things we did not mean, it does not make us a bad person. What I am trying to say is, let the ladies get to know the real you.” (www.russianwives.com)
“We are an agency and our purpose is to try to help people meet each other. We never refuse any clients that come to us with the exception of incarcerated people. So the answer is yes we will do our very best to help you, as we do for everybody else, but you should try to work on these problem you have for your own benefit and the benefit of your future wife.” (www.missright.com)
Obviously, this is a problem.
What I like about this article, though, is that it really humanizes the men who are trying to find wives. They’re portrayed as unhappy, as misfits, but as guys who do have good intentions. Their views on gender roles and women are pretty backwards, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to marry any of them — but they’re a group of men who seem lost. Somewhere along the way, feminism shifted women’s roles and collective social mentality, but a lot of men were left behind. Not that that justifies them treating women like commodities, but it’s worth remembering that these guys aren’t demons.
Even the most likable of them approached the idea of marriage as if through a time machine. One, for example, a sweet-tempered, chubby Canadian businessman, spoke with passion and conviction about the female orgasm, and openly about loneliness; at one point he leaned over to me and whispered, “We’re all hurting in one way or another, that’s why we’re here. We’re all trying to make our lives better, we’re all looking for love.” He told me he wanted a genuine partner, but with the caveat that on the big issues—house buying, for example—he must be in charge, for the good of them both. “A ship cannot have two captains,” he insisted. When I suggested that he and his hypothetical spouse might eliminate the need for a “captain” by simply shopping for a house they both liked, he went silent for a moment before he managed both to concede my point and to reframe it entirely: “Actually, that’s an important thing you just said, because for a woman, she would take a lot of pride in her house. The kitchen area, the living-room area, the entertainment area, she’s got to be compatible with that. So that’s something I would gladly defer to a woman on.”
Read the whole article. It’s just… sad.
via Feministing, whose weekly feminist reader you shoud also check out.