How many times have you heard some idiot say something like, “man, I hate American chicks, might as well go to Thailand/El Salvador/Moldova, that’s where the REAL WOMEN are at.”
Now, we all know what he probably means here – women who are at a similar economic level are not submissive enough, and women who are not are “easier” to deal with. There’s also the fact that a certain woman’s upbringing may make her more “susceptible” to what the man perceives to be submissive status, or else give the appearance of such status.
That’s all pretty much clear, or so I think. What isn’t often clear is the motivation of the “submissive foreign woman” in question. Based on my experience, scenarios vary wildly. A lot of women consider the arrangement a step up, and will tell you to fuck off if you try to lecture them on who to marry and how to carry themselves.
Were you born outside of Donetsk to an emotionally sadistic mother who cleaned hotel rooms and slept with guests for extra cash? Did you have an alcoholic stepfather who tried to bash your face in with a wrench after you refused to blow him? Did your mother then kick you out of the house for “trying to steal [her] man”? If not, you’re probably not going to have a whole lot of authority in the eyes of the eighteen-year-old who just wants a nice, stable life with some aging paramour in Milwaukee.
Maybe she’ll be happy with him. Maybe not. Maybe she’ll wait for him to die, inherit all his money, get a young boyfriend, and do her thing without ever revealing whether or not she’s happy. Hell, I don’t know. But what’s usually true about relationships that spark up in this manner is that both parties enter into them while pursuing a certain ideal, and their expectations are adjusted accordingly when reality hits.
Sometimes this is positive. Sometimes it’s deadly.
I’ve known people who have entered into such marriages. One was the childhood friend of my cousin on my dad’s side, and she was beaten severely by her first husband, in Spain. After getting out of that relationship, she ended up going straight back to Spain with another dude. She said it’s what she wanted, and the rest of us could take a flying fuck on a rolling donut, as the saying goes. After my cousin’s tragic death, we all lost touch. Who knows what happened to her? I hope she’s happy, but I’m not entirely sure, and in fact, I fear the worst. I’ve seen the look in that woman’s eyes, and it frightened me.
Another one of my cousins, on my mom’s side, has a very good friend who married a man from Denmark, having met him through a dating site or something like that. The two of them ran a business together for many years, and raised a child. Then the woman met another man, a fellow Ukrainian, and skipped out. They still run the business together, and it’s doing well. The guy from Denmark is often in Ukraine, working, and going out to drink with his ex-wife’s friends. He’s unhappy about how his marriage turned out, but he is happy about the money that his savvy Ukrainian wife has made. Who’s to say that arrangement is unequal? Or even bad?
On the other hand, you hear of husbands murdering their wives after discovering that said wives refuse to act like automaton fucking and cooking machines. Such men can prey on poorer foreign women very easily, especially when one considers the fact that dating agencies rarely do background checks or refuse customers based on past record. They’re in it for the money, and if a few women are murdered in the process, it doesn’t bother them a whole lot.
In a men’s magazine I read a few years back, there was a story of a fashion photographer who went to Latin America to search for a bride. He actually boasted to the journalist about how his woman is a “sex machine,” etc. – the usual dehumanization was taking place. Well, they ended up falling out back in the States, and he sent her packing. Then she discovered she was pregnant. And while he admitted that it was going to be difficult for her to find another man after what happened, you could tell, based from the article, that he just couldn’t give a fuck.
Many people, when given the opportunity to treat others like toys, will.
So what do you do about all of this? I don’t know. I know that until conditions markedly improve in my native Ukraine, people are going to want to get out. Until more men realize that women’s sole purpose isn’t to gratify their sexual and culinary needs, they’re going to seek out the vulnerable among us.
And we will keep on keeping on.
Though if I have any ideas about any of this, it’s to stress that all of us, the rich, the poor, the in-between, the misogynists, the crusaders, the quiet and shy, the loud and abrasive – we are all as “real” as the next person.