How the Internet Gave Mail-Order Brides the Power
backchannel.com
backchannel.com
If anything, I'd say the historical power play is the man being taken advantage of for his simpleminded sexuality, not the other way around.
Look at a "regular" dating site: there are far more active male users than female, the men send almost all the messages, and the women reply to nearly none of them.
Now look at one of these mail-order bride "dating" sites, or, equivalently, a "sugar-baby" site like SeekingArrangement—where, in either case, the men come pre-qualified as having money and being willing to give that money to the women: now, on these sites, there are far more active female users than male, the women send almost all the messages, and the men reply to nearly none of them.
When you take non-wealthy men out of the dating pool, suddenly there are few enough men left that supply-and-demand forces women to compete over men. Which puts them in a much weaker negotiating position than they would be otherwise.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I wouldn't expect "Sugar Babies" to be looking for potential husbands on those online platforms. Whereas mail order brides seem to be in for a longer commitment.
If the two value propositions are so different (essentially a hot temporary girlfriend vs a wife), there is no real competition, and the bargaining power should not be too affected.
For the mail-order brides who actually want to be someone's bride, yes, it's a bit different.
That certainly doesn't seem to be what the article describes and it's hard to see why Western men who were strangers to the women would agree to this arrangement unless they were being paid.
Also, having gone through the process of getting a green card for a spouse, I think this would be harder than you're probably imagining.
Although the internet has empowered mail order brides to some extent, there are still a long ways from guaranteed happily ever afters. From what I've observed the power balance is still heavily against women and such "transactions" fail and largely to the disadvantage of the women involved.
Also alot of cultural disconnects between Phils and OECD nations. Reflecting upon my past relationship, neither of our needs were being met in any meaningful way; by standards of relationships I've had since and currently enjoy. It wasn't a healthy relationship for either of us and when I observe many other Filipino/foreigner relationships I see alot of similarities with my own direct experiences.
Women who are in these "relationships" are often trapped because they lack: money of their own, local friendships, ability to speak the language, threat of deportation if they end the relationship.
An entry for "Falsehoods programmers believe about women".
Basically attractiveness has a very large performative component. It's not just the physically visible elements of hair, makeup and diet; but a whole chunk of emotional labour in making oneself outwardly pleasant and not letting the smile slip. And further emotional labour in simply worrying about this element of how one is percieved by others.
In particular, maintaining a marriage as a mail-order bride is obviously going to require a whole bunch of work and self-sacrifice. I don't think the average mail order husband is going to be happy to act as a translator for his wife while she goes off to e.g. pursue a full time hobby of landscape painting; he's going to expect a certain amount of domestic labour and subordination, while she at the very least has to put up with learning a foreign language while being separated from her family.
There's an element of indenture here that's been mostly (not entirely) extirpated from marriages among Westerners of equal social status.
This male trait reinforces itself automatically.
If a man is not sufficiently obsessed with simple-minded sexuality, then he will not do what it takes to transmit this traits to the next generation. Hence, not being obsessed with simple-minded sexuality is an evolutionary dead end that gradually dies out ...
We are the way we are, simply because if we were not like that, we would not even be here.
Simpleminded sexually exclusively is not generally a good thing.
1. you waste time and energy breeding with unfit people
2. you do not accelerate evolution.
Clearly these are not good things. It's important 1 gender is more advanced-minded when it comes to sex to avoid this. But only 1. If both sexes were advanced-minded, then people would likely stop reproducing as much, and this trait would die out.
For this particular on-line dating case, the old Carnegie Tech saying comes to mind: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd". These mail-order brides may be getting to pick and choose among a wider pool, but it's a pool of guys who are still resorting to this model of meeting a wife...
> Leonor and her son Zen. Photo by Meredith Talusan.
My name is also Zen, and I've never met or heard of anyone else with this name :) That's cool.
(Just as I was getting into the story...poof...ended :-( )
What about just a week later so we know if they were even getting along in person? And how their expectations and understanding upon meeting each other changed?