British men choosing foreign wives for their "Stepfordesqeness"

What is your objection to "gender lensing"? This is a feminist discussion board and we can discuss the feminist aspects of this including male entitlement to women's bodies for sex or marriage.

I think you misunderstood When's last sentence. It reads fine to me as she wrote it.

You just reminded me of that horrible documentary Sardine. I think I saw the same one as I remember that awful line about 'headaches'. Barf. Truly sick-making. The Thai women in it did seem in control of things though and knew what they were doing. The men were just vile idiots.

I wouldn't have thought of Southern European women as subservient though margery. Greek and Spanish friends I have are as tough and independent as any Northern European friends I have. These are college-educated women though so maybe in poorer or less-educated groups in those countries the women are more willing to put up with macho crap from men in exchange for material security?

I think in that last sentence you mean 'consequences of their conduct towards men.'?

Part of my issue is I don't know what dating agencies promise.

I think at the very least you would expect such an agency not to employ people to pretend to like you without your knowledge? I think that is pretty obvious, without any need to invoke gender lensing.

I suppose your comments highlight one of the problems: what are the roles and expectations of those involved....(material deleted for brevity)

WhentheRed I find the idea of wife shopping odious, and it is actually something people have looked at me sideways over and wondered about because of my wife’s nationality, not knowing she was a young teen when she came to the west with her parents.

But since when does delusion and unreasonable expectation excuse outright fraud or, worse, make it some form of righteous punishment? Its nice you have the personal smarts not to be scammed by Hot Jamaican web sites but even joining a regular dating site prepare to be hit on by plenty of men from God knows where telling you whatever they think will best part you from your money, quality of your body notwithstanding. Reputable dating sites do their best to suppress such individual fraud but even the poor ones who let it slide with little oversight are a huge step away from being complicit in its execution.

Dating agencies don't promise successful partnering. Some may offer your membership fee back if you don't get a date, but the final choice comes down to the other members.
Anything other than this is coercion and may amount to forced marriage.

Of course it has to do with buying sex and marriage. The reason the men are using the agency is because they are trying to buy sex and/or marriage. As a PP said, the article emphasises that the dates were platonic to heighten the scam or the poor deal for the men who weren't even getting sex from the women. The fact that one of the men whittled down his list of hundreds of women to two women then went to Ukraine expecting to be able to choose one of them is also very telling.

How is this anything other than men trying to buy sex and/or marriage and being disappointed that they actually have to be desirable or attractive to the women for something other than their cash?

would she have scammed him?

If the only reason she went out with him was because she was being paid to do so by the agency and also being paid to pretend that she was interested in him then, yes, it is fraudulent.

It has nothing to do with ''buying'' sex or marriage. How would you feel if you joined an expensive dating agency and found out that all the hot guys you saw on the site were getting paid to chat to you out of the fees that you paid the agency and that the only reason they actually replied to you instead of ignoring you is because they are being paid to do it?

I think that you would be surprised just how big a business this is. It's actually the agencies themselves that take most of the money but a lot of the women involved with this also make quite a good living as well.

Nicky, if a friend of yours went out on a very expensive second date with a man who turned out to be less nice than she thought, and after a lavish dinner that he paid for, decided not to sleep with him or probably even see him again (suppose he turned out to be racist or a drunkard or violent or something - or suppose she just didn't like him) - would she have scammed him?

nickymanchester, the things you are talking about are only scams if you think, first, that men have the right to buy sex and marriage from women; and second and it was implied that having paid they had the right to these women, their bodies and their lives.

I do not believe that men have the right to buy these things, and therefore I don't consider a man to be "scammed" who doesn't get to shag or marry or even meet a women who doesn't want these things from him.

A friend of mine has a Thai wife. He met her whilst travelling. He was always a real free spirit, worked for a while, saved up and then went off for months at a time. They are the antithesis of all the major stereotypes.

She has a dd from a previous relationship, and they now have 3 more children together. He dotes on her and all the children. He has OCD, so almost all the housework falls to him, and because of his job, he is able to get up in the morning, make breakfasts and do the school run and she sleeps in till about 10am. She doesn't really seem to have any concept of time, school rules etc!

She is lovely, but so laid back, it has to be seen to be believed. She is not interested in his money, and has a massive circle of south Asian friends. He regularly hosts monks at his house for her religious beliefs.

I feel for him and her, because he has told me that people regularly ask him if she was a prostitute, or if he 'bought' her.

I've just read the article linked to by ezinma and, to be frank, I find it difficult to understand why she and allhailqueenmab are so angry about it.

One of the women I mentioned above has a cousin who does this and the article really is quite accurate. It really is all about how to part sad American male losers from their money as quickly as possible - and it is mostly Americans.

To the poster who said I see no evidence of scams let me tell you it is one massive scam. A lot of women will pretend to be interested in a man in order to get her share of the money that he pays to the agency.

These parts from the article probably best sum up the situation:-

The women took their cut of cash for chatting with him, but did not answer his calls when he arrived.

Other women were genuinely looking for a young and interesting partner and wanted to leave Ukraine, but spent hours chatting with elderly men in order to make money.

My friend's cousin says that it is generally older men from the USA who have never been abroad before that are easiest to get money out of.

Rather than being angry at this sort of article I actually think that this sort of thing is helpful. If it opens these men's eyes to realise that they won't be meeting a stunning 20 year old model but they are just likely to lose a lot of money then it will put them off.

I understand that this thread is rather old but has just been revived.

LRD you mentioned about Russia above and I do know quite a few British/Russian couples in this country. In fact I'm part of one as well, although in our case it's my DH who is from Russia.

I probably know eight couples with a British husband and a Russian/Ukrainian/Moldovan etc wife and I generally don't recognise the view of smallclanger above of ''wife purchasers''.

All the couples - apart from one - are still together and happy and have one or more children from the marriage. The one couple that did split up had a 20+ year age gap and both of them had alcohol issues.

They all work, some part time, some full time. A couple of them have got seriously good jobs. A lot have degrees or similar level education and all are integrated into the UK with both British and Russian friends.

Talking to them, quite a lot did mention partly economic reasons for coming to the UK but they also made it clear that they wanted the whole package - economic security and a good man to go with it - they wouldn't have moved just for the money.

Looking at the men they're with I generally think that they could have done a bit better looks wise with these men but actually most of them are quite nice people and I could see why they married them.

And when it comes to being submissive that is definitely not a word I'd recognise.

I'm just posting this to show that despite all the issues that I'm sure do occur in these sort of marriages there are also plenty of examples of people just having an ordinary relationship

But I think Todd was ok, or he was in the end. He was quite philosophical - he seemed to resign himself to the fact that, guess what, you can't buy a woman. Fair enough. But it is the writer who writes about him as someone who has been cruelly scammed!

Quite. And he's really gone out of his way to secure the 'poor exploited dudes' angle: he acknowledges that there were "a few" men on the trip whose "misogyny reached prize-winning levels", but they're set aside as they don't fit his narrative; others are mentioned in passing as "less sympathetic characters", but again, the writer prefers the bittersweet tale of the blue-collar schmuck. And contrast the language: the men live in "desperate hope" but return home with "heavy hearts", while Alina and the women are clinical: they have a "sordid array of techniques", and their treatment of the men is described as "rinsing" and "dispatching".

But I think my least favourite phrase is: Todd, who had not succeeded in finding his other half at home…. Dating as a treasure hunt, a business venture, and a pair of socks (with one gone missing), all at once. Ugh.

ezinma, that article is absolutely appalling! I suppose I am double-outraged because it is in the Guardian. They should know better.

This sentence is enraging:

"Now, it seems, things are different. None of the men I became close to on my tour ended up in lasting relationships, and the majority appeared to fall victim to a number of sophisticated scams."

It seems that the writer believes that the ways these men are parted from their money are scams because the women cannot be forced to actually marry them, thus giving them, he probably thinks, a "fair" return.

As I read this article, I see no evidence of scams. Men are promised time with women, for money. They pay, they get to talk to women and go on dates, as promised. It is all iniquitous, but not because the women are "scamming" the men.

Particularly creepy is the repeated use of "platonic" as in "platonic dates". What is obviously striking the author as a great injustice is that the men go out with women and don't even get to shag them or feel them up.

What an obnoxious toe rag.

Reminds me of the vile letters of Philip Larkin, where he complained bitterly of all he had spent on dates and women still didn't shag him.

Hmmm. I think wife shopping exists, predominately, because there are not that many women left in the west prepared to treat a man in the way he believes he deserves to be treated. Which is to say the bulk of men who wife shop do so because of a massive sense of entitlement to self empowerment. They are 'owed' something. I think a smaller proportion of men wife shop for a mix of different reasons, outright abuse, white knighting, socially inept/damaged, physically flawed.

I like your assessment of the article ezinma. I can barely think of a group of people less deserving of sympathy than these men.

?

No it's your words, you used them in your post.

"pregnancy trapping" - the words of a European female friend who was managing an office (not mine).

"pregnancy trapping"

I have worked in Asia and Africa, and you get a gamut of reasons;

You get guys who have just worked away for so long from the UK its a natural think to marry someone local, though may have met professionally,

There are bitter husbands (who usually cheated/are $hits) who complain about 6 headed medusa ex wife etc getting with a girl professionally or "met in a bar" read sex worker. Several countries are not at the point where women just go out drinking on their own/friends so the women in bars are predominantly sexworkers.

Some countries still hold onto having a big breadwinner to look after the very extended families I have heard local women saying that the western men don't subject them to the same kinds of domestic abuse they could suffer traditionally, and of course they have money/allow them to be responsible for their own money.

The men, often not in the best shape have these very young slim traditional attractive women throw themselves at them, bit of pregnancy trapping here and there.

I am not agreeing with this just reporting what I saw/heard. I was never tempted as I thought you would rarely know wether they are sacrificing themselves for the family than being truly in love with you.