Women competing for men

30 replies

exhaustedandannoyed · 16/12/2013 11:57

I haven't posted on feminism before but I am really bothered with what is going on in the country that I live in and will most probably be living in for a long time/forever. It is an Eastern European country and apparently (according to dh who is from here) there are many more women than men in the population. This has the effect that women are pretty much competing with one another to find a 'mate'. This means that they put a lot of effort into the way they look, dress in a 'sexy' way and according to him generally put up with being treated badly by men as they are just grateful to be with one.

I find this really disturbing and it is very sad to think that so many of these men are not been brought up to respect women more. He also says that the reason many women are not very friendly to me is because in their eyes I have stolen one of their men! I tell him he is just being conceited but he says sadly this is the reality of how things are here. I asked him why he isn't more angry with the way that women are being treated and he said he is but there is really nothing you can do to change it. He says he was attracted to me because I saw him as an equal and didn't effectively try to make myself into doormat for him. We have 2 small dds, I don't want them to see this as normal. I know I can try to show them through my relationship with dh how it should be (well as best we can) but is there anything more I can do?

Also I know I can't change a whole culture but is this kind of behaviour inevitable when you have an imbalance of men/women? Another thing that worries me is that apparently domestic violence is very common and is not at all taken seriously by the police. Apparently normally the only way that this violence comes to an end is by one of the couple killing the other. There really needs to be more support in place for women, but I don't have clue how or if I could try to set something up.

OP posts:

AskBasilAboutCranberrySauce · 17/12/2013 20:24

It's funny that no one ever wonders why where there is a shortage of men, no-one ever wonders why women don't do the obvious thing and just
become lesbians

scaevola · 17/12/2013 10:14

In China, where the imbalance is the other way round, there is kidnap and forced marriage.

I doubt there is such an extreme imbalance in Europe though. And it is possible that DH is describing his own views on relations between the sexes, not a population-wide one.

But yes, in any culture, you will find women who see men as a "prize" and this may reflect a societal imbalance in earning power and expected gender roles.

whatdoesittake48 · 17/12/2013 09:57

there were some reports recently that the rape problem in India is due to there being more men than women.

Strange isn't it that when women outnumber men they turn into barbie dolls to attract a husband, but when men outnumber women they turn into rapists.

Sausageeggbacon · 16/12/2013 22:07

Well there is NYTimes

This is from Latvia and is a few years old BBC

There are reason but it is different for each country.

Sausageeggbacon · 16/12/2013 12:30

I read something similar about some American Universities where there is an imbalance and more female students than male. There was the complaint that competition for intelligent" male partners meant that some girls felt they had to go further sooner in the relationship to keep the guys interested. I will see if I can find the link but this works in reverse as well, At college as it was a technology based college with a small business unit there were 12 guys for each of us. I can't remember a night out where I had to buy a drink simply because every guy was out to impress and when I did try there would always be one or two who would happily stop me.

So yes I guess it would be true depending on where in the world you are. Certainly seeing reports from China that guys are outnumbering women and there are now a lot of older singletons.

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