Brilliant Vietnamese factory concept

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^ I'm not a cultural relativist. You seem to be.

I have a problem with helping to perpetuate cultures that are oppressive by doing something that only solves the problem on the surface (in this case, taking away all those 'problem women' by getting them to marry abroad.) I'd rather see Thai women actually trying to change their status in their own society and would support them if I knew of organisation in Thailand that tried to do that.

You're a cultural absolutist? Or a cultural imperialist?



Some of the Englishmen who marry some of these women might like to change some aspects of their culture, too.

For example,

http://www.stickmanweekly.com/Reader2007/reader4516.htm



Sorting out the cultural differences is best left to the people involved.

It might be true that English Feminists possess the highest moral standards attainable for mankind, and that the rest of the world could benefit by carefully mimicking their standards and practices. Or, maybe other people are better off being left to develop their own solutions.

^Of course they can develop their own solutions, that's what I'm favouring. I just don't think it's a white knight thing to do to marry a poor Asian woman when that actually distracts from the issue over there.

I call BS in every culture where I see it.

Well, you have your issues, other people have theirs. People have to chart out their own courses for happiness, whether it causes third parties to be cranky or not.



Sounds like international Feminist evangelism.

I don't see much point in telling other people how they should live or what they should value.

But, 19th century English missionaries had a huge impact on many parts of the world. Maybe 21st century English Feminists will do the same.

Different lifestyles, different cultures, and different senses of morality are not necessarily better or worse than each other. Some might be better or worse for me personally. But I reject the notion of an objective gold standard that suits everyone.

^ You credit me with having far more power than I actually have or desire to have.

I simply wish to say what I think, and that is that 'traditional' cultures are full of BS. No evangelism intended.

I will add that all cultures are full of BS, but where there is a largely-unquestioned power structure (such as those pertaining to class, race or in this case, gender) then great, steaming piles of BS exist. I have an inability to ignore it or pretend it has a pleasant smell. I just wish for people born with a similar inability to myself to have the right to pinch their nose and vomit at the stench around them.

Your vomit probably also smells bad.

If people who disliked other people's lifestyles and cultures went around vomiting all over the place, then things would surely become messy.

The Southeast Asian women who marry abroad generally consider supporting their parents and other family members to be their top priority. Maybe this shouldn't be their priority, but it is what it is. No amount of Feminist tracts is going to change their minds.

I don't care if supporting their family is their top priority, I don't even think it's a bad priority to have. You know perfectly well that that wasn't the thing I found distasteful.

What I vomit over is the way they are valued so poorly in their culture unless they can make money on the marriage market (which they can only do with natives if they've never been f****d before.)

Women being valued less then men isn't a culture or a 'lifestyle' that I think is worthy of my respect. If you weren't a troll, you'd stop using the language of social liberalism to say I'm a bigot for not being happy about oppression. If you're not trolling and you genuinely think that, for example, slavery would be okay if it was someone's culture/lifestyle (because that's where your ideas logically lead) then I'll happily be bigoted.

Also, don't bother with the whole defence of 'I'm not a troll or I would've been banned/trolling is a very serious thing to accuse me of.' I know that full well and I suspect you also know you're trolling. We've tolerated your form of trolling because it's not exactly ban-able and because you're sometimes amusing. You really haven't been very funny since Inuyasha left. This is because you don't have any cast-iron feminazis to argue against, so you have to resort to baiting very reasonable people like myself and LKL, so it's not as funny. I suspect you know it's not as funny. Don't waste your talents on this crap

You can say, 'I'm not trolling; I just have a different opinion to you,' but I'm letting you know in advance that I won't believe that you seriously think that widowed and divorced women having a low status in society is a good thing, or that all inequalities are cool in the name of 'lifestyle.'

I'm almost tempted to find a real-life Inuyasha clone and get them to post on here so you can shine again.

Oh, I wasn't accusing you of finding this particular aspect of their culture to be distasteful. Probably most foreign men who marry Thai women find it distasteful, and will be in for a shock.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world ... d=all&_r=0



I actually spent some time in Udon Thani back in my backpacker days. Fun times. Anywho, this aspect of Thai culture is something that the promoters of international marriages (e.g., matchmaking websites and agencies) probably don't emphasize enough. But, some of them can be as bad as realtors out to make a quick commission.



Wages in Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam are very, very low. A lot of Filipinos try to help their families financially by working abroad.

http://www.unladkabayan.org/overseas-fi ... rkers.html

A lot of the people perceive marrying their daughters abroad to be a way to wealth. As mentioned above, this has raised the value of daughters in Vietnam, to the point that they may be less likely to be aborted as fetuses.



The women are actually ending up being of greater value through marriage migration.



Invoking the T-word already? I'm not in favor of slavery. Different cultures have evolved different ways of supporting family structures, and different rules for how the genders are to interact. Some value female virginity until marriage. Others don't. Maybe the women over there don't really feel as oppressed as you think they should.



By "T-word", you mean someone whose opinions and perspectives differ from your own.



I'm not saying that widowed and divorced women having a low status is necessarily a good thing, nor that other societies should try to emulate this. All societies have a way of differentiating people by status. A lot of the Englishmen who go off to Thailand to find female companionship probably find that they have quite low status in the mating pool within their own country. Off to Thailand, and problem quickly solved, for both parties. Of course, the Englishman will find that he now has a number of cultural differences to deal with. But, for him, it may still be preferable to having no opportunity to mate at all.



I wonder what happened to my little buddy and favorite nemesis? He always used to call me an ill-informed Liberal rather than a T-Word.

^ I think Thai women marrying foreign men is a perfectly sensible thing for them to do, given the constraints of their culture. What I object to is that being their only sensible option. Poverty is a big part of that and what I'm objecting to is as much about poverty as it is about gender. Marrying abroad may be a boost for the family involved, but I think Thailand's problems of wealth inequality are too big to be solved by that.

I think women need a way of being able to look after themselves without relying on men, not because of feminist ideals, but because some women just don't want to have sex with men. I was one of them for part of my life. De facto prostitution with no other reasonable choice is particularly odious to such women.

Most of the Englishmen who marry women from Thailand could find a mate in England; they just find English women substandard. My partner has friends who've married Asian women who constantly tell him 'England is a sinking ship', but he says he's happy with me and doesn't think I'm substandard.

Thai brides must be a whole lot more common in England than here--you don't see very many. Probably more Filipinas. Most men here marry other Americans, usually of the same race, and wouldn't consider any other options. For that matter, most Americans probably don't even know that Thailand is a country, and certainly wouldn't be able to find Thailand on a map.

You must have seen this Little Britain episode.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5oI3RGunk[/youtube]

I think that men who talk this way usually are just frustrated at their inability to find a coitus partner. I suspect that men may have a tendency to project their feelings outward and to blame others, possibly more than women do. Women have choices, too. Probably moreso than men. The guys who can easily get laid any day of the week probably aren't complaining about how substandard English women are.

For a gent who couldn't get a date to save his life in England, Thailand may be the best option. Perfectly sensible, given the constraints of his culture.

But, once married, there isn't any point in continuing to bash the women of their own culture. Some of them will have daughters, who will grow up English, and they will want their own daughters to find a decent husband. They will have to get over their personal bitterness eventually, and just move on with their lives.

Anyone in England can get laid any day of the week. The famous English sexual repression doesn't stop anyone doing it; it just stops people talking about it. It traditionally required people to adapt to the hostile environment of a crappy (cattle-market) nightclub, but now the Internet exists. I suspect it's probably different in conservative parts of the US where it probably is actually hard to get laid for some men without paying for it.

What they look for when they go to Thailand for a bride isn't sex, anyway (the ones on sex holidays aren't looking for relationships.) They want to find a girl to be in a relationship where the woman is as 'respectful' as they think women ought to be. From what I've seen, often the men who try to find wives abroad have British ex girlfriends they hate but haven't gotten over yet, which is why they continue to trash British women even after finding a foreign girlfriend. Sometimes they genuinely don't feel comfortable with Western culture and move to Asia permanently and learn the language and date Asian women - but the one guy I knew who did that moved to Japan, rather than one of the less developed countries in Asia, like Thailand. He rose to the considerable challenge of assimilating into Japanese culture so I say 'good for him,' but most of the ones I know who've gone to Asia don't do that.

My friend's ex-boyfriend found a woman in China and then kept sending emails to my friend detailing how ugly British women were in comparison to East Asian girls, and just generally trying to upset her/make her jealous. Last I heard is that he gave up on China and is back in Britain with a British girlfriend and is now moving on with his life. It's like the whole, 'go to Asia and find a girl in order to get revenge on the ex' is a phase that some men seem to go through in their 20s nowadays. The ones who are in their 40s or older and marrying abroad usually are the type who struggle to get girlfriends over here and they don't trash British women as much as the younger men who do it.

The main economic problem in most poor countries is official corruption at all levels.

http://world.time.com/2013/09/11/philip ... squealing/

The Philippine government takes in a lot of money, but instead of using it to improve health, education, housing and infrastructure, government officials simply appropriate the money to themselves.

In my part of the USA, you see a lot of money wasted on resurfacing roads that don't need to be resurfaced. Government contractors are quite talented at bilking the treasury. But, at least they are giving jobs to people, and, sometimes, completing projects that are useful.

Wages in the Philippines are extremely low, and the economy is highly dependent upon remittances from abroad.

http://www.bulatlat.com/news/5-22/5-22-remittances.htm

A family that doesn't have any members working abroad may end up very poor. Sometimes, it is very difficult to get a position abroad. The USA used to take in a lot of Filipino nurses, but I think that has curtailed in recent years. Marrying a daughter off to a foreigner may be one of the most expedient ways of establishing an income source from abroad.

Really? The poor fellows who are whining in the Love and Dating Section must all be Americans, then. "Sex is NOT an Entitlement!" must just be the peculiar battle cry of American Feminists.

We really ought to tell the chaps in the Love and Dating Section about this. One can often find good deals on trans-Atlantic flights.

Sex isn't an entitlement, it's just easy to get if you can put yourself out there enough. The actual going to nightclubs or even messaging a person on a sex site on the Internet bit is what they're struggling to do - they're either too socially awkward to send a message to a girl on sex site, or they have standards set too high (which is why you get the whole, 'I can only find a girl hot enough for me by seeing an escort' type of posts. And yes, most of them are American rather than European in L&D.

It might be the most expedient way, but it won't solve the issue of corruption and unfair wages in those countries.