Mail Order Brides

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...Far from being “naïve victims of exploitation” or “scheming Slavic beauties,” Russian mail order brides are sometimes just looking for love, says a University of Toronto researcher.

Modern visions of the “marriage broker industry” are often clouded by misconceptions, Alex Rowlson argues in “Negotiated Nuptials: A Transnational Analysis of the International Marriage Broker Industry and the Russian ‘Mail-Order Bride.” This week the Canadian Women’s Studies Association recognized the paper, which portrays arranged marriages as a moral grey area, as the best in the field by a graduate student this year.

“Women aren’t forced into these marriages, they actually have choice in the matter,” says Mr. Rowlson, a PhD student in Russian history.

While the mail-order bride industry may be tainted by visions of vulnerable women being duped into unhappy marriages, for the most part the modern practice is not much different than a cross-border version of online dating. Russian women interested in Western husbands post their own profiles. Men seeking wives then initiate a conversation with the women by email. Between 150,000 to 200,000 Russian women are currently listed on marriage databases targeting American men....

...Critics risk imposing a double standard when attacking the industry, Mr. Rowlson says. “Nobody is attacking people who use eHarmony or Match.com.”...

...Canadian marriage broker Mark Scrivener likens his industry to the influx of 48,000 European “war brides” who came to Canada at the close of the Second World War....

...The average Volga Girl client, Mr. Scrivener says, is a financially successful Christian conservative with old fashioned values. “A lot of guys work shift work, they’re more introverted, they just don’t have a lot of time for meeting women in their own city or jurisdiction,” he says. “But they do have time to correspond over the Internet and fly over to Russia once a year.”

Like Mr. Scrivener, they mainly share a desire for “traditional” women. “I just don’t need the baggage that comes with local women,” he says.

The sentiment is common among bride-seeking clients, Mr. Rowlson says. In letters to Russian women, American men often condemn the “feminists” and “feminazis” of their own country.

Russian women, meanwhile, often decry their men as abusive alcoholics. Domestic assault remains virtually unchecked in Russia. Each year, more than 14,000 Russian women are killed by domestic violence, according to 2008 data from the Russian Interior Ministry. For generations, Russian women have also faced a severe scarcity of men. The Second World War wiped out more than nine million Russian men, but of late the ranks of Russian males have been decimated by an alcoholism epidemic afflicting up to 40% of the adult population. A commonly cited statistic states that Russia has 10 million more eligible women than men.....

...Between 9,500 and 14,500 women enter the United States as mail-order brides each year, representing 0.4% of all new immigration...

The term does sound like purchase.

so how is this not slavery?

They can run away.

Why not? If they're hot flexy, intelligent, and can cook: why not?

Slaves can run away too.

Slaves can run away too.

A mail order bride might run but if they do, they also risk deportation to a country where their future may be a misery. Which for some ends up in choosing between abuse with wealth or misery with poor future.

A kind of false choice. You can make a choice but it won't make real difference.

Slaves can run away too.