Letters to the Editor
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To Anon
Glad you posted. Even more glad to hear that Sara's comments were helpful.
Sometimes when the only male voices that appear in the letters sections are brightstar and Parson Jim, very little seems accomplished. I wish more men with concerns like yours would post to Broadsheet. I think your post, and people's thoughtful responses, is perhaps one of the best things I've seen happen in the letters section. I hope it won't be the last.
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IMBRA
To the guy that seems to think that the International Marriage Brokers Reform Act of 2005 was passed because of a conspiracy of radical feminists wanting to make it harder for men who seek foreign brides: I don't know about the Eastern European agencies, but I read that many agencies in Asia and the Phillipines screen the women but not the men.
Don't you think it's fair that both women and men be screened (as long as it's not in a humiliating manner); in order to weed out the gold/green-card diggers and con artists as well as the batterers and rapists?
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Anon Single Guy - addendum
I rarely read Broadsheet. This article caught my eye from the "active letters" section. But, if you swing like Sinatra, I guess you can call me a broad.
Many of the critiques in Broadsheet are uninteresting since I've been thoroughly immersed by art education in the miasma of theoretical feminism. I don't let that stop me from exploring the pieces that inspire lots of reader writing. Julia Kristeva is right to avoid the label 'feminist', I don't know how she feels about 'broad'.
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men who have to go to extraordinary lengths to find women,.. usually have something seriously wrong with them. I mean deep-rooted woman-hating freakiness
there you have it. All that needs to be known about the situation is known. All that remains is to implement a solution.
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Someone asked what is different about the U.S, i think I have an idea
Nowhere but here would anyone seriously believe that men and women are in the same position socially. Men have to prove themselves, women have to be appealed to. Societies have evolved traditional ways of dealing with/channelling this reality. In most of the rest of the world this is understood and accepted a little better than here. I don't think there are very many other places where the average man is denied any socially acceptable way of sucessfully proving himself to women while at the same time being told that in fact nothing is being asked of him (by the woman who is requiring the instinctively demanded demonstrations while denying doing so) and who is at the same time insisting HE is demanding something of her that he is not.
Or to take another example of American exceptionalism: Where else besides the US would an Andrea Dworkin be taken seriously by anyone (except as a psychiatric phenomenon).
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Quoth Wilma
"The most marriageable, caring, stable guys around are usually married, engaged or in a stable, commitment-focused relationship, by their late 20s."
Hm, this leaves me to wonder if I'm not stable, not caring, or not marriageable (whatever that entails).
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a book a movie and a pass
Has anyone seen that Tim Blake Nelson movie where he and his brother (played by David Arquette) take the Eastern European love tour? It seemed accurate and humane, but then, how I would know?
I did understand the "like American women" premise a little easier than the author, mainly because of a really well-drawn character/ization in Jonathan Franzen's first novel, a rich man who'd originally sought fortune in order (as I remember it) "to become all object; to have that power."
So you see, art really can illustrate life. (I'd planned on closing by inquiring if any of you had "cosmicmojo"'s number, but now suddenly that feels inappropriate.)
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guys are only interested once I'm taken! LOL
Ha ha, moniker, isn't that the way of life, that people are only interested in us when we're in a relationship? Whenever guys say I seem like a "cool chick" to date, now that I'm married, I say "where were you in those dark years when I couldn't get a date?!" I guess it's the safety of enjoying being interested in someone without having to do the work involved.
The Old fashioned Nelson family equation of the bread earning man and vacuuming in high heels wifie is extinct. Some of the roles and dynamics the most cynical men here describe could have been in play back in that world, but it's gone now.
Now, I have financial independence. I was able to educate myself, find interesting, fulfilling, and modestly renumerative jobs to provide me with a sense of value and a way to look after my base needs: food, shelter, transportation, clothing. So I don't have to play that old fashioned role of looking for a sugar daddy. I am my own suger momma and that freed me up to spend time with men I REALLY liked, instead of the most wealthy man, the one most likely to keep me in the manner to which I'm become accostomed. I keep myself just fine. So what do I need from a man/husband in this new economy? Not money. I need love, friendship, honesty, trust, respect, comfort, and committment. Those are the new rules of the new economy.
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"Marriageability"
The most marriageable, caring, stable guys around are usually married, engaged or in a stable, commitment-focused relationship, by their late 20s.
I thoroughly disagree with the premise of this statement. "Marriageability" (ack, pitooey, I don't even like that term) isn't a state that's fixed for life one way or the other at the commencement of adulthood. A man who is a poor prospect for a committed relationship in his 20s or even 30s can easily evolve over time into someone who's a lot more ready for a true partnership. Same with women. Certainly I am not the person I was when I was 25, and thank the Goddess!
When I separated from my husband, my father said to me: "X is a total schmuck. Most men his age [early 30s] are total schmucks. I should know; when I was X's age, I was a total schmuck." I of course must take anything my father says about relationships with a large hunk of NaCl; this is the man who also told me I'd need a good long bout with Weight Watchers in order to find another partner at the wizened age of 40, and he was dead wrong about that. But, sweeping generalizations about other men aside, I certainly can't argue with his self-assessment; when he was younger, he was an absolute nightmare to live with, and to hear my (second) stepmother tell it, now (at age 65!) he's a total pussycat. I'll take her word for it.
Similarly, when my mother met my stepfather, he was on the downslope of 45 and had never been married. When I first met the man, I didn't like him at all; he struck me as being a controlling nervous wreck. As it turns out, that was not far off my mother's initial reaction to him also, and he felt similarly about her. They needed a mutual friend to "push them together" and find each other's good qualities. And I have to say, over the last 15 years I have begun to see what she saw in him, that he is someone who is capable of growing and learning and understanding his own foibles, and wants to do whatever it takes to be a good partner. As my mother put it, "We're a team." That's not something anyone is born knowing how to do, or automatically knows how to do when they reach majority. That's something you have to learn by screwing it up over and over again until you get it right.
And then we come to my brother, who married for the first time last year at age 38 (same age as his never-married wife). In his case, I think a large part of his problem finding a partner was lack of propinquity; he was a newspaper writer who plied his trade mainly in smallish towns when almost every woman over the age of 18 was long since betrothed. He had to change careers (to magazine writing) and move to a major city in order just to bring himself into contact with a decent pool of eligibles. And yeah, the guy was picky. He wanted a nice, not terribly neurotic Jewish girl who wasn't religious and was highly educated and successful but not so crazy busy she didn't have any time for him. For a while, I wondered if his choosiness was going to get the better of him, but I have to give him credit; he held out and got exactly what he wanted, and my SIL is wonderful.
And of course there's my (divorced) boyfriend, who says he didn't date anyone for three years before he met me because he didn't want to go out with anyone he didn't feel a real connection with. He'd already done that, and it damn near killed him. He's a quirky soul who's not real big on things like owning a car and driving himself hard to become some Captain of Industry, and probably a lot of women would have passed him by because of that. But that was exactly what I wanted, someone who knew how to take care of himself without having to follow the dots, because that's how I am too. If we'd met when we were younger, we agree, we'd probably have been attracted to one another but would have been too full of our own neuroses for things to work out between us. So, anyone who felt discouraged by the quote I started this epic post with, please don't! Things just aren't that cut and dried.