PicoBlog

 Mail-order brides is a term used to conceal what it actually means: modern slavery and exploitation of the most impoverished women. “Brides” suggests a legitimate arrangement under the sanctity of marriage. How language can hide abuse. Men use capitalism to their advantage in procuring women with the allure of a ‘better’ materialistic lifestyle. 

At first, the concept of mail-order brides may seem odd but harmless, after all, it’s a service that supposedly benefits both sides? Women “willingly” advertise themselves as potential brides and travel to foreign countries to get married and start a new life with a lonely man (my heart bleeds… not). But what happens when a man, put off by what he perceives as independent or hard-to-get women in his own culture, turns to “services” that allow him to buy a "subservient" woman from abroad who will meet his every need (cooking, cleaning, sex, pregnancy, emotional labour). She lives as the oppressed and he is the oppressor. These mail order “services” objectify, fetishise and ‘other’ women to the extent that they become de-humanised with racist, sexist and demeaning language. It sounds like abuse, doesn’t it? 

The age-old concept of the mail order bride hinges on the fantasy of a handsome western man playing saviour to a beautifully exotic woman, by lifting her out of a world of poverty and destitution and they fall in love. (That is literally how love works under the patriarchy, just look at Pretty Woman). However, cultural, social, economic, and legal issues lay the foundation for the sex trade that merges sex and labour trafficking across the globe and labels it as a “happily ever after”.  Mail order brides are a way for certain men to find someone to marry them. They target the mail order bride services to find young, usually less educated and certainly poor women from other countries who are desperate to leave their life in search of a better one. 

Mail order brides are portrayed as young and obedient women who connect with a caucasian man through an online international marriage brokerage firm that facilitates the process of establishing a “pen-pal” relationship for a while. Many of the men seeking out this service are considerably older than the women they marry, though some agencies encourage their clients to stay within a 20-year difference in age, because as we know, the best relationships are the ones with a 20 year age difference…

There is a lack of statistics regarding the number of mail-order brides who are abused by their husbands, which makes it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem. In the US, In 2007, the Tahirih Justice Center conducted a survey of almost 200 American legal-aid groups, of which half had handled abuse complaints submitted by mail-order brides.  After two foreign brides in Washington State were killed by their husbands, Congress passed the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act in 2005, under which international marriage brokerage agencies are required to search the national or state sex offender registry, collect background information on the American client, and provide the potential bride with the results, along with a copy of the United States Homeland Security pamphlet on domestic violence.  

The Public Interest Law Reporter paper noted that “mail order brides are often subject to physical and sexual abuse once they arrive in the U.S., which they are especially vulnerable to due to their immigration status.” There are language barriers, deportation worries, and financial concerns that all serve to place a woman in a dangerous position. If the woman has been successfully isolated by her new fiance or husband, it's very difficult for her family and friends abroad to verify her well-being or to report her missing in a worst-case scenario.

Mail order brides rather than being a taboo or touchy subject in the media - are in fact a joke. In September 2016, NBC announced it was going to release a new sitcom all about Mail Order Family, featuring this “comedic” premise: A lonely American widower buys Filipina mail-order brides to raise his preteen daughters. Barely 72 hours later, amid furious protests from the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, bloggers, and multiple online petitions, NBC announced it was cancelling the project.

Despite the clear issues and human rights violation, buying a wife off the internet is not illegal in the UK. It is completely legal to bring a mail-order bride from almost any country to the UK (although it is not easy to travel to the UK due to a hostile environment for those trying to move to the UK).

The practice of mail-order brides is centuries old but it is more prevalent in our modern-day era because of the ease of access through the internet but mail-order brides have been coming to the United States for over a century. A 1907 a Gentleman’s Agreement between the United States and Japan enabled Japanese men already living in this country to bring their picture brides in from Japan without invoking immigration restrictions.

Brokers are selling people for profit, women rarely know their soon-to-be husbands or the lived reality they are marrying into, and there is a power differential between the man and woman like no other. One is owned, and the other is the owner. This is human trafficking. Often international marriage broker sites are used as covers for prostitution rings and act as sites where pimps can buy new girls and sell girls who are no longer of use to them. Husbands and buyers often use immigration status as a way to control women, stating that if they report abuse, try to leave the relationship, or do not comply with orders, they will be deported.

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