I noticed this in China too. Older male expats with local wives or sex partners. Some of them were on their second or third local wife. There's a whole culture that develops around it of young women who make it a goal to try find a western husband, either for the money, or for the convenient foreign citizenship. Unfortunately this creates some resentment of expats amongst the local men, and gives expats in general a bit of a poor reputation.
Maybe I'm jus non-traditional but I don't understand the poor reputation. Consensual relationship marriage, who cares why the parties consented so long as it wasn't done under force?
It's hilarious going to a certain 3rd world country with my wife (where she was born). My wife is dual citizen (gained citizenship and good career before I met her) and makes more than I do. In this country impoverished women often marry rich westerners. When we go people assume I'm her sugar-daddy/visa-husband. The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else? Also in many nations marriage is as much about connections as it is anything else.
It's a valid assumption because it's rare for a woman to make more than the man, and it's especially common for women in those countries to seek foreign sugar daddies, I don't understand why you think it's mysterious. It would be mysterious if nobody assumed that.
>The odd thing to me is I don't see our relationship as any more or less valid, who the fuck cares that we married for a different reason than someone else?
It's only odd to you because you're not affected by it. Men in local populations have a MUCH HARDER time finding wives that are local. When a foreigner jumps in and snatches up one while barely speaking the language it's a little "wtf."
Let's put things into reality. The fact of the matter is women marry up. They are attracted to men with higher status. Globally, white men occupy this status. Not officially mind you, no white man or person of any race would say this, but subconsciously that's the hierarchy. That's why white men, if they date women of other races often have a much easier time. Women everywhere tend to just put white men on that pedestal. In terms of status, a white man can get better results if they date another woman of a different class and race then they would if they dated some women of the same race and status. That's reality. The statistics on dating sites verify this racial phenomenon.
So of course if the tables were turned and rich asian and black men came stateside and started taking away white women the resentment would exist in the other direction. And such resentment does sort of exist (not in the dating scene) in terms of employment and jobs.
It's normal there's nothing wrong or right about the situation, but it is what it is.
> It's only odd to you because you're not affected by it. Men in local populations have a MUCH HARDER time finding wives that are local. When a foreigner jumps in and snatches up one while barely speaking the language it's a little "wtf."
Why not simply improve their country? That would solve their problem.
Have you seen the improvements china has made? In terms of wealth and technology the country is projected to surpass US GDP in the near future.
I would say the subconscious sentiment is reversing only fairly recently. Groups like BTS are changing the game. Among the youngest generations Asians are seen very differently.
However the overall sentiment will remain for most our lifetimes.
>In terms of status, a white man can get better results if they date another woman of a different class and race then they would if they dated some women of the same race and status.
Asians are indisputably higher earners in US than white, on average. If anything it would make more sense that people view it that someone from an Asian country such as my wife married down and not up, if we're viewing through the race lenses you are viewing things through.
Shockingly, I found the same study, and you are correct.
Factoid: the second richest kind of heterosexual household in the US, on average, is Asian woman, white man. Interestingly, Asian-Asian and White-White lag significantly behind both.
Almost paradoxically, from a purely financial outcome perspective a white man is expected to be better off marrying an asian woman, while an asian man is expected to be better off marrying a white woman.
I didn't realize there was a pair like that where both male and female are statistically better off financially marrying the complement, but it seems white/asian pair is the winning combination for maximum expected income?
>Highly doubt these averages indicate causation. More likely these pairs formed because the women are choosing men with certain financial attributes. Either way correlation doesn't indicate causation, and I believe you are mistakenly assuming such a connection.
I think you are mistaken about what 'expected' means.
Expected value doesn't imply causation [0]. Sorry for not being more clear here, I was using the word as it's used in probability theory. Since there is no weighting here, expected basically means average, not some causative assertion.
>white women will only choose an Asian who's so financially well off that race no longer matters
This is just straight up racist. You can say what white woman will do on average or what white woman is expected to do, but you can't possibly know white women will 'only' choose an Asian when they're financially well off.
>Being married implies some marrying happen. You're just playing semantic games.
I'm not playing fucking semantic games. I'm telling you your sentence is straight up wrong. I already get what you mean. We can end it here. But your usage of the term marriage HEAVILY implies causation and that's what I thought your meaning was when I read your language.
Obviously you meant different. BUT my technical guideline will help you prevent future misunderstandings. If your logic and technical language is bulletproof then your entire argument will be as well.
>Sure, you can backtrack and it becomes a population observation rather than a racist rant about what white women will ONLY choose.
What's wrong with backtracking? I don't understand. You use imprecise language and you backtrack and I can't? All the fuck we're doing here is trying to communicate and clarify communication. When I attempt to clarify you accuse me of backtracking and try to paint me as a racist?
It is 100% true that as a generality white women are not interested in asian men due to status. Even Asian women in the US aren't as interested in Asian men as a result of the same perception. This is a VERY real phenomenon. It is not racist to describe reality.
Do you know who I am? I'm asian. I grew up facing some of the most racist white people in existence. Do not call me a racist, not after what the white race did to my people and others. Let me be absolutely clear. I am not racist. Neither are you, but if you choose to call me a racist EVEN though I clearly am not then you are no worse then them.
"Are you white? Why are you backtracking on all the people your race enslaved and killed?" It would be wrong if I used the previous sentence on you. I'm not. Just throwing it in here as an example to show you how ludicrous your backtracking bs is.
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Flamewar comments and personal attacks will get you banned here. We've had to warn you about this more than once already. I'm not going to ban you right now, because you've also posted good comments, but if you don't fix this then we'll end up having to, so please fix this.
In China there is already a gender imbalance in the favor of men thanks to the one child policy, which means straight young men can struggle to find a romantic partner. When older, richer foreigners come along and snap up local women - who are already in short supply - it definitely breeds resentment. Tangled up with that is the existing problem of human trafficking, where brides are shipped in from Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar etc. It's easy for an increasingly nationalistic culture to blame foreigners for exacerbating these issues.
I can see how that is the case in China. My wife is from a country where there is no shortage of women. Probably 90% of the people speak passable English, so there is no language barrier. I don't see a lot of hostile resentment to be honest.
The presumption is more of a practical and amusing one. Many of the villages are funded in part by remittance from US and this country was saved by US from literal mass rape by Japanese in WWII and unlike other countries we never seriously fucked them afterwards so the people overall are very cheery in dealing with Americans in my experience.
The Philipines is has a long and notorious history of mail-order brides[1]. Parent's incredulity on peoples attitudes rings a little hollow when that's explicitly spelled out.
1. The term predates the world-wide web to a time when women in developing counties would be in a literal catalog, and correspondence was done via mail.
Another word for the process of getting a mail-order "bride" in the context of the current day is "internet dating", which everyone does. The other term is still used to evoke some historically charged negative emotions due to the implication that perhaps people are bought or relationships are started for the wrong reasons, but the modern dating scene has the exact same problems. What is left then is racism (it's "bad" because the parties are from different countries and perhaps even have different skin colour), and deserves to just go straight out the window.
You're skipping over the power dynamics- the brides are often very poor and dependent on spouse for financial support, the lack of support network (bride leaves family & friends thousands of miles away),as well as the precarious visa situation (real or perceived). Other than that, it's just like internet dating, like you said.
So what are you going to do? Ban these brides from seeking a husband abroad? What is the point of complaining about mail order brides?
You can educate them on all these things (many of these brides surely already know this) and yet many would still choose on their free volition to proceed ahead.
Don't put words in my mouth: I said your incredulity at people rings hollow - not your experience.
It's like a Tesla owner being surprised that people assume they bought a Tesla because it's an EV, when the real reason is because they love the seats and infotainment system. It should not be surpring to discover that a widely-held semtiment (right or wrong) is widely-held.
I see, the issue is you don't understand what incredulity means. It doesn't mean I'm surprised. I'm perfectly willing to _believe_ that people have rational views on what a situation may be. I understand your wish to be sanctimonious, and perhaps it would have been wise for me to turn the other cheek rather than point out your hypocrisy of putting words in my mouth. Mea Culpa.
This is a very new cultural assumption (something like the 1960s ?)
Prior to that marriage was a lot less about contemporary concepts like "emotional love", "my forever best friend" etc.
Vietnam still has a very old religious under pinning (idk the exact definitions, but something like daoist - bhuddist - ancestor worship). Marriage and family means something very different there than in the US meaning (nearly formless these days)
In some sense I think they have it right. The chemical induced feeling of love lasts a couple years at best. The rest is about relationship, bonding, family, duty and responsibility - IMO. I would wager those who don't marry for love but make a pact to form a working relationship still get most the upsides of marriage.
I'm surprised nobody posted this very famous video of a British man and his Asian girlfriend getting harassed by a local in Taipei, Taiwan 7 years ago. [1]
The aggressor ended up getting in trouble and appeared on the local news but I'm sure a lot of people shared his toxic views.
