The lonely hearts club

Part 5

by David Andrew Stoler

The charitable view is that mail-order bride services are just a different kind of entre nous, a transoceanic dating service for people who still believe that men wear the pants and women hem them. "Everybody wants to have someone," says Alan Weegens, and at some level, one can't help but sympathize.

But the misogynistic tone of the mail-order bride literature, the selling of little girls' addresses to grown American men, the feminist-backlash rationalizations and the pictures of "marriage-minded" 13-year-olds on the Web -- these are painful to see. This business is more than just the consumer instinct run amok. It's an attempt to turn back the clock by decades, to escape the consequences of feminism, to return to the time when women didn't get headaches -- or orgasms.

Perhaps more disturbing, though, is that the impulse driving the business -- the impulse to reduce people to a commodity -- is something that affects us all. Flipping through the catalogues, page after page, face after face, it becomes hard not to think of the brides that way. Even those of us who know better can't help doing a little comparison shopping. It is frustrating, disheartening, even scary.

That's why activists like Wade and Wise keep reminding us about the horrific results of the commerce in women. Says Wise: "All we can do is talk about it and talk against it. [We can] remind people who may be well-intentioned, who may be lonely, that a real partnership is built through mutuality and respect. And maybe there are other ways to go about getting that."

David Andrew Stoler is a freelance writer living in Providence.