Philippines Books

In all fairness to the young lady who wrote to me about my web site ‘degrading’ her (see ‘Mail Order Bride’ below), she made some valid points. WHile I responded in that article with a rebuke regarding the reasons why the situation is as it is, the fact remains that many people view all Filipinas as ‘mail order brides’. Yes, it is unfair, yes it i wrong, yes it is inaccurate but sorry, it happens. It is then up to the individual I suppose to change the perception if she feels it necessary.

I didn’t create the situation and I won’t eradicate it, but I will not be a part of the problem and I do what I can to adjust attitudes. In my book ‘Philippine Dreams’ I make the point very clearly and in the opening paragraph that there is no such thing as a MOB and that I find the term offensive. It offends the Filipina and her foreigner partner. No woman will have herself delivered FedEx’d to someone halfway around the world just to escape grinding poverty. Well, not many anyway. Unless you have experienced such grinding poverty firsthand I guess you can’t say with any accuracy exactly how far you would go to improve your situation and future prospects.

The situation is not resting purely on one group or another, there are several vested interests involved. First of al there are the men who seek a companion from foreign stock. Whether they use an old fashioned printed catalogue and snail mail exchanges or the plethora of personal introduction web sites or even the web cam that allows vision and speech to speed up the whole process. What used to take many months of long waits for replies now can be over and done with in a day. While that allows people to get to know each other quickly and rapidly weed out the poor matches, it also opens up a pandora’s box of possibilities for getting ripped off. From either party.

Web cams, chat rooms and even those pay to view soft porn sites are places where men and women can meet in cyber space. I think they are not as invasive as an exchange between a sex worker and her customer, face to face but others might see little or no distinction. Of course for every girl working the web for her living there are many more simply trying to meet a man they can love and live with.

What my critic doesn’t know is that I was the person who branded the Filipino dating site ‘Itzamatch.com’ . This site is like any other dating site and is aimed at those Filipinos and Filipinas who are looking for friends and partners, be they heterosexual, homosexual or whatever. It is not a MOB site. The social class of the members is different to those who frequent the sites where the foreigners are likely to be found. They are younger, monied, educated and have never had to wonder if there will be any food on the table tonight, they were spoon fed by their YaYa until they were 8!

Of the foreigner contact sites, the men who visit there are as mixed a bunch as any. Most of them are over 40 and divorced, usually from the USA but increasing numbers from elsewhere in the western ‘Anglosphere’ world. Why are they there? Why are they looking for love and companionship from third world women of much less sophisticated backgrounds with arguably far less education than they have? Many do have college degrees and good employment prospects in their own right once out of the Philippines but the majority are at best high school graduates from small, provincial barangays.

Is it because these are the Filipinas who make up the majority of the pool of available marriageable women? Why? Well if you are well educated and live in an upscale home with servants and money and a future why do you need to find a ‘fat, old foreigner man’?

Keep in mind many of these men failed in their relationships with western women. They did not like the competition as society swings over from the old ‘wagon train’ mentality to the new ’spaceship’ one. The wagon train had the men fighting off the ‘injuns’ and the ‘wimmin’ making vittles and bearing children and so on. The spaceship has everybody equal as technology removes the need for the male attributes of strength, aggression and the ability to pee standing up. Upscale Filipinas are already on the launch pad while poorer girls are still hitching up the horses. In some cases literally if you substitute a carabao for the horse!

So the man thinks he wil get a better deal from a woman who treats him as the head of the house and appreciates what (little) he can provide for her. Unlike his first wife who was always whining and demanding more, his Filipina fetches and carries for him as if he were the most important person in the room. And he is until she can get the Green Card and the bank account and a job in the US and take care of herself and her family without him.

It happens and it is happening more and more. While there are still many dedicated, loving Filipinas genuinely seeking a man to love and cherish, there are more and more looking for a way to improve their lot in life and he is merely a means to that end. On the other hand, there are far too many men who treat women (all women) abominably. They should not be able to form relationships because they are so bad at them. They are selfish and childish and self centered and treat their wives like submissive sex slaves and then wonder why she left him. Or had him killed if he is living with her in the Philippines. (See related stories below)

Ten years ago I read little but success stories of Fil-Foreigner marriages. Today I read of more failed relationships, rip offs and scams and I wonder why. I think the speed of things is the factor. The internet has sped up the process so that no longer do you have to work at the relationship. A few clicks of a mouse and you can exchange a lifetime of lies. Then you rush into each other’s arms, be on your best behaviour and before you now it time has passed and you are ready for the ‘happy ever after’. Only then you find she/he is not as you were led to believe.

Men and women are made different for a reason, to compliment each other. When you add the societal and cultural differences, you have two people who really need to be either a match made in heaven (a fictitious place by the way) or they will both have to compromise and work together to make the marriage work. And hard work is too hard for most people, we all prefer the path of least resistance nowadays and that is divorce.

If two people who grew up in the same culture, speak exactly the same language and share the same societal values can’t get along, what makes these men think they can do it with a Filipina? And not a well educated one with a much closer grasp of western culture but one who has a warped version of our values. A woman who has probably never used a knife and fork, at best a fork and spoon and most likely her fingers to eat with. A woman from a family of many, perhaps with only the scattered education of the less than adequate government school system and full of mixed up myths and superstitions from the blend of catholicism and animism that passes for religion for 84% of the population.

Even is she speaks English, it will be a very different version to the English the man is familiar with. Word meanings are extreme only. If a word can mean even just two things and one is worse than the other, be assured she only knows the worse meaning. If you then use the word in its other context she will misunderstand you and it’s ON! Foreigner men forget how important family is to these women. All they have is their family, their kin and their lives often depend on each other. They don’t have social security, health insurance or much other than superstition and magic. They live in a land of volcanos, typhoons, floods, landslides, disease and reckless driving all backed up by the ridiculous belief that God will provide and if anything bad happens then it is His will and you can;t do a thing about it… bahala na!

So even the men who have only the very best of intentions have their work cut out for them. If both parties really try and work hard to make their marriage last then they will succeed and it will be a strong marriage. But if just one of them has any doubts or lacks total commitment or entered into the union for less than the stated reasons; it is doomed. Keep in mind many Fil-Fil marriages fail. The difference is the iron grip of the catholic church means only the wealthy and privileged can afford to buy annulments. Everybody else makes do by pretending all is well. There are far too many single parents, abandoned mothers and children, kept mistresses and bigamous relationships in the Philippines. But of course these are not acknowledged as they do not tally with what the culture claims.

The society is corrupt from the top down. Systemically corrupt. That might offend many but it is the truth and deep down they know it is the truth. Corrupt societies are far more open to exploitation than societies with moral integrity. Part of the problem are foreigner men who exploit the desire of less fortunate women to escape such a society. Of course the well off have no need to leave what for them is a great place and so they take offense at being seen as the same as those who do what they must to survive.

Life is not fair, it never was and never will be. I think in countries like the Philippines Life is more obvious, more in your face than in western countries where we tend to hide it behind a veneer of social justice and projected equality. Of course we have very serious societal problems in the west, no denying that and no doubt we have contributed to the problems experienced in the third world. But at least on this web site I like to think an honest view is expressed and if that cause someone to feel degraded, then they must ask themselves, why?