American Men Respect Filipinas!

The following is an article written by a Filipina feminist named Vera (no last name found). She charges the foreign bride industry as stereotyping all Filipina women as sexual objects and maids. While all advertisement includes exaggeration, American men are hardly so stupid.

In, The Cyber Feminization of Poverty: Mail-Order Brides and the Image of the Filipina, Vera writes, (my comments are included in italics)

When one Googles the term “Filipina”, one will be immediately flooded of dating sites catering to mail-order brides. This industry, which started in the early 1980s in the United States costs multi-million dollars and has been been steadily profiting through-out the years. The Asian bride market received its strongest push through a program on Phil Donahue and also through a front-page story in the Wall Street journal entitled “American Men Find Asian brides Fill The Unliberated Bill” which came out in the public in the early 1980’s (Constable, 2003, p.70). Through the aforementioned, the mail-order bride business was further popularized by the Western media through American television such as the talk shows of Oprah, Donahue, Nightline, and 20/20; radio programs and magazines.

The Philippine mail-order bride sites often depict Filipinas in their most seductive poses, and in other instances almost nude and pornographic photographs.

Throughout time women use their sexuality to attract men, nothing new here. Almost nude, what sites is SHE looking at....?

The Filipina is very famous among Caucasians due to the notion of being a “perfect wife” that came about because of certain underlying notions of the former’s natural inclination to take care, nurture, and unconditionally love their spouses. Perhaps the Filipino culture indeed was able to mold a seemingly ideal icon of women that are able to fit the neo-capitalistic society. The Filipina, though now excelling in the corporate world, is still able to multi-task and do her role in the family as a home maker. Besides her work, she is still able to cook, take care of her offsprings, her husband, and even her in-laws.On taking the Western perspective, it is a sad reality that most Asian women are often stereotyped most specially in Hollywood films as “oriental doll” or “lotus blossoms”. These metaphors seemingly creative at a glance however creates an idea of a “distorted” perfect woman due to the containment of the opposites- possession of both the yin and the yang. It is often the case that Asian women are viewed as “sweet, innocent, sexual romantic, conniving, devious and shrewd” (Constable, 2003, p.13).

All of us get stereotyped. Asians are also apparently hyper-smart. Intelligent people all over the world understand that the notion of "nationality traits" are to be taken with a grain of salt.

Such a highly sexist and problematic projection of the character of the Filipina has become the cornerstone of its popularity in the international dating market. The so-called E-Trafficking or the use of the latest technology in order to cater to the growing international demand for sex has paved the way not only for pornography but for mail-order brides in developing countries (Worden, 2001).

Foreign brides and pornography have nothing whatever to do with each other. Just because filipinas are often sexy, does not man they are lose, or that anybody thinks as much.

The rise of trafficking through the advent of the internet is only a proof that until now, the state of affairs of women being objects of men has barely changed.

What does this have to do with foreign brides?

The feminization of poverty, a concept that is highly evident on third world countries is still in existence, and worse being perpetuated through the rise of the Internet as a the primary venue to purchase and market sex. It is a fact that the Filipina being family oriented, desires to do nothing but help her family ascend from their marginalized state of affairs. Being such, they have become a perfect target of on-line sex trafficking that is camouflaged by matchmaking sites.

People use the internet, guns, knives and cars to commit crimes. They may even use foreign bride agencies to commit fraud on unsuspecting victims. That people misuse anything for their own nefarious purposes proves nothing.

The mail-order bride business is primarily characterized by Asian women who are in pursuit of greener pasture in trade for sex and marriage. Such a business perpetuates the idea that Filipinas are willing to do anything just to have her liberated from her “poverty stricken bondage”. As such, this creates a sense of social reality that Filipinas are still incapable to assert themselves hence further perpetuating a “collage of economic, sexual, and racial hegemonic discourses [that] celebrate dominant Anglo patriarchal capitalist ideology by fashioning an ideal product—the colonized Pilipina ‘Oriental Butterfly’ doll” (Meng, 1994).

People decide to marry for their own self-interested purposes. They decide based on physical attractiveness and earning potential every day in millions of marriages across the world. In most GOOD marriages, partners compromise in the pursuit of combined happiness. Foreign brides are no different, and no less able to act in their best interests.


“The bodies of Asian women have often been seen as erotic and exotic in the Western discourse of “the Orient. ” Their smallness has been associated with timidity and subservience, traits that have made them desirable to many men in Western societies. This perception has even led to the development of mail-order businesses in which Asian women are sold to Western male consumers as brides” (Mascia-Lees and Black, 2000).

I am attracted to asian women (don't tell my wife) because they are petite, and exotic, TOO ME. Most things that are substantially different to the normal are exotic. Sexiness and exoticism are wonderful. The charge that foreign brides are purchased is spurious and void of any evidence."

This new form of sexual slavery has been camouflaged by a number of internet sites as mere dating venue or a place to explore one’s social network. The capacity for fraudulent advertising and cunning play of words has paved the way for these on-line businesses to escape the rule of law, hence perpetuating the cyber-reality that “Filipinas” are synonymous to marginalized new-age cyber sexual objects.

"Puffing" is present in all business advertisements.