To have and to hold: a postmodern feminist response to the mailorder bride industry.

• Author: O'Rourke, Kate

1. INTRODUCTION

   There are, of course, attractions for men other than the escape from feminist values to the traditional, family orientated [sic] females. We all know [P]hilippine women make perfect wives. In the [P]hilippines wives are very loyal house wives, As [sic] a mail bride they make excellent mailorder brides for [A]merican [sic] men ... And the Filipina believes that men must have regular sexual activity. It is the nature of the beast. It is very unusual for a Filipina wife not to make herself available for her husband whenever requested: "It's just a natural part of marriage." She is there, among other things, to be a provider of quality sex. Headaches are fairly rare! (1) The above enticement is just one example of the hundreds of Internet sites currently facilitating the "mail-order bride" industry. (2) The industry has boomed in recent years, with an estimated 2,700 matchmaking agencies worldwide, 500 of which can be found in the United States. (3) While much of the recent boom can be attributed to the Internet, the industry in its modern form emerged as early as the 1970's when one American-based entrepreneur decided to expand his Asian import business. (4) Although proponents and those who profit from the industry describe the services provided through these agencies as akin to "pen-pal clubs," the industry has faced heavy criticism, described by one author as "rel[ying] on stereotypes and transnational economic inequalities to support a profit-making commercial market[,] ... nurtur[ing] structures of subordination based on race, sex, and class within countries, among nations, and between individuals." (5)

   This paper will analyze the industry, including its current legal framework, through the lens of postmodern feminist legal theory. Part II provides a broad overview of the emergence of the mail-order bride industry, including the factors that perpetuate its existence, the interplay between feminism and international law, and the legal responses to the industry, focusing on the United States and the Philippines. Part III will analyze the postmodern feminist response to the industry as a social phenomenon and to the deficiencies in its legal framework. Finally, Part IV concludes that a more comprehensive approach to the industry is required, one that allows for an integrated, multilateral response to both supply and demand and that recognizes both the beneficial and harmful causes and effects of the industry.

2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

   1. The Mail-Order Bride Industry

      1. How It Works

         While opponents of the industry tend to characterize the process by which women in developing nations end up marrying Western men through the services of an agency as comparable to prostitution, (6) and defenders of the industry characterize the service as facilitating "pen-pal clubs," (7) the reality lies somewhere in between these two poles (at least as far as the superficial processes and operations are concerned). (8)

         The bridal agencies initiate the process, primarily utilizing newspaper and magazine advertisements to recruit potential brides. (9) Agencies have focused their recruitment efforts heavily in Asia, and the Philippines in particular, with a shift toward Russia and other Eastern block countries in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union. (10) One report estimates "that between 100,000 and 150,000 women from a variety of countries (including the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia) annually advertise themselves as available for marriage." (11) Throughout the recruitment process, agencies weed out those women not deemed attractive enough to land a potential husband. (12) The agencies, after screening and selecting the women, generally assign them a number and include their full-body photographs or headshots in either printed magazines or online catalogs. (13) Additionally, women are required to provide personal information, ranging from their physical measurements, to personal interests (frequently cooking), breast size, and underwear preference. (14)

         Having stocked their magazine brochures or online catalogs with available women, usually focusing on a particular part of the world, the agencies next direct their energies toward attracting potential customers. Agencies provide varying degrees of service, but typical features include providing the mailing addresses and phone numbers of the women, additional biographical information, visa and immigration consultation, and even letter-writing on behalf of the male client. (15) In addition to the initial screening process, some agencies provide their male clients with further evaluation tools, ranging from private investigators to clinical psychologists. (16) Of course, these services are provided in exchange for fees, with many of the agencies offering both a la carte and package deals on the services available. (17)

         The most profitable service provided by the agency is the guided tour, usually purchased by a client after he has conducted correspondence with a number of women in a given country. (18) The agency's package tour generally includes airfare and hotel, marriage contracts and paperwork, low-cost wedding arrangements, and social parties, some with female-to-male ratios approaching 2,000 available women for every twelve male customers. (19) At the end of the day, the men using agencies to find a foreign wife may end up spending anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. (20)

      2. Who Uses the Service?

         Descriptions of the men who seek wives through the mail-order bride services vary little from source to source. One survey of American men, conducted in 1998, produced the following data: a median age of 37, where ninety-four percent were white; fifty percent had two or more years of college, while less than one percent lacked high school diplomas; fifty-seven percent had been married at least once before; and seventy-five percent hoped to father children through the mailorder marriage. (21) Additionally, the men surveyed were, for the most part, politically and ideologically conservative and financially successful. (22) The primary motivation for seeking a foreign wife tends to be a sense of frustration and dissatisfaction with the "liberated" Western woman, who is far too aggressive, selfish, and focused on her own career, combined with a belief that a foreign woman, particularly one from a less developed nation, will be more loyal and devoted to her husband's needs. (23) This underlying expectation builds the potential for a major disappointment in the "delivered product," as the women who use these services may have completely different expectations of their Western marriage. (24)

         The women who enlist through these agencies do so for a variety of factors. First, many women seek escape from the developing world, where job and educational opportunities are limited for men and virtually non-existent for women. (25) Additionally, the factor most often cited by the women themselves is an attraction to the "American Man." (26) Many of these women are raised in nations where violence toward women goes unchallenged, and has even been tacitly condoned by the State. (27) Women in both Russia and the Philippines have expressed dissatisfaction with the men from their own countries, along with a belief that American men will treat their wives better and will be more faithful. (28) Notably, many of the foreign women have based their opinions of Western men on the fantasy-like images created through books and movies, and may therefore be disappointed by the reality they face upon arrival in the United States, or some other Western nation. (29)

      3. Mail-Order Bride Industry: A Perpetual Motion Machine

         1. Economic Factors

            The underlying force driving the entire industry is global economic inequality. Both the wealth of the consumer's country and the poverty of the bride's country are necessary elements to the equation. The wealthy male of the developed nation has both the power and the financial ability to "buy" a wife, while the potential bride has an incentive to leave her impoverished nation for the higher standard of living available in a developed nation. (30)

            The primary "supply" countries for the mail-order bride industry, particularly the Philippines, have been plagued by economic and political instability, thereby creating high levels of poverty and unemployment. (31) These economic woes have created a "push" on the Filipinas, who see foreign marriage as a very real solution to their plight. (32) Agencies have responded to, and nurtured, this desire for escape by setting up shop in the impoverished nations. The nation itself then comes to rely on this micro-economic escape route--completing the cycle and ensuring its success for years to come. In fact, the Philippine government has had a long-standing tradition of encouraging the exportation of its women as Overseas Contract Workers (OCW's) in order to boost its domestic economy. (33) It is this interdependency of economic factors that makes the industry such a difficult beast for any single country to tame.

         2. Racial and Sexual Stereotypes

            Economic factors alone did not create the mail-order bride industry. The intersection of racial and sexual subordination plays a significant role in shaping and perpetuating the industry. Particularly in the Philippines, the historical "military sexual colonialism" has permeated the relationship between the American male and the Filipina, establishing the notion of the Asian woman as sexually available to the American man. (34) The Philippine's legacy as a sexual colony remains despite the passing of the Vietnam War era, when roughly 10,000 American soldiers daily sought entertainment in the Philippines. (35) Indeed, the sex industry persists at the former locations of U.S. military bases, although mostly civilian tourists use the services today. (36)

            The notion of the Asian woman as sexually available to the white American man did not emerge solely...