Attacks by biased, lazy, or uninformed journalist go back to the early days of the modern international dating movement in the 1990s. This media bias is almost impossible to counter.
People remember the false story, form an opinion, and as everyone knows it is nearly impossible to change someone’s opinion once it is set.
In April 2015 a Reddit user asked, Redditors who married mail-order brides from Russia or the Philippines, what surprised you the most when you started living with your spouse?
Reddit regularly ask questions about international dating on the enormous messaging site. Most of these questions generate a few hundred responses before aging out, but this Reddit question generated nearly 10,000 comments. That alone was odd.
What was even stranger, according to the coverage of these comments in the mainstream media, was that these Redditors confirmed every angry assertion that radical feminists have ever hurled towards international dating.
Feminists hate mail order brides and have since at least the early 1990s. During the Bush Administration, the feminist critics nearly succeeded in making it illegal in the United States, but in recent years the heart of the feminist critique has been disproved by new academic research, mostly by a younger generation of feminist academics.
So, it was bizarre that all of a sudden this one Reddit discussion seemed to re-launch all of those old nuclear attacks.
Nuclear Attacks on International Dating
On April 25th, shortly after the question appeared on Reddit, the British newspaper, The Independent, started the attack with a headline that breathlessly screamed, The confessions of men who ordered mail-order brides: Most were apparently unhappy with their resulting relationships. Then the article went on to give some very depressing examples from the Reditt.
For instance one broken-hearted husband wrote that…
It surprised me how fake it all seems. There was no emotion in anything she would do. I could always tell she was uncomfortable. It seemed like she was just doing a job.
Later the article quoted a sad Redditor who commented…
…the biggest surprise was finding out that when she was sending money back home to her family, it was to her husband and kids in the Philippines.
This article was short, only about four hundred words, and the author continued the assault when he quoted a Redditor who wrote, She seemed under the impression that a man was to be kept like a king and she was there for food and sex.
On April 28th the Daily Mail continued the attack with the ridiculously long headline: ‘She spoke about sex like it was housework’: Confessions of the men who paid thousands to marry mail-order brides… but who lived to regret it.
The article continues the attack in almost the same words as The Independent, and, in fact, out of somewhere around 10,000 comments the hardworking, dedicated journalists at The Daily Mail also quoted the exact same Redditor about the poor abused mail order bride who…
… seemed under the impression that a man was to be kept like a king and she was there for food and sex.
It was odd, but other media sources kept piling on. In the finest tradition of yellow journalism Glamour’s headline wailed, The Reddit Thread That Shocked the Nation: Husbands of Mail-Order Brides Tell All and there were more articles and blog posts.
All of them repeated the old hostile, negative feminist critique of international dating from the early years of the modern mail order bride movement after the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
International Love Scout – Shocked
The staff here at International Love Scout were certainly shocked at these reports, but we were also confused and curious.
We review all of the leading international dating websites and have investigated many aspects of international dating in our own articles to discover The Truth About Mail Order Brides.
We keep a close eye on the most current scholarly research on international dating and follow the big cultural trends. We have looked at the incredible story of the unwanted women of China and examined why there are so many Eastern European mail order brides.
We know that sometimes these relationship don’t work out and we have even explained that there are men who should not pursue a mail order bride. But we knew that none of these incredibly negative articles made a lot of sense.
Yes, there are problems in the international dating world, but the overwhelming evidence is that the marriages that develop from men and women who meet on international dating web sites tend to be MORE successful than other marriages. So, the reporting on the scandalous claims of anonymous Redditors struck us as odd.
And frankly, IF international dating is as horrible a business as these articles suggested we would shut down International Love Scout and open a less odious business like a puppy mill, an online university, or an investment bank.
It would just be bad karma to be involved in human trafficking and the other crimes these articles suggested go hand in hand with international dating.
Were these attacks true? Should international dating be as radioactive as blood diamonds, child abuse, and large sugary drinks? Does the mail order bride industry deserve to be bombed back to the Stone Age? Are These Beautiful Women Really Being Exploited?
Trying To Investigate International Dating
So, the staff of International Love Scout decided to investigate the Reddit. The first issue was the sheer number of comments.
Remember, if each of the nearly 10,000 comments
was printed on to a single sheet of paper that would be something like ten volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. For our analysis we worked from a copy of the Reddit with 9788 comments.
The writing staff at International Love Scout started and stopped this project several times. Given our very limited resources it seemed unmanageable. After a couple of false starts we let the project sit for almost a year.
That is probably where this investigation would have stopped, just another overly ambitious project that we did not really have the resources to complete, but we kept running into links to those stories claiming that these Reddit comments proved every angry allegation radical feminists have ever made against international dating.
Finally, after spotting one of the stories about the poor abused woman that, was there for food and sex
again we decided we had to dive into those comments and see what the results really were.
We did not know what we would discover when we started the project, but soon it became clear what the majority opinion was and it was SHOCKING!
The Shocking Results About Mail Order Brides
There were just several hundred comments by Redditors who had some sort of personal experiences or firsthand observations about the relationships between Western men and foreign women. That was shocking and disappointing, because after all of the screaming by the mainstream media we hoped for a little more substance in almost 10,000 comments.
All of these articles had suggested that there were thousands and thousands of scandalous confessions
from men who married foreign women. That was simply not the case.
It was hard to see given the sheer number of comments. The vast majority of the comments were either jokes or comments and questions about the relative handful of serious responses, but the serious comments were shocking and surprising.
52% of the comments were totally positive. Even more surprising was that this group was the single largest group of comments. This was not the result we expected. We assumed the results would probably be ambiguous, but once the comments were processed the results were overwhelmingly positive.
The majority of the comments described successful, long term relationships that seemed truly happy. That is an important result in a country like the United States, where slightly more than half of all marriages end in divorce, but even more amazing was the fact that the second largest group of comments, about 25%, were stories of relationships that were at least partially successful.
In general, the ambiguous comments described partially successful relationships that lasted several years and often produced children before ending in divorce.
A few described ongoing relationships that appeared too caustic and strife ridden to possibly classified as good relationships, but they did not seem awful enough to classify as purely negative either.
But the result meant that over 77% of the relationships turned out to be positive, at least to some degree, and, really, do you think the shocked editors at Glamour or The Daily Mail could do much better in their own love lives?
Who knows, but the statistics on marriages in the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Canada suggest they couldn’t.
Finally, despite what the mainstream media screamed for over and over to millions of readers, only 22% of comments were clearly negative. That is important too. It is sad that 22% of comments described negative relationships, but those are hardly the results the mainstream media claimed.
The breathless headlines were not just wrong, they were completely and unequivocally wrong. To put it into terms they could understand in South Alabama, these reports were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
Oh, they accurately quoted a tiny number of comments, but they were a tiny group selectively chosen to reinforce every bad stereotype about international dating and create a few new ones.
If you really want to see how our favorite international dating agency A Foreign Affair operates watch this incredible video:
If you like what you see in that video you can visit A Foreign Affair and sign up in five minutes.
Negative Comments: Crazy Mail Order Brides and Sick Western Men
The negative comments basically described stories about emotionally unstable women and the psychotic men who married them.
Overall, the commentators blamed the women as the primary cause for failure in about 70% of the relationships, men received blame 22% of the time, and in 8% of the cases no one or both were deemed equally responsible.
Perhaps, we had been subconsciously influenced by all of the negative reporting from the mainstream media, but the expectation of the staff was that men would receive the overwhelming majority of the blame.
Slightly over half of the negative comments were from friends, co-workers, or neighbors. That is not a shock because it is a lot easier for anyone to pass on salacious gossip about friends or neighbors than to admit personal failures.
A few of these observers were biased against the guy for things other than his behavior with women. For instance…
Knew a guy, complete asshole with a rich mommy. Skinny, bald, glasses, hunched over, looked like Monty Burns but uglier, with a hick mentality and nowhere near as smart.
Of course, you don’t need to read the rest of the story to see this is a story about a jerk getting his comeuppance. But depending on how you count it there were only three or four of these comments from biased observers ridiculing a man they did not like.
The comments may be true, but when they show no compassion or understanding for the man, who might well have problems, you have to wonder about the overall validity of the comment.
Relationships are hard work and it probably is harder to bring a woman from overseas into a completely new culture.
Many of the comments alluded to cultural issues. A man from the UK noted that, “Humour doesn’t translate very well,”
and that makes a lot of sense.
Money was another issue that not surprisingly came up a lot. If a woman believes she is marrying a rich guy she is not going to be happy to find out the opposite and on some level that is a cultural issue.”
Most American men are rich by Ukrainian or Thai standards and it is easy for a woman to get the wrong impression. And if she feels a man tricked her she is going to be angry.
When the women were at fault jealousy was a commonly cited problem. Again, sometimes that is cultural too and it is not surprising for a woman thousands of miles from friends and family to hang on tight to her man.
Not all of the negative comments were utter disasters. In some cases, the couples just decided it wasn’t working. And that brings up the question of whether or not the fact these couples met through mail order bride web sites really matters or not.
The final surprise for the writing staff was that only 8% of the comments were from men who personally married a woman from overseas and had an awful experience.
This was shocking because almost anywhere you see men congregate, in bars, truck stops, gyms, or comic book stores, you will hear stories about greedy ex-wives and cheating girlfriends. And in anonymous online settings like Reddit bashing your ex is one of men’s principal hobbies.
The Myth and Reality of a Submissive Mail Order Bride
One of the deeply ingrained cultural issues that came up in surprising ways was the concept of the submissive, compliant mail order bride. First, all though it is incredibly galling to media elites and radical feminists, women are expected to submit to their husbands in many if not most traditional cultures around the world today. Yes, in the twenty-first century a large majority of cultures consider women second class citizens at best.
That is a simple fact, but the radical feminists often charge that this is the primary reason Western men seek international brides and that it represents a form of abuse.
This is the worst sort of Western cultural imperialism, because it denigrates deeply ingrained local customs and arrogantly assumes that the Western ideal of the equal marriage, a concept that has not been widely lauded for more than perhaps a 150 years, is the highest and best of all possible relationships.
Worse, it paints the women who follow their traditional cultural practices as stooges of some sort of overarching male patriarchy and the men who marry them as little more than slave masters.
The Reddit comments did not support these views and painted a much more complicated picture. Going against everything that mainstream media throws at men who marry these so-called mail order brides, a submissive woman was a real problem for some men.
One man explained:
Cooking was amazing and she was low maintenance,and,Sex was good and frequent…She thought that cooking, cleaning, and sex were all that a man expected from a wife and perhaps in her native land that is true, but most Western men expect more. They expect to be loved.
The guy in the comment above wanted more than a submissive sex slave who was a great cook. He went on and explained that the, Biggest surprise was how subservient she was,
and notes, She was loving, cared for me very much, didn’t love me.
Another husband who needed that attachment and emotional support that Western men expect from a wife wrote that…
There was no emotion in anything she would do. I could always tell she was uncomfortable. It seemed like she was just doing a job. I somewhat pitied her in a way. She would cook, clean, offer sex, whatever. Pretty much what you want from your wife. But the passion, emotion, warmth, everything that makes a marriage actually work was lacking.
Yes, it is true that a lot of Western men are drawn to the notion initially because, well it is an alluring fantasy to be waited on hand and foot by a sexy young woman.
But MOST Western men find the reality of being treated like an Old Testament patriarch harder to adjust to than they expected. It means that the man has to shoulder a lot more responsibility than in a normal modern marriage and it also limits the upside from a husband and wife really working together like a team.
Another interesting point is that these negative comments seem to weaken the argument that women from the Philippines, Thailand, China, and other Asian nations are far more submissive and compliant than Eastern European and Latin ladies.
Slightly less than half of the negative comments that mentioned a woman’s nationality were about Asians. These ladies certainly were not reported as being submissive, compliant, or easy to manipulate and control.
Not Quite Happily Ever After
It is hard to get to happily ever after. Romance is a struggle and there are stages in the process. Most international marriages start off with a whirlwind romance, but marriages are long term events and once the honeymoon is over they take work. These comments were difficult to evaluate.
These were couples that succeed on some level. The couples in this group were married for years and often had children, but overtime things soured and eventually the relationships collapsed.
Relationships take work and whether or not these relationships failed because they were international marriages is hard to determine. Not all of these couples were divorced, but these were not happy situations.
Growing apart
was the primary issue for these couples. For instance, one commentator told of a marriage that ended after three kids and probably better than a decade of marriage after, …she got a doctorate with a specialization in heart surgery,
and left her husband.
Of course, this is an unavoidable issue in all marriages. Each partner grows, changes, and develops over time. People change jobs, move and have kids. No one is the same person at twenty-five that they are at fifty. Culturally, intellectually, emotionally, financially, and physically everyone changes and many of these couples were not able to adjust.
This may be more of a problem in international relationships because of the age differences common between the husband and wife. A lot of the comments begin something like, My dad went a teensy bit insane after his divorce with my mom and ended up marrying a mail-order bride from the Philippines.
And then feel the urge to shame the couple, He is 68 and she is in her late 20s, so that’s a little weird.
Another one writes that, …he’s around 50 and she’s gotta be 22. It’s downright creepy if you ask me.
Shaming mail order brides and their husbands is a serious issue that couples have to consider. A lot of families, particularly the grown children of older men, are not comfortable with a twenty or thirty year age difference. It is a real issue.
One of the few, perhaps the only actual mail order bride to comment in the Reddit explained that…
My husband is so much older. He doesn’t hit me he lets me give money to home he just doesn’t like women as equals. I wish I could be like the other women in this country with education. My husband will probably die many years before me.
You can understand her concerns and it is too bad her husband has not been able to help her feel more comfortable about the situation.
Money also came up regularly in the comments describing these couple were involved here too, but these couples did a better job of dealing with the financial challenges than in the failed marriages.
Part of the dynamic of international dating that Western men often ignore is that the women who join international dating agencies are not only among the most beautiful and talented women in the world they are also goal oriented ambitious women. If they were not, they would have probably settled down in Siberia or Bangkok.
One Redditor described a friend of his who married a smoking hot Russian bride. She stayed fit and was apparently a great stay at home mom, which is what this guy wanted, but…
he’d better fucking be ambitious and bring home the dough. They were going to live in a NICE house in a NICE neighborhood and have a NICE car and send their kids to good schools etc. It made sense to me, but it caught him totally off guard. She was a borderline ruthless social climber.
But if this woman had not been a “borderline ruthless social climber” would she have had the drive, ambition, and guts to give up her life and family in Russia and marry a man from the other side of the world?
Mail order brides are brave. And was this man unhappy? Perhaps, this man believes that marrying his ambitious Russian wife was the best thing that ever happened to him.
A lot of guys end up feeling like the bro in the Brice Lee song, A Woman Like You, when his woman asks him what he would be doing if they never met… “Well I’d be looking for a woman like you.”
Maybe, we should have included that comment with the successful relationships.
The Storybook Ending
Everyone wants the storybook ending, but so many of us have no idea how to achieve it. That is part of the reason that the men and women seeking love abroad deserve respect. These people are taking an extraordinary step to find happiness. That is more than most people can ever say and what would really surprise the critics is how many of these relationships succeed.
The challenges in the successful relationships were the same as in the disasters and the marriages with mixed results: language, culture, money, and the problem of shaming by society at large all play. The difference is that the successful couples are better at adapting to the situation and growing together.
One of the big differences is the men. When we made our final pass and counted up the positive comments about 15% were from men who had actually married a foreign bride. In contrast only about 3% of totally negative comments were from actual husbands of mail order brides.
The men who had failed at international marriage were somewhat restrained about the flaws of their women, the men in successful marriages bragged like young men in the midst of romance.
She is a kind loving honest person. I trust her completely,
one besotted husband explained. Another guy noted that after eighteen years of marriage, To thus day I find my wife to be basically the sexiest woman in the world.
Another said that after ten years of marriage, We now own our own small business and between the kids and our shop we are super busy but happy and successful.
I’m not sure a man can ask for much more than that and again this was a comment that the mainstream media was unable to discover.
Many of the comments about successful marriages were extraordinarily sweet and funny. In these comments the clear majority of women, about two out of three, were Asian. European women were second with about 15% of the extraordinarily positive comments, a few were Latinas, and there was one from a man who married an African lady.
The overwhelming majority of the Asian women praised by their husbands were Filipinas. In part this might be because the mail order bride tradition in the Philippines goes back until at least the Vietnam War, so some of these comments were from older guys looking back on a great relationship.
It could also be because most Filipinas speak English, are Catholic, and familiar with Western culture, because of the Philippines experience as an American colony.
The Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia are heavily patriarchal societies and the comments claimed that the women are willing to be more patient with their husbands. One man explained the real advantage of a Filipina by offering that…
I just want to say to future men who will end up marrying a mail-order-bride, you’ll be surprised to know that woman in the Philippines are very UNDERSTANDING, and very patience.. They’ll teach you on how to control your angs, they will teach you that real love is to give and take (not material things).
That attitude would explain a lot of the successful marriages.
And among the successful men the subservient attitude was usually not a positive. A guy who married a Filipina wrote that, When she got to the US not really much of a surprise other than she was completely obedient to me….
Now, a gotcha
mainstream journalists drinking the feminist Kool-Aid would stop right there and begin preaching about the evils of the submissive mail order bride, but the writer went on and explained that,
of course I didn’t like that so I drilled it into her head that here is not like there she has equal power as me in the relationship that I was her husband not her master. Other than that I think the biggest shock was when she cooked the Stinky Little Dried Fish i was like BLERGHHHHHH.
None of the men actually happily married to mail order brides mentioned they were looking for a submissive bride, but the one who married a Kenyan came close. He said, I married an African because I wanted a wife who would have many children and not demand that I do any housework.
A few of the observers’ comments suggest the women are ready to be more submissive than the husbands ever expect.
One commentator mentioned that his brother’s European wife, …is pretty submissive, but she’s getting out of that habit.
A woman who is friends with a mail order bride said that, when she arrived she did the whole submissive wife thing but quickly realized that is not what her new hubs wanted.
That attitude probably accounts for a lot of the reason why these men are successful. The woman above continued her friend’s story,
As they got to know each other they realized that there had a lot in common. She said she fell in love with him right away because he treated her like she was his equal partner in life and the more they got to know each other the harder she fell.
Now, you understand why this man had a happy marriage. It ain’t rocket science.
Surprisingly, given the feminist critique of mail order brides as slavery in all but name many of these women were the ones PHYSICALLY in charge in their relationships because the men were disabled. One guy explained that a friend of his who,
…was handicapped due to a freak accident that happened about 20 years ago. Finally, in his late forties, Due to his handicap, he wasn’t having much luck in the dating department so he signed up for a mail order bride service and ended up marrying an 18yr old from the Philippines. They look like a very odd couple but they’ve been married for a few years now and are doing good.
That sort of story was repeated on several occasions and when you consider that many of these women are ten, twenty, or even thirty years younger than their husbands you really have to wonder who has the power? These guys know they will be old one day and whether they like it or not the woman will end up in charge of many aspects of their life.
So, whatever the power dynamic is in one of these marriages it will shift and the women know this too.
Children and Shaming Mail Order Brides
Quite a few of the comments that endorsed the successful of Western men and younger foreign women were the children of those relationships. One Redditor explained that,
…my mother was a picture bride from the Philippines. From what my father told me, he was 20, got a picture of my mother and they married a couple months later. He said it was a bit awkward at first, but many people did this at the time. He didn’t really give much specifics. They’ve been happily married for almost 30 years.
Another child wrote,
…my parents really love and work well together. Reading about how most men that get a mail order bride are, I can confirm that my dad is kind of a socially awkward guy. He has the goofiest quirks, and he dotes upon my mom. My mom is definitely not subservient, she is the one who calls the shots, but there is give and take and I love them to death.
The mainstream media journalists
, and I use that termly loosely, who wrote those misleading articles need to read this comment and the others from the happy children these relationships produced.
Because the nasty tone of the mainstream media in so many thousands of print and media attacks on international dating cause a lot of pain for the children. The extra pressure of mail order bride shaming is a common theme among even in the positive comments.
One friend wrote, They both know what people think of them in public, but I don’t think that either of them care.
The more important question is why should their neighbors be so judgmental? Is this poor woman a slave to a husband who wants a submissive wife? Hardly,
He told me how wonderful it is to have her as his wife, and how he truly feels lucky because she’s happy to be involved in their relationship and finances, rather than just being a ‘house servant’.
The pressure of the community scrutiny seemed to be especially tough on some of the children…
This is how my dad met my mom. It’s kind of sad to know that I haven’t been born out of love (mom says that she really loved him, but I don’t believe that). I feel bad for those who have to do such a thing just to get a better life or support their loved ones.
In fact, in order to shield their children from the pressures of shaming some parents never tell their children the truth. A couple of children seemed shocked to realize that their mom was actually a mail order bride.
One wrote that… Reviewing this story now I can’t believe I didn’t think it was a mail order bride thing, for years I would deny it by saying it was a dating magazine.
And another offers that…
I am pretty sure that this is what my mom was. The story my parents tell makes no sense, and they rarely expound upon it. I’m sure that my dad’s family doesn’t even know how he met my mom.
One of the surprises for the International Love Scout writing staff was the number of positive comments of Western children, particularly older children, about their dad’s new wife. It is never easy to be a stepmom, but there were a significant number of positive comments by children as opposed to a handful of completely negative comments. It was not a result the staff expected to see.
Several of the children started off annoyed or concerned to find out they had a stepmother. One Redditor succinctly explained the course of the relationship…
My dad married a girl from the Philippines years ago after my parents divorced and at first I was concerned about the situation and also felt angry about the whole situation (parents breaking up, him starting a new life and family, etc) but they have been married for 10 or 12 years now, have 3 awesome kids, and she does a great job at picking out gifts for our son on birthdays and Christmas.
Another child, whose father was very open, was allowed to help pick out potential women. He wrote that after his parents divorced his father,
…sat me down when I was about seven, put the book on my lap and asked me which one I liked. They were like Facebook pages. I picked a lady from Beijing who had a tiger on her lap in her photo, but he went with a woman from the Philippines.
It is understandable why a lady with a tiger would really be something for a seven-year-old boy, but he went on and explained that, They’ve been happily married for about fifteen years now and have two boys. All my family love her.
Why Is There So Much Mainstream Media Bias?
In the end the writing staff that dug through the comments and analyzed them was surprised that the comments were so overwhelmingly positive.
The articles about this Reddit in the mainstream media did not simply make judgement calls, they selectively picked only the most damning comments and rarely even admitted that there were any positive arguments.
In short, the media elites did not just spin the facts; they pureed them. Nothing about these articles was fair. This looks like the classic example of a philosophically hack job.
The question is why? The primary answer also appears in the thread, because a sizeable number of angry feminist critics participated on the thread. Usually they launched a full scale attack generalizing that…
Men who are socially inept, unattractive, have major issues or over-the-hill who are looking to use their wealth and citizenship-trade to buy a maid and sex partner, someone they would never under any other circumstances be able to have a relationship with, if they were not in a position of power.
She (the staff assumed it was a she) did not stop there, but laid out the entire feminist mantra…
…they see no issue with spending tens of thousands of dollars to BUY a human being. BUYING A HUMAN!!
The angry feminists hated the fact that there were so many good positive stories. One wrote, This is a horribly sad thread.
Then after being confronted by the evidence that many, probably most, of these relationships work out as good or better than the average relationship she added an edit…
Edit: and with all the lovely comments telling me how wrong I am and that mail order brides are consenting, this has been one of the most sad threads I have been in on Reddit.
This Redittor and most feminist critics of international dating take the same approach. They do not care about the facts, the cultural issues, or the improvement in the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of women from around the world.
They do not care about whether these marriages are more successful than average. In fact, they make it clear that they would not care if the relationships were 100% successful.
To feminists, like all committed ideologues, the facts don’t matter…
These men are delusional and rationalize the facts to make it acceptable somehow to themselves. It’s disgusting and pathetic. If they are so concerned about the welfare of these women, send them money in their country.
The simple truth is that to the unshaved, overweight Birkenstock wearing feminist in a peasant dress and combat boots this is a moral issue, a religious issue, though very few appear to be religious, but most importantly a theoretical issue.
Worse, some of the men were conservative and somewhere that was simply more than a good feminist could stand. So, they set out to launch a full on first strike to destroy any credibility this Reddit had before it could damage their all-important theory with those nasty facts.
What probably happened is that they cherry-picked a few of the most negative comments, and wrote a press release about the sad
and creepy
and horrible
men who decided to search for love overseas.
The press release probably went to hundreds, perhaps thousands of lazy mainstream journalists. More than likely 99% of them ignored it, but Edward R. Murrow is dead.
Journalism no longer draws the best and the brightest and someone decided to simply rehash the negative press release and head down to the pub.
Given the way the system works the amazing thing is that the vast majority of mainstream journalists did their job very well. They either ignored the press release or visited the Reddit and decided that there were easier stories to be had than reading through almost 10,000 comments to distill the truth of the accusations in the press release.
A small handful of mainstream journalists caused pain suffering and embarrassment to hundreds of thousands of happy families around the world. That is truly sad, because it was all based on lies, half-truths, and angry fantasies.
The O’Henry Twist
The writing staff of ILS put a ton of effort into this report. You can read about our research methodology at the bottom of this article if you have a burning desire.
If you want to you can go to Reddit and read the entire thread for yourself. You would probably come up with a slightly different result than us because there are a lot of judgment calls in this sort of research.
But we feel certain our basic finding that the overwhelming majority of serious comments were at least somewhat positive will stand any fair analysis.
Still, we were surprised to find a full-on O’Henry twist at the end of the story. Remember, that poor abused mail order bride who was there for food and sex?
Her awful story was one of the things that intrigued the staff here.
Here is the FULL comment from the thread. Decide for yourself if the mainstream media spun the truth right out of the comment.
My uncle did, when he was 65. His bride was 37. For a start it was weird and he tells how she’d cook meals and stand behind him so she couldn’t be seen but could attend to anything he wanted. She would insist he finish before a massage and being tucked into bed. She seemed under the impression that a man was to be kept like a king and she was there for food and sex.
She would only eat for herself after he was asleep. He tells us he had to metaphorically beat the submissiveness out of her.
Now 14 years later they have three kids, she is fucking insane in that fun-insane kind of way, and more a part of the family than most of the extended family I grew up with. Cultures well and truly blended beautifully.
If you have any interest in being on the side of truth, honesty, and romance tweet, post, and email this article to everyone you can think of.
Perhaps, one day someone will say: “My dad said he decided to look for a foreign wife after he read an article that pointed out the mainstream media bias against mail order brides. They’ve been happily married for thirty-one years.”
That would be very good karma.
