Vlad, (a regular reader, but never commenter on this blog) has sent me a really scary leaflet, which he was handed on the streets of Dundee recently. The Dundee based organisation, "Hand-in-hand" offers to import wives for lonely single Scotsmen from the Czech republic. Not only is the customer offered the chance to select age, height, hair and eye colour and build but the front-page blurb actually says the following:
Our programs are designed for single men looking for a true life partner, who is beautiful (10 to 20 years younger), intelligent and educated, is unspoiled by feminism and whose culture is one of support and respect for their husband".
So is this the practical solution to a practical problem; poor women seeking residence in a richer nation, and lonely men finding love? Or is it a scandalous trading in people as if they were commodities, and as outrageous as the Albanian people-trafficking that Endlessly Restless has been blogging about today?
I think the latter. Immanuel Kant famously interpreted the command of Christ (the golden rule) to "do to others as you would have them do to you" as, "you may only treat people as 'ends' never as simply 'means'". The thought that just as businesses can re-locate to Eastern Europe in order to pay lower wages, and be faced with lower health and safety, pension or NI costs, might be transferred to the field of romance and marriage is appalling. The suggestion that a woman might have to assume a subservient role, in order to get here is shocking. The suggestion that 'respect ' can be purchased any more than 'true love' is deceptive. The Christian debate between Complimentarians and Egalitarians is well documented, but both sides of that fierce debate would condemn this trade in souls.
I can't believe that this is being promoted so close to home.
As for Vlad himself, he says he is not going to pursue a wife this way, thankfully. He rightly points out that they sound a bit insipid and that a proper row with a feisty Scots lass is a far more appealing proposition. I might add that the Irish shouldn't be excluded from the search criteria either!
...or a lass of said descent!! ;D
ReplyDeleteFeminism enriches a woman it doesn't spoil her.
ReplyDeletethere is no such thing as feminism, rather a series of feminisms, differentiated by time, ethnicity, class, culture, and degrees of counter-cultural radicalism, set against the backdrop varying states of patriachy. which of these enrich women and which damage is a hugely complicated question on which the divisions within the cause are as
ReplyDeletedeep as those between us and supporters of patriachal social systems.
the kind of woman-trading you describe as being promoted in your town, in which women are marketed as an object for male satisfaction, should be abhorent to all.