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Selects: How Mail Order Marriages Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: You may not know this, but the original purpose of
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know was to change people's minds about
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Speaker 1: male order marriages, and we certainly did with this episode.
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Speaker 1: We were so successful that we decided to keep the
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Speaker 1: podcast going. I'm just kidding for those of our listeners
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Speaker 1: who have trouble detecting that kind of thing. What is
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Speaker 1: true is that it's a surprisingly interesting episode and it
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Speaker 1: may very well change your mind about male order marriages.
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Speaker 1: I was serious, just not for those of our listeners
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Speaker 1: who always think I'm kidding. How about we all just
0:32
Speaker 1: enjoy this episode? Shall we?
0:38
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:47
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:50
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
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Speaker 1: should Know about male order marriages.
1:00
Speaker 2: Murky Waters.
1:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, yeah.
1:04
Speaker 2: This is one of those where.
1:07
Speaker 3: We researched and researched and read and read, and I
1:11
Speaker 3: think it's one of those deals for me that's like
1:15
Speaker 3: and this is just my opening statement where it can
1:19
Speaker 3: be a positive thing, like a dating service in some ways,
1:27
Speaker 3: but there is certainly a darker side to the whole situation.
1:33
Speaker 1: I already know how you feel about it, and I
1:35
Speaker 1: feel like it's coming through clearly.
1:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's very It's one of
1:39
Speaker 3: those really murky things where sometimes you hear these really
1:43
Speaker 3: great stories about people that do find are looking for
1:46
Speaker 3: love and find love with someone from another country and
1:49
Speaker 3: it works out for everybody. And then sometimes you hear
1:52
Speaker 3: about stories where it's sort of what the National Organization
1:57
Speaker 3: for Women's sonya Asario calls a softer version of human trafficking.
2:04
Speaker 1: Or even worse, occasionally someone turns up murdered.
2:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the truest dark side. So that's
2:12
Speaker 3: just me level setting and we can talk about the good,
2:15
Speaker 3: the bad, and the ugly.
2:17
Speaker 1: I think that was a great level saying. I generally
2:19
Speaker 1: agree with it. But for me, the jury is still
2:23
Speaker 1: out in thinking about it as a whole because there's
2:26
Speaker 1: so little hard data on this stuff. Yeah, almost everything
2:30
Speaker 1: is anecdotal, true, and when like you condemned something based
2:34
Speaker 1: on anecdotal data, what you've got there as a moral panic,
2:37
Speaker 1: not necessarily something in reality. So I'm a little hesitant
2:41
Speaker 1: to go all the way. The jury's still out for me,
2:43
Speaker 1: but I definitely recognize the same stuff you do. For sure.
2:46
Speaker 1: It's definitely there. It exists, it's just for me. The
2:49
Speaker 1: question is how much does it exist and does the
2:51
Speaker 1: good outweigh the bad? And I don't know. So yeah,
2:54
Speaker 1: we should probably like actually define what we're talking about here,
2:57
Speaker 1: because most people, I would guests are familiar with mail
3:01
Speaker 1: order brides. They're more recently they've come to be called
3:06
Speaker 1: mail order marriages because they've been extended to same sex
3:09
Speaker 1: couples in the United States. But then also like even
3:12
Speaker 1: more generally, it's called international marriage brokerage.
3:16
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean there's a full industry built around this,
3:20
Speaker 3: with thousands of websites and agencies that are brokering these marriages.
3:26
Speaker 3: And you know, from looking into it, it seems like
3:29
Speaker 3: there are some really above board ones that kind of
3:33
Speaker 3: act like an international dating surface in some ways where
3:40
Speaker 3: they group, you know, match like people together. And then
3:43
Speaker 3: it seems like there are a lot of really sketchy
3:45
Speaker 3: ones that charge people a ton of money and aren't
3:50
Speaker 3: looking out for the men or the women.
3:53
Speaker 1: And I know that money is sunk back into making
3:57
Speaker 1: their website look at all nonclude.
4:00
Speaker 2: I saw some really really bad websites, I mean so.
4:04
Speaker 1: Bad, man like comic Sands at one.
4:07
Speaker 3: Point Yeah, it's hard to see those and not think, well, A,
4:10
Speaker 3: this is a scam or B this is a front
4:13
Speaker 3: for some sort of CD trafficking operation.
4:15
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it is tough not to think like that.
4:19
Speaker 1: But but what we are talking about generally is a
4:23
Speaker 1: marriage where the husband and the wife are generally unknown
4:29
Speaker 1: to each other. Maybe have met once, but if they did,
4:33
Speaker 1: it's possible it was just a day or two before.
4:37
Speaker 1: Or maybe they've met once or twice and have done
4:39
Speaker 1: some correspondence back and forth for an extended period of time.
4:43
Speaker 1: But that's pretty new. And the classical definition it's they're
4:47
Speaker 1: generally unknown to one another, and one of them, usually
4:52
Speaker 1: the bride travels a very long distance from home to
4:56
Speaker 1: move to the husband's home and make a life there
5:00
Speaker 1: and be married. That's not the Webster's definition. There's a
5:04
Speaker 1: lot more stumbling in my definition, but I think that
5:07
Speaker 1: generally gets it across.
5:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, the kind of the classic thing
5:11
Speaker 3: that you think of is lonely American man who has
5:16
Speaker 3: a little bit of money in his forties or fifties,
5:19
Speaker 3: can't find American woman and ends up getting a young, beautiful,
5:25
Speaker 3: young Ukrainian woman who doesn't speak much English. And would
5:28
Speaker 3: love to live in the United States and fall in
5:33
Speaker 3: love with an American man and that sort of And
5:36
Speaker 3: you know, of course it happens from all countries, but
5:38
Speaker 3: a lot of times you think of Russia and the
5:40
Speaker 3: Ukraine or maybe in Southeast Asia or something like that.
5:44
Speaker 3: That is sort of I feel like when people say
5:47
Speaker 3: that term, most people, that's probably what pops into their head.
5:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, or I think you're being rather generous. I think
5:53
Speaker 1: a lot of people would be like, you know, some
5:55
Speaker 1: sad sack who can't like find a woman in America
5:58
Speaker 1: has to go look elsewhere to get really judge about it,
6:01
Speaker 1: and I think people are really judging about male order marriages.
6:04
Speaker 1: I think there's a long standing tradition in the United
6:07
Speaker 1: States of considering people who who go outside the traditional
6:12
Speaker 1: channels of marriage and basically take it into their own hands,
6:15
Speaker 1: like through male order marriage are they're very much judged
6:19
Speaker 1: harshly and criticized, maybe fairly, maybe not. But I think
6:23
Speaker 1: there's another component too, especially these days, is that the
6:26
Speaker 1: men who who are looking for women for male order
6:30
Speaker 1: brides are also dominant, domineering, possibly abusive, and they're looking
6:36
Speaker 1: for docile women who will do whatever they say, because
6:41
Speaker 1: they're the husband, so they have to go to other
6:43
Speaker 1: cultures where that might be more prevalent and where they
6:46
Speaker 1: can select from women who might respond to that kind
6:50
Speaker 1: of thing a lot better than an American woman who
6:52
Speaker 1: wouldn't put up with his guf. Yeah.
6:54
Speaker 3: I mean that is certainly a part of what happens sometimes,
6:57
Speaker 3: and some of these agencies promote that the submissive nature.
7:02
Speaker 3: There was one that literally said that these young women
7:05
Speaker 3: are quote unspoiled by feminism, and you have potential homemaking
7:09
Speaker 3: savings of one hundred and fifty dollars a week because
7:13
Speaker 3: you're essentially getting a you know, sort of a living
7:15
Speaker 3: domestic servant.
7:16
Speaker 1: Good lord.
7:16
Speaker 3: So you know, that's the underbelly and the dark side.
7:20
Speaker 3: But we you know, I did find some that do
7:22
Speaker 3: seem very above board and people that do genuinely look
7:25
Speaker 3: like they're looking for love and have struck out at
7:28
Speaker 3: home so they're looking elsewhere.
7:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I said, Chuck, And we should also say
7:31
Speaker 1: one other thing too, Like, you know, it's pretty like
7:35
Speaker 1: it's a pretty well known thing in America. It's not
7:38
Speaker 1: like on everybody's lips. You don't hear it in every
7:40
Speaker 1: monologue on the Late night talk shows or anything like that.
7:43
Speaker 1: But like, generally people in America are familiar and know
7:48
Speaker 1: about male order marriages, but it turns out it's even
7:52
Speaker 1: bigger in other countries like Taiwan and South Korea have
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Speaker 1: huge male order marriage industries that may even dwarf the
8:00
Speaker 1: United States. And it's pretty I don't want to say
8:03
Speaker 1: it's huge in the United States, but it's not like
8:05
Speaker 1: just some small speck of sliver of like an arcane
8:08
Speaker 1: group of people. Like it's bigger than you'd think, but
8:11
Speaker 1: it's even bigger in some other Asian countries as well.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, And Dave Ruse helped us put this together, and
8:17
Speaker 3: this was a tough assignment for him, but he used
8:20
Speaker 3: a lot of information from a book by a legal
8:25
Speaker 3: professor originally from University of South Carolina named Marsha Zugg
8:29
Speaker 3: called Buying a Bride insert colon music Jerry, an Engaging
8:36
Speaker 3: History of mail order Matches, where it seems like she
8:40
Speaker 3: gives a you know, a fair but fairly full throated
8:44
Speaker 3: defense of its history through the ages as far as
8:48
Speaker 3: and we'll get into this, but as far as an
8:50
Speaker 3: opportunity for a lot of women to gain more agency
8:53
Speaker 3: and to gain more rights at a time when they
8:56
Speaker 3: might not have any, all the way up through today,
8:59
Speaker 3: where she still defends it to a certain degree and says,
9:05
Speaker 3: you know, like, sure, these situations can be bad, but
9:09
Speaker 3: what's really bad is what undocumented immigrants have to suffer
9:13
Speaker 3: through in this country because they have no legal rights.
9:16
Speaker 3: They can't go to the police, they can't leave their
9:21
Speaker 3: spouse or their partner for fear of deportation. And it's
9:26
Speaker 3: an interesting take, I think, and I'm glad that Dave
9:30
Speaker 3: found this book, you know, because I'm not sure that
9:32
Speaker 3: I would have been as fair.
9:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, she definitely almost I get the impression
9:37
Speaker 1: that she is defensive on behalf of the industry just
9:42
Speaker 1: because of how mistreated it's been, in her opinion, unfairly
9:46
Speaker 1: in large part.
9:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, I think it very much has
9:50
Speaker 3: an anti feminist rap for good reason. But she does
9:53
Speaker 3: make some compelling arguments that throughout history it wasn't that
9:56
Speaker 3: way at all, And I guess we can go ahead
9:58
Speaker 3: and dive into some of that. In the early days
10:02
Speaker 3: of male order marriages in the American colonies, there was
10:06
Speaker 3: a lack of women problem in the early colonies.
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Speaker 1: I mean, like the earliest colonies. We're talking like James
10:12
Speaker 1: Town here.
10:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you know, the Puritans and Pilgrims, they may
10:16
Speaker 3: have come over with their families, but there are a
10:18
Speaker 3: lot of single men that came over, and a lot
10:21
Speaker 3: of them some of them may like run off with
10:25
Speaker 3: an indigenous woman and live with among her tribe and
10:28
Speaker 3: be like, you know what, I'm kind of done building
10:31
Speaker 3: things for Jamestown. I'm out of here. So that's no
10:34
Speaker 3: good if they're looking for young men to like kind
10:37
Speaker 3: of help build up these young colonies. And then other
10:40
Speaker 3: ones were just lonely and said, hey, like there are
10:44
Speaker 3: no women over here, what are we supposed to do?
10:47
Speaker 3: So very early on they started sort of advertising and
10:53
Speaker 3: bringing women, you know, supposedly volunteers over who wanted to
10:58
Speaker 3: come to the colonies and sort of have maybe even
11:02
Speaker 3: more rights than they had back home.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is a really good example of kind
11:06
Speaker 1: of like a thread that ran through the first couple
11:09
Speaker 1: centuries of America's founding, which was government sanctioned and supported
11:18
Speaker 1: mail order marriages in order to help build more stable communities. Right,
11:22
Speaker 1: So the legislatures did things like create laws that made
11:27
Speaker 1: it more attractive for a woman to become a male
11:30
Speaker 1: order bride in this area, Like apparently in England, if
11:34
Speaker 1: you became a widow you got a third of the
11:37
Speaker 1: estate and that was it. And in places like Virginia
11:40
Speaker 1: and I think Maryland as well, they set up laws
11:43
Speaker 1: that basically said, hey, you're going to keep a lot
11:46
Speaker 1: more than that, you can run your own business afterward,
11:48
Speaker 1: like being a widow's going to rock And did we
11:51
Speaker 1: mention also the men are dropping deadlight flies over here,
11:55
Speaker 1: so yeah, your husband's probably going to die pretty quick.
11:57
Speaker 1: So if you don't like them, who cares. You still
11:59
Speaker 1: get to keep all this inheritance and you get to
12:02
Speaker 1: keep the business and you can't do quite that well
12:05
Speaker 1: for yourself in those circumstances back in England. So that
12:08
Speaker 1: attracted people. And that was like the government saying like,
12:11
Speaker 1: please come over here and marry these strangers that you've
12:13
Speaker 1: never met before.
12:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, it made sense for a lot
12:16
Speaker 3: of these young women because many of them were you know,
12:21
Speaker 3: they were from like the servant class, let's say, so
12:23
Speaker 3: they were looking at years of servitude in England and
12:27
Speaker 3: then they basically were like, well, hey, forget all that,
12:30
Speaker 3: why don't you just come over here, get married and
12:32
Speaker 3: like you said, I think the status even one in
12:35
Speaker 3: three marriages lasted ten years.
12:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they.
12:38
Speaker 3: Did kind of sell them on the fact that, yeah,
12:41
Speaker 3: it's not so great, you'll probably be dead soon enough.
12:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you can have his stuff.
12:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it actually, I mean like that actually did
12:51
Speaker 1: like attract some women. I think, at least I don't
12:55
Speaker 1: know if we have the number, but there definitely were
12:57
Speaker 1: what they called tobacco wives who came to marry new
13:01
Speaker 1: tobacco planters who were setting up their own fortune. And
13:05
Speaker 1: I actually had to prove that they were of financial
13:07
Speaker 1: means by donating one hundred and fifty pounds of gold
13:10
Speaker 1: leaf tobacco to the Virginia Company to take part in
13:14
Speaker 1: this right. And so that lasted as long as it lasted,
13:19
Speaker 1: or as long as it needed to. And as the
13:20
Speaker 1: Eastern colonies started to like become more self sufficient, became
13:25
Speaker 1: less rowdy, became more family oriented as far as the
13:28
Speaker 1: Europeans were concerned, the need for like those mail order
13:34
Speaker 1: schemes kind of went away. But then as America kind
13:38
Speaker 1: of expanded further and further west, the frontier kept recreating
13:43
Speaker 1: itself in different places. So you know, it went from
13:48
Speaker 1: the eastern colonies to you know, along the Mississippi, and
13:51
Speaker 1: then further and further out west. And every time it
13:53
Speaker 1: did that, this new iteration of the frontier was settled
13:57
Speaker 1: by rowdy men, and they would have to figure out
14:00
Speaker 1: a way to get women to attract women to come
14:02
Speaker 1: out to marry the rowdy men so they would stop
14:04
Speaker 1: beating each other up in bar fights and become more
14:07
Speaker 1: productive citizens. And that kept going on throughout the eighteenth
14:11
Speaker 1: and nineteenth centuries in the United States.
14:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, if you're already thinking, guys, this,
14:18
Speaker 3: this already sounds terrible, these marriages based on these financial arrangements. Yeah,
14:22
Speaker 3: and you know, despite these promises of a better life,
14:26
Speaker 3: like that's kind of what we're talking about, like welcome
14:28
Speaker 3: to marriage in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
14:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't be so naive.
14:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not that's kind of what it was.
14:36
Speaker 3: And they've made a good point, like the notion of
14:39
Speaker 3: marrying for true love, that's a very much like a
14:42
Speaker 3: twentieth century proposition. Yeah, even if it wasn't a male
14:46
Speaker 3: order bride situation, it was someone's dowry or parents sort
14:51
Speaker 3: of arranging marriages and saying these family this family should
14:54
Speaker 3: marry this family, which still goes on today. I should
14:57
Speaker 3: point out among like the blue chip in the high Societ,
15:00
Speaker 3: like and Arthur had to marry Susan.
15:03
Speaker 2: You know, let's not forget that.
15:05
Speaker 1: Everybody with a Habsburg jaw was an arranged marriage.
15:08
Speaker 2: He could marry Liza Minelly.
15:12
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you were making the movie reference. I
15:15
Speaker 1: thought you were thought Arthur and Susan. I thought you
15:18
Speaker 1: were using like Biff and Muffy, like generally Arthur and Okay, yeah, yeah,
15:24
Speaker 1: I got it. Now I got it.
15:26
Speaker 3: But the point is is that marriage was a financial
15:28
Speaker 3: arrangement many in most times back then. I'm not saying
15:31
Speaker 3: no one ever married because they were in love. I'm
15:33
Speaker 3: sure that happened, uh, but it had to take a
15:36
Speaker 3: lot of boxes back then.
15:37
Speaker 2: So it was just sort of the way it was.
15:39
Speaker 3: And so this solved problems for early settlers and for
15:44
Speaker 3: westward expanders. They made things really attractive in California for women.
15:49
Speaker 3: They made it easier to divorce your husband if you
15:52
Speaker 3: wanted to. They made it easier to or just legal
15:56
Speaker 3: to own and sell, buy and sell land, which is
15:59
Speaker 3: not something you could do at other places in the country.
16:02
Speaker 3: So they were trying to make it an attractive situation
16:05
Speaker 3: for women to move west because they needed men and
16:08
Speaker 3: women out there. And I think the between eighteen fifty
16:11
Speaker 3: and eighteen sixty, the population of women in California increased
16:18
Speaker 3: from three percent to nineteen percent of the total population.
16:22
Speaker 2: So it was working, Yeah.
16:24
Speaker 1: It was. And it wasn't just California, but Washington State
16:29
Speaker 1: also participated. I think Oregon may have as well. And
16:33
Speaker 1: there would be these schemes and I don't mean scheme
16:36
Speaker 1: like you know, like dastardly scheme, but like a.
16:39
Speaker 2: Plant good scheme.
16:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, where like a guy would go around to the
16:44
Speaker 1: bachelors out in like Washington Territory and be like, give
16:47
Speaker 1: me a one hundred bucks or I think three hundred bucks,
16:49
Speaker 1: which is about five grand today, and I will bring
16:53
Speaker 1: you a suitable wife. And at least one guy did this.
16:57
Speaker 1: Asa Mercer was a marriage broke and he would go
17:01
Speaker 1: back east say hey, there's like this great booming economy
17:05
Speaker 1: out west, why don't you come with me, And like
17:07
Speaker 1: he would return with like one hundred women and some
17:10
Speaker 1: of them would get married immediately, some would wait. But
17:13
Speaker 1: it was like another It was another thing where there
17:15
Speaker 1: was a need for women to stabilize it out of
17:20
Speaker 1: control male population.
17:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:22
Speaker 3: And you know, Zug points out very fairly in her
17:25
Speaker 3: book that some of these Mercer girls from as they
17:27
Speaker 3: were called, from ace of Mercer's operation, became abolitionists, some
17:31
Speaker 3: became women's rights advocates and social reformers. One of them's
17:36
Speaker 3: name was this great name, Mihitable Haskell Elder, and she
17:42
Speaker 3: organized the eighteen seventy one Women's Rights Conference in Olympia, Washington,
17:47
Speaker 3: and recruited one Susan B. Anthony as the territory delegate
17:51
Speaker 3: for the National Women's Suffrage Association convention. So, you know,
17:55
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases, these women did find agency
17:59
Speaker 3: and they did get out of a better situation than
18:03
Speaker 3: they were in back east.
18:04
Speaker 1: Hey, So you want to take a break and then
18:06
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the probably what was the real birth
18:10
Speaker 1: of mail order marriages? Sure, Okay, we'll be right back,
18:35
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck. So we've been talking to this point
18:37
Speaker 1: about basically like government sanctioned schemes to kind of stabilize
18:43
Speaker 1: male populations. There was also at the same time, beginning
18:46
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, I think starting in England actually
18:50
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, that was kind of simultaneously unfolding.
18:54
Speaker 1: And that was the matrimonial advertisement industry, which to me
18:59
Speaker 1: is like the real birth of the mail order marriage
19:03
Speaker 1: industry that we understand today. But it was basically the
19:06
Speaker 1: personal ads.
19:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the birth of personal ads, the birth
19:09
Speaker 3: of dating services. It's really interesting in that women would
19:16
Speaker 3: put ads in London and then later on in the
19:19
Speaker 3: United States, ads in the paper basically saying, you know, hi,
19:23
Speaker 3: this is who I am, this is what I'm looking for.
19:25
Speaker 3: I mean, much like you would see these days in
19:27
Speaker 3: like a dating profile. And it was a way for
19:30
Speaker 3: them to, you know, to take some agency over avoiding
19:33
Speaker 3: the arranged marriage that their parents had set up for him,
19:36
Speaker 3: and maybe get a little bit of choice of suitors.
19:39
Speaker 1: Right, And I mean like that is like taking control
19:43
Speaker 1: of your own of your own marriage prospects. And it
19:47
Speaker 1: was I guess radical is probably a pretty good word.
19:50
Speaker 1: But it picked up. It caught on, especially in the
19:54
Speaker 1: US by the end of the nineteenth century, it really
19:57
Speaker 1: started to catch on to where they were like magazines
20:00
Speaker 1: that were like dedicated just to matrimonial advertisements. Right. Yeah,
20:05
Speaker 1: Like there was the Matrimonial News, which is actually the
20:09
Speaker 1: most straight ahead of all of them.
20:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like Cupid's Messenger. That sounds like a cute one.
20:15
Speaker 1: What about Heart and Hand, Heart.
20:18
Speaker 3: In Hand, and then to me this one, I guess
20:21
Speaker 3: they were just trying to play it really safe, the
20:23
Speaker 3: standard correspondence club.
20:25
Speaker 2: Right, good day to you, right exactly.
20:29
Speaker 1: So yeah, so these things were like kind of popular
20:31
Speaker 1: by the end of the nineteenth century. But then it's
20:33
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, by the end of the nineteenth
20:36
Speaker 1: century the beginning of the twentieth century, our ideas about
20:39
Speaker 1: what constituted marriage or the reasons for marriage had transitioned
20:43
Speaker 1: from financial arrangements into love in America, right, And so
20:49
Speaker 1: there was simultaneously a popularity of matrimonial advertisements and people
20:53
Speaker 1: taking control of their own marriage prospects, and at the
20:57
Speaker 1: same time a criticism and a society generally looking down
21:04
Speaker 1: upon people who did that kind of thing. So there
21:07
Speaker 1: would be stories in the paper of people like sad
21:10
Speaker 1: sack bachelors or lonely heart widows getting conned or swindled
21:15
Speaker 1: or getting fool catfished basically is what you'd call it today.
21:20
Speaker 1: And people love to read that kind of stuff and
21:22
Speaker 1: laugh at their misfortune and look down on these people.
21:25
Speaker 1: And that's where like the root of what people still
21:29
Speaker 1: do today to the mail order marriage industry, at least
21:32
Speaker 1: in America, really finds its roots in the twentieth century.
21:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is when things started transitioning to overseas,
21:42
Speaker 3: when American men started bringing in women from foreign countries,
21:46
Speaker 3: and that's when I think that's when it became a
21:50
Speaker 3: bit more of an industry. And this is when Congress
21:54
Speaker 3: got kind of full on racist and trying to control
21:57
Speaker 3: this thing because there was you know, there were women saying,
22:02
Speaker 3: I don't want these women coming into our country and
22:05
Speaker 3: disrupting our feminist agenda that we're trying to push. There
22:09
Speaker 3: were men saying, we don't want this people from China
22:14
Speaker 3: or Japan coming in here, and you know, they can
22:18
Speaker 3: have babies once a year, and they like there were
22:21
Speaker 3: senators literally saying these things. Yeah, and so they would
22:24
Speaker 3: enact laws like, you know, we're going to be overrun basically,
22:27
Speaker 3: So they would enact laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act
22:31
Speaker 3: of eighteen eighty two to ban Chinese immigration. There was
22:35
Speaker 3: a loophole for Japan with a nineteen oh seven Gentlemen's
22:39
Speaker 3: Agreement which basically said, I you that a Japanese woman
22:44
Speaker 3: and their kids could come over if they were married.
22:47
Speaker 3: So there were Japanese single men already in the United
22:50
Speaker 3: States that immigrated over here that would get married sight
22:53
Speaker 3: unseen from like a catalog basically in order to gain
22:57
Speaker 3: immigration status for the Japanese women.
23:00
Speaker 1: That ultimately got shut down in nineteen twenty four with
23:03
Speaker 1: the Immigration Act and they just said no Japanese immigration
23:06
Speaker 1: of any kind now after that. So there was a
23:09
Speaker 1: huge anti Asian thread from the late nineteenth century in
23:13
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century based on immigration, and a lot
23:17
Speaker 1: of that kind of centered on mail order marriages. But
23:21
Speaker 1: then one of the other things that really kind of
23:25
Speaker 1: cropped up as a result of male order marriages going
23:28
Speaker 1: from like women back East or women coming from Europe,
23:32
Speaker 1: to women coming from Asia to marry white American men.
23:37
Speaker 1: There was this idea that the women were nothing more
23:41
Speaker 1: than like looking for a green cart basically American citizenship,
23:46
Speaker 1: trying to escape their own country. And you run into
23:49
Speaker 1: that criticism today, I mean just as much as you
23:52
Speaker 1: would have back in nineteen twenty four when they passed
23:54
Speaker 1: the Immigration Act against Japanese people.
23:58
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because you know, and this is from Zug's book.
24:02
Speaker 3: She talks about you know, Mexican women, Greek women, Asian women,
24:06
Speaker 3: Jewish women, Italian women, they were much more likely to
24:10
Speaker 3: be deported under an LPC charge, which is a person
24:15
Speaker 3: that is likely to become a public charge, basically like
24:18
Speaker 3: to come over and sort of live off the government.
24:22
Speaker 3: If they were from these countries. In a way around
24:24
Speaker 3: that was to get married and get that green card.
24:26
Speaker 3: So that criticism came pretty straight away, I think, right.
24:30
Speaker 1: And then the other one is that they were basically
24:34
Speaker 1: all just sex workers in disguise, coming over under the
24:37
Speaker 1: guise of being mail order brides, but really they were
24:40
Speaker 1: coming over here to prostitute themselves and behave immrally. And again,
24:46
Speaker 1: this is another accusation that you see today, except the
24:51
Speaker 1: onuss or the focus the empathy, I guess has evolved
24:56
Speaker 1: from being put on society being attacked by these immoral
25:02
Speaker 1: women to the women themselves being trafficked by international criminals.
25:07
Speaker 1: But it's still generally the same accusation. It's just been
25:11
Speaker 1: it's just altered itself some you know what I'm saying.
25:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know that sort of anti
25:18
Speaker 3: feminist charge from American women saying that you know, these
25:22
Speaker 3: women from other countries are coming over here and they
25:26
Speaker 3: do whatever their husbands tell them, and this is setting
25:28
Speaker 3: us back.
25:29
Speaker 2: They would say the same thing though, about war brides.
25:32
Speaker 3: If you are a soldier in Korea or Vietnam and
25:36
Speaker 3: brought a woman back over, they would have that same
25:38
Speaker 3: kind of charge levied against them, saying, the only reason
25:41
Speaker 3: you're bringing these women back is because of the power
25:45
Speaker 3: and balance that is now gained. And you know that
25:49
Speaker 3: can be fair to a certain degree. There's a lot
25:51
Speaker 3: there is. It's really hard to talk about marriage like
25:57
Speaker 3: this without talking about inequity and a power imbalance from
26:02
Speaker 3: the beginning. Not to say that that doesn't change and
26:06
Speaker 3: that there aren't great success stories where both partners are
26:11
Speaker 3: equal and they both contribute and they both respect one
26:14
Speaker 3: another's viewpoints.
26:16
Speaker 2: But anytime you are.
26:21
Speaker 3: In a situation where you are bringing someone over from
26:24
Speaker 3: another country that is escaping a bad situation and looking
26:27
Speaker 3: for a more prosperous situation and you can provide that
26:30
Speaker 3: and you are paying the money to the service for
26:33
Speaker 3: linking you, there's a power imbalance there from the beginning.
26:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's a power imbalance in that. Like you
26:38
Speaker 1: probably don't speak the language as the mail order bride
26:41
Speaker 1: you don't have any friends, you don't have any family,
26:43
Speaker 1: you don't have any social structure to depend on. The
26:45
Speaker 1: only person you have to depend on is your husband. Right,
26:49
Speaker 1: he's not very nice to you, or even worse abusive
26:51
Speaker 1: towards you, you're in big trouble. And then it's also,
26:55
Speaker 1: like you said, if you are escaping poverty back home,
26:58
Speaker 1: you might show up with basically no money. And so
27:02
Speaker 1: if you just found out that this guy is not
27:04
Speaker 1: always cracked up to be, or he is abusive, or
27:08
Speaker 1: he's actually got a terrible criminal record or terrible credit
27:11
Speaker 1: or all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't have otherwise
27:13
Speaker 1: come over for, you're stuck here. And according to some
27:18
Speaker 1: human trafficking groups, that is a broad definition of human
27:22
Speaker 1: trafficking where a person has moved from one place to
27:24
Speaker 1: another for financial means and then ends up becoming dependent
27:28
Speaker 1: financially in a situation that they otherwise wouldn't want to
27:32
Speaker 1: be in, they would not have chosen to put themselves in.
27:35
Speaker 1: That's as much trafficking and a broad definition as somebody
27:38
Speaker 1: being kidnapped and forced into sex work.
27:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even if there is no you know, no
27:46
Speaker 3: literal violence or abuse, that doesn't mean that it's an
27:50
Speaker 3: equitable situation, because someone can essentially be a almost a
27:56
Speaker 3: captive in their own home. Like you said, if they
27:58
Speaker 3: don't speak the language, they have no advocation, so be
28:00
Speaker 3: here for themselves or friends to help them and speak
28:03
Speaker 3: up for them.
28:04
Speaker 2: And it's you can see why it gets a bad
28:07
Speaker 2: rap for sure.
28:08
Speaker 1: So on the flip side, though, there have to be
28:13
Speaker 1: men out there who just struck out consistently with America
28:17
Speaker 1: or American women or men and took matters into their
28:21
Speaker 1: own hands and looked abroad. And the best way to
28:24
Speaker 1: do that is a marriage broker, and there's plenty of
28:28
Speaker 1: places you can do that. And then also the other
28:32
Speaker 1: problem with just basically characterizing mallard or brides as nothing
28:38
Speaker 1: but like victims right for exploitation, is to really miss
28:42
Speaker 1: the personalities of a lot of them. Where to put
28:47
Speaker 1: yourself out there is a Maillard or bride shows a
28:51
Speaker 1: or demonstrates like a lot of initiative compared to just
28:55
Speaker 1: staying back home and making do with your lot in life.
28:59
Speaker 1: Like if you're a widow in some countries and you
29:01
Speaker 1: have kids, you might not be remarriable. There might not
29:05
Speaker 1: be anybody who wants to marry you, and so you're
29:07
Speaker 1: doomed to a life of solitude and single motherhood, whether
29:12
Speaker 1: you like it or not. So if you just say, okay,
29:15
Speaker 1: well that's my lot in life, that's what I'm doing, Okay, fine.
29:18
Speaker 1: But if you say, you know what, no, there's another
29:20
Speaker 1: way out, and it might not be the most tasteful
29:22
Speaker 1: thing that I would have chosen for myself before, but
29:25
Speaker 1: I really want to make sure my kids are taken
29:27
Speaker 1: care of and I'm going to go seek a husband elsewhere.
29:31
Speaker 1: That shows that demonstrates a lot of self starterness. I
29:36
Speaker 1: guess that I think kind of undermines a lot of
29:41
Speaker 1: the view of male ard to brises these kind of
29:44
Speaker 1: like simple minded, docile women that can't fend for themselves
29:51
Speaker 1: or stick up for themselves.
29:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also a real slippery slope to judge.
29:58
Speaker 3: I mean, we all think like, oh, you should only
30:01
Speaker 3: fall in love with love at first sight, and that
30:04
Speaker 3: should be all it is, and that should be what
30:07
Speaker 3: marriage is based on, full stop.
30:09
Speaker 2: It's a real slippery slope to.
30:12
Speaker 3: Judge someone other's someone else's situation if it's working out
30:16
Speaker 3: for both of them, if if it is a rich
30:19
Speaker 3: old guy in his sixties who is like, you know what,
30:22
Speaker 3: I want to live out the last fifteen years of
30:23
Speaker 3: my life.
30:25
Speaker 2: With a partner.
30:26
Speaker 3: And there's a beautiful young Ukrainian woman who's like, you
30:29
Speaker 3: know what, I've got nothing going on over here. I
30:32
Speaker 3: don't have a lot of prospects. My country is not,
30:34
Speaker 3: you know, doing me any favors. And so I'm going
30:37
Speaker 3: to go over and marry some rich guy and we're
30:40
Speaker 3: going to be happy for the last fifteen years of
30:42
Speaker 3: his life. And they travel and they do take cruises
30:46
Speaker 3: and they have a good time together. Like it's a
30:48
Speaker 3: real slippery slope for someone to come in and say, well, no,
30:50
Speaker 3: that's wrong, because you guys just didn't meet and fall
30:54
Speaker 3: in love like, you know, meeting in a bar drunk
30:57
Speaker 3: one night like all Americans.
30:59
Speaker 1: Again and again. That seems to be a long standing
31:02
Speaker 1: criticism that stretches back at least a century here in
31:05
Speaker 1: America too, for sure. Okay, so enough of that, Enough
31:08
Speaker 1: of that, I feel like we should talk about some
31:10
Speaker 1: of the nuts and bolts of the mail order marriage industry.
31:15
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, let's do it.
31:18
Speaker 1: Well, let's start. So I found this contemporary journalism from.
31:23
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty six you'r CJ.
31:26
Speaker 1: Right in the New York Times, and they basically just
31:29
Speaker 1: checked in with the mail order marriage industry at the time,
31:33
Speaker 1: and it gave a really good snapshot of how things
31:35
Speaker 1: used to be. One of the reasons why mail order
31:38
Speaker 1: brides were called mail order brides, because time was that
31:41
Speaker 1: you would find a mail order marriage service, you would
31:44
Speaker 1: subscribe to that service. The New York Times says anywhere
31:48
Speaker 1: between fifty to five hundred dollars a year, and well
31:53
Speaker 1: that was for a catalog annual subscribe fifty to five hundred.
31:56
Speaker 1: And then every month or every couple months, or maybe
31:58
Speaker 1: twice a month, probably not twice a month, you would
32:01
Speaker 1: get a catalog that was clearly made by somebody who
32:05
Speaker 1: didn't major in catalog making in college of pictures of
32:10
Speaker 1: the of like a prospective bride, her stats, physical stats,
32:15
Speaker 1: her likes, her dislikes, that kind of thing. Basically a blurb,
32:18
Speaker 1: and you were you'd flip through a catalog and you'd
32:21
Speaker 1: get back in touch with the subscription service and say,
32:24
Speaker 1: I like number eight eight, nine, seven to two, and
32:28
Speaker 1: I also like thirty seven fifty five, and you just
32:32
Speaker 1: give them a list of women that you wanted them
32:35
Speaker 1: to reach out to on your behalf, and all of
32:37
Speaker 1: a sudden you would start exchanging letters. Little by little
32:41
Speaker 1: you would narrow down the women that you were talking to,
32:45
Speaker 1: and then you would eventually probably go over and meet
32:49
Speaker 1: one and maybe in that trip marry them, like have
32:53
Speaker 1: your wedding like that the day you meet them or
32:56
Speaker 1: the day after you met them. And that was pretty
32:58
Speaker 1: standard for the seven tventies and eighties as far as
33:01
Speaker 1: mail order goes, and I think into the nineties as well.
33:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course it's all online now and depending
33:08
Speaker 3: on which agency you go through, and like I said,
33:10
Speaker 3: there are thousands. They offer a range of services to
33:14
Speaker 3: you know, bleed you of as much money as they
33:16
Speaker 3: can in the process, whether it's subscription fees, or will
33:22
Speaker 3: will write your letters first letters for you and translate
33:24
Speaker 3: them for a fee, or if you want to video
33:27
Speaker 3: chat or have phone calls, we can arrange that for
33:29
Speaker 3: a fee. Everything has a fee. I think this one
33:34
Speaker 3: and this is from an Anti Trafficking International website article.
33:39
Speaker 3: They said that estimates show people spend about six to
33:46
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars. Each client spends about six to ten
33:49
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, and I think this is for you know
33:52
Speaker 3: the I guess more high end, more reputable ones. I
33:56
Speaker 3: think I think some of those places are happy if
33:59
Speaker 3: they get like five hundred buck out of you and
34:00
Speaker 3: then you leave.
34:01
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can be like a skin flint
34:03
Speaker 1: husband and just do it strictly online and then go
34:07
Speaker 1: meet them and marry them. But there are ones that
34:10
Speaker 1: offer like tours for like five grand, which depending on
34:15
Speaker 1: the country, may or may not be legal where you like,
34:19
Speaker 1: if you went to Vietnam, it would be illegal, and
34:21
Speaker 1: Vietnam mail order marriages the whole industry is illegal, but
34:26
Speaker 1: it's also rampant there. And there are like whole hotels
34:31
Speaker 1: that where a woman goes and stays and then tours
34:35
Speaker 1: of like guys from Taiwan or South Korea or the
34:39
Speaker 1: United States come through and meet them. And I think
34:44
Speaker 1: human trafficking people are like and do god knows what
34:47
Speaker 1: else for money, and if you hit it off with one,
34:53
Speaker 1: maybe you like start talking to them a little more
34:56
Speaker 1: or you marry them on the spot, that kind of thing.
34:58
Speaker 1: But there's like there's tours you can go on, and
35:01
Speaker 1: depending on your view of the mail order marriage industry,
35:03
Speaker 1: it's either a tour where you're going and meeting a
35:06
Speaker 1: lot of prospective brides or it's basically a sex tour
35:09
Speaker 1: at Vietnam.
35:11
Speaker 3: Right, And they also will do things where it's really
35:13
Speaker 3: hard to not read as a man sort of buying
35:19
Speaker 3: a woman, where they say like, well, you know, we'll
35:23
Speaker 3: put them up in this hotel and we'll have them
35:25
Speaker 3: go checked out by our doctors and our psychologists, the
35:28
Speaker 3: hob the psychological evaluation, and all of this information will
35:31
Speaker 3: be sent to you, the man with the money, to
35:34
Speaker 3: make your decision on whether or not you're going to
35:36
Speaker 3: sort of.
35:37
Speaker 2: Pay for this bride.
35:38
Speaker 3: And it's really hard to look at that any other
35:41
Speaker 3: way than that, like you really got to stretch your mind.
35:45
Speaker 3: But then you will read a story about a couple
35:49
Speaker 3: that are deeply in love for twenty years on and
35:53
Speaker 3: who had kids in American and who had a great
35:54
Speaker 3: life together, and they were like, no, it was really
35:57
Speaker 3: more like an international dating service and they just sort
36:01
Speaker 3: of match maked.
36:03
Speaker 2: Or matchmated made matched.
36:05
Speaker 1: Match maked.
36:07
Speaker 2: I love it.
36:08
Speaker 3: So it's like it's just I don't know if we've
36:11
Speaker 3: ever had a topic where I was so like, all right,
36:13
Speaker 3: well this is doesn't sound too bad, and like, oh
36:16
Speaker 3: my god, this sounds terrible.
36:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotcha, Yeah, I can't remember that.
36:20
Speaker 3: Maybe the industry, you know, Yeah, I mean I think
36:23
Speaker 3: it can be both those things.
36:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes you yes, and it surely is both
36:27
Speaker 1: of those things. Again, the question is is one way
36:30
Speaker 1: more than the other, and if so, which way is
36:32
Speaker 1: it lopsided? And if so, do we need to like
36:34
Speaker 1: follow Vietnam's footsteps and outlaw the marriage the mail order
36:38
Speaker 1: marriage industry. You know what I'm saying. It's like, sure
36:40
Speaker 1: that that may be a really big red flag, like
36:43
Speaker 1: why did Vietnam outlaw an entire industry that's totally like
36:46
Speaker 1: fine and legal here in the United States?
36:48
Speaker 2: Right, So should we take a break.
36:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we should take a break and we'll
36:54
Speaker 1: talk about mail order marriages in the Internet age because
36:57
Speaker 1: things have changed a little bit.
36:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some of the Lawsah right, right, all right,
37:03
Speaker 3: we'll be right back.
37:23
Speaker 2: All right, really quickly.
37:28
Speaker 3: The great article I found that from the Anti Trafficking
37:30
Speaker 3: International site they did kind of talk a little bit
37:33
Speaker 3: about what it means for your immigration status and how
37:38
Speaker 3: because I mentioned earlier that Zug said, you know, who's
37:40
Speaker 3: really at risk or undocumented immigrants because they have no
37:44
Speaker 3: recourse but even if you do come over as a
37:47
Speaker 3: mail order bride. And here's basically what happens. The Immigration
37:53
Speaker 3: Marriage Fraud Amendment, which was an acted in eighty six
37:56
Speaker 3: is basically, the husband will apply for a spouse or
38:00
Speaker 3: a fiance visa and then the bride has to marry
38:04
Speaker 3: the husband within three months upon arrival in the US.
38:07
Speaker 3: So there's a three month sort of try it out period.
38:11
Speaker 3: But the bride only has conditional resident status for two years.
38:16
Speaker 3: So in that two year period at the end of
38:19
Speaker 3: which they have to apply jointly for her permanent status
38:22
Speaker 3: as a resident. In that conditional two year period, that
38:27
Speaker 3: is the dodgy territory where they're basically like, the bride
38:30
Speaker 3: is completely dependent on the husband. He holds all the cards.
38:35
Speaker 3: They're very vulnerable at this point. They may have linguistic
38:38
Speaker 3: isolation and or cultural isolation. They may not have that
38:42
Speaker 3: social network that we were talking about, or be completely
38:45
Speaker 3: economically dependent on the husband, and they might be afraid
38:48
Speaker 3: that he'll be like, you know what, it's in that
38:51
Speaker 3: two year frame, I can still have you sent home,
38:54
Speaker 3: so you better be nice. And this is basically where
38:58
Speaker 3: they're saying, this is just sort of a a softer
39:00
Speaker 3: version of trafficking, right, even though and there is real
39:03
Speaker 3: trafficking attached to this, we're not talking about that. We're
39:07
Speaker 3: talking about women who do come over voluntarily, but they
39:10
Speaker 3: still see that as a sort of a softer version
39:12
Speaker 3: of that.
39:13
Speaker 1: So and that power dynamic, and the one where you
39:16
Speaker 1: mentioned where the men were supplied with all the information
39:19
Speaker 1: where the mail order bride'shead basically none about the men.
39:25
Speaker 1: That's changed in the last few years thanks to the
39:28
Speaker 1: Internet and thanks to things like video chat and texting
39:32
Speaker 1: and Facebook and Skype, and now women are able just
39:38
Speaker 1: through the simple tools on the Internet to be much
39:42
Speaker 1: more discerning and discriminating in the men they choose. It's
39:45
Speaker 1: not just like I'm going to put myself in a
39:47
Speaker 1: catalog and cross my fingers. They're putting themselves out there
39:52
Speaker 1: much more, at least ones that are are members of
39:54
Speaker 1: legitimate mail order marriage brokerages. Right.
39:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was there were very sadly a couple
40:02
Speaker 3: of high profile murders leading up to the International Marriage
40:07
Speaker 3: Broker Regulation Act in two thousand and five, and this
40:10
Speaker 3: is where things really kind of changed as far as
40:13
Speaker 3: at least trying to help adjust that power dynamic in
40:15
Speaker 3: that if you are a legitimate brokerage agency, you're required
40:20
Speaker 3: to provide these women with a lot of information now
40:24
Speaker 3: about the men, whether or not they're on state or
40:28
Speaker 3: national sex offender registries, background on their financials. They're given
40:34
Speaker 3: information on domestic violence and like what that looks like,
40:39
Speaker 3: you know, and how to go to the police and
40:41
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and that you can do stuff like that,
40:44
Speaker 3: arrest history, marital history, residence history if they have kids,
40:50
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff now that these agencies have to
40:53
Speaker 3: provide about the men for the women.
40:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so people who are like, hey, that's not
41:00
Speaker 1: that's not cool, man, if you were an American woman
41:03
Speaker 1: just dating an American man, you wouldn't have access to
41:05
Speaker 1: that kind of information. That's truly invasive. It is true.
41:10
Speaker 1: It's also almost basically a straw man argument, because an
41:15
Speaker 1: American woman is not going to be in the kind
41:18
Speaker 1: of isolated, completely dependent situation that a male order bride's
41:22
Speaker 1: going to be, and so the mail order bride needs
41:25
Speaker 1: a lot more safeguards than just an average American woman
41:29
Speaker 1: is going to need. So nice try, but that argument
41:32
Speaker 1: doesn't hold water at all.
41:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, you talked earlier at the beginning about
41:38
Speaker 3: a lack of data and statistics. They don't even really
41:41
Speaker 3: know how often this is happening, much less how many
41:45
Speaker 3: are successful and how many times they end like poorly
41:49
Speaker 3: or an abuse and things like that. There are a
41:52
Speaker 3: few numbers out there, I think the.
41:56
Speaker 2: How do you pronounce that?
41:58
Speaker 1: I want to say to hear he to hear E.
42:03
Speaker 3: Justice Center they estimate between eleven thousand and sixteen thousand
42:08
Speaker 3: women immigrate.
42:09
Speaker 2: Each year through a marriage broker.
42:11
Speaker 3: The I INS has it more like four to six thousand,
42:15
Speaker 3: so you kind of can't really tell how much this
42:19
Speaker 3: is even going on. So it's really hard to you know,
42:22
Speaker 3: like you said, if you don't have the data. For
42:24
Speaker 3: nubes like us, it's kind of hard to form a
42:27
Speaker 3: hard opinion.
42:28
Speaker 1: Right, But it's not just nubes like us who don't
42:30
Speaker 1: have the data, Like, no one has the data, so
42:33
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, no one can form a hard opinion.
42:37
Speaker 1: And if in that case, you have to treat it
42:39
Speaker 1: on like a case by case basis, and like if
42:42
Speaker 1: you have nothing but anecdotal data or evidence, you can't
42:47
Speaker 1: just say like, yes, the mail order marriage industry is
42:50
Speaker 1: just a front for human trafficking and sex trafficking. That's
42:54
Speaker 1: that is a moral panic that you've just started right there.
42:58
Speaker 1: So we have to go out and get the data.
42:59
Speaker 1: But at the same time, that doesn't mean you can't
43:02
Speaker 1: simultaneously offer support to women who might be suffering from that,
43:07
Speaker 1: Like what if it turns out to be true, Like, yeah,
43:09
Speaker 1: it's all just a big front for human trafficking, and
43:12
Speaker 1: these women need help roll out the red carpet, like
43:15
Speaker 1: get those services broadcasts, like figure out how to get
43:17
Speaker 1: them help if they need it, and see if anybody
43:20
Speaker 1: comes out of the woodwork In the meantime, while you're
43:22
Speaker 1: conducting those studies to come up with that data. One
43:25
Speaker 1: way or another, it can't hurt. It's just money, and
43:27
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good thing to spend money on, if
43:29
Speaker 1: you ask me.
43:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
43:31
Speaker 3: There are some studies that show spousal abuse rates are
43:34
Speaker 3: about three times higher. But this is just for immigrant
43:39
Speaker 3: women married to US husbands. I don't think I think
43:42
Speaker 3: that includes all immigrantmen. I don't think it's just mail
43:45
Speaker 3: order situations. So that's data that doesn't exactly help, but
43:50
Speaker 3: it does shine a light on that power dynamic as
43:53
Speaker 3: a whole.
43:53
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, And I couldn't I couldn't tell that.
43:56
Speaker 1: Dave mentioned that there were three murder women male order
44:01
Speaker 1: brides in the United States, I think between twenty ten
44:05
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty maybe, And if using the high the
44:10
Speaker 1: high number that the to hear E Justice Center uses
44:15
Speaker 1: for how many came over every year, you got one
44:18
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand of them. So three murders out
44:21
Speaker 1: of one hundred and sixty thousand population is I thin
44:25
Speaker 1: zero point eighteen percent. But out of all the women,
44:29
Speaker 1: all the married women in America, it's like sixty four
44:32
Speaker 1: million married women seventeen two hundred and fifty on average
44:37
Speaker 1: died but were murdered by their partner in that same time,
44:41
Speaker 1: which is two point six percent. So I probably got
44:45
Speaker 1: the math wrong. But if it is right, then that
44:47
Speaker 1: means you're actually less likely to be murdered by your
44:50
Speaker 1: husband as a male order bride than you are just
44:52
Speaker 1: as an American woman who was married in just part
44:56
Speaker 1: of the general population.
44:58
Speaker 2: So that's great, right. I think one of those status
45:02
Speaker 2: you can't feel good about.
45:03
Speaker 1: No, exactly, that's a great That is an excellent point
45:05
Speaker 1: for sure, Chuck. I mean, I think anybody you're going
45:08
Speaker 1: for sure, it shines the light that we need to
45:10
Speaker 1: basically do away with spousal murder. I think we can
45:15
Speaker 1: all get behind that, right.
45:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:16
Speaker 3: What it What it does though, again, is it makes
45:19
Speaker 3: you think, maybe let's concentrate on the real problems, right,
45:23
Speaker 3: And if that's not, if the male order bride situation
45:27
Speaker 3: isn't the real problem, then we just and we all
45:30
Speaker 3: know this, but we have a real domestic violence problem
45:32
Speaker 3: in this country anyway.
45:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same thing. What was the last one
45:35
Speaker 1: we talked about, Oh, the stranger danger where it was like, oh, no, actually,
45:39
Speaker 1: your cousin is going to like rape and murder you
45:42
Speaker 1: way more frequently than just some strangers. But let's all
45:45
Speaker 1: concentrate on the stranger. Right, your spouse is possibly going
45:50
Speaker 1: to murder you, but let's ignore that and concentrate on
45:53
Speaker 1: male order brides being murdered instead, even if it's just
45:55
Speaker 1: a much less of a chance. Like that's the it's
46:00
Speaker 1: the definition of a moral panic, and you got to
46:02
Speaker 1: sort those out because they obfuscate important things.
46:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, at the beginning of the episode
46:08
Speaker 3: you mentioned LGBTQ rights. That's why we call it male
46:12
Speaker 3: order marriages now because in twenty thirteen, with the Supreme
46:15
Speaker 3: Court striking down parts of the defensive Marriage Act it allowed.
46:20
Speaker 3: And there has been a, you know, since then, a
46:23
Speaker 3: sort of a big time rise in LGBTQ people doing
46:29
Speaker 3: the exact same thing. And a lot of times these
46:31
Speaker 3: people in other countries are literally fleeing for their life
46:35
Speaker 3: because they have no rights in their own country as
46:40
Speaker 3: a person from that community. So that's one of those
46:43
Speaker 3: where you look at and you're like, they could literally
46:45
Speaker 3: be saving someone's life by getting them out of their
46:47
Speaker 3: country over here.
46:47
Speaker 1: Yep, that's right.
46:49
Speaker 2: And men do it too.
46:50
Speaker 3: I saw there was a I was curious about male
46:52
Speaker 3: order husbands and if that was even a thing. And
46:55
Speaker 3: apparently Ireland in recent years has got some of this
47:00
Speaker 3: going on, where these irishmen are putting themselves out there
47:03
Speaker 3: and saying, hey, I'm a strapping young Irishman and I'm
47:07
Speaker 3: happy to come marry you and live in your country.
47:11
Speaker 1: Very nice.
47:11
Speaker 2: It's a thing in Ireland. Did not know that.
47:13
Speaker 1: I had no idea either, but leave it to Ireland
47:16
Speaker 1: to just try something new. So good for you, Ireland,
47:19
Speaker 1: good for you. You got anything else on mail order marriages?
47:24
Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
47:25
Speaker 3: I can take off of my roller skates now this
47:27
Speaker 3: one was it.
47:29
Speaker 2: Was danger at every turn.
47:30
Speaker 1: I thought you did great. I thought we did great.
47:32
Speaker 1: It's good. I'm pretty sure. Oh god, I hope so well.
47:36
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about mail order marriages,
47:38
Speaker 1: go check it out and see what you think for yourself.
47:40
Speaker 1: Don't take our words for it. And since I said
47:44
Speaker 1: don't take our words for it, it's time for listener mail.
47:50
Speaker 2: Listener mail.
47:50
Speaker 3: This is a sad case, so a bit of a
47:53
Speaker 3: trigger warning here, especially if you've lost a family member
47:57
Speaker 3: to COVID. But I had it back and forth with
48:00
Speaker 3: this gentleman, and he really felt strongly about reading this
48:03
Speaker 3: on the air in the name of getting people vaccinated. Hey, guys,
48:07
Speaker 3: haven't written in quite some time. Been listening since two
48:09
Speaker 3: thousand and eight. You've been around for so many personal milestones,
48:13
Speaker 3: even though we've never met, even though I did ask
48:16
Speaker 3: you the best question ever at your live show in Phoenix.
48:19
Speaker 3: My father taught me how to play guitar. I've been
48:21
Speaker 3: playing for nearly thirty years because of his influence. There's
48:25
Speaker 3: never been a question of Gibson or Fender in my family.
48:28
Speaker 3: It's always been clear where a Fender family. He played
48:30
Speaker 3: a strat and I played a telly last This last Tuesday,
48:36
Speaker 3: I said goodbye to my father. COVID had done its
48:39
Speaker 3: job and completely overtaken his body.
48:42
Speaker 2: After he passed.
48:42
Speaker 3: Later that day, I went into my truck and took
48:44
Speaker 3: a few minutes and decided I needed some Josh and
48:47
Speaker 3: Chuck to get my mind off of things. And I
48:49
Speaker 3: was absolutely shocked. On that day Leo Fender and Les
48:53
Speaker 3: Paul came through in my feed. My father and I
48:56
Speaker 3: did not have anything we bonded over more than our
48:59
Speaker 3: love of music and play guitar, an affinity for Fender,
49:02
Speaker 3: and a dislike of all things Gibson. Sorry, Chuck, there
49:05
Speaker 3: could not have been more perfect topic to help me
49:07
Speaker 3: through one of the hardest days of my life. I
49:09
Speaker 3: look forward to someday when I might be able to
49:11
Speaker 3: shake your hands after a good hand washing and sanitization,
49:14
Speaker 3: and just thank you for being with me through so
49:16
Speaker 3: many good days in so many bad days.
49:19
Speaker 2: And he included a song that he gave his father
49:22
Speaker 2: that he wrote for him.
49:23
Speaker 3: It's great and this is from Eddie, and Eddie said,
49:28
Speaker 3: please read this on the air. He said, my mother
49:31
Speaker 3: decided to get vaccinated because of this, and they were
49:35
Speaker 3: not vaccinated and he said, just please send the message
49:39
Speaker 3: out to people that it can happen to you and
49:42
Speaker 3: your family, and just go out there and get that
49:44
Speaker 3: vaccination already.
49:45
Speaker 1: Thanks for that, Eddie, and definitely our condolences on your
49:49
Speaker 1: father's passing. I'm really sorry to hear that, but I'm
49:52
Speaker 1: glad we could bring you a little measure of comfort
49:54
Speaker 1: at a terrible time. So thank you for letting us
49:57
Speaker 1: a bit about that, and also thank you for telling
49:59
Speaker 1: everybody get vaccinated, because it's a pretty good thing to
50:01
Speaker 1: use your position for. So I think, like Eddy said,
50:05
Speaker 1: go get vaccinated. Yeah, we said it, Go get vaccinated.
50:10
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, agreed.
50:11
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, if you want to get in
50:13
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can send us an email. The
50:15
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
50:21
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
50:24
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
50:27
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.