"Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source.
[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]
Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.
[content note: spoilers for "Pride and Prejudice"]
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, was first published in 1813. It's a romance story, about how the fancy gentlemen and ladies of 1700's England go about partnering up and getting married.
Those of us who grew up in purity culture in the American church in the 1990's were taught an ideology about "sexual purity" and rules about dating and gender roles. This ideology was presented as timeless, traditional, how God always intended relationships to work. Like everyone has always known that these were the rules, until the sexual revolution of the 1960's- that's when all the problems started. We need to just get back to these traditions, which are straight from the bible. That's how dating is supposed to be.
So, naively, one might imagine that when you encounter writing about romance/relationships/marriage from hundreds of years ago, in a society that was greatly influenced by Christianity, it would basically match what purity culture teaches. That the rules that proper men and women followed back then should be more or less the same as the rules that purity culture is putting on us now. That the way that people in that time period viewed romantic relationships would match what purity culture tells us.
But oh goodness, let me tell you, this is very much not true about "Pride and Prejudice."
Wow, it is very much NOT TRUE that purity culture ideology is just getting back to the way that every proper and respectable person used to approach romantic relationships. Purity culture is a movement that was invented in the US in the 1990's, and its aesthetics give the appearance of being old and traditional, but it's not.
So let me tell you about 4 things in "Pride and Prejudice" that are at odds with the purity-culture perspective on relationships.
"Santa Tell Me" is a 2014 song by Ariana Grande. The chorus goes like this:
Santa, tell me if you're really there
Don't make me fall in love again if he won't be here
Next year
Santa, tell me if he really cares
'Cause I can't give it all away if he won't be here
Next year
She is interested in a boy, but doesn't want to fall in love with him if the relationship isn't going to last. So she's asking Santa if she will still be with this guy in 1 year, and also if this guy really cares about her.
She's asking Santa? Since when do people ask Santa for dating advice??? Since when is Santa believed to have the ability to see the future? Since when does Santa read people's minds and feelings?
Like, okay, sure, according to the standard tropes about Santa, he has a "naughty list" and "nice list." I suppose Santa could look this guy up and see which list he's on, but I don't think Santa's naughty/nice binary categorization system is really going to give Ariana Grande the information she needs. Just because this guy is nice enough to deserve a Christmas present doesn't really tell you if he's boyfriend material. This song seems to be implying some kind of knowledge or ability on Santa's part that goes beyond "he's gonna find out who's naughty or nice."
Also, "don't make me fall in love again"- is she saying Santa has the power to manipulate her emotions to stop her from falling in love if the relationship isn't going to last? What? Since when is that something that Santa can do? Or, maybe we should just read this as, he should give her the information she is asking for, and then she will be able to keep *herself* from falling in love.
This song has bothered me for so long because these are just *not* things that Santa is typically regarded as being able to do. This is not the role that people expect Santa to play. He just judges who's "naughty or nice" and gives gifts. That's all. He doesn't give relationship advice, what on earth, who has ever asked Santa of all people for relationship advice? He doesn't predict the future, my goodness. (This seems like more the sort of thing that people would ask God. Not Santa.)
But actually, this is how the Santa mythology has always worked. Pop culture is always adding to it, through songs, movies, Coca-Cola ads, adding to the body of knowledge that people "know" about who Santa is. It changes and develops, and we should read "Santa Tell Me" as an attempt to develop the cultural ideas about Santa in this direction. If it catches on, then there will be more songs and movies made, which portray Santa as an all-knowing relationship-advice-giver, and people will think it's just self-evidently obvious that that's who Santa is, just like it's obvious that he lives at the North Pole and gives gifts to children and has "naughty" and "nice" lists.
Well, the song is from 2014 and this new interpretation of Santa doesn't seem to have caught on. But I will always be on the lookout for anyone else claiming that Santa knows the future and has insights about whether your boyfriend really cares about you.
1.Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man (September 20) "'When I found out an image of her has been exploited in what felt like a sexualised way by a massive company like that to market their product it left me feeling quite disgusted,' [the father of a 13-year-old] said."
2. Plane to purgatory: how Trump’s deportation program shuttles immigrants into lawless limbo (September 10) "'It seems the goal is to make people desperate enough so they decide not to fight their case, so they decide that the quickest way to see their other children or make sure they don’t have to deliver their babies in shackles is to accept a voluntary deportation,' said Toczylowski. 'It is particularly cruel.'"
4.Social media is shattering America's understanding of Charlie Kirk's death (September 20) "But nuance fails in online platforms designed to boost and sustain engagement and promote content likely to provoke a reaction from users. Already, social media pundits on the left are questioning whether the texts and interviews in the charging documents are real. Meanwhile, those on the right are agitating to declare left wing activists as terrorists."
8.What Public Officials Are ICE Goons Arresting Today? (September 21) "At least a dozen state and local officials in the great state of New York were among the 71 people arrested Thursday during a protest at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, the federal building where ICE has been grabbing people as they leave their scheduled immigration hearings. Among those arrested was NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, who was also arrested in June while escorting an immigrant from a hearing room. The officials were hauled off after they requested to see the detention cells, where conditions for arrested immigrants are so bad that a federal judge on Wednesday ordered DHS to limit the number of people held, provide adequate food and clean conditions, and to ensure detainees’ access to attorneys."
Ember (fire girl) and Wade (water boy). Image source.
Well I'm late to the party on this, but I just saw the 2023 Pixar movie "Elemental" and I LOVED IT. !!!!! Why didn't anyone tell me this was a movie about immigration and cultural differences? I would have watched it much sooner! I knew it was a "forbidden love" sort of story between a fire character and water character, but it's more than that.
Here's an overview of the movie: In the beginning scenes, 2 fire people leave Fireland and immigrate to Element City. ("Fire people" are basically anthropomorphized flames walking around.) Element City is very much NOT built for fire people. There's water flowing and dripping in lots of public places (probably the city was designed for water people). These immigrants built a little shop which sells things to other fire people, and over time more fire people moved to their section of the city. Their daughter, Ember, works in the shop, and her father says she will take over the shop when she's ready.
Then Ember meets Wade, a water person, and they get to know each other and eventually fall in love. Wade is more naive and idealistic than Ember- he is ready to go against all the societal norms so they can be together. For Ember, it's not the simple. She doesn't have the same privileged background that Wade does. Her parents worked hard and sacrificed so much to come to Element City and build a life for themselves and for her, and she feels she can't reject all of that just because she has feelings for Wade.
I was very impressed with how this movie portrayed the sense of being out of place, of standing out in a foreign environment, of being constantly inconvenienced by societal structures which everyone else feels are normal. When Ember goes into the city, and when she goes to Wade's home to meet his family, there are no other fire people there, and she very much stands out. She always carries an umbrella with her, and whips it out many times to protect herself from water being splashed around, while all the water people aren't bothered at all by getting wet- it's a constant inconvenience for her, that other people don't even notice. Even Wade, who accompanies her and wants to help her, fits in so well and is so comfortable in that environment, so he can't *truly* understand what she's going through.
I have experienced a lot of this, as a white person living in China. As a white person visiting my Chinese husband's family. And also, from the other side of it- bringing my husband to meet my family in the US.
Another theme in the movie is about how cute ideas like "follow your heart" land extremely differently for someone from a privileged, majority-culture background vs an immigrant/minority background. Both Ember and Wade come from families where "elements don't mix", but when Wade decides to challenge this ideology, it's very different than if Ember was challenging it. In Ember's case, her parents have sacrificed so much, and lived through constant discrimination from water people, and worked so hard keeping their little shop going... the idea that she can just turn her back on all of that, just because she loves a water guy? She can't.
My experience with this is that I grew up in an evangelical culture which admired missionaries. We were all so impressed by Americans who were "called by God" to give up everything and go live in some scary poor country. We talked about this "calling" like it could just strike anyone, out of the blue, you're a normal Christian and then one day you're praying and you hear God saying "goooo to Chinaaaaa" and then you have to give up everything and go.
So I was always in this ideology where it was seen as heroic to give up your whole culture and lifestyle for God. We believed our lives didn't really belong to ourselves, but to God, and we should be totally willing to "surrender all."
When I moved to China, it wasn't as a missionary, and it wasn't because "God called me", but it was still very much influenced by this Christian missions ideology. Viewing my lifestyle and culture as something that can easily be sacrificed, something that is not truly mine.
At some point, I realized that the only reason I felt so okay with giving up these things was because I was so privileged- I had always taken for granted that I would have them. I had worked hard, sure, but never with the threat of "if I don't work hard enough, I won't be able to have that kind of [normal white American college-educated] life."
As an example (which I wrote about here: Privilege and "Putting God First"): When I was in college, I was very involved with bible study groups and other Christian activities. I dedicated a LOT of my time to them. And all of us in those groups would always talk about how bible study was more important than the other things in our lives, like homework. About how we needed to get our priorities right, and put God first. Following God was a higher priority than doing well in our classes.
I was only able to think that way because my entire life, I had always taken for granted that I would go to college. There was never any possibility that I wouldn't go to college. And so, it was easy to act like it didn't matter, like "yeah I'd totally give this up for God." To act like I didn't value it.
I knew other students who were the first people in their families to go to college. And I knew international students whose parents had spent a lot of money to send them to school in the US. Do you think they were walking around talking about how doing well in school didn't *really* matter, and all that mattered was devotion to God?
And from a parent's perspective, how does it feel if you've worked so hard to give your child a good life, and then the child decides they don't want that life at all? Like it's something they can give up so easily? This can go in several different ways, depending on how privileged you are. If the child wants to do something different than what the parent wanted, but it would still work out okay, then the parent should hopefully accept that. But if the child decides they want to go back to the kind of difficult, dangerous life that the parent worked so hard to escape from, well that's not so good.
So I really enjoyed "Elemental," because it showed the experience of being an immigrant and feeling out-of-place in a foreign environment. And how the typical Disney-movie message of "be yourself, follow your heart, don't be limited by your parents' expectations" can play out very differently depending on how privileged your family background is.
So, as I said, I'm the opposite of aromantic. In college I used to dream about the kind of wedding I wanted to have, because I had SO MUCH romantic desire, and wanted to find one magical romantic partner I could be with forever to fulfill that romantic desire, and I viewed the wedding traditions as important symbols of getting those desires fulfilled.
Fast forward a few years, and I got engaged to a Chinese man (Hendrix). We had our wedding in the US, so we did all the American wedding traditions that I wanted, but we live in China so I had the chance to talk to Chinese people about Chinese wedding traditions, and I've attended weddings in China, and the traditions are very different! It was sort of surprising to me, how these traditions- which I viewed as big important romantic milestones that I couldn't live without- just totally DO NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. They have different traditions instead.
In this post I'll list a few of the traditions that were very important to me, and how they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT in China.
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Getting engaged
So, Hendrix proposed to me with a diamond ring and big romantic gesture, just like the American traditions say you should do. It was great! Very happy with that!
When I told my friends in the US, they were all like "How did he ask???!!!" expecting to hear a grand romantic story- and yes, I told them the grand romantic story. And my relatives were calling on the phone, telling him "welcome to the family!"
Then when I told friends in China, none of them were like "How did he ask?" And Hendrix's family members didn't really act like anything was different.
Nowadays in China, because of influence from western countries, people do propose to their girlfriends with a ring and romantic gesture. But this is kind of new thing; it's not at all an established tradition in Chinese culture- seems like the older generation doesn't have much of a concept of it.
No, in China, instead of getting engaged, I would say the sort-of equivalent thing is getting the marriage license.
See, in China, getting the marriage license (ie, getting legally married) is a completely separate thing from the wedding. What?! I was shocked when I found out about this. In the US, the wedding is the event at which you get legally married- that's the definition of a wedding. In China, this is not the case!
We ended up getting our marriage license in China (because of immigration reasons that made more sense than doing it in the US) and then having our wedding in the US. I was a bit worried... if my relatives knew that we were already legally married, would they think our wedding was not "real"?
I remember asking a Chinese friend how you define which day is your anniversary- since the day you get legally married is different than the wedding day. She didn't seem that concerned about it. She said you can decide for yourself which one is meaningful to you. She said she felt like, getting the marriage license was about just you and your partner, and then the wedding is something you do for your family, so for her, getting the marriage license was more important.
And since I was raised in purity culture, which made a big huge deal about how you can't have sex till marriage, I was super confused about "how do you know when you can have sex?" Is it when you get the marriage license, or is it after the wedding itself? (Fortunately I quit believing in "purity" and decided we can just make our own decision without having our wedding be the way we announce the world that we're about to have sex, eww.)
And the day we got our marriage license, Hendrix's relatives took us out for a fancy dinner. See, turns out that's the "welcome to the family" moment, from a Chinese perspective. Not when you get the engagement ring. (There are also Chinese traditions about the bride and groom's family negotiating about how much money the groom's family is going to give the bride's family, but we didn't do any of that.)
I remember a Chinese friend asking me about getting engaged and what it means in US culture, and he asked, "Do some people get married without getting engaged first?" And I interpreted that to mean if a couple just goes and elopes without telling anyone- and their family and friends would probably be unhappy about not being invited to the wedding. But actually I don't think that's what he was asking. I think he wasn't aware that it's not really possible to invite people to your wedding without being engaged- like, if you're planning a wedding and sending out invitations, you ARE engaged. He was probably thinking you get the marriage license, then you plan the wedding, then you have the wedding- and getting engaged sounded like an unnecessary step before that.
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The wedding dress
In US culture, shopping for the wedding dress is a big deal. Finding that one perfect dress- THE dress. And then there's a tradition that your partner isn't allowed to see the dress until the wedding day.
In China it's totally different.
First of all, at Chinese weddings, the tradition is that the bride wears a bunch of different outfits. The traditional color for weddings is red, so basically she wears a series of different red dresses- but now that China is borrowing [the appearance of] some traditions from western culture, many brides add a white dress to the mix too. So there's not like a "THE dress" - you wear a bunch of dresses, and I don't really know what the romantic/emotional significance of it is.
And here's what really shocked me: In China, the couple gets their "wedding photos" taken as a completely separate thing from the actual wedding itself. Really, "wedding photos" is not the right translation of "婚纱照"- I would translate it as "wedding dress photos." Because these are NOT photos from the wedding, they are photos of the couple wearing wedding clothes. This is something that's done before the wedding.
Totally shocking to me, because, what about the tradition that your spouse can't see your wedding dress before the big day? (Yeah, not a thing in China.) And also, the dress that the bride wears in the photos isn't even THE dress. You go to a photo studio and pick from the dresses they have there, and you wear that in the photos, and that has no relation at all to the dress(es) you actually wear on your wedding day. (In fact, I've been to weddings in China where they show a slideshow of photos of the couple, and these "wedding dress photos" are part of the slideshow- making it really obvious that they were taken beforehand and aren't photos from the actual wedding. This is completely normal in China.)
I remember when I found out about this, it made me feel like the wedding photos in China were "fake." Because it's not your actual wedding day, and that's not your actual wedding dress. But it's not "fake"- it's just that they have different traditions for this.
We went and got photos taken in China when we got our marriage license. We wore the traditional red clothes that the photo studio provided. My mother-in-law also wanted me to do photos wearing a white wedding dress, but I totally refused. I can't be wearing a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day and it's not my wedding dress- that would be a lie! The only reason I would ever do that would be maybe if I was shopping for dresses, trying on different ones, sending a photo to my sister to get her opinion- but beyond that, no, no way am I letting anyone see me in a white wedding dress if it's not my wedding day.
So we just did the photos with the red Chinese clothes, and that was fine.
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Dancing
Dancing is my FAVORITE part of weddings. But in Chinese tradition, there's no dancing at a wedding at all. To some extent, for Chinese weddings that are more "westernized", they kinda-sorta add some dancing to it- the bride and groom have their first dance on stage, and the bride has the dance with her father, on stage- but it's basically just a performance on the stage, not something that you eventually get all the guests to join into. There's no dance floor, there's no hours and hours of everyone dancing.
Really surprising to me, because dancing with everybody was one of the things I looked forward to the MOST (and our wedding was in the US, we had a DJ and dance floor and everything, it was great) but in China it's just not a thing at all.
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And there are so many other wedding traditions which are completely different in China- I just discussed these 3 here because these were the ones that were most surprising to me, because they were extremely meaningful to me but just aren't part of Chinese tradition at all.
I'm writing this for the Carnival of Aros because it shows how romance is so culturally constructed. To some extent, there are things that will be the same in all cultures- most people have romantic feelings, most people fall in love- but the specific ways that those feelings manifest is super-dependent on the unique cultural symbols of romance, and those aren't universal at all. I spent so much time dreaming about my first dance at my wedding- there are cultures where people simply don't do that, because they don't have a first dance. They may have similar romantic feelings to me, but it doesn't cause them to dream about their first dance. It comes out in other ways.
So if you're aromantic and don't care about romantic traditions, well, whatever, billions of other people don't care about those specific traditions either. And even if you have romantic feelings, that doesn't mean you have to care about roses or diamond rings or whatever. All these things are just cultural symbols- there's no intrinsic reason they need to be viewed as "romantic."
1.The Performative Sexuality of Matt Walsh (January 19) 8-minute video from Jessie Gender. "Okay, obviously on its face this is the funniest ****ing thing I've seen this man say, and I have seen this man say some really fun, dumb ****, amongst all the horrible horrific fascist nonsense that he says and [transmisic] bullshit."
2.This Cat Is NOT "Totally Normal"!! (January 20) 1-hour-37-minute sudoku solve video. Wow, this is amazing. "It's absolute nonsense and yet you can actually find a way through this!"
3.7 Ways to Be An Ally to Autistic People (January 2) "Joking around and whatever is perfectly fine, but sometimes when I can’t figure out if people are being serious or just joking and ask for a quick clarification, they either refuse to answer or actively make my question part of the banter like it wasn’t meant to be serious. Don’t do this to people, it’s rude."
4.Google promised to delete location data on abortion clinic visits. It didn’t, study says (January 17, via) "A year and a half has passed since Google first pledged to delete all location data on users’ visits to abortion clinics with minimal progress. The move would have made it harder for law enforcement to use that information to investigate or prosecute people seeking abortions in states where the procedure has been banned or otherwise limited. Now, a new study shows Google still retains location history data in 50% of cases."
5.What It's Like to Be Denied an Abortion in Your State (January 18, via) [content note: pregnancy loss] "I just could not believe it. It was already hard enough dealing with the fact that my baby wasn't going to make it. This was a wanted pregnancy; this was a planned pregnancy."
8.The Biden Administration Is Ending Bank Overdraft Fees as We Know Them (January 18) "Under the new rule, overdraft fees at large banks will be limited to the service's cost–expected to be as low as $3 per incident. Currently, the typical consumer is charged $35 for each overdraft."
10.Take a Hint! How Chinese Officials Are Subtly Promoting Having Children (January 24) "The challenge even prompted the China Family Planning Association — formed in 1980 to help implement the one-child policy — to seek the public’s help in formulating new propaganda slogans for the three-child policy in 2021." Oh yeah that's what we need, propaganda slogans. That'll do it. [/sarcasm]
I find it a bit goofy that this article is framed like "the Chinese government is promoting these images of families with 3 children, hoping it will convince people to have more kids" [my paraphrase, not an exact quote] which is, uh, how shall I put this, obviously ridiculous. Can you imagine any parent being like "well I have 1 child, and WOW childcare is expensive, but oh look here's a statue of a family with 3 children, I should totally have more kids!!!" LOLLLLLL.
It would make a lot more sense to frame it as "Because the one-child policy was in place for 30-some years, in Chinese culture it's now seen as 'normal' to only have 1 child (for example, the typical image of a family is a mom, dad, and 1 child). Now that China has changed to a 3-child policy, the government is trying to promote more images of families with 2-3 children, to show that this should also be seen as 'normal.'" Like not with the expectation that this is going to *convince* people to have more kids (lol what on earth), but simply as a way of helping people see that there can be different sizes of families and that's all fine.
12.Raped, pregnant and in an abortion ban state? Researchers gauge how often it happens (January 24, via) [content note: rape statistics] "As an abortion provider in Montana, Dr. Samuel Dickman has seen patients routinely who tell him they became pregnant after a rape." This study estimates 64,000 pregnancies from rape in states where abortion is banned, since Roe v Wade was overturned.
A world map, with a heart in the US connected to a heart in Europe. Image source.
I'm a US citizen; my husband is a Chinese citizen. We got married in China, we live in China, and we have a son who was born in China. A few days ago I wrote a post called Why Marriage as a Private Contract is a Bad Idea, which included the idea that people don't think about the fact that marriage is an actual legal arrangement which comes with certain rights/obligations/restrictions- they just think inromantic terms like "we want to spend the rest of our lives together, so, we get married." This post will be about how that relates to my situation as an immigrant who got married in China.
When we got married, the legal process of it worked thusly: I had to go to the US consulate in Shanghai and get a document that states I wasn't already married. (If I had been married before, I would have had to bring proof of divorce or death, when I went to get this document from the US consulate.) I just had to swear that I'm not already married, and the US consulate didn't do anything to check if it's true or not, they just believed me and wrote up a paper that says so.
Then we had to go to my husband's hometown, because his hukou is from there. What is a hukou, you ask? Ah. Well. The hukou system is very important in China, so let me explain it. A hukou is a document that all Chinese citizens should have, that states what city in China you are officially a resident of. In the city where your hukou is, you enjoy some rights that non-locals don't have- things related to access to public services like schools, health care, buying property, etc. Some hukous are better than others- for example, a Beijing or Shanghai hukou is seen as really valuable to have, whereas a hukou for some little city in the middle of nowhere, like, who cares.
It's not that each individual has a hukou- it's the household that has the hukou, and all the family members' names are on it. So for many people (such as my husband) their hukou has their parents' names on it, and their name. And the actual physical document is in the parents' possession, in their hometown. Lots of people in Shanghai are in this situation- they live in Shanghai, but their hukou is a hukou from their hometown rather than a Shanghai hukou, and they don't actually have it physically, their parents have it in a different city.
In China, lots of people move from small cities to big cities to find jobs. But just because you move to another city, and live there for a long time, doesn't mean you can change your hukou to that city. Each city has requirements about what you have to do to get a hukou (for example, how many years you have to work and pay taxes, how high your salary has to be, what level of education you should have, etc). I know people who, after living in Shanghai for a long time, were able to get a Shanghai hukou, and remove their name from their parents' hukou.
Anyway. So. When Chinese people get married, it has to be in one spouse's hukou city. They can't just get married anywhere. So, we went back to Hendrix's hometown, brought all our documents, and got our marriage licenses there. (We later held the wedding in the US- in China, getting legally married is a completely separate event from the wedding.)
Okay, so that's the legal aspect of getting married in China. Also, we have to be a man and woman because China doesn't allow same-sex marriage. (Same-sex couples would have to go to a different country to get married, I'm not sure on the details of this, sounds complicated.) Beyond that, I didn't think about the legal aspects at all.
Later, we started the process of applying for a US green card for my husband (but now we're not sure about the timeline for moving to the US, so we're currently not really moving forward with it). That's a very significant legal benefit that comes from marriage- if you're married to a US citizen, there's a straightforward, reasonable process to get a US green card, and eventually US citizenship. If you're not, well... it might not even be possible.
In China, my status as a legal immigrant is dependent on my job, not my marriage. If you're in China on a marriage visa, you're not legally allowed to work, so that's why I don't have a marriage visa. But it is nice to know that if I lose my job, and I can't find a new job before my residence permit expires, I can do the paperwork to change to a marriage visa, rather than being forced to leave China. (A "residence permit" is basically the same thing as a visa but if it's long-term they call it a residence permit instead of a visa. Also, I know that "marriage visa" isn't the correct technical term here, but I am trying not to get this blog post too bogged down in the minutiae of Chinese bureaucracy.)
There are things that are much more inconvenient for me than for a Chinese citizen, and even some things that I can't do at all, so I just ask my husband to do them for me, which works out well. For example, when buying imported products online, it's often a requirement to have a Chinese ID card, and the seller needs to use your ID card number for some customs bureaucracy stuff. If you don't have a Chinese ID card, you could either ask a Chinese citizen to buy the thing for you, or you can message the seller and explain that you don't have an ID card, and ask if they have a workaround. (Sometimes the seller will use their own ID card for it.)
Also, my husband has a bank account with a better interest rate than mine. I tried to open one, but it required a Chinese ID card. So, we keep a lot of our savings in this account, which only he has access to. But I am the organized one who tells him when to put money in, and when to spend money from that account. And I also have my own bank account with my own savings. (In China there aren't joint bank accounts.)
So, that's an overview of the ways that the legal aspects of marriage- where he is a citizen and I am an immigrant- have affected our lives. ("Hey babe I'm sending you a link for some deodorant that needs a Chinese ID card to buy, can you buy it for me?" - that's mostly what immigrant marriage is.)
Sometimes I read news articles about women who immigrated to the US and married American men, and how a woman in that situation can be very vulnerable. If her husband abuses her, she may feel like she's not able to divorce him, because it would affect her immigration status.
I don't have anything like that in my marriage, but I wonder if it's always true that a marriage between an immigrant and a citizen will have a power dynamic which could potentially turn bad. The root of it is, citizens always have more rights than immigrants. And an immigrant married to a citizen has more rights than an immigrant not married to a citizen. So, it is necessarily true that the immigrant will have more legal rights if they stay in the marriage than if they don't.
(Thinking about how people usually view this kind of marriage in very romantic terms, like "wow our love is so strong, it crosses the boundaries of culture, race, nations, and language, how beautiful" without thinking at all about the practicalities of it.)
Honestly, though, it's probably impossible to have a relationship that doesn't have any kind of "power dynamic" at all. (And maybe "power dynamic" isn't even the right word here- is it only a "power dynamic" if it's likely to turn harmful?) The two partners are two different people, each with their own unique resources, which the other partner can have access to if they stay in the relationship. Is that a "power dynamic"?
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Okay, but things are different if you have kids.
When I was pregnant a few years ago, I joined a few social media groups for international women in China who are partnered with Chinese men. And that's where I first heard about the massive amount of bureaucracy you have to wade through if you have a child who has 1 Chinese citizen parent and 1 foreign parent. See, China doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and yet, according to Chinese law, our son is a Chinese citizen because his dad is a Chinese citizen, and according to US law, our son is a US citizen because I am, so, uh... he does *have* two citizenships, but China doesn't *recognize* it, what on earth does that mean?
Well, the short version is, it means more paperwork for me. (And it means that China calls it "nationality conflict" [国籍冲突] instead of "dual citizenship." ... So basically dual citizenship, except with extra bureaucracy because they're pretending it's not dual citizenship.)
There were a whole bunch of bureaucracy-related decisions we had to make, after our son was born. On his birth certificate, do we put his Chinese name or English name? Do we get him a US passport? Do we get him a Chinese passport? Do we get him both passports? (Note that apparently it's illegal to get him both passports- but some parents do that.) Do we put him on the Chinese parent's hukou?
(There's nothing *wrong* with having a child in this situation- plenty of people do. The government employees never treat us like we've done something wrong, they just often don't know how to handle it because my son doesn't fit nicely into any of their categories.)
Okay, so I had to think through all of those options and figure out what would be best for our family. I'm really glad there are social media groups with other moms in this situation, because most people in China have no idea about any of this. I had no idea it would be so complicated.
But, when thinking through all these bureaucracy things for my son, it wasn't just about "how much of a pain is it to apply for a pro-forma visa vs a Chinese travel document?" I was also advised by the other moms to think very seriously about what it would mean for my child custody rights if we divorced.
Basically, the issue is, China considers the child to be a Chinese citizen- not recognizing dual citizenship. If you divorce in China, the Chinese court will give custody to the Chinese side of the family, and the foreign parent doesn't have rights. This is what I've heard- I don't know the exact details. If you're in that situation, talk to a lawyer, don't take this blog post as legal advice.
I've heard a lot of bad stories, in these social media groups for international moms married to Chinese men. Women posting things like "I want to divorce my husband, but I know that I would not be able to get custody of my child" [often followed by "and he never actually does any of the work of being a father- he'll just send the kid back to his hometown to live with her grandparents"]. Or "my husband says he will divorce me when our child is over 2 years old, because if the child is under 2, the court is more likely to award custody to the mother." Just really scary stuff. I've heard stories of women who divorced their husbands, and then the woman went back to her own country without her kids- oh god, don't do that, don't leave China without your kids if you're on bad terms with your husband- you might never get those kids back. I even heard about a woman who made plans with her husband that she would move to another country first, and then later he would come and bring their kids, but instead he suddenly cut off contact with her after she had left China. Oh god.
I've heard that, if the husband runs off with the children without your consent, Chinese courts will not hold that against him, and actually will award custody to him because the children already live with him and it would be difficult for the children to suddenly have to move- whereas, if you take the children and get the hell out of China, and then your custody battle is in a court in the US/Canada/Europe/etc, it's likely the court will say you kidnapped the children and that will look very bad for you.
Power dynamics.
If you really want to protect your rights as the non-Chinese parent, to the fullest extent that you can, here's what you need to do:
When the baby is born, put an English name on the birth certificate. This way, it will be impossible to add the child to the Chinese family hukou. Only people whose names are Chinese characters can be added to the hukou.
DO NOT allow the Chinese side of the family to put your child on the hukou. (If you did the previous step correctly, then you don't need to worry about this.) I have heard of cases where the Chinese side of the family put the child on the hukou without the mom's consent- yikes. (But honestly this is because for Chinese people, it's simply unimaginable to not have a hukou- they likely never even thought that *not* putting the child on the hukou was an option.)
Renounce your child's Chinese citizenship. (If your child is on the hukou, there is an extra step you have to do first: remove the child from the hukou. The hukou is likely in the grandparents' possession, so now you have to talk to them and convince them to remove the child from the hukou- yeah, good luck with that. This is why the previous step is important.) Renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship requires a bunch of paperwork and consent from both parents- so you have to do this when things are going well in your marriage, not when you're about to divorce.
Good job! If the child is not a Chinese citizen, then in the event of a divorce, it's likely the the Chinese court will award custody to the foreign parent.
If you've failed to do the above steps, and you want to divorce, you should move out of China, together with your husband and child, and after you've established your life in a different country, then file for divorce. You'll likely have a better time there than in a Chinese court.
Before my son was born, I talked to a bunch of moms about this, and got advice like "do NOT put your baby on the hukou" and "before I got pregnant, I made my husband agree that we will renounce the baby's Chinese citizenship as soon as possible" and less intense ones like "yeah we put our baby on the hukou, *shrug*". There are women who are extremely serious about advising other women to protect their rights, and also women who are aware that these risks exist but are confident they won't get divorced, so they don't worry too much about it.
(Please note that there are some other benefits to renouncing the child's Chinese citizenship. It's not just about the foreign parent not wanting the Chinese parent to screw them over in a child custody battle. Remember how I said that China doesn't "recognize" dual citizenship, so it makes things more complicated? A lot of bureaucracy stuff for the child is much simpler if the child is a fully foreign citizen, rather than being "both." For example, registering for school.)
I didn't know how to think about it. I had never considered marriage in those terms- like, how to make sure your spouse doesn't have the legal right to screw you over. Honestly, I don't want to think about marriage in that way. I don't want to think about *my* marriage in that way.
And, society tells us that we're not supposed to think about those things, because that means you don't have confidence in your marriage, and it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy and you'll end up divorcing. But the immigrant women in these social media groups, they know how it really works. They know there are very real risks of losing your children, if you don't consider these things and you end up getting divorced. I was told "you can't be naive and romantic about this."
I eventually came to this conclusion: I want to make the choices that are best for my son, rather than doing things that are sub-optimal for him, in the interest of protecting my own rights. He lives in China, so it will be more convenient for him if his legal name is in Chinese characters, rather than English. And we didn't want to renounce his Chinese citizenship- we want to let him make his own decision about that when he's old enough. I want to follow the law in China, so we didn't get him a Chinese passport, only a US passport. To enter and exit China, instead of a visa, he can use a document called an "entry exit permit" or "travel document", this is basically a passport issued to Chinese citizens who can't have a Chinese passport for whatever reason. (This is the workaround that the Chinese government invented because you're not supposed to have a Chinese passport and foreign passport.) We did not put him on my husband's hukou, because there's no benefit to it- it's not a Shanghai hukou, so it doesn't do anything for us, living in Shanghai.
Anyway, that's what we're doing. Uh so, I guess I didn't really take the advice to protect my own rights for child custody... I just really don't know what to do with that advice. It's very... game theory... like *not* choosing the option that's better for everyone overall, because it would put me as an individual in a position where other people could take advantage of me if they wanted.
I don't want game theory in my marriage. But am I too naive and romantic? I can say "marriage shouldn't be like that", but in reality it sometimes is like that, so, if you do end up in that situation, don't you want to be in a position where your rights are protected? Divorce IS real. Seems like a bad idea for me to just pretend that it's not. It's real, and it can be very bad. Especially for immigrants.
Long ago, when we were engaged, I remember reading a blog post where the writer said, "I wouldn't marry someone that I wouldn't divorce." Okay, that's worded confusingly, let me explain: What they meant was, you should marry someone that you trust will still treat you fairly, even if you divorce. Not someone who's going to fight dirty. I understand the point they're making, but also, I don't really know what to do with this advice either...? Nobody thinks they're going to get divorced, so does it even make sense to plan for that?
But in everything else you do, it's wise to have a backup plan in case it doesn't work. Is marriage different? Well, I think it is... because it's about love... uh right?
And here's another thing: International marriages require more trust than a marriage between 2 citizens who live in their own country. I don't know if it would really be practical, to think "the law doesn't protect my rights, so I need to set additional boundaries in order to never be in a situation where I'm vulnerable and my spouse could take advantage." In practice, it needs to be the opposite- it needs more trust, not less.
People in an international marriage frequently find themselves in situations where they have to depend on their spouse for help with navigating the language or culture. Suppose you're traveling together in Spouse A's country, and Spouse B has no idea how things work, so Spouse B has to trust Spouse A to basically handle all the decisions. And then of course, sometimes it works the other way, you're in Spouse B's country and Spouse A needs to listen to Spouse B's expertise on how to do things. This is super normal in an international marriage. You have to depend on each other like that.
(Is that a power dynamic?)
And there have been several times that I traveled to the US with my son, and my husband didn't come with us. This is also incredibly normal for immigrant families. Taking a trip to the other side of the world is a big deal- plane tickets are very expensive, and you have to take 2 weeks off work (2 weeks is a good amount, if it's less than 2 weeks it's not really worth it, you won't even be done with jet lag and your vacation will already be over). So, it's often the case that one parent isn't able to come on the trip, or feels it wouldn't be worth the cost. Again, SUPER normal for immigrant families.
I frequently see people posting in social media groups "I'm traveling to another country with my kids, and my husband isn't coming, do I need to have him sign something to give me permission?" Yes, many countries require some kind of signed document from the other parent. And there are always people in the social media groups ready to help- "yes, here's a template you can fill in and have him sign." This is super normal.
And if your marriage is good and you trust each other, then no big deal. I guess I would say, maybe don't let your spouse take the kids and go to the other side of the world, if there are warning signs that maybe they're planning to not come back? But normally, of course you trust each other, so it's not an issue.
There was even one time I was traveling to the US with my son, without my husband, and I had to get some paperwork for my son from the Chinese consulate in the US, and it took longer than expected. It took so long that I had to cancel my return flight because the Chinese consulate hadn't mailed me my stuff yet. (Bureaucracy!) I cancelled our return flights (from the US to China), waited a few more days till I got the documents in the mail, and then bought tickets for the flight back to China.
And all of that is no big deal. Yeah my husband missed us, and wished we could come back sooner, but, it was fine, it was only a few days. But I guess if you feel you should never be in a situation where your spouse can screw you over, it would be different... you realize, I *cancelled* our return flight. If you didn't trust your spouse, would you insist that instead of cancelling, they rebook for a different day immediately, despite not knowing exactly when the required documents would come in the mail? But, plane tickets are expensive- is it practical to live that way?
My point is, in an international marriage, it's very common that sometimes one spouse takes the kids and goes on vacation to the other side of the world. (Is that a power dynamic?) You see what I mean, an international marriage requires more trust- it's not going to work with less.
The way marriage should be is, you treat each other right because you love each other and want to have a good relationship- not because the law forces you to. But, when people divorce, they no longer have an incentive to treat each other right, so they do need to be forced by the law. And in an international marriage, well, you should be aware that the laws regarding divorce are different in different countries. And as an immigrant, you're at a disadvantage compared to a citizen. There are many stories of very ugly things that happen, when international couples divorce.
But, what do you even do with that information? Should you really make decisions proactively to protect your own rights in the case of divorce, even if those decisions aren't what's best for your child/ your marriage/ your family? I'm sure that the women who lost custody of their children in a Chinese court wish they had made those decisions, instead of trusting their partner. Is it unwise for me to live like I'll never be at risk for that, so I don't have to worry about it?
I don't want my marriage to be like that- I want to be a team, a family. But of course that's what everyone thinks when they get married- nobody expects they're going to divorce, but the reality is that some couples do divorce. (And maybe, when a marriage is breaking down, there is a transition point, where you no longer prioritize the marriage, but you prioritize your own rights, at your spouse's expense.) I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this information.
The overly-romantic view of international marriage is "our love is so beautiful, it transcends the boundaries of culture, race, language, and nationality" but the reality is more complicated than that. If you divorce, the immigrant spouse is likely to be in a situation where they don't have the same legal rights as the citizen spouse (in particular, in China, a foreign parent is very unlikely to be awarded custody if the children are Chinese citizens). A divorce can be ugly and painful in ways that wouldn't happen in a divorce between 2 citizens. At the same time, the practical reality of being from 2 completely different cultures will frequently require the 2 spouses to trust and depend on each other in ways that citizen couples don't have to. And it's very common that one spouse will take the children and travel to their home country, without the other spouse being present- which is totally fine, unless your spouse happens to be the kind of person who is going to take the children to the other side of the world and then disappear, in which case, what would you even do???
I guess marriage is a lot of things- it's love that reaches across cultures; it's trusting and supporting each other in practical ways every day; it's a legal arrangement where the exact details of what rights you have may or may not matter, depending on whether your spouse is a decent human being. How to reconcile all of this? That's a big question.
I love this song because it's called "International Love." We played this song at our wedding. Please ignore all the other lyrics except the part that says "international love."
I searched google for "levirate marriage" and this is the diagram I got. It's a family tree, with circles (women) and triangles (men), and one triangle is crossed out and an arrow is drawn from the wife to the brother. Image source.
A while ago I saw this blog series "When Marriage is Unjust" by Herb Montgomery- here's part 1, part 2, and part 3. It's about Luke 20:27-38, where the Sadducees come and ask Jesus this weird hypothetical question about a woman who married 7 brothers in sequence because they keep dying on her- whose wife will she be at the resurrection (ie, in heaven)? Jesus tells them that at the resurrection, there will be no marriage.
Montgomery's take on this passage is:
Jesus explains that in the age to come, an age of justice, there will be no marriage. How unjustly must the institution of marriage have been that Jesus couldn’t imagine it in the coming age of justice? Jesus states that all who are children of the resurrection will be “like the angels.” We can debate whatever that means, but the implication of the phrase is that marriage will be no more because all injustice will be no more.
Marriage in the time of Jesus was so unjust and oppressive to women, that Jesus says it cannot possibly exist at the resurrection, when there is perfect justice.
(Montgomery's blog posts also raise some good points about the practice of levirate marriage- which is what the Sadducees are describing, a widow has to marry her dead husband's brother- and how it was so centered on men. Like the dead man's "need" to have an heir is more important than his widow's right to make her own choices about things like marriage. I've heard the argument that this practice was intended to help the woman, because if she was single and didn't have a son, she basically had no way to provide for herself- even so, the problems are all caused by patriarchy.)
I find this fascinating because it's so different from what I was taught "the bible says" about marriage, growing up in evangelicalism and purity culture. Purity culture teaches that "God has a plan for your life" about what person you will marry. That God picked 1 specific opposite-gender person for you, and that's "God's plan" (and you have to pray really hard and be really stressed about trying to figure out who it is, or else you're ruining God's plan). And that when you follow all of God's rules, don't have sex before marriage, and marry the one magical person that God picked, the result will be so perfect and magical and amazing. You'll have such a loving, intimate, romantic connection. You'll have the best sex ever. You'll fit right into your gender role, and it will feel so natural and fulfilling.
That was how I viewed marriage. You find someone you can truly trust, that you can love with everything you have, and you build a life together, as equal partners. I thought that's what marriage *is*. (And yes, lucky for me, that *is* whatmy marriage is about.)
Turns out that's a pretty modern idea- having a marriage based on romantic love. And historically, the way it often worked was, women have a bunch of less-than-ideal options, and one of those options is to get married- so that's why they get married.
It really amazes me how obvious it is that there are no women in the bible who followed the "purity rules" and then had a perfect marriage, and I totally never noticed this, until I had already started to question purity ideology. I'm a bible nerd, I knew all the stories, I knew all the messed-up ways that men of the bible treated their wives, and yet somehow I still bought this idea that "God has picked 1 guy who is perfect for you, and if you follow these biblical rules, it guarantees a perfect marriage." HOW??? (I ended up writing about this here: "God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical.)
As I was thinking about the idea of "unjust marriage" and getting married because it's the least-bad option, I thought about this article I had read, from Sixth Tone: A Vietnamese Bride’s Chinese Dream. It's about a Vietnamese woman who didn't have many options for getting a well-paying job in Vietnam, and then she heard about a cousin who had married a Chinese man and moved to China. She decided to look into this option for herself too, which meant taking a very shady bus ride hundreds of miles into China, with some other Vietnamese women. They came to some small village in China and met the available men. She says this about the man whom she decided to marry:
The next family offered 100,000 yuan and had a two-story brick house. The suitor was in good physical shape, had a junior high school diploma, was five years older than me, and looked to be freshly shaven.
The first time I saw him, I felt nothing; my only concern was the bride price. After weighing it up, I decided to marry him.
It really surprised me, the way marriage is talked about in this article. It's not about "you know this person and you love this person and you want to spend your life with them." Instead, it's talked about like... do you think you could tolerate this person? If you had to live with him and have his children, could you accept that? Is it a better situation overall than the life you have in Vietnam?
The article also talks about the difficulties that this woman has because she entered China illegally. Not having id, worrying about being deported, not even having the right documents to be able to go back to Vietnam- and also, she couldn't speak Chinese at all when she first arrived. Immigrant women in this kind of situation are extremely vulnerable. What if her husband turns out to be abusive? She can't easily leave him because then she may get deported.
This is the reality of what marriage is, for a lot of people in the world today. It's a way to get out of a bad situation, into a different-and-hopefully-less-bad situation. And I think reading about women's experiences today, choosing marriage for these reasons, can help us when we read what the bible says about marriage.
We read words like "marriage" or "divorce" in the bible, and we think of those terms in the way we see them defined in our culture today- which is very much because of the work of feminist activists, pushing for changes in society so that women would have better options. And as a result of that feminist work, it feels normal to us to marry someone because you want to be with them, rather than because it's the least-bad option available to you. And also, the work of LGBT activists- because the concept of same-sex marriage is very much dependent on the idea of marrying someone because you want to be with them, not because of societal expectations, or economic reasons, or being expected to have children. (But also there are legal things like health insurance, hospital visitation, etc, which are very important reasons same-sex couples need to have the right to marry.) So this is how we see marriage, and then we read the bible and we assume that's what the bible means when it uses the word "marriage", but wow it is NOT.
So, in summary: In purity culture, I was taught that God has a plan for all of us to have a wonderful marriage with an opposite-sex partner, whom we work together with so incredibly well, and that we love and trust fully. And yes, I'm married now, and I'm glad my relationship with my husband is like that- we work together well, it's romantic, we love each other, etc. (But I don't believe in the gender-roles stuff, and also it's important to me that I chose to marry him, instead of just coasting along on "God's plan.") But, this view of marriage is a very modern thing- and actually, there are many cultures in the world today where that's not what marriage is at all. Instead, marriage is about financial needs, or immigration opportunities, or fitting a role that your family wants you to fit... And the concept of marriage that we see in the bible is much closer to that than to romantic ideals about "we want to spend our lives together."
When we read what the bible says about marriage, we should remember that's the kind of marriage it's talking about. And we should be grateful that because of feminist and LGBT activists, marriage in our culture has become something so much better than what it was in biblical times.
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And 1 more thing I want to say: We can help by donating to charities that help women around the world have better economic opportunities, and charities that help immigrants. For example, there's Women For Women International, which focuses on women who are survivors of war.
A woman in a beautiful dress stands on the red carpet, while a huge group of photographers takes photos of her. Image source.
[content note: abusive dating relationships, "Fifty Shades of Grey"]
So for some reason, "Fifty Shades of Grey" has been on my mind. (Maybe because I watched some videos about why "Twilight" is about an extremely unhealthy relationship.) I never read the book, but I watched the movie a few years ago, and wrote a post about it: How would we even know 'Fifty Shades' isn't normal? Basically, I was so EXTREMELY CREEPED OUT by how much that guy (Christian Grey) used language about "choice" and "consent" as if it was a healthy relationship, while also stalking and manipulating her. It SCARED me, imagining a girl like me, with a purity-culture background and barely any sex-ed or teaching on what a healthy relationship looks like... if she walks away from purity culture and then immediately finds Christian Grey, she will see ZERO RED FLAGS. She has no ability to recognize that the way he treats her is shady as hell.
Thinking about being extremely naive, and how easy it would be to get caught up in a bad situation like that. And that's what I want to talk about in this post too.
The point I want to make is, I can easily imagine how a naive girl [like me] would see this situation and see a power dynamic in it, which is actually exactly backwards from the power dynamic that exists in reality.
He buys her all kinds of expensive gifts. He tells her he's so attracted to her that he can't control himself. He stalks her.
And she might interpret it this way: Wow, I'm such an attractive/beautiful/interesting person, that I've got this rich guy wrapped around my finger. He wants me so much, he's so desperate, that I could ask him for anything and he'd give it to me. I have so much power here.
But if you know a little more about how the real world works, you see it's actually like this: He has enough money that he's able to maintain a habit of impulsively buying whatever he wants. If some shiny toy catches his attention, he can buy it, it's no big deal. Currently, this girl is the "shiny toy" that he wants. He spends money on her because he always spends money on things; it's no big deal to him. But he never risks anything that he actually values. He has years of experience being a rich businessman, of course he knows how to calculate where the line is between "having fun doing whatever I want" and "throwing away things that are actually of value to me, which are going to affect me." He's not going to throw away everything on a whim, just because he's attracted to someone.
All that stuff about "not being able to control himself"? That's bullshit. He can certainly control himself enough to avoid, say, making a scene in front of his colleagues/ business partners. Because that's something that actually matters to him. But apparently he "can't control himself" when he's cornering a girl in an elevator, because it's a situation where there won't be any consequences for him.
So I can easily imagine that she thinks he's so infatuated with her, that he would do anything for her, and she's the one with power. But that's completely backwards. In reality, he manipulates her, while not allowing any risk to the things that actually matter to him.
(For example: Does he introduce her to his friends? Does he talk to her about what's important to him, and value her perspective on it? Does he want to share his life with her, as an equal? Idk, maybe in the sequel, the relationship develops a bit more. At the beginning, though, he sees her as an object rather than a person.)
And actually, her naivete may be one of the reasons that he is drawn to her. He doesn't do these romantic gestures for her because she's so beautiful and kind and intelligent and interesting, and he's just in awe of what a wonderful person she is- he does this because she's inexperienced and will be easy for him to manipulate.
I have another example of having the power dynamics backwards. It's about modesty culture.
So, in Christian purity culture, girls are taught that we have to dress "modestly" because boys just can't think straight when they're in the presence of an attractive girl, the poor dears. The boys are so weak, and need the girls to help them.
I used to imagine it like this: Wow, as a girl, I possess in me this amazingly potent feminine power to control boys, but I must never use it. Oh, but if I did use it- if I let a bra strap show- if I wore a tight shirt- I could get the boys to do whatever I wanted. I would have a line of boys following me around while I teased them. They would stand at a respectful distance and look at me with hearts in their eyes, awed at just being in my presence. They would beg- beg me for a date, a kiss, etc- and I would say no, and they would never violate that "no." All they could do would be continue to beg, or maybe bring me gifts, etc. I would have so much power.
But it's not like that, it's actually opposite. Sexual harassment... women getting catcalled by men on the street... A creepy guy notices a girl, and it can be a scary thing for her, because she doesn't know what he'll do if she rejects him. Maybe he'll call her names, maybe he'll attack her or rape her.
There are people who think that sexual harassment is "a compliment" and don't understand why women complain about it. I think the reason for this misconception is that they imagine a power dynamic completely different than what's actually going on. They imagine a more equal power dynamic, where one person says "you're sexy/beautiful/whatever" and the other person says "thank you" and then they part ways and nothing else happens. In reality, though, it's not "a compliment." In reality, the person who's being "complimented" may fear- "what does this guy want from me? if I say no, is he going to become dangerous? would I be able to get away from him?"
"Modesty" was supposedly about how women are so powerful and men are so weak, but the reality is that powerful men who rape women often get away with it, and people defend rapists by asking about the victim's modesty. "What was she wearing?" Modesty is a way to control women. As a naive teenage girl, I had the power dynamics totally backwards.
(I specifically mentioned "men who rape women" there, because it relates to my point about "modesty", but obviously rapists can be any gender, and victims can be any gender, and it's a PROBLEM that society doesn't take it seriously when a man is raped.)
And, actually, in my fantasy about boys following me around and respecting my boundaries, well, that kind of sounds like celebrities with their fans and paparazzi. But here's the key thing: Celebrities hire bodyguards for exactly that reason. If you have obsessive fans stalking you, they don't stop just because you say "no", they stop if someone (your bodyguard) has the power to stop them. They stop if they are going to face consequences that actually matter to them.
Naively, one might think that it's about attraction. It's about if Person A is so incredibly attracted to Person B, that Person B therefore has the power to make Person A do anything they want. But no, in reality it's not about that at all. It's about who has power, in the real world, not in a sexy/romantic way. Who has the power to do whatever they want and get away with it. Who has the power to stop the other person.
Now, the exception to this is extreme romantic infatuation which drives a person to make unwise decisions as they pursue the person they're infatuated with. A person falls in love and then wants to make sacrifices and give up things they've worked hard for, just for the chance of being with the person they're infatuated with. And perhaps this is what Ana thinks Christian's situation is, in "Fifty Shades of Grey." She thinks he's so in love with her, that it drives him to act reckless. No. He's not actually being "reckless"- he's identifying situations where he won't face any consequences for his behavior, and specifically when he's in those situations, he takes whatever he wants.
In my own experiences being young and naive, I can understand how a very naive person would think that attraction necessarily means romantic infatuation. But... after the second time you fall in love, you understand that just because you feel something, doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. People who actually have practical experience in the real world know that there's more to life than romantic feelings. After experiencing crushes a few times, we learn to keep them in perspective. So just because someone is attracted to you, and they're performing romantic gestures for you, doesn't mean that they're overtaken with obsession for you, and you hold all the power over them. Maybe that's how it works for a teenager having their first crush, but that's not how it works as an adult in the real world.
When I was young and naive, I wish I had been taught how to take a step back and see the actual power dynamics at work. It's not about the strength of one's attraction, it's about how far you can go before someone's able to put meaningful consequences on you.
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Another excellent example of getting the power dynamics backwards is the idea that "women make men do things" which Dr. Laura Robinson describes here:
I am nearly 43 yrs old. I have had 2 children, probably 10+ gyns, and so many pelvic exams.
Only last week did I encounter a doctor who first asked, "so many women have experienced sexual assault, will you be comfortable with this exam? Or can we talk about what you need?" 🤯
3.This School Has the Worst Fire Safety Policy You've Ever Seen (2013) Okay I know this is from 2013, but I just saw it shared on Twitter and I am gobsmacked. (Also he links to a related post that he wrote but his link is broken, here is the correct link for that one.) Hemant Mehta literally emailed Pensacola Christian College to ask for clarification, and they replied twice, but somehow they aren't able to say the words "getting out of a burning building is MORE IMPORTANT then dressing modestly."
4. The recent kerfluffle on twitter is that some pastor told a story about how he was minding his own business at a restaurant and then the SEXIEST WOMAN EVER came and hit on him- the consensus on twitter is that this never happened, and now we are analyzing the cultural environment that these stories come from/ the reasons that a male pastor would make up a story like this (and this is a whole genre- it's not like this is the only example).
Okay, I figured it out. These kinds of stories are the only kinds of stories men can tell about how they heroically prevented adultery that also leave them totally in the clear. The reason why they sound so ridiculous is because that’s not how men and women have sex with each https://t.co/h0A3hPdWRR
5.The Princess Bride (1987) -- Ace Mini-Review (February 17) "Unlike many rom coms, which treat True Love as a universal goal everyone should be searching for, The Princess Bride presents it as practically unattainable. And, as an ace-spectrum person, I actually find that comforting."
6.Extremely Hardcore (January 17) About Twitter employees' experiences after Musk took over. Yikes.
8. Far From Home: Meet the Migrants Returning to Shanghai (February 16) "On Sunday, Sixth Tone visited an underground parking lot at the Shanghai Railway Station, where a temporary shelter has been set up for returning workers. Since public transportation closes at midnight, many migrant workers find it too expensive to stay at hotels or book taxis. Instead, they stay overnight to catch the earliest metro to their next job."
And 2 more articles, also from Sixth Tone:
How the Pandemic Left China’s Migrant Kids Behind (February 16) "Less encouraging is the data from the last three years. Although reliable statistics are hard to come by, education figures suggest that the pandemic has reversed some of the progress of the past decade and separated large numbers of children from their migrant parents."
Chinese Teams in Turkey: Rescue Over but Relief Will Take Years (February 17) "As the world pledged to help, China was among the first, offering aid, equipment, and personnel. While the government announced 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) in aid, official estimates suggest that nearly 300 personnel, both sent by the government and from independent organizations such as Blue Sky Rescue and Ramunion, have joined the rescue effort."
10.There is no sleeping giant (February 17) "That all-or-nothing view of revival will only ever produce the latter result. It will never bring 'revival.' I’m not sure it will even allow it."
