From the NYT:
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
China’s ‘Leftover’ Women
By LETA HONG FINCHER
BEIJING — The headlines scream like sensational tabloids: “Overcoming the Big Four Emotional Blocks: Leftover Women Can Break out of Being Single.” “Eight Simple Moves to Escape the Leftover Women Trap.” And my personal favorite: “Do Leftover Women Really Deserve Our Sympathy?”
These eye-catching topics do not appear in supermarket-aisle gossip magazines. They are articles about single, professional women published on the Web site of China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation. ...
In 2007, the Women’s Federation defined “leftover” women (sheng nu ) as unmarried women over the age of 27 and China’s Ministry of Education added the term to its official lexicon. Since then, the Women’s Federation Web site has run articles stigmatizing educated women who are still single.
Take this uplifting column from March 2011 that ran just after International Women’s Day:
Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don’t realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls.
After knocking some good sense into those misguided women who pursue a higher education, the column accuses educated, single women of sleeping around and having degenerate morals:
Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.
Glad we got that straight. Now, why would China’s state feminist agency conduct a scare-mongering campaign against single, educated women?
Curious, I searched the Women’s Federation Web site and found that it posted its first article on “leftover” women in 2007, shortly after China’s State Council issued an edict on strengthening the Population and Family Planning program to address “unprecedented population pressures.” These pressures include the sex-ratio imbalance — which “causes a threat to social stability” — and the “low quality of the general population, which makes it hard to meet the requirements of fierce competition for national strength,” according to the State Council. The State Council names “upgrading population quality (suzhi)” as one of its key goals, and appoints the Women’s Federation as a primary implementer of its population planning policy.
What better way to upgrade population quality than to frighten “high-quality” women into marrying and having a child for the good of the nation?
The Women’s Federation columns on sheng nu all share the same goal: convince single, educated women to stop being so ambitious and get married already:
The main reason many girls become “leftover women” is that their standards for a partner are too high … As girls are not too picky, finding a partner should be as easy as blowing away a speck of dust.
Some of the columns have been reposted several times over the years and list helpful tips, such as “seduce but don’t pester” and “be persistent but not willful”:
When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking ... this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?
Since 2008, local population planning commissions in cities such as Nanjing and Ningbo have carried out “interventions” to address the “leftover women crisis.” Local Women’s Federation branches have arranged matchmaking events for “highly educated, high-quality” women. This March there was a drive in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, for “leftover women to speedily find conjugal happiness.”
Here in the Enlightened West, however, we have moved far beyond such retrograde notions as "conjugal happiness" and all realize that true feminist bliss is dying alone, like Shulamith Firestone.
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103 comments:
If I give a damn what happens to women in nonwhite countries, irritable nonwhite activists will accuse me of having a white savior complex, so I say the hell with 'em.
We should have let the Stalinist | Maoist communists win.
What can we do to get a new chattering class? (Can the current one be voted out of office?)
Here in the Enlightened West, however, we all realize that true feminist bliss is dying alone
Booom
Headshot.
The abrupt introduction of elective and highly effective birth control into human populations upset the natural balance of sexual attraction vs. the level of reluctance people may have to go out and have kids.
In other words, people, females mostly, can now satisfy their level reluctance to have children much more effectively than they could for the preceding countless millenia.
So it is sort of a one sided fight, with the tendency to not want to have kids combined w/effective birth control completely wiping out the mechanism of sexual attraction causing "accidents" or unwanted pregnancies. Hence the population crashes in highly modern/advanced populations.
This will all come back into balance in a few generations w/a much higher incidence of women who actively want kids emerging.
Childless women, as always, are evolutionary/adaptive dead ends. This is similar to the adaptive problems other populations have had with the abrupt introduction of alcohol, European diseases, advanced weaponry, sugar/high-calorie diets, and so forth. And it isn't their fault, so I can't get too worked up wishing feminists would have more kids or whatever.
By not having kids and leaving it to those who do want kids, they are taking care of this problem for future generations.
Leftover women in China? I thought there was a shortage of marriageable women, due to the Chinese aborting their daughters in the one child policy madness.
I bet a 27 year old Chinese woman with an education can probably find someone to marry if she wants that. If not in China, in Europe or North America.
This makes no sense: China has a well-documented surplus of men.
"Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don’t realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls."
Have you checked out Leta Hong Fincher's profile on LinkedIn? She fits the definition of a leftover woman to a t. No wonder she's so peeved by the Chinese government's policy.
They should be encouraged to invite Larry Summers to Chair their Feminist .org.
Don't worry about that, worry about disparate impact: Hispanic gets 99 years in jail for being, not so smart, and Hispanic.
Steve, this has less to do with career feminists, and more to do with upper middle class girls who go to college, whore around with alpha males (frat boys, basketball players, etc.), then go to grad school, whore around some more, and in their late 20's/early 30's try to "settle" for some beta herb provider male. But by then, it's often too late and even the betas aren't going for it these days. And it's a tragedy, because these women going to college are on the right half of the bell curve. It's Idiocracy in action.
Liberals facing reality..always amusing to watch.
Not enough Wangs to go around. Apparently, 1.6-1.9 billion Chinese in China is not enough. (No, I don't believe China's reported 1.3 billion population statistic) As long as they have white people to lean on and pity them they can produce as many children as they want and the white world will have the displeasure of dealing with them. Instead of discouraging poor, dumb women not to have children, they encourage rich, smart women to have children. Somehow that will balance things out, in their minds.
Here is a small excerpt from Wikipedia about the exploding birth "toursim" of Chinese:
"As the United States practices birthright citizenship, children born in the US will be US citizens. The closest option (from China) is Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US dependency in the western Pacific Ocean that allows Chinese visitors without visa restrictions. The island is currently experiencing an upswing in Chinese births. This option is used by relatively affluent Chinese who often have secondary motives as well, wishing their children to be able to leave communist China when they grow older or bring their parents to the US."
Why is feminism always about upper-class women? And their oppressive upper-class male husbands?
I'm starting to think that feminism is class warfare. Please note that a third of women have always worked (typically low-labouring jobs, NOT "careers").
The whole stay-at home/housewife thing who never did anything and had nannies with her was for wives of very rich men (alpha men?). Thereby, these were high-status women as well (daughters or female relatives of rich men). Alpha females, in other words.
Most beta men (mercenaries? peasants?) throughout history had women who worked inside the home or did something part-time. They cohabitated. They didn't legally marry as the upper-classes. The whole arranged marriage thing was cultural, and everybody did it in a way (nobody stayed together for "love"), but it was only official (as in paper) for rich people.
Most omega females were prostitutes or did something that involved criminality or illegal/wrong/hidden practices, just as omega males.
Feminism seems geared towards satisfying the whims of 1-5% of the population at most. Along with powerful rich (millionaire/billionaire) daddies who fund feminism and the wonderful husbands of these strong independent career women.
Ever notice how every feminist is an upper-class (or upper-middle class) girl? There's a lot of Jewish and European feminists. Not many Hispanic or African feminists.
Doesn't ring a bell anyone?
Feminism has been a disaster for the lower-classes and it is currently destroying the middle-classes. Scratch that, it HAS destroyed the middle classes.
Feminism needs money to waste, but if it wastes too much then it leads to debt and financial collapse. How ironic.
I don't think I understand.
We are told that in China they are so evil that they kill little baby girls with wild abandon (I was going to say gay abandon but decided not to).
So, that means that they have an enormous imbalance of males.
So, now there are women left on the shelf? What is going on? Are they too choosy?
In the United States, we are enlightened. Instead of encouraging intelligent women to marry and have children...we encourage them to go into debt getting a useless PhD and pricing themselves out of the mating market. And we forcibly tax people to pay for birth control that only the more intelligent will even think to use.
The worst part is that this women is part of the Sociology department at Tsinghua. Sociology? Dear god.
The silver lining is that those who believe feminist ideology are less likely to reproduce. Thus, over time, leftism weeds itself out of the gene pool. The only problem is if susceptibility to leftist malware correlates with clock speed; that is, if you're dumb, you aren't as vulnerable to the leftist verbal mind viruses. This means that leftism might go, but with it many of our best and brightest.
A lot of this has to do with a hugely skewed Gini co-efficient, with a tiny contingent of immensely affluent nouveau riche in China enjoying their pick of all the babes in the country.
These are the guys the hot/eligible women now covet the most (earlier in the century it was Taiwanese or Hong Kong Chinese) and there still really aren't enough of them to go around - even in the big cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen.
The gender imbalance is probably one of the more overstated items of gloomy demographic news for China, since so many female births in the countryside are left unreported, and it's mainly the rustic population which has a preference for male offspring.
I know of a woman born after the one child policy was implemented who wanted a passport but didn't have a birth certificate because her birth was left unreported. She went to the local police station and they already have a standard procedure for her situation due to its widespread nature of her predicament.
"
I bet a 27 year old Chinese woman with an education can probably find someone to marry if she wants that. If not in China, in Europe or North America. "
There used to be a saying in Shanghai which was current a few years ago:
"If you're an unattractive girl with no job prospects, just marry a Westerner. They can't tell the difference."
Love that picture of Ms. Firestone - in high school, she must have been voted "mostly likely to end up eaten by her cats."
Made a donation via Amazon BTW - second time's the charm.
Lots of effort goes into validating the lifestyle choices of childless women like Valerie Jarrett and seemingly every other female employed in Barry's office.
Feminism is an attack by these deranged rich women upon poor women.
The author of the article:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/author/letahongfincher/
Not attractive, aging, and can't stop being educated - she is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Tsinghua University and States. Before that, she got M.S. in East Asian Studies from Stanford and B.S. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard.
...or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner.
I know two Chinese women in the US for whom this fits like a glove. One of them I was interested in 20 years ago when she was (unbeknownst to me) dating a wealthy married guy (who eventually kicked her to the curb like yesterday's trash). Last year she tried to get something started with me.
Sorry, lady. Your looks and fertility are gone. What does a woman in her late 40s brings to the table?
Those excerpts are hilariously straightforward and truthful. They apply mutatis mutandis to all modern women. That is the way good mothers talk to their daughters. Steve's last line would make the grade of those columns, too.
So, now there are women left on the shelf? What is going on? Are they too choosy?
In a society where the emphasis is on having a son, a woman who is out of her childbearing years has gone from very high social value to very low.
There is another solution. If the woman is waiting for the perfect man, She could instead marry a beta man, but have children with a perfect man. The aim of creating a better society is achieved, by the sacrifice of the beta husband. Males often place blame on women, but perhaps the insistence by men that they pass on their genes, and only raise their children, in marriage, is to blame as well. It is very easy for a man to procreate, and many men probably should not be procreating for one reason or another. A relaxation of reproductive customs and rules may be a good idea.
Or, she could have one child with the beta man, on the condition that she be allowed to have a child with a perfect man, who will be raised like one of the family. But china has a one child policy so this wouldn't work.
Stacy, I've been saying for years that, while feminism may be helpful for career women, it has nothing to offer the female 99 per cent, who have jobs. Boring jobs. Exhausting jobs. Dangerous jobs. Jobs that are all of the above. Many of us are saddled with having to work these jobs because feminists invented no fault divorce and trained men not to take too much interest I the children they conceived, lest those children be killed as Dad looked on helplessly.
Have you checked out Leta Hong Fincher's profile on LinkedIn? She fits the definition of a leftover woman to a t.
I guess that would depend on whether "Fincher" is her married name. I'm guessing it probably is.
"China has a well-documented surplus of men."
I wonder if there is a surplus of well-educated men, though.
In the USA, there certainly is an 'Education Gap' (nationally, among 25-34-year-olds, there are nearly 13 women with a Bachelor's degree or higher for every 10 men with equivalent education. In the 100 biggest metros, 38% of marriage-age women and 31% of marriage-age men hold college degrees [2008 data]).
That means, 21% of college-degree-holding American women will not be able to find a college-degree-holding husband.
If this dynamic applies to China, too, then the article makes sense.
Here in the Enlightened West, however, we all realize that true feminist bliss is dying alone
Well, alone, except for all the cats.
To those who don't understand, the word is hypergamy. You can have a surplus of 1 billion males, but women don't marry down.
Steve,
Nothing on this site even raises an eyebrow in China. The rise of China should be very good for realism on these issues. And if you wanted to write a book about the Harvard price or American universities, I bet the Chinese edition would outsell the English one.
I'm sympathetic to this kind of thinking, being a Christian who believes in chastity and the Patriarchy, but something bothers me: it's mostly self-serving, mixing truth with fiction.
This kind of advice, from men, seems to proliferate when there is a woman shortage. It's when women seem to have the most options that scare tactics are used the most. In China of all places, we are to believe there is a "crisis" whereupon women past the age of 27 are having trouble finding husbands?! We don't have near the imbalance China has, and yet my husband and I have noticed in just the past year the proliferation of older women/younger men marriages in response to female shortage.
Worst of all is the insinuation that these women settle for men, on average, with fewer previous sexual partners than they themselves had and I find that dubious. Exceptions exist again.
Jason Malloy said once that one of the strongest constants in sociology is that men and women pair up with those of extremely similar sexual histories with men ever so slightly edging out women on average. HPV rates among women confirm this: 27% of American women will have only one parter, but only about 20% of American women are believed to have never caught HPV. The overlap due to the extra partner(s) their one man had.
Whiskey himself, famous for emoting things like this, once wrote that men should sleep around first before marrying, presumably going by what he writes, a virgin.
Spengler's maxim is one of my undeniable truths of life: in all times, and in all places, the men and women deserve each other.
Leta Hong Fincher: I don't think she is married, she appears to be Euro/Asian from her picture.
In the USA, there certainly is an 'Education Gap' (nationally, among 25-34-year-olds, there are nearly 13 women with a Bachelor's degree or higher for every 10 men with equivalent education. In the 100 biggest metros, 38% of marriage-age women and 31% of marriage-age men hold college degrees [2008 data]).
My question is whether women are interested in marrying a guy with education, or if income potential is enough. Women are less likely to get degrees that translate into a well paying job. A woman with a degree in French Literature will probably never make as much money as a plumber, electrician, or rig jockey.
During the internet and later housing booms these gals all went to work for the government at some level. But since governments stopped hiring their income potential has dropped like a stone.
So how valuable are the intangible benefits of a bachelor's degree in the marriage market?
...“leftover women to speedily find conjugal happiness.”
I'm less sure about the 'finding conjugal happiness' part than I am receptive to the thesis that smart women marrying late or never and having fewer to no children is dysgenic.
And regarding being receptive, the Chinese see themselves as trying to 'catch up' to the West, so I wonder if this includes things like feminism and women in the workplace? Although I admit it's harder to imagine the Chinese taking an idea like a "Frauenquota" seriously.
If you're an unattractive girl with no job prospects, just marry a Westerner. They can't tell the difference.
They do realize the difference, it's just that being with a plain NON-feminist beats being with a more attractive whiny american woman any day of the week.
Frizzy curly brown hair. Prominent nose. Hyphenated surname. Doesn't really look Eurasian. I think this specimen is a rare example of a Jewess with a Chinese husband.
This makes no sense: China has a well-documented surplus of men.
The old Bonnie Tyler song title encapsulates the problem. It appears Chinese women believe in "holding out for a hero" or staying single. Happiness is a hard thing to define, but the extinction of arranged marriages means that a lot of super-picky upscale women might or might not end up happy, but they will probably end up childless and single.
"Feminism seems geared towards satisfying the whims of 1-5% of the population at most."
Gotta keep the Scotch Irish happy...
Nothing on this site even raises an eyebrow in China. The rise of China should be very good for realism on these issues. And if you wanted to write a book about the Harvard price or American universities, I bet the Chinese edition would outsell the English one.
Steve, maybe you should write regular Letter From America in a major Chinese media outlet. Sort of like Alistair Cooke's Letters From America back in the 20th century.
Also China has started affirmative action for boys. Girls are asked higher scores to get into some majors.
Disencouraging female education, the first step towards breaking feminism's backbone.
http://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/the-only-path-for-eugenics/
Now no one can he say doesn't know why certain branches of the evolutionary tree die out. Auf wiedersehen. Au revoir. Good-bye To All That. It's Been Nice Knowing Us.
Firestone, neé Feuerstein.
Shulamith Firestone and dying alone are representative of 21st-century feminism? Give me a break. That stuff had already become history by the 1970s.
You're at your best when you think. Ideology makes stupid.
Stacy, there was a whole movement about what you're talking about, "womanism" (as opposed to feminism).
There's also a classic article about upper-middle-class feminists: Caitlin Flanagan, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement. My favorite line from the article: "If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can't have something."
China has a huge gender imbalance problem. The ratio was 118 newborn boys to 100 newborn girls in 2011.
The natural rate is 105 boys to 100 girls.
However, the imbalance is very strong in the rural areas and towns. The more sophisticated a location becomes the imbalance disappears. In Shanghai its 105 to 100.
This article is about mating problems in sophisticated parts of China so the crisis of educated women holding out makes sense even in the wider context of huge gender imbalances in China.
On another related topic. It seems like a given now that the majority of boys in rural China won't be able to find a spouse. Is that going to lead to changes in the population generations from now?
Western feminists don't die alone. They die surrounded by doctors and nurses provided by the government-mandated healthcare program.
A lot of the expolosion in the size of govt is about looking after people who choose not to have a family that would look after them.
"and all realize that true feminist bliss is dying alone, like Shulamith Firestone."
True feminist bliss is to see others die alone like herself.
"You can have a surplus of 1 billion males, but women don't marry down."
There is some feminist science-fiction where the authoress muses what would happen when women surpass men to such a degree, so that even best men are no match.
Ahem.
"That means, 21% of college-degree-holding American women will not be able to find a college-degree-holding husband."
Considering that almost half of UK's college educated women in 40s are childless, big deal!
"So, that means that they have an enormous imbalance of males."
On paper, and as Ron Woo notes, there was an article documenting that chinese may be hiding million babies a year.(on googling, the number is three million)
"Why is feminism always about upper-class women? And their oppressive upper-class male husbands? "
It's quite funny that a movement about equality doesn't look for equality amongst its own. Stephanie Coontz in her recent NYT tirade against Hana Rosin's 'End of Men' made the same point.
"Please note that a third of women have always worked (typically low-labouring jobs, NOT "careers").
"
yep yep, the "right" to work is a funny invention
And Steve remarked that the criticism of Summers of Harvard also came from other men who presumably stood to gain from their women-folk.
Ex-submarine officer: it cuts both ways; not only women who don't want to have children will be filtered out, men who don't want to have children assortatively mating with similar women will also be filtered out of the gene pool.
"This will all come back into balance in a few generations w/a much higher incidence of women who actively want kids emerging."
And an equally high incidence of men who actively don't care.
Like this guy.
Future belongs to the Han.
"I'm starting to think that feminism is class warfare."
It's basically ethnic warfare of Jewish and Northern European women against the men of every other race by enticing their women to defect and join their franchise. It does rest on class presuppositions but this class happens to be dominated by women of those races.
"Please note that a third of women have always worked (typically low-labouring jobs, NOT "careers")."
So you're saying feminists ought to do slave labor. I agree.
-uh
"That means, 21% of college-degree-holding American women will not be able to find a college-degree-holding husband."
Considering that almost half of UK's college educated women in 40s are childless, big deal!"
Ah, the UK; Isn't it grand that we Won the War?
On point: A certain number of those college-degree-holding men will marry non-degree-holding women. Presumably far fewer educated women will marry non-educated men. Thus, the actual effect of the 'Education Gap' on "leftover White women" will, inevitably, be greater.
They do realize the difference, it's just that being with a plain NON-feminist beats being with a more attractive whiny american woman any day of the week.
Heartiste [are you paying attention?]: This.
This, this, this, this, THIS, a thousand times THIS!
You can take teh flamingly hawtest "11" on the face of the earth - Charlize Theron, Megan Fox, Angelina Joli, Monica Bellucci, whomever - but the moment that cold, dark, feminazi venom starts spewing out of her mouth, the "11" immediately plummets to "0".
lest those children be killed as Dad looked on helplessly
I used to value IQ above all else, but in recent years, "has a good heart" has soared to the very top of the list of qualities that I'm looking for in a chick.
If you wanna date [much less actually marry] me, then you'd better not be the kind of chick who would ever even entertain the notion of sneaking off to an abortuary and murdering my child.
Sorry, lady. Your looks and fertility are gone.
Exactly.
Marriage is for making babies [and then raising them].
Period.
This makes no sense: China has a well-documented surplus of men.
Lol, they don't have enough women to go around, so it makes no sense that they want to make sure every last woman is married. Gotcha.
"Why is feminism always about upper-class women? ... I'm starting to think that feminism is class warfare."
Great insight at 6:19pm supra, Stacy. One that is not widely shared, at least among the Elect.
You probably read Professor Doctor State Dept. Director Ann-Marie Slaughter in the July 2012 Atlantic, Why Women Still Can't Have It All. As the title of her article shows, Slaughter broke the feminist code of omerta by stating the problem. Fortunately, her faith is unshaken. Her solution boils down to "every woman should have a full-time nanny." Along with more government-mandated social engineering--much more.
The fawning interviewer and callers on some NPR call-in show were especially amusing. Irony is indeed lost on these people.
50-something comments in, I'm not sure it does any good, but here goes.
"But-but, China has a girl shortage! How can they have un-marriage-able women?"
Take as a near-ironclad law that a woman cannot marry a man with lower status than her. Add that a man can marry a lower status woman if he and his dick so choose.
The result is a few hundred thousand? Few million? 25+ women with nice degrees and/or good jobs, but no man, who have "hit the wall" in game-blog terms. Their male counterparts have the pick of all women their age and status, plus younger women of similar status, plus hotter women of lower status. And the women won't settle for a man who doesn't have the same degree/income/status that they do.
So some people are trying to tell these women that they can maybe have A) a man with a good personality, B) a man of the same income/status C) a good-looking man D) etc., but the more of this list they demand, the fewer "acceptable" men there are.
There is a shortage of Chinese women--but this mostly applies to the bottom of the Chinese social structure. Peasant laborers in the provinces and upper-class women in the cities both lack "appropriate" mates.
Maybe they need to crank out some propaganda romantic comedies where the career-oriented city girl falls for the down-to-earth farmer and finds fulfillment having kids in East Armpit?
--Discordiax
"When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking ... this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?"
rotfl. funniest thing i ever read.
Stacy is right. Feminism is a cudgel wielded with great success by women in the upper percentiles of intelligence and/or attractiveness. It gets them access to upper percentile men or creates sinecures which would otherwise not exist in a viable society. Less intelligent and/or less attractive women--don't try this at home. We are going to reap the whirlwind from feminism.
Despite being a communist country (or perhaps because of it), in China with the right amount of money you can do anything. One of my grad student colleagues from a rich family in China once told me that his brother had been sort of a black sheep of the family, and got involved with the wrong people there. He didn't do well in school and ended up getting into some trouble for some criminal acts. Ordinarily, the sort of women one would want as a wife there would run as far away from a guy like this as possible (at least there anyway- here in the liberal brainwashed West, they flock to such men). Anyway, their family basically paid a bright young woman's family (or the girl herself, I forget which), for her to marry the guy, and have kids with him.
Think of China as Singapore writ large but 20 years behind.
Singapore had well a educated women marriage bureau long ago. Lee Kuan Tew made no bones about the fact that it was being done to keep the high IQ genes in the gene pool.
The author looks like the non-hyphenated product of a Jewish father and an Asian mother unlucky enough to inherit the worst physical appearance genes from both. An example of a true lack hybrid vigor, looks-wise.
"...China has a one child policy..."
That is the "Official" policy. Truth be told though it mainly applies to the bigger cities. Elsewhere the older proverb of "The mountain is high and the emperor is far away" applies.
Which is still better than the state of the west where the rule that seems to apply is The Emperor is high and the mountain is far away.
"You can take teh flamingly hawtest "11" on the face of the earth - Charlize Theron, Megan Fox, Angelina Joli, Monica Bellucci, whomever - but the moment that cold, dark, feminazi venom starts spewing out of her mouth, the "11" immediately plummets to "0"."
- Hot women, and women in general will turn a 180 in their views and lifestyle if a man with enough presence comes into their lives. The search for that guy is the real reason these women are waiting. Guys like this are less rare here than Hollywood has led them to believe which is why it is common here for them to wait longer than they should. In China, given the passivity of men there, especially towards dating, as women adopt these Western hollywood myths to heart, it probably becomes an even worse problem, even with a male:female imbalance.
And regarding being receptive, the Chinese see themselves as trying to 'catch up' to the West, so I wonder if this includes things like feminism and women in the workplace?
They haven't exactly been keen on democrazy.
"the "11" immediately plummets to "0""
men's rising preference for educated women by Ms. Coontz
"That stuff had already become history by the 1970s."
Ah yes, the Incorrigible Fluidness of Feminism.
5th wavers:
Patriarchy cooped up women with rapacious men, 1 in 4 women graduating with PTSD degree.
Thanks to us, men have been cleaned out completely except for a bunch of effiminate macho jerks who oppress women by getting better than average scores and higher income.
Given how rare fertile young women are becoming in China, perhaps they should exchange them instead of bitcoins?
Sorry, lady. Your looks and fertility are gone. What does a woman in her late 40s brings to the table?
Oh, I don't know...intelligent conversation, warm companionship, shared interests, her own career, a physical relationship, if she (and he) have taken reasonably good care of themselves. There are lots of nice women of every age out there, and many couples remarry or marry late for reasons other than having children. Some of the comments here are extremely bitter and immature.
I live in China.
Every woman's minimum requirement is a man who earns more than she does, is taller than she is, and is generally higher status than she is.
Like women everywhere.
Surprised no one wants to speculate about the potential eugenic implications of China's gender imbalance. If over 50% of the rural men in China won't find a spouse, will there be a eugenic effect?
Good grief. The Chinese Communist Party, the party of lunatic and mass-murderer Mao Zedong, has a much better grip on reality than the entirety of Western media and "enlightened" opinion.
How did it come to this?
...not only women who don't want to have children will be filtered out, men who don't want to have children assortatively mating with similar women will also be filtered out of the gene pool.
That's not necessarily a choice they're given. If it's really true that 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men (and I think that's somewhat true), then there are guys who won't be having children even though they would be perfectly happy with a woman on the same rung of the ladder. Even one or two down.
But that woman has to wake up while she still can have children. And I don't mean "have children after several rounds of IVF". Fertility treatments have a pretty low success rate - they're just one step above being a scam.
Upwardly mobile, college educated Chinese women have no desire to move to the provinces to be the wife of a subsistence farmer. Even non educated Chinese women realize they can have a better life working in the factories in the big city than staying behind and marrying one of the losers in their farming village. This leads to a local surplus of women in the cities and a massive shortage in the rural areas. To put the Chinese dating scene in graphic form: http://shanghaishiok.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Sheng-Nan.png
Stephanie Coontz
Yeah, she's someone you'd wanna listen to:
For example, the percentage of female electrical engineers doubled in each decade in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But in the two decades since 1990 it has increased by only a single percentage point,...
Yeah, if things were fair, it should have kept doubling!
A few thoughts...
1. Women don't look to mate with men based not on their level of education, but based on class. So, all those teachers, nurses and office ladies who come from working class families often date and marry cops, men who are serving their country, men working in a trade or managing a restaurant, without a degree. However, a woman whose parents, grand parents, siblings and childhood neighbors are educated professionals is very unlikely to see a man without a degree as a real option. But the man's education is just a way for a higher class girl to marry down. A son of two doctors with a lawyer grandpa and a dentist sister can screw around until his late 20s, and he'll still be able to marry a girl with a respectable bachelor's while he works on his degree part time because everyone knows that he'll get back onto the path eventually and his quality of life and mannerism is still similar to those of his family.
2. Education doesn't limit women's choises. It provides the option of being alone. Now, for most people it's not the path to happiness, but it can very well be an escape from misery. Some girls (and some guys) have neither the looks nor personality nor luck to engage with someone who could add to their quality of life. Such people with no other options have always gotten together with each other and lived uncomfortable, sad lives, just to survive. Now, they don't jave to. It's not what most people would have wanted, but it's better than the alternative. Meanwhile, highly educated women have no problems finding a man, provided they are attractive and pleasant. And the highly educated women who are plain and hard to get along with would have to settle for someone they don't really want even before they had their degrees. Education and career save them from that fate.
3. From the time I spent in an East Asian country, I got the impression that, on average, men in Asia are a lot more picky and demanding than the men in the West. Some of our guys over there dated and got engaged to Asian girls who were very cute, in my opinion. Yet, the locals wondered out loud why these American men settle for such uglies.
"Heartiste [are you paying attention?]: This." - You'll have to say his name 3 times to get him to appear.
Maya, after being around American women, anywhere else is a breath of fresh air, apparently
Maya is basically the only reasonable voice on this thread. A lot of overly sour grapes otherwise.
To all the people complaining about feminism being "class warfare"....if it is, so what? Middle and upper middle class families understandably want the best for their sons and daughters. It is a shame that feminism causes smart people to have small families, but at the same time it ensures that the best and brightest are mating with eachother should they choose to form families. And also I'll add that throughout history spinsters have always been more intelligent than the general female population. Think of all the nuns and school-marms.... this is not exactly a brand new phenomenon. At least feminism increases the chance that an educated, intelligent young man will value the same qualities in a partner, instead of chasing after just beauty.
Anyway, the real effort should be spent on depressing the fertility of dysfunctional people.
Dying alone is the logical end result for feminism. It has clearly worked against the best long term interests of most women, in my view, whatever shorter term improvements it provided in female employment. The great and fundamental flaw of feminism is its failure to understand that while men and women are equal, they are also very different. And these basic, biological differences pre-determine many outcomes.
From the time I spent in an East Asian country, I got the impression that, on average, men in Asia are a lot more picky and demanding than the men in the West. Some of our guys over there dated and got engaged to Asian girls who were very cute, in my opinion. Yet, the locals wondered out loud why these American men settle for such uglies.
From my experience with a couple of decades of marriage to a Chinese woman, you need lots of patience to stay married to any woman for a long time.
The ugly East Asians Maya is talking about are the ones that stay natural, while the "pretty" ones are the ones that get plastic surgery to look white.
"The ugly East Asians Maya is talking about are the ones that stay natural, while the "pretty" ones are the ones that get plastic surgery to look white."
But my whole point is that those Asian girls that looked ugly to their own co-ethnics didn't look ugly to my Western eyes! And I'm assuming they didn't look ugly to the American boys who were willing to marry them.
I did notice that among the middle class, most girls got plastic surgery between high school and college. I guess that's just something a good Asian father saves up for, just like a college fund. And you know what? The results were mostly very lovely. Yet, the locals tended to think that most of those girls were still plain as hell, even after their noses and eyelids were done, only not as beastly as they used to be. I'm not some great advocate for Asian women and their beauty- honest- but I've met very few Asian women whom I could sincerely describe as "beastly". A bunch of them are plain janes, but those common surgeries make them, at least, pretty, in my humble opinion.
All I'm saying is that middle class Asian men seem to have standards that are unrealistic, at best. Of course, I'm generalizing here. I've actually met quite a few happy married couples. But I got the impression that they were in the minority.
"From my experience with a couple of decades of marriage to a Chinese woman, you need lots of patience to stay married to any woman for a long time."
And I congratulate you, Sir, on the length of your marriage and wish you further luck. May you bring more joy than sorrow to each other.
However, I have no idea how your statement relates to my comment that you quoted. I said that, from what I understand, Asian men have higher standards for female beauty (and worth, in general) than the Western men. I wasn't comparing women of different races, but the attitudes of men of different races towards women. Asian men of middle class seem a lot harsher and a lot more judgmental when it comes to picking a wife than their Western peers.
Hot women, and women in general will turn a 180 in their views and lifestyle if a man with enough presence comes into their lives.
I dunno, dude.
Do you spend any time around left-wing graduate student chicks in college towns?
The nihilism is so severe in some of those chicks nowadays that it's monumentally depressing [and frankly a little terrifying] to be around them.
As an example, Katrina vanden Heuvel was pretty darned hawt, back circa 1979, but would you wanna waste 20 or 30 years of your life on the faintest of hopes that maybe - just maybe - you could pull her back from the edge of the precipice? All the while having to put up with some of the world's most pointlessly asinine bile every time you tried to engage her in conversation?
"Has a good heart", dude, that's what you should be looking for - don't go wasting any of your precious life on a chick with a great big black hole where her heart ought to be.
A bunch of them are plain janes...
There are a lot worse things in life than a "Plain Jane" who
a) Has a good heart,
b) Can cook, and
c) Derives particular joy in life from fornicating your little testes right off [on a regular basis].
>men in Asia are a lot more picky and demanding than the men in the West.[...] the locals wondered out loud why these American men settle for such uglies.<
Could it have been sour grapes?
Anonymous said...
The ugly East Asians Maya is talking about are the ones that stay natural, while the "pretty" ones are the ones that get plastic surgery to look white.
I would argue that white girls get plastic surgery to look more Asian. Like all nose jobs involving reducing the size of a nose. Asian women have smaller noses than white women.
However, I have no idea how your statement relates to my comment that you quoted. I said that, from what I understand, Asian men have higher standards for female beauty (and worth, in general) than the Western men. I wasn't comparing women of different races, but the attitudes of men of different races towards women. Asian men of middle class seem a lot harsher and a lot more judgmental when it comes to picking a wife than their Western peers.
Ha ha. Some Western men seem a lot more judgmental of Western women as well.
To each his own.
My point was that any man who thinks that Chinese women are submissive things who will suck c*ck at the drop of a hat are being unrealistic.
Yes, some Chinese men (and I know quite a few and speak some Cantonese and Mandarin) are picky, but I have also seen those Chinese men who are gentle with their kids and respect their wives and who have also been married for a long time, and thus have lots of patience.
I also know that there are Chinese women who complain about Chinese men. There will always be women who complain about men.
Finally, Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) who was in The Road Home (我的父亲母亲) would be considered attractive by Westerners, I am sure. I know that I personally found her portrayal of a young woman very moving in that movie.
Perhaps I have not answered your question. Perhaps I simply used your comment as a launching pad for some realism.
"There are a lot worse things in life than a "Plain Jane" who
a) Has a good heart,
b) Can cook, and
c) Derives particular joy in life from fornicating your little testes right off [on a regular basis]."
Absolutely! That's a great attitude. Also, most of them are well educated and disciplined hard workers. And, again, seriously, most middle class girls in the East Asian country where I worked get two routine procedures done upon high school graduation that make them, at least, cute and very often- quite pretty.
Oh, but about the sex... I've heard from a bunch of people there that the majority of the middle aged couples don't have sex in that culture. At all. It's like their relationship is over, but they continue living together, so their kid wouldn't get shunned by the other parents. And many seem to believe that the sex/intimacy/romance part of marriage is just a stage before the kids start school. But, as I said before, I've met some happy couples in Asia too, but they considered themselves abnormally lucky.
It is interesting that the notion of Kick Ass Women seems to have started in China a long time before it occurred in the West.
I am referring to 花木蘭 (Hua Mulan, Mulan of Disney fame.)
What is interesting is that Chinese men have a joke about Mulan that indicates that they know it is bullshit, just as GI Jane is regarded as bullshit and the Hultgren-Curie syndrome is discussed on some web sites.
The joke goes: One day Mulan was knocked off her horse during battle. She was having her period at the time.
When the medics examined her, they said "Oh shit, he has been injured so badly his penis was chopped off."
There is lots of realism out there.
"Women could save Japan’s economy: IMF’s Lagarde"
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/13/women-could-save-japans-economy-imfs-lagarde/
"Women could rescue Japan’s chronically underperforming economy if more of them went to work, the female director of the International Monetary Fund said Saturday.
Christine Lagarde said Japan’s shrinking and greying workforce, which has left the country struggling to pay welfare bills, could really benefit from an injection of female talent.
“Because there is this ageing problem… we believe that women could actually help very much,” Lagarde told reporters in Tokyo, where the IMF is holding its annual meetings.
“It’s critically important the world over but it’s particularly important in Japan,” she said, referring to IMF research on the role of women in the country “that indicates that women could actually save Japan”.
“Today you have five out of 10 Japanese women out of the job market, as opposed to two out of 10 men,” she said.
Lagarde said if there were “better kindergartens and better assistance and cultural acceptance that women can actually do the job, it would be excellent for the Japanese economy”, she said.
Despite high levels of education, many women drop out of the workforce when they have children, and social pressures to play the homemaker remain.
Japan’s once world-beating economy has spent more than two decades treading water with entrenched deflation and anaemic growth.
Lagarde, a former finance minister of her native France, was speaking after Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa stressed the importance of raising the labour participation rate of elderly people and women."
"What is interesting is that Chinese men have a joke about Mulan that indicates that they know it is bullshit, just as GI Jane is regarded as bullshit and the Hultgren-Curie syndrome is discussed on some web sites."
Why is the idea of there existing a kick-ass warrior who was female, once in a blue moon, bullshit? There is a small percentage of women who can pass men's fire fighter entrance physical. Not enough to have one on every squad, or even in every city, but they sure exist.
Most untrained boys can manage several pull ups in gym class at 11, while the vast majority of girls just hang there while they are trying their hardest to make at least one. Well, there was a girl in my class who managed 4 on her first try ever. It's very rare, but it happens. Genetic outliers are a part of any significantly population. And there is nothing particularly strange about an extreme case being born every thousand years or so. I bet somewhere in the world, even right now, there is a woman with genetic potential to become a Navy Seal. Freaks of all types are a part of the human experience.
"At least feminism increases the chance that an educated, intelligent young man will value the same qualities in a partner, instead of chasing after just beauty."
Umm you overlooked that male preferences over time graphic just like Ms. Coontz did.
beauty in a woman
"Yeah, if things were fair, it should have kept doubling! "
Moore's Law!!
"I bet somewhere in the world, even right now, there is a woman with genetic potential to become a Navy Seal. "
which has been enhanced since nobody notices nuthin'
and there is always myostatin freaks somewhere out there.
"Most untrained boys can manage several pull ups in gym class at 11"
puberty?
Then the little thing about human growth
"From the time I spent in an East Asian country, I got the impression that, on average, men in Asia are a lot more picky and demanding than the men in the West. Some of our guys over there dated and got engaged to Asian girls who were very cute, in my opinion. Yet, the locals wondered out loud why these American men settle for such uglies. "
That's pretty much what I heard from Taiwan, I discerned later that "ugly" meant, not anorexic, without bone-thin hair, and having had been in the sun a few times.
I would argue that white girls get plastic surgery to look more Asian. Like all nose jobs involving reducing the size of a nose. Asian women have smaller noses than white women.
Sorry, Asian women have broader and flatter noses, with indistinct roots and flaring nostrils. No one gets plastic surgery to broaden their nasal bridge or enlarge their nostrils.
Traditionally, Asian or Oriental nasal features consist of noses with flat bridges, lacking bony height in the bridge, and soft, floppy and ill-defined nasal tips. Their cartilages tend to be weak and thin and their skin thick with flaring nostrils. ... One of the most popular cosmetic surgery procedures for Asian patients is nose augmentation combined with double eyelid surgery for a more complete, enhanced look. Many of the patients need to undergo nasal lengthening to make a nose appear longer. ... These are the typical Asians nose characteristics:
Thick skin with excess sebaceous glands.
Deep and flat radix (root of the nose).
Low nasal bridge with wide and flat dorsum.
Minimal tip definition with an abundant of fibro fatty tissue.
Flaring nostrils.
Minimal columella.
Often has a retracted maxilla.
http://www.rhinoplastyonline.com/asianrhinoplasty.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/hong-kong-loves-weird-english-names/263103/#
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/could-there-be-an-earlier-version-of-the-mona-lisa-8182663.html
Nailed it on the head
They're none of the above but honest. Welcome to the real world. Hope your "career " and "accomplishments " were worth it. :)
And also I'll add that throughout history spinsters have always been more intelligent than the general female population. Think of all the nuns and school-marms.... this is not exactly a brand new phenomenon.
It's no different from monks or unmarried professors being more intelligent than the general male population.
"Yes, some Chinese men (and I know quite a few and speak some Cantonese and Mandarin) are picky, but I have also seen those Chinese men who are gentle with their kids and respect their wives and who have also been married for a long time, and thus have lots of patience."
Yes, of course. I am making gross generalizations here, since we're discussing an emerging statistical trend. Personally, I've met many warm, gentle, fun, generous people during my time in Asia, many of them men, and many of those middle aged and married.
"It's no different from monks or unmarried professors being more intelligent than the general male population."
Yup. You got it. So nice to come across another classical feminist.
"As an example, Katrina vanden Heuvel was pretty darned hawt, back circa 1979, but would you wanna waste 20 or 30 years of your life on the faintest of hopes that maybe - just maybe - you could pull her back from the edge of the precipice? All the while having to put up with some of the world's most pointlessly asinine bile every time you tried to engage her in conversation?"
As a matter of fact, I overlapped with her at Princeton and I do remember her being good looking but probably difficult. Reading her Wikipedia entry, I didn't know she was part Jewish, and I see that her husband is 21 years older and a Communist professor that I've heard of.
Maya said...
"It's no different from monks or unmarried professors being more intelligent than the general male population."
Yup. You got it. So nice to come across another classical feminist.
I prefer to think of myself as someone with common sense.
Too many people are looking for some sort of "Superman Gene", and think that IQ is it. It isn't, and no such gene exists. High IQ, although usually indicative of good genetic and nutritional health, comes with its own price tags. I could argue that high energy plus moderate IQ is a better producer of wealth and success.
Besides, not everyone wants to be rich, or powerful, or famous. Some people measure success by other means. Some people also prefer to be "a lesser target", to quote mirror-universe Spock. Those sorts, male and female, are very common in both academia and religious orders.
Given the choice, would you prefer to have a greedy doctor, or a dedicated doctor of equal talent, operate on you?
The silver lining is that those who believe feminist ideology are less likely to reproduce. Thus, over time, leftism weeds itself out of the gene pool.
I wish this were true, but it's not, at least in the major western countries. The major obstacle is the welfare system (AFDC/TANF in the US), which specifically subsidizes young women and even teenage girls to have children out of wedlock as a means of getting funds. Did you know that a MAJORITY of US births are now out of wedlock as a result?
Obama's election ought to be enough to show everyone that it's either already too late or close to it: The Marching Morons are here now.
The Marching Morons are here now.
Ergo Romney's "47%" comment.
Romney needs to stick to his guns on that one, and not back down: EVERYONE knows what he's talking about - both the EITC/AFDC/WIC/EBT/SSDI cheats, and the rapidly dwindling majority of folks who foot the bills for the former.
The time to resolve this mess peacefully is NOW - if we wait another four [or God forbid, eight] years to confront this bankruptcy of ours, then the only way out of it will be < CENSORED GIBBERISH ABOUT THE 2ND AMENDMENT & SECESSION WHICH IS GUARANTEED TO INFURIATE KOMMENT KONTROL >.
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