Second post of the day, thanks to a male fellow blogger, whom I will not name, lest he be embarrassed to be discovered reading a girl blog.
As you can imagine, the one-child-only policy of China has led to a shortage in women, something very sad for Chinese men who have discovered that there aren't that many women available to marry. And therefore there is a new kind of pressure on Chinese women to marry.
It is pretty disgusting for a supposed women's magazine to tell women that they are "old" by the time they are studying for an MA or PhD, old like "yellowed pearls." Outrageous. Dear Chinese dictators, thanks to your stupid policies, Chinese women are in relatively scarce supply. Your little mind games will not change this situation, and who would want to marry a completely spoiled "Little Emperor" anyway?
My fellow blogger found the chart "scary" because it shows how many Single British women there are, although I am not sure why this is scary, unless one envisions those British women as desperately alone and sad eating peaches in tins over the sink after a luckless night down at the bars. However, that's not how I envision most British Single women, at least not the ones I know.
9 comments:
Oh yes, being likened to a "yellowing pearl" is a sure-fire way to motivate a woman to walk down the aisle, right? Horrible. Sad thing is, the 20 million "extra" men under 30 might be more appropriately deemed "leftovers" than the educated, successful and happy single women who either don't want to marry, or haven't waited as long as they have just to settle. (Not that we should call anyone "leftovers". How very undignifying!) Rather than trying to improve the quality of the surplus of men, let's try to degrade the "A" quality women to the point that they are supposed to feel deserving of a lower quality man... relieved to at least be married (even if it's a horrible, un-equally yoked union) in order to be preserved from further cultural backlash. Talk about denigration of your God-given value thanks to these horrible tactics! Luckily, it appears that because these "leftover women" are educated- they aren't falling for the tactics that are supposed to make them feel inadequate and they have more backbone than their parents or the Chinese government would like.
Good riddance! I need another cup of coffee now.
Yes, they certainly have a lot of nerve calling women "leftovers!"
I wonder what they will do, though, to keep the surplus population of men happy. A surplus population of young men with little or no access to women is a civilizational recipe for war.
My mother suggested decades ago that women's rights will be eroded wherever we are seen as a scarce commodity. I hope this is not true!
Not to be all pessimistic... but I think there are a lot of global factors that could result in war. And in 150 years from now when they talk about why there was a war, the large numbers of young men with no access to women will be part of it. (Let's hope not, of course...)
Wouldn't it be the opposite, Seraphic - that women's rights would be more at risk where they are as "common as dirt" and no one is afraid of hurting their feelings? It seems to me that where there are less women than men, the women have the pick of the crop so the men therefore have to step up their game in order to attract someone. Where there are more women than men, women start lowering their standards and men perceive they don't really need to work as hard to get a girlfriend (or no-strings-attached sex.) This leads to a situation where women are less respected. Surely erosion of women's rights follows hard on the heels of the latter?
I am lost in admiration of the women cited in this article, who seem to have a very healthy attitude towards career and marriage despite cruel societal and parental pressure. Of course, I'm not so naïve as to think the BBC didn't filter out the voices of other women who are affected by the propaganda.
Wow. That's probably the most blatantly misogynistic article I've ever seen in a magazine. So insulting. Does the Chinese government not care that they appear incredibly stupid in this regard? It's just one more effect in a long list of ways that abortion truly destroys not only the unborn child but society. Mother Theresa was right to say that the greatest destroyer of peace was abortion.
Meanwhile, I am truly grateful to live in a place in the world that doesn't consider single women that way (though we have other problems).
I've got to side with your mother on this one Seraphic. I think that if women were seen as scarce, they would be valued for the wrong reasons - or at least not for all the right reasons. There would be a lot of emphasis placed on things like feminine appearance and domestic skills, things which still matter, but not as much as education, maturity, etc. Girls would be taught that their most important traits are the ones that make them attractive to men, because men would be the ones running society. Women would be encouraged to be wives and mothers first (as seems to be the case in China), and discouraged from pursuing careers that men are already doing.
Sexual dignity is a whole other story.
<< Wouldn't it be the opposite, Seraphic - that women's rights would be more at risk where they are as "common as dirt" and no one is afraid of hurting their feelings?>>
Just the opposite. When women are more important to "have," those in power (men) will exert even more power to control and have them. When there really are more women than you "need" (it's awkward to talk about human beings as economic goods, but that's what happens), then it's okay if some of them become un-useful to the male project of working them into the family structure (which is the more healthy option but still largely male-controlled, depending on the dynamics of the family and society).
I fear for China's uneven population not only because lots of men with nothing to do make violence against other people or against themselves -- but because they make violence *against women*. If men know that there is no "best case scenario" (there's just too many men to marry and therefore get a "return" on submitting to social controls), and if lower achieving men feel outshone by women who rank higher in "demand," then they will turn to violence against women. Because sadly, the patriarchy is real, and lots of these large scale patterns bear out the fact that men will try and assert dominance ESPECIALLY if they have nothing else to gain. The goal isn't "achieve satisfying relationships of equality with women," it's mostly "preserve dominant status however we can."
That's what this article is all about.
(It could also mean a terrible rise in sex trafficking and the sex trade. Basically, the shortage of women is going to be a disaster.)
Once again, we are reminded that Paul VI was right in Humane Vitae.
Secondly, I'm sensing some eerie parallels to Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."
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