The role of the gender aristocracy:
May 15 2007
On May 8, the Washington Post started the drum-beat against Islam again, this time with a story about how Muslim men abuse Muslim wimmin even once they are both in the united $tates.(1) At the same time, at least a discussion of a different solution than war started--giving legal immigrant status to Muslim wimmin.
On March 26 a U.S. federal judge assisted the Bush administration in upholding a new law regulating international romances. There are future legal challenges in the works, but MIM would like to explain where the law stands so far.
Wikipedia reports the substance of the law this way:
" * On January 6, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the "International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005" (IMBRA) as part of the H.R. 3402: Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005.[6] The requirements of the law are controversial, and some commentators have claimed that it presumes that American men are abusers.[7]
"The law requires that before a foreign woman's address or other contact information may be sold to a US citizen or resident by an international marriage broker:
1. The man must complete a questionnaire on his criminal and marital background.
2. The seller must obtain the man's record from the National Sex Offenders Public Registry database.[8]
3. The questionnaire and record must be translated to the woman's native language and provided to her.
4. The woman must certify for each specific individual, that she agrees to permit communication.
"In enacting IMBRA, the Congress of the United States was responding to claims by the Tahirih Justice Center (TJC), a woman's advocacy group, that mail order brides were vulnerable to domestic abuse because they are unfamiliar with the laws, language and customs of their new home. The TJC insisted that special legislation was needed to protect them."(2) As a result of the law and extensive book-keeping and paperwork needed for it, some dating services have stopped serving Amerikan men.
The donors for the Tahirih Justice Center include ExxonMobil and the Justice Department.(3) The closest thing to a big name feminist organization backing it is the Women's Bar Association.
The divorce rate is lower among so-called mail-order brides in the united $tates. The notion that wimmin leave after three years and getting a green card for citizenship appears false.(1) About 5000 wimmin get married this way each year--leaving a foreign country to take up citizenship in the united $tates.
Although the marriage brokers call Tahirih Justice Center "radical feminists,"(4) obviously by its cast of supporters it is no such thing. In actual fact, Tahirih Justice Center is the perfect example of gender bureaucracy, such that if it did not exist, MIM would have to invent it to explain a point of theory.
What the Tahirih Justice Center really is is a white nationalist refinement project. It is about the bid of the gender aristocracy to restrict the mating choices of Amerikan males to Amerikkkan females. Outraged marriage brokers trying to tie a knot had this to say on one marriage broker website:
"The husband is from America and you are living in a foreign country. You’ve been a proper young lady all your life and during your honeymoon together with your new husband you conceived your first child. You are married, 6 ˝ months pregnant, and starring at a U.S. Embassy Consular Officer as he just handed you a VISA DENIAL form letter. An 8 ˝ x 11 termination of your dreams. Thanks to Jeanne Smoot of Tahirih Justice Center."
Obviously no radical feminists either, even the stupid marriage brokers noticed that the law and Tahirih Justice Center are contributing to the sex trade industry--a total vindication of MIM theory.(3) When crossing the border is made more difficult this time in the name of "protecting" those wimmin who want to cross, the result is the reduction of poor wimmin's choices, not just rich men's choices.
So this IMBRA issue looks like an international question for wimmin and sounds fine and dandy until we realize that inherently the structure of its impact is ambiguous. It benefits the females inside U.$. borders by restricting the choices of males inside U.$. borders, at the expense of the world's majority of females. This is a typical case where a gender aristocracy receives benefit from a law. Amerikan females are a small group of privileged females, so privileged we refer to them as "men."
"Choice" plays no progressive role in the rich countries anymore. It is rhetoric used to justify bombing Afghanistan and invading Iran. However, in the Third World, choice is still somewhat progressive, because these countries still have remnants of feudalism such that bourgeois ideology still has a forward-moving role.
The reason that Tahirih Justice Center and such organizations arise is that there is no obvious and vibrant revolutionary feminism inside u.$. borders, so there is always an attempt to right conditions by half-measures that end up totally misdirected. The unreality of pseudo-feminism in the united $tates also contributes to reactionary polarization, when the right-wing of parasitism points to the total lack of possibility behind some pseudo-feminist ideas. In contrast, when Marx said "a spectre is haunting Europe," he was talking about actually existing millions of workers at barricades, not some totally imaginary idea of politically correct minds.
The Christian right-wing of parasitism is upset with the IMBRA law, because it specifically broke up some Christian matchmaking. We have no figures, but the suspicion is that Christian men benefit disproportionately from the past rules concerning the border and dating. MIM stands with the Christian activists against the IMBRA law. MIM cares not a whit how many Democrats love Bush for signing the IMBRA.
The dirty secret is that Amerikan wimmin are not interested in looking for males abroad--because of the unresolved nature of the 'ho question. Without money, men from the poor countries seem unattractive. The next time someone tries to say that wimmin are looking for sexually attractive men, ask them how many have found any that would certainly be available from poor countries. The gap between males and females in their proclivity to search for mates anywhere is another indication that the de-repression theory is just wrong: there is nothing there to de-repress with wimmin. Even when handed economic opportunity to find more attractive mates, as now exists with so many professional wimmin with careers, wimmin do not make use of it. They would rather restrict the males in their pursuits.
The fact is that Amerikan wimmin can easily be more reactionary than Amerikan labor aristocracy men. The labor aristocracy wants to close the borders to keep out job competitors. The females often want that plus a reduction in dating competition. Thus, Amerikan females can be the most Amerikkkan nationalist of all.
The tighter the sexual border, the more sex-trafficking arises. That is the inevitable consequence in any class society. All proletarian feminists should be siding with marriage brokers pushing for legalized international "choice" in order to oppose the black market in sex slaves.
The problem is that there are no throngs of millions of Amerikan feminists fighting to open the borders and crush sex slavery. In 2006, we already said it in criticism of Catharine MacKinnon:
"She knows that Euro-Amerikan females won't even support dating visas, never mind opening the borders to wimmin as workers; even though that is what wimmin need to be less vulnerable to sexual slavery."The way to undercut sex slave trafficking is to make dating visas easy to obtain. Yet only internationalist feminists are going to point that out, no matter how much rhetoric a handful of pseudo-feminists spill against sex slavery.
The truth is that the real feminists are the Mexicans trying to cross the borders. Those Mexican males and Latino men trying to cross the border are more objectively feminist than Amerikan females. We say "objectively," because most of them do not know it. Subjectively, Mexican males fighting the border do not think of themselves as "feminist." In fact, many white females subjectively feel that they are "feminist," but in fact they are not. This past two May 1sts we did not see any massive contingents of feminists for opening the border demonstrating to end sex slavery. Instead we saw millions of Mexican and Latino migrant workers fighting to open the border. If they succeed, they will crush sex slavery as it is practiced today. The actuality of May 1st these past two years is proof of MIM's long-standing line, that the exploited and super-exploited are the true implementors of feminism, whether they know it or not.
Notes:
1. http://sweetness-light.com/archive/wapo-claims-muslim-wives-are-abused-even-here
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail-order_bride
3. http://www.tahirih.org/tahirih/about/centersupporters.html
4. http://www.dating-services-review.net/Tahirih-Justice-Center.html