There is no issue that anti-male activists have been so effective at shaping national opinion on as the issue of international dating. It is ridiculous.

One of the most bizarre things is that these critics ignore the conclusions of a mountain of academic research done in the last thirty years. Nearly all of these scholars are women, and all of them would describe themselves as feminists.

Most of them, particularly before 2010 or so, expected to uncover a worldwide criminal conspiracy. Instead, after spending years interviewing couples, traveling along on singles tours, and interviewing the owners of the dating agencies they realized their initial hypothesis was incorrect.

They all concluded that international dating is incredible for the foreign women who become "mail order brides" and very good for the men who marry them. This conclusion shows a little bias on the part of the researchers, because it downplays just how brutal the dating scene for men is in the United States, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of the "developed world." Here is an article that reviews most of the recent academic research.

Despite that caveat this research is hard for any fair critic to refute, because these scholars have the credentials and background to have been devastating critics of international dating. Instead, they ended up as devastating critics of the opponents of international dating. For most of them this was not the result they expected.

Marcia Zug, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, and the author of Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail Order Matches, (2014, NYU Press) explained that, "Buying a Bride demonstrates that many of the widespread concerns regarding mail-order marriage have questionable origins. This book also emphasizes the similarities between historic mail-order marriage and its modern counterparts and demonstrates that the benefits offered by these marriages remain significant. Nevertheless, I think it is important to acknowledge that a focus on the advantages of mail-order marriage was not the original intention of this book. In fact, it was my own negative reaction to a magazine article on mail-order marriage that initially inspired this project." (Kindle Locations 86-93)

Like the Apostle Paul, her "road to Damascus moment" made her a much stronger advocate. She explains that, "...there are no statistics indicating that this form of introduction, including marriage brokers, pen pal clubs, and so on, increases the risk of abuse at all. As doctoral student Lisa Simons discovered during her research on mail-order brides, most of the citations for the claim that mail-order marriage increases abuse actually stem from two newspaper articles from the 1980s, containing no statistical research, or are based on studies regarding domestic violence in general. In addition, she also notes that most studies that have investigated mail-order marriages have actually found a “generally high level of marital satisfaction and a generally low level of physical violence.”' (Kindle Locations 3180-3187).

Zug is great and is particularly useful for men who want to defend their choice of international marriage to friends and family. But what she does not quite explain is that the feminist scholars who actually went out and interviewed couples, observed the operations of dating agencies, and spent years on other forms of research ended up - often much to their own surpise - positive about international dating.

Anti-male activists who stayed at home in Cambridge or Berkley smoking good weed and pondering feminist theory never gave up though. They hated the concept of mail order brides - which is a loaded term - and they have never given up. Men need to know this is just a very theoretical fantasy.

It has been a devastating fantasy which led to the most draconian Federal interference into the personal lives of Americans that I know of, the International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act of 2006, and it leads to constant mail order bride shaming. This has been a long post so I will skip discussing those for now, but the fact is men who are curious about international dating have nothing to be ashamed about.

That is not just my opinion. It is what the best evidence shows.

Buy a copy of Buying a Bride. Or if you still have questions check out r/MailOrderBrideFacts it has a ton of additional information. It you don't see the information you need post a question. It will usually get answered in 24 hours.