The cyber-bullying term mail order brides bestowed on the international online dating industry by the mainstream media is nothing but a blatant objectification of foreign women.

Here is why it’s so wrong.

Objectification Leads to Victimization

The recent study into sexual victimization by a group of American researchers pointed out that objectification is the core precondition of violence against women.

Even considerably small episodes of sexual objectification led to lower self-esteem and reduced assertiveness in victims.

David DiLillo, Professor of Psychology, and Sarah Gervais, Associate Professor of Psychology of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, together with the graduate student Molly Franz interviewed 297 female students aged 17-30 to confirm their prior findings that sexual objectification is linked to an increased risk of sexual assault.

38% of female undergraduate students of the American university who answered the questions admitted to having experienced sexual victimization.

“This study is the first to reveal possible mechanisms that may explain how seemingly mild experiences of being sexually objectified can increase women’s vulnerability to sexual victimization”, DiLillo said.

Objectification of Foreign Women into Mail Order Brides

Just a few days ago I came across a view on Russian and Ukrainian women as seeking “immigration support in exchange for sex” that was openly promoted through a major technology blog claiming modern outlook (by a female blogger), showing an appalling lack of understanding and social responsibility for the effects such publications cause.

And such publications are not a stand-alone occurrence.

This is what breeds potential violence, where men who were brought up on these principles that had been spoon-fed to them since puberty get in their heads ideas of “submission in exchange for a passport” that mythical “mail order brides” are supposed to provide.

Would a Gawker blog publish a racist stunt?

I very much doubt it.

But the habitually marginalized category of foreign women seeking contacts with men outside of their locality is fair game.

Among the ocean of political correctness, females of Caucasian appearance, who do not wish to remain single in their demographically challenged locations, can be freely targeted on one of the largest opinion-forming sites of the English-speaking Internet.

Good job on dehumanizing a large group of foreign women and turning them into sex objects, Gizmodo.

By promoting outlandish lies (“immigration support in exchange for sex”) you are assisting giant international conglomerates and their wealthy shareholders to continue siphoning millions of dollars out of the pockets of trusting readers, relying on your promise that they are able to obtain the legendary “Russian mail order bride”.

(They are not.)

I am all for the free speech but slanderous statements and character assassination are not a free speech but another act of victimization against the ones who are unable to defend themselves.

Turning Women into Sex Objects

“Evidence tells us that we need to challenge rigid gender stereotypes and gender inequality to prevent violence against women”, wrote Rosie Batty, a survivor of domestic violence and 2015 Australian of the Year from Neveralone.com.au in an email for the Australian Father’s Day 6 September 2015.

I believe it’s time for the western media to reconsider its outdated stereotypes and take its share of the blame for the blatant objectification of foreign women seeking partners abroad and continuous bullying of people involved in international relationships.

This is what leads to the domination of pay-per-letter money-extracting ventures, capitalizing on the mail order bride concept that is so actively promoted by the oblivious to modern realities mainstream media.

The deception starts at conception, when something that doesn’t exist is made up to be the fact of life.

We have understood and learned to be kind to economic or wartime migrants, but demographic migration is not something that has been addressed previously by publishing giants.

It’s time for everyone to realize that a submissive Russian mail order bride is just a plain false narrative. Ladies from Eastern Europe date on open websites with their own strong preferences. Using this term diminishes the real issues of female trafficking and slavery, which still exist in today’s world. However, these critically vulnerable girls and women are not on international dating sites, where members converse openly and choose whom to contact and communicate with, exercising their freedom of choice and association.

Slavic women dating internationally are independent, educated, and quite opinionated. They have a good environment, live well, look after themselves, have all the modern conveniences, a great educational system. It’s not third world. (Never was.) They are not doing it because they are poor or have no other alternatives. Have you been to Kiev, Odessa, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk, Vladivostok? The idea of a man being able to get a mail order bride from these locations is totally ridiculous.

As a woman, I find the term mail order bride offensive and demeaning. There are businesses that promote this term purely for popular search results, but it doesn’t really exist for real online dating.

And it’s time we took a careful look at ourselves and stopped the bullying.

About Me

Thanks for dropping by. My name is Elena Petrova.

I was born in Russia roughly half a century ago, where I completed school, studied for 6 years at a university, graduated with a degree in Philosophy, and for a while worked in sales, marketing, and advertising. The last position I held before leaving Russia was of a regional manager of an international marketing firm.

I immigrated from Russia in 1998. I met a guy I fell in love with, and moved to South Africa.

When people hear that, they often gasp and ask, “Africa? It’s worse than Russia, isn’t it?”

It was. Hence, we migrated together as a family with our 2 children to Australia in 2003, to avoid the growing number of problems in the democratic, all-races-are-equal South Africa of early 2000’s.

I have lived on the Gold Coast in Australia since 2003, and I genuinely feel it’s the best place on Earth. Mind it, I haven’t visited all of them but only about 40 countries to date, so it remains to be seen whether I keep this opinion forever.

I have 2 children and 2 step-children.

My Qualifications

• Degree in Philosophy
• Certified Life Coach
• Certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP

I have over 16 years of experience in the dating industry and was one of the first bloggers online, even before the word “blogging” was invented. My personal opinions were something of a novelty in 1999 when I launched my first website womenrussia.com.

Since then, I have been interviewed by media and appeared on TV in several countries as a Russian dating expert. Female magazines like Elle and Cosmopolitan featured stories about me and my sites.

I had a book published in Russia in early 2000’s about dating a foreigner, and several eBooks online in English and Russian.

It was a shock for me to find out after my immigration that I was, in fact, classified as a mail order bride, which set me on the path of dispelling the myths about Russian and Ukrainian women seeking love abroad.

I am happy to divulge all the spicy details what the situation is really about, based on my firsthand experience. Don’t assume that you know what it is, until you talked to real humans. We have stories to tell, souls to nurture, and we are strong enough, mentally and emotionally, to challenge bigotry and systematic abuse thrown at us through mail order brides stereotyping.

The attitude of superiority together with ignorance do not provide for a balanced approach. As there are survivors of sexual and physical abuse, we are survivors of constant objectification and dehumanization by mail order brides typecasting, touting us as “sex objects” and attributing to us ulterior motives and intentions.

My path led me to study dating and relationships in depth through training programs and courses, and reading hundreds of books by western experts and psychologists.

Completing certification as a life coach helped me to grasp extra dimensions of how to support single people seeking relationships.

I was lucky to train in NLP with the founder of Time Line Therapy® Dr. Tad James and the creator of Neuro-Semantics Dr. Michael Hall, as well as some other outstanding teachers and mentors.

In my life, I have completed a marathon and a half marathon, and studied martial arts.

Read also:

• Pay Per Letter dating sites — dinosaurs of mail order brides thinking
• How to find Russian brides quickly — step-by-step guide
• What Russian women think about marriage, family, and kids
• Most Russian-American couples meet for the first time in this country