China's Mistress Dispellers
June 26, 2017 1:08 AM Subscribe
China's Mistress Dispellers - Jiayang Fan writes in the New Yorker about 'mistress dispellers', a cross between private detective and blackmailer, paid by wealthy Chinese women to chase off their husbands' mistresses. Fan writes that wealth, divorce law and unequal gender expectations have created a niche for a new profession.
Ancient and traditional Chinese greeting:
One morning, in the lobby of my Shanghai hotel, I met a man in his early forties who introduced himself as Detective Li. “The difference between your actual appearance and your WeChat profile is considerable,” he said by way of greeting.posted by adrianhon at 4:42 AM on June 26, 2017 [25 favorites]
That's really sad. I hope all my former students from when I worked in Beijing and Shanghai are in happy relationships, same with my younger Chinese friends who were then unmarried. It's hard for me to imagine my guy friends being so awful to their wives, so I hope they're not.
At the time, we knew one divorced woman who was a little older than I was - she used "Helen" as her English name. I think she'd met some Canadian friends of mine through some church outreach they did*? She was from somewhere else and had fled an abusive husband. Because of the terms of the divorce, IIRC, she basically couldn't see her child. It was pretty awful. She was a very sweet, gentle and pretty person, and it is depressing to think of her as "depreciated", since she was obviously a real catch in every important way.
What struck me about this wasn't the universal nature of it so much as how we stack the deck and call it fate. "That's the fate of a Little Third," says everyone, when no, that's the fate of a woman in a society where the laws - written by humans and changeable by same - disadvantage women materially. Add in some spousal maintenance, for instance, crack down on asset hiding, start scrutinizing those special loans available only to the single, etc, and you wouldn't totally solve the problem but you'd make a good start. On the one hand, it's "cultural" in the sense that everyone looks down on women for reasons that are more than just legal and procedural - but on the other, one way to start showing that women are valued is to make it so under law, and then enforce the law.
*They were technically "missionaries" but they weren't, like, that kind of missionary, more the "imitation of christ" kind.
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on June 26, 2017 [17 favorites]
At the time, we knew one divorced woman who was a little older than I was - she used "Helen" as her English name. I think she'd met some Canadian friends of mine through some church outreach they did*? She was from somewhere else and had fled an abusive husband. Because of the terms of the divorce, IIRC, she basically couldn't see her child. It was pretty awful. She was a very sweet, gentle and pretty person, and it is depressing to think of her as "depreciated", since she was obviously a real catch in every important way.
What struck me about this wasn't the universal nature of it so much as how we stack the deck and call it fate. "That's the fate of a Little Third," says everyone, when no, that's the fate of a woman in a society where the laws - written by humans and changeable by same - disadvantage women materially. Add in some spousal maintenance, for instance, crack down on asset hiding, start scrutinizing those special loans available only to the single, etc, and you wouldn't totally solve the problem but you'd make a good start. On the one hand, it's "cultural" in the sense that everyone looks down on women for reasons that are more than just legal and procedural - but on the other, one way to start showing that women are valued is to make it so under law, and then enforce the law.
*They were technically "missionaries" but they weren't, like, that kind of missionary, more the "imitation of christ" kind.
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on June 26, 2017 [17 favorites]
Amen Frowner.
Property law is not natural law. The "judicial guidance in 2011 that property should no longer be split on divorce, but awarded to the person whose name is on the deeds" has without a doubt trapped many women in shitty marriages (source).
The saddest quote from the article was “I get to stay in my home.”
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:19 AM on June 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
Property law is not natural law. The "judicial guidance in 2011 that property should no longer be split on divorce, but awarded to the person whose name is on the deeds" has without a doubt trapped many women in shitty marriages (source).
The saddest quote from the article was “I get to stay in my home.”
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:19 AM on June 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
Cache link for those who have "read your last complimentary article this month. "
posted by CaseyB at 11:20 AM on June 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by CaseyB at 11:20 AM on June 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
“Women in China have missed out on the greatest accumulation of residential property wealth in history,” said Leta Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. “That tremendous accumulation is now over." (Guardian 2015)Wealth via real estate bubble has and continues to be deeply problematic, but when the primary way of building longterm wealth is through property acquisition it boggles the mind how fucking unfair this is.
Research in China’s biggest real-estate markets in 2012 found that in 70% of cases brides or their families at least partially financed properties, but women were named on only 30% of deeds.(Guardian 2015)posted by spamandkimchi at 11:25 AM on June 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
Shit like this makes me so damn angry. The other day I was listening to a Fresh Air interview with Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi woman who defied unwritten law to drive a car herself (Daring to Drive is the book she wrote about it). Listening to her talk about how many basic rights are denied to women in Saudi Arabia was physically painful to me. How the fuck did so, so many cultures of the world decide that women are less than, that women are inferior, that women are property? It wasn't that long ago, just over 100 years, that women couldn't own property in the US either.
This article, with consultants telling women that they must turn themselves inside out to be more desirable, more pliant, submissive - to prevent the men who are supposed to love them and are cheating on them from leaving them? Gah, it makes me see red. It makes me want to shout at the women to RISE UP, to get the hell out of there, to want better for themselves! But of course that's my cultural privilege showing. I'm a Norwegian woman living in the US - and so I have access to role models and to my own property and to my own individuality and I fucking know that I am equal in worth to any man, and my desires are as worthy as any man's, and my life is mine to live, and I have always known that.
I just wish I knew how to fix shit like this.
posted by widdershins at 11:58 AM on June 26, 2017 [15 favorites]
This article, with consultants telling women that they must turn themselves inside out to be more desirable, more pliant, submissive - to prevent the men who are supposed to love them and are cheating on them from leaving them? Gah, it makes me see red. It makes me want to shout at the women to RISE UP, to get the hell out of there, to want better for themselves! But of course that's my cultural privilege showing. I'm a Norwegian woman living in the US - and so I have access to role models and to my own property and to my own individuality and I fucking know that I am equal in worth to any man, and my desires are as worthy as any man's, and my life is mine to live, and I have always known that.
I just wish I knew how to fix shit like this.
posted by widdershins at 11:58 AM on June 26, 2017 [15 favorites]
Great link, and the story at the end with the woman who decided to eventually live her own life was striking.
When I first read this article, I tweeted out this bit:
I, of course, felt like a bit of a dick.
posted by adrianhon at 3:20 PM on June 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
When I first read this article, I tweeted out this bit:
Confucius wrote, in his Book of Rites, “The woman obeys the man. In her youth she obeys her father and elder brother; when married, she obeys her husband; when her husband is dead, she obeys her son.”noting that Confucius could be a bit of a dick. My dad, of course, saw this tweet and proceeded to consult his various Confucius texts and emailed me a bunch of research into the historical and cultural reasons for why Confucius might say that 2500 years ago (a time at which there are plenty of people saying the same, and even worse), and different interpretations of his attitude towards women.
I, of course, felt like a bit of a dick.
posted by adrianhon at 3:20 PM on June 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
@adrianhon - could you share some of what your dad wrote to you about Confucius? I am genuinely curious, and it seems relevant.
posted by metaseeker at 10:08 PM on June 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by metaseeker at 10:08 PM on June 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ancient and traditional Chinese greeting:
One morning, in the lobby of my Shanghai hotel, I met a man in his early forties who introduced himself as Detective Li. “The difference between your actual appearance and your WeChat profile is considerable,” he said by way of greeting.
This greeting is known in Chinese as Wánquán shèjí, which translates literally as "making complete fire" or what the kids today call a TOTAL BURN!!!
posted by jonp72 at 7:21 PM on June 27, 2017
One morning, in the lobby of my Shanghai hotel, I met a man in his early forties who introduced himself as Detective Li. “The difference between your actual appearance and your WeChat profile is considerable,” he said by way of greeting.
This greeting is known in Chinese as Wánquán shèjí, which translates literally as "making complete fire" or what the kids today call a TOTAL BURN!!!
posted by jonp72 at 7:21 PM on June 27, 2017
« Older This was the sound, this was the sound I saw | The Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Monday at 4:29 AM on June 26, 2017 [2 favorites]