There’s Good And Bad Women Everywhere

I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed at the open misogyny displayed in recent readers’ submissions. It’s always been there but in recent weeks it’s almost become a campaign. Do these people have nothing else to do? I mean, who gives a damn? I come to Stickman to read funny stories about idiots who get their hooker girlfriends pregnant, have sores around their mouth because they couldn’t resist a trip to the salad bar, newbies who got taken in by a ladyboy (thank you, Hummwan 19/3/2010),… not to get all this bitterness and unresolved anger. If you’ve been treated badly by a Western woman, try to understand what you could have done better yourself (if anything, not ignoring the warnings signs that I’m sure were there before you tied the knot), become a wiser man and move on. Every life has its ups and downs.

In that sense, I really liked “It Just Ain’t That Bad!
” (9/4/2010). Here we have a guy who went through 3 marriages but has made peace with himself that it was partly also his own failings, and then without baggage married again. If you take an attitude that it was all that bitch’s
fault, and life is so unfair to you, then you become bitter (a very unattractive trait, might I add). The problem is that the haters have the passion to write, the rest of us thinks those views are daft but don’t care enough about the issue
to set aside 2 hours to put together a submission. Eventually these “vagina bad, penis good” rants take on the aura of truth if repeated enough without challenge. I’m sure there’s a good chunk of western women and Thais
among Stickman’s readers and I shudder to think that they will come to believe that this is the accepted opinion of all Western men. Speaking of which, at some point in my career I was doing a lot of market research, and Stickman’s
readership would be the last audience I’d want to sample if I needed a cross-section of the Western male. Now if I were doing a pricing study for a new herpes treatment…

Then about 2 weeks ago came Stickman’s call “I'm REALLY interested to see if anyone wishes to argue in favour of Western women…” and I almost took him up on it until Korski (1/4/2010) beat me to it and brought back some nuance to the one-sided debate. His submission was so utterly reasonable, comprehensive and well-argued that I thought that would be the end of it and we could all get back to stories in which unabashedly corrupt policeman and ailing water buffalos take the lead. Wrong, of course.

Another thing that has been bothering me is the increasingly intolerant tone and descent into name-calling of recent submissions. If you already get hot and bothered about strangers whose values and lifestyle you don’t know having a different opinion, no wonder your marriage exploded in acrimony. What is really striking about all these submission, no matter which side the writers are on, is how revealing the articles are about the author, much more so than the Western women that are the subject (and I’ve known very many, having lived in several European countries and 3 US cities). Reading these articles, certain things just jump out at you: Is this person easy to get along with? Is he capable of self-reflection or is everything the fault of someone else? Does he have good people knowledge? Does he have conflict resolution skills? Etc. Sure, everyone can have bad luck in a relationship, but not everybody then proceeds to blame a billion people (including their mothers and sisters) and take a hectoring tone towards everyone who doesn’t live in their black and white universe. If someone writes off all women from New Zealand to Spain, Sweden, Germany, UK, big-town USA, small-town USA… then this tells me this person is not very reasonable and generally an uncompromising, difficult person. So we may agree that the best option for them is to stay single and play the butterfly game, but it’s the bitterness and desire to paint all Western women with a bad brush that I don’t understand. If it was something to do with the physique that they don’t like, I could understand, but it’s the ethics and personality that they attack. They should be happy it’s only a small minority of us who enjoy the Thai scene rather than try to convince other Western males to follow in their footsteps. In more ways than one, the cushy deal we currently enjoy in SEA would collapse if too many Western men took their advice.

So let me come to my point and state something yawningly obvious: there’s good and bad women everywhere, you just need a little bit of people knowledge and choose wisely. Yes, people change as they age, face different contexts and have different priorities, but come on, the core personality is always there if you’re willing to see it (barring extreme cases of mental illness – but the point is “all” Western women vs. “some”). As an example, take Mr HereAndNow’s submission of 10/4/2010, not to pick on him personally because he sounds like a decent person, but honestly, reading about his first wife I want to exclaim: “Did you date her at all before you got married?” “Did you wake up in Vegas with a hangover and a golden ring on your finger?” Surely if she was such a psychotic bitch, there must have been telltale signs before you tied the knot? It’s really not that hard to pick up on meanness, greed, dishonesty, ruthlessness, unwillingness to comprise, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, and a whole slew of other unpleasant personality traits while you’re dating. And sure, I can understand marrying while you’re young and stupid – we’ve all done our share of bone-headed things when we were young – but then we’re back to Korski’s point that Thai women are by no means a failsafe deal either. Sure like hell I wouldn’t want my 20-year old nephew to fall in love with a Thai girl.

For what it’s worth, my own viewpoint is that for a serious partnership, it’s hard to imagine anything but a Western woman after 6 years in SEA (Singapore). I just couldn’t achieve the closeness that I seek from a marriage with an Asian women. If my wife can’t be my soul mate and best friend, why bother? The culture is too different. However, the window to get married with a Western woman is closing for me since I’m getting older (44 soon) but my taste in women hasn’t aged. (I know, I’m weird that way.) Nor do I feel that I’m done sowing my wild oats. I’ve always had a thing for beautiful women, and after the initial thrill of the hunt the commitment phobe in me wakes up. So for now, it’s the butterfly lifestyle for me, and I’m OK if it stays that way for the rest of my life. But that’s all because of me – not Western women – and I don’t feel the slightest bit of rancour towards them as a group.

There is a lot of sense here and for sure, some have displayed rather a lot of bitterness on this issue.