if you are female and not hitched by 27 you are leftovers

[tbf]

Well that's the way it is in the world's biggest relationship market, China.

 

BBC News - China's 'leftover women'

 

One consolation is if you are an older unmarried woman, you are considered higher quality...too good for most men, even though there are millions of excess men.

Its not just the family who puts pressure on women to marry over there, the govt gets in on the act. Local govt. gets involved in trying to match up single people. If they really want to help all the dorky 'nice' guys or country farmers there, and have these educated women breed, then they should make it so that if the guy writes to his local state party chief, then they can force any single woman over 30 of his choosing to marry him.

So you're quoting from a country with the worst track record of social engineering to prove your point?

 

Why not use the example of Yemen where adult men marry nine year old girls?

[iKING]

Leftovers are still pretty tasty.

[Taramere]

I see plenty of happy, well balanced single women who are thrilled to be alive and thriving, and don't need or want to be married. I'm sure it's the same for many Chinese women.

 

I'm not talking about single women who the press are trying to ridicule into marriage being unhappy. It's a bit frightening, the degree to which ethnocentricity on this board results in people thinking that the biggest problem Chinese women face is being given insulting labels if they choose to remain single.

 

I'm guessing the Chinese men on average marry earlier too because of cultural and family pressure. So they marry young women of the same age. Also the girls there can take their pick, as there is a lop-sided gender ratio.

 

 

Not really.

 

"China's one-child policy causes more violence against women and girls than any other policy on earth, than any official policy in the history of the world."

 

These are the passionate words of Reggie Littlejohn, a U.S. attorney who founded Women's Rights Without Frontiers -- an international coalition that opposes forced abortion and sexual slavery in China... Littlejohn summed up the one child policy as nothing short of a "Chinese war against women and girls." Forced abortions among women who violate the policy are commonplace in the country and sometimes carried out up to nine months of pregnancy. They can be so violent, Littlejohn says, "the women die along with their full term babies."

 

But the brutality of forced abortion isn't the only human rights violation wrought by China's infamous "family planning policy." It leads to gendercide because of China's traditional preference for boys, leaving girls disproportionately subject to abortion, abandonment and infanticide. It results in sexual slavery as the elimination of baby girls has led to an increase in the trafficking of women from neighbouring countries into China, driven by an estimated 37 million more Chinese males than females.

 

And although the connection isn't fully proven, the policy may also be the cause of a high rate of female suicide in China (the World Health Organization says the country has the highest female suicide rate of any country in the world, with approximately 500 Chinese women ending their lives each day). "I don't think that's unrelated to forced abortion, forced sterilization and infanticide," Littlejohn says.

 

China's War Against Women and Girls | ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome

 

A shortage of women in a society does not result in women living a belle of the ball type lifestyle. It results in a situation where women are increasingly commodified and where people want to have their rights restricted so that they can be pressured into marriages they don't want. Sometimes where they will be abused by their husbands and their husbands' families to the point where they seek escape by suicide...and that's what I mean when I say that some women might consider the aborted female foetuses to be the lucky ones.

 

I challenge anybody to argue that that wouldn't be the mindset of a woman so desperate that she'd ingest farm chemicals that will result in a slow and agonising death....that being the most common form of suicide amongst women in rural China.

Edited February 22, 2013 by Taramere

[ascendotum]

So you're quoting from a country with the worst track record of social engineering to prove your point?

 

Why not use the example of Yemen where adult men marry nine year old girls?

 

Huh! It was in today's news. I didn't have to go searching for it. China has a million times more global influence than yemen and they mostly marry in early 20s there which is not even close to your 9. I take an interest in world events and just because it is not about dating in NY or London doesn't mean its it of no relevance or that other people are doing it wrong. As someone else pointed out the current situation is a result of past failures to reduce population.

[boaaaar]

bah, china ...

[Radu]

Well that's the way it is in the world's biggest relationship market, China.

 

BBC News - China's 'leftover women'

 

One consolation is if you are an older unmarried woman, you are considered higher quality...too good for most men, even though there are millions of excess men.

Its not just the family who puts pressure on women to marry over there, the govt gets in on the act. Local govt. gets involved in trying to match up single people. If they really want to help all the dorky 'nice' guys or country farmers there, and have these educated women breed, then they should make it so that if the guy writes to his local state party chief, then they can force any single woman over 30 of his choosing to marry him.

 

That photograph in the article is quite interesting.

Her colleague in the background is the focus of the photograph, her [possible] ring is hidden, and the woman in question despite wearing red is obviously insecure.

That photograph is an insult to her potential tbh.

 

To the 29yr old miss i have just one good advice, leave the country and find a western guy who appreciates her.

Hypergamy and enforcement of hypergamy will never go away in China in the near future.

[tbf]

Huh! It was in today's news. I didn't have to go searching for it. China has a million times more global influence than yemen and they mostly marry in early 20s there which is not even close to your 9. I take an interest in world events and just because it is not about dating in NY or London doesn't mean its it of no relevance or that other people are doing it wrong. As someone else pointed out the current situation is a result of past failures to reduce population.

China, like all governments, should stay out of people's bedrooms. ALL their problems have been caused by governmental interference, from Mao encouraging families to breed too much which caused their population explosion, then a reversal of policy because of overpopulation back down to one child where they abort or leave to die, female children and now this, because of their lack of females. That's why their males are rampaging since there aren't enough females.

 

One big clusterf**k of why governments need to get out of people's homes.

[ChessPieceFace]

China, like all governments, should stay out of people's bedrooms.

 

Look around you. Earth only has so much ability to support humans. Logic suggests we're already past the sustainable max population given current farming and water reclamation technology. Even if/when tech improves to support a higher max pop, there is still a max pop. People aren't going to police their own bedrooms. Population laws are the best of the options.

[Eggplant]

Population laws are the best of the options.

A lot of poor rural women worldwide don't have access to birth control.

[Radu]

A lot of poor rural women worldwide don't have access to birth control.

Because of multiple factors.

Poverty is one, but here's a more interesting one.

Many of the BC offered to poor ppl are bought at western prices.

In the US, it costs 50$ for the pill for a woman, every month.

Prices for medicine in Mexico for medicine are close to a 3rd of what they are in the US.

In Romania it's 5-10$.

 

Who benefits from this ?; ppl at the top who have friends in pharmaceutical companies and their lobby groups.

[Els]

I see plenty of happy, well balanced single women who are thrilled to be alive and thriving, and don't need or want to be married. I'm sure it's the same for many Chinese women.

 

You completely missed Taramere's point. She was not talking about the fact that they were single, more so the fact that they are living in such an extremely chauvinistic and narrow-minded culture. Marriage absolutely does not improve a woman's lot in China, not unless she's starving poor and marrying into a rich family - emigration does.

 

I visited Hong Kong briefly back in the mid nineties and that was when I first started to think about that particular emerging problem. I was out for dinner with friends of the people I was staying with and the issue of how things would be once all these boys got old enough to marry and there weren't enough girls around came up.

 

I think generally life is better for women in countries where there are more than enough women to "go around". The fewer women there are, the more women start to be seen as commodities...and you've got all the aggression that goes with frustrated men who want girlfriends & wives and can't get them. You can see how women who don't get married might provoke this outrage and efforts to shame and ridicule them out of singledom.

 

I partially agree with this, especially the outrage and aggression bit. I think China was just as bad before the female shortage though (prior to the one-child policy). At least the foot binding and blatant polygyny stopped after WWII.

 

The irony being that the same society that aims all that shaming and ridicule at them for not doing their bit to reduce the number of frustrated bachelors in China is responsible for the imbalanced numbers of men and women - thanks to sex selective abortion and outright murder of female babies. Some of the women who were permitted to make it past babyhood are probably left thinking that those who didn't may have been the lucky ones after all.

 

Yup. Using chauvinism to solve the issues caused by chauvinism. Not surprising that it isn't working out terribly well, and also not uncommon in history - in countries where rape is considered par by course, the 'solutions' implemented by authorities tend to include laws for how women are allowed to dress. Ironically, men also suffer when such a culture predominates - the fathers, brothers, and husbands of women who are raped, the men who are seen as nothing more than a walking wallet in the eyes of their suitors, the men who are left behind in the goverment-induced rat race because they are 'D grade' (with 'grade' solely taken to mean wealth and employment). The only people who benefit are the very rich and powerful men. Just horrible all around.

[ChessPieceFace]

A lot of poor rural women worldwide don't have access to birth control.

 

Excuses don't change the fact that Earth can only support a certain number of humans. Nothing does.

[Els]

Excuses don't change the fact that Earth can only support a certain number of humans. Nothing does.

 

So what are you doing to increase the availability of birth control worldwide?

[mcdo]

Glad I'm not in China. I'm 25 and I quite fancy a girl who is 30. I don't consider her as "leftovers" at all. She just spent a lot of her 20s with some Class A a$sh0les.

[Revolver]

Most women by 27 know whether they are going to get married or not.

[quietGuy13]

I know single guys over 33. They date younger.

 

Single girls over 33 might have trouble though.

 

Except if they're hot. If those 33 year old women are hot, everybody likes them

[aed]

when i was 10 years and you hadn't hold hands or dated a someone you where a left over.

 

when i was 14 and you didn't kissed anyone you where leftover

 

when i was 18 and you hadn't slept with anyone you where leftover

 

when I urned 30 and you aren't settled you where a leftover....

 

 

when you are 10 years past al those ages did all really mather if you where 2 years laters?

 

all bull****... IMO

[xpaperxcutx]

I have families in China and I have been to China long enough in the past to know all the women who hold off on marriage are the ones looking to marry a millionaire.

 

Just because there are all these " Sheng Nu" ( leftover women), doesn't mean they can't get married. Compared to Western countries, most Asian women are skinny and beautiful. They just have a high standards especially given the state of the continuous economic boom.

 

Just recently, my mom went back to visit relatives and she told me the most the women in China talk about is what kind of house people own, what kind of cars they drive, and what kind of brand bags they have.

 

If you thought Western women are materialistic, Chinese women all want Louis Vuittons and Coach bags.

[Els]

I have families in China and I have been to China long enough in the past to know all the women who hold off on marriage are the ones looking to marry a millionaire.

 

Just because there are all these " Sheng Nu" ( leftover women), doesn't mean they can't get married. Compared to Western countries, most Asian women are skinny and beautiful. They just have a high standards especially given the state of the continuous economic boom.

 

Just recently, my mom went back to visit relatives and she told me the most the women in China talk about is what kind of house people own, what kind of cars they drive, and what kind of brand bags they have.

 

If you thought Western women are materialistic, Chinese women all want Louis Vuittons and Coach bags.

 

Eh, this is true, too, especially in the cities. It's almost unheard-of for Chinese women (who are born and bred in China) to 'marry down', so the high-earning women are left with relatively few prospects. And the 'D-grade' guys (probably even the 'C-grade' ones, due to the current lack of women) are screwed. Same thing is happening in most Asian countries with a high population of East Asians (Singapore, etc), except in those countries they're not as screwed because there aren't so few women compared to men.

 

Yet another lovely byproduct of chauvinism.

[Radu]

Eh, this is true, too, especially in the cities. It's almost unheard-of for Chinese women (who are born and bred in China) to 'marry down', so the high-earning women are left with relatively few prospects. And the 'D-grade' guys (probably even the 'C-grade' ones, due to the current lack of women) are screwed. Same thing is happening in most Asian countries with a high population of East Asians (Singapore, etc), except in those countries they're not as screwed because there aren't so few women compared to men.

 

Yet another lovely byproduct of chauvinism.

 

The same dynamic also exists in the US and it will eventually reach boiling point there.

[ascendotum]

I have families in China and I have been to China long enough in the past to know all the women who hold off on marriage are the ones looking to marry a millionaire.

 

Just because there are all these " Sheng Nu" ( leftover women), doesn't mean they can't get married. Compared to Western countries, most Asian women are skinny and beautiful. They just have a high standards especially given the state of the continuous economic boom.

 

Just recently, my mom went back to visit relatives and she told me the most the women in China talk about is what kind of house people own, what kind of cars they drive, and what kind of brand bags they have.

 

If you thought Western women are materialistic, Chinese women all want Louis Vuittons and Coach bags.

 

I wondered if this part of the picture is this as well. Taramere was saying how the significant imbalance in favour of single women is not really for their benefit (commodified/restricted rights), but not knowing whats its like on the ground in China I have a hard time believing its that bad being a seller when its a sellers market and the men are the buyers queuing up. I saw a doco on Sex in China, and how much things have changed there in the last 20 yrs. Prostitution, sex shops galore, sex fairs, Chinese cosmo magazine, sex & city type blogs. They interviewed women and they had high expectations now. For the men working on the construction sites earning crappy money it was a different story. That was Shanghai though, and I realize in the middle & western provinces of China traditional views on M/F relationship dynamics still live on. That doco like this article mentions, many single women are are now able to leap up in lifestyle by marrying wealthy men because they have plenty of options. Now there is a bit of a trend where the man's family has to pay dowry because the bride has the upper hand.

Welcome to China 21st century...China's brides go for gold

 

xcutx, this article mentions..."It is not uncommon to see bank statements and share certificates framed in gold on the side of marriage halls" How ****ing tacky!

[tbf]

Look around you. Earth only has so much ability to support humans. Logic suggests we're already past the sustainable max population given current farming and water reclamation technology. Even if/when tech improves to support a higher max pop, there is still a max pop. People aren't going to police their own bedrooms. Population laws are the best of the options.

This would be an inaccurate assessment of the Earth's sustainable population.

 

Many scientists have suggested that maximum population would be anywhere from 10 - 12 billion based on existing wasteful infrastructures. If food is properly distributed and rationed without the existing copious amounts of waste, the Earth can support up to 30 billion.

 

Also, based on a 2012 U.N. report, the global increase of population has reduced in the last 40 years, to the degree that it's predicted that in the next 5 years, there will only be an increase of 70 million. It's hoped that by the middle of this century, global populations will reduce to a sustainable level of two children per couple. In other words, flatlining at around 8 billion which is far below maximum capacity.

Edited February 24, 2013 by tbf

[Els]

The same dynamic also exists in the US and it will eventually reach boiling point there.

 

Hrm, I'm not sure about that. Western culture (not sure about the USA in particular) seems pretty far removed from Chinese culture in terms of gender imbalance.

 

For instance, look at China bank's 'sexist' promotion sparks outrage

 

IMO as countries modernise, they tend to embrace gender equality, rarely going backwards. This banking service would be par by course for China 30 years ago but now some Chinese youth are protesting it. Good for them.

[taiko]

The same dynamic also exists in the US and it will eventually reach boiling point there.

Like it has with "good black men". I guess I wasn't good until I was seen with an Asian

[amazingdrummer]

Most women by 27 know whether they are going to get married or not.

 

I just celebrated my 27th birthday a few day ago. I know that I'm going to get married, I just don't know where to find my groom :-D