So the fairy tales goes like this: One day a knight in shining armor rescued the young, helpless lass from a life of sure disadvantage and made her his wife. And also his maid.
If you think that trope is hopelessly outdated, consider this Tinder profile I came across the other day. Unless your name is Bill Cosby or James Deen, I’m not in the business of outing entitled male pigs, so let’s just call this man—
Jacques, 48
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
6 kilometers away
Living in Manila
I also look for a maid in stay in :)
So Jacques, obviously French, obviously white, and obviously looking for… what is it? A hook-up with domestic benefits, or a domestic with hook-up benefits?
Either way, what the fuck, Jacques? Talk about the many subtle forms of orientalism and objectification. Yeah, it’s more fun in the Philippines. Come to the country where the women are beautiful, sensuous, and servile.
And that smiley face punctuating the end of his short spiel clearly indicated that he thought he was being cute and clever. Other men boldly advertise their proclivity for bondage and threesomes, hoping to find a willing playmate; Jacques uses Tinder for job recruitment, hoping to find a maid.
While Jacques’ blatant advertisement for live-in help with sexual duties on the side was disgusting and demeaning and, frankly, a huge turn-off, as it should be for intelligent women everywhere, the journalist and amateur anthropologist in me was tempted to swipe right. I mean, he wasn’t ugly, and he at least went to university. For a split-second, I entertained the prospect, if we matched, of meeting him and ascertaining for myself the level of sexist douchebaggery this guy was all about before proceeding to Simone de Beauvoir the shit out of him. In French.
But I swiped left. He just wasn’t interesting enough.
What I’d be interested to know, however, is how many women did actually swipe right? Did they bother to see the fine print, or did they, with their AFAM only, please standards, think, I wouldn’t mind fucking that, maid’s uniform optional?
The master-maid relationship is not new; the history of expat culture in Asia heaves with tales of men falling in love with, and eventually marrying the help, as well as sagas of marriages crumbling and families disintegrating because the master of the house fucked the maid.
And this isn’t just limited to Asia. It happens all over the world. (See: mail-order brides).
Surely there are genuine “love” matches, or at the very least consenting sexual relationships, among such expat men and the women in their employ who end up bedding and/or marrying them. But the majority of such liaisons are posited on disparities of status, real or perceived, whether economic, social, educational, professional, intellectual, and, distasteful as it may to be admit, racial, thanks to centuries of colonial baggage and the entrenched system of white male privilege.
For a swathe of women economically disadvantaged, raised on a diet not so much of “some day your prince will come” but rather, “if you get the chance to escape from this hellhole one day and find someone who’ll take care of you, do it, who cares if he’s ugly or condescending, as long as he has money,” their idea of love may be inextricably linked with rescue, or some form of salvation—deliver us from misery—with the savior being a white (or foreign) man, his being white considered synonymous with being moneyed.
Mr. White Knight may indeed be truly kind, truly generous and truly in love, yet sometimes the fairy tale takes a tragic turn and the man on the pedestal morphs into Mr. Mean Monster, and unless—or even if—he physically abuses the long-suffering wife who cooks, cleans, cares for the children and sucks his cock, she is often advised by well-meaning friends and family to put up with His Horrible Highness and pray to the Lord, the Virgin Mary and all the saints in heaven that your enduring love will help him change.
When distilled to its depressing essence, it would appear that such marriages (and to an extent the sex that comes with it) is not so much a relationship between equals but a transactional exercise. He provides food, shelter, financial security, and status, and she, the cleaning skills and the magic pussy.
Even in more egalitarian societies the notion still persists, albeit subtly. A British friend of mine tells me that every now and then, her investment banker husband, also British, likes to joke that had he not married her, an advertising executive when they first met, she would still be living in a bedsit in Fulham. It was actually Chelsea, on Cheyne Walk, but she does let him get away with it every now and then. After all, she confides, she went to Cheltenham Ladies and he went to a second-tier boarding school. His ego needs the boost.
Similarly, an ex-boyfriend of mine thought I should alternately jump for joy and fall to my knees and blow him every second of the day out of gratitude for wanting to marry me and buy a house for me and my children. In a country he wanted to retire in but I had no desire to live in. I mean, seriously, thanks but no thanks. Love me he certainly did, but clearly he didn’t know me well enough to realize I didn’t need rescuing.
Men. They never listen.
B. Wiser is the author of Making Love in Spanish, a novel published earlier this year by Anvil Publishing and available in National Book Store and Powerbooks, as well as online on nationalbookstore.com. When not assuming her Sasha Fierce alter-ego, she takes on the role of serious journalist and media consultant.
For comments and questions, e-mail b.wiser.ph@gmail.com.
Art by Dorothy Guya