China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’ • Hacker News Board

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#41

Post by gakada » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #13

sanxiyn wrote: post #3

The key paragraph, in my opinion: "One response to marital infidelity is divorce. But divorce can be costly, especially for women. Aside from the social stigma that falls more heavily on women, family property and finances in China tend to be registered in the husband's name. A divorced woman can find herself homeless, adding to the pressure of taking measures to save the marriage."

"70% of women think that men should only get married after buying their own housing properties" according to a 2011 survey. The survey also shows "that about 80% of the single women interviewed think that it's reasonable for men to only consider a relationship if they receive a monthly income of above 4,000 yuan" ( http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/womenofchina/report/136873-1... ) Reducing that number to 0 percent and…

It seems that marriages in capitalist societies are inherently unstable. If rights are equal, then women are incentivised to divorce to "cash in" the value of their husband. If the rights are unequal, then men are incentivised to divorce to "trade up" to a more attractive wife.

It's only agrarian societies that manage to make husband and wife dependent enough on each other that divorce is a bad option for everybody.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#42

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

ripitrust wrote: post #33

rdslw wrote: post #10

Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR. China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners. 1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which…

You are in fact very right, but there is one critical issue here. If we are talking about marriage. Culturally there is a "lifespan" of value to both genders. A Man's valuable lifespan can be well over 20 years, from age 20 all the way to age 40.While a woman's valuable lifespan maybe only less than 10 years, from 20 to 30. This is because of the "stake" people are seeking when looking for a marriage between genders.…

Cultures change. Changing gender imbalances are one of the driving forces of said change.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#43

Post by cinquemb » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

ripitrust wrote: post #33

rdslw wrote: post #10

Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR. China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners. 1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which…

You are in fact very right, but there is one critical issue here. If we are talking about marriage. Culturally there is a "lifespan" of value to both genders. A Man's valuable lifespan can be well over 20 years, from age 20 all the way to age 40.While a woman's valuable lifespan maybe only less than 10 years, from 20 to 30. This is because of the "stake" people are seeking when looking for a marriage between genders.…

>Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.

Now it would be fascinating if people could generate probability distributions that accurately describe social-economic systems/relationships like what I would say that you accurately describe quantitatively.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#44

Post by Retric » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #27

rdslw wrote: post #10

Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR. China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners. 1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which…

Men are not fungible.

A man is not fungible, but 600,000,000 men are.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#45

Post by ctvo » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:21 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #36

ctvo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction is probably lost, but a mistress is someone the husband has emotional feelings for (and what scares the wives is their ability to manipulate their husbands). It takes time to find someone like that and build up a new side relationship. It could happen again, but they're hoping not quickly. This is different from sleeping with escorts and other transactional women, which a lot of wives are comfortable…

Escorts are considered part of how business is done in China?

Not all the time, but common enough that no one is shocked and it's not a secret that business men engage in these activities.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#46

Post by hasenj » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:26 PM UTC

rdslw wrote: post #10

Hard to believe this is something more than 'wannabe business PR' plus movie PR. China female/male ratio is heavily unbalanced. There is a LOT men on market for women to choose. Also almost no foreign woman marry chinese man, on the contrary to the chinese women marrying a lot of foreigners. 1+2 means china is a market where men are at bad position and women has plenty of fish to choose from. Opposite situation which…

But how many of these men are actually desirable by the women?

The services in the article cost upwards of $10k which means the woman in this case might be married to a rich high status man, which is arguably difficult to come by.

If you are a women age 28 married to a high status man for say six years, you probably want to keep that man instead of trying to find another one.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#47

Post by dpark » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:32 PM UTC

gakada wrote: post #41

belorn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"70% of women think that men should only get married after buying their own housing properties" according to a 2011 survey. The survey also shows "that about 80% of the single women interviewed think that it's reasonable for men to only consider a relationship if they receive a monthly income of above 4,000 yuan" ( http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/womenofchina/report/136873-1... ) Reducing that number to 0 percent and…

It seems that marriages in capitalist societies are inherently unstable. If rights are equal, then women are incentivised to divorce to "cash in" the value of their husband. If the rights are unequal, then men are incentivised to divorce to "trade up" to a more attractive wife. It's only agrarian societies that manage to make husband and wife dependent enough on each other that divorce is a bad option for everybody.

> If rights are equal, then women are incentivised to divorce to "cash in" the value of their husband.

This only applies if earning potential between women and men is wildly disparate. When women can and do earn as much as men, the "cashing in" factor largely goes away.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#48

Post by dpark » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:33 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #35

chii wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's interesting that in the west, divorce usually means the women gets half the networth of the man, in which case, it's the man who normally don't want to divorce.

Unless the wife has higher income in which case the husband benefits. Or maybe they even earn similar incomes...

Yeah. I'm not sure what decade these people are living in. If you're worried about marriage because you think your wife is going to divorce you and take half your money, you could choose a spouse with her own source of good income.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#49

Post by roel_v » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:36 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #44

roel_v wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are not fungible.

A man is not fungible, but 600,000,000 men are.

Either a good is fungible or it isn't (well, a good has an elasticity, it's not binary of course), it doesn't depend on the supply. Consumer choices are a function of elasticity and location on the supply/demand curve (and many more things ofc, but that's not relevant for this point). In other words, supply nor demand are a component of fungibility.

Re: China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’

#50

Post by HNerInChina » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

ripitrust wrote: post #20

I doubt that this will ever work in countries other than China because women (and marriage) in other countries are mostly protected by law, while in china, women are not so well protected. Also, culturally speaking, a divorced woman is very hard to get marriage in China. While a divorced man is easy. In society, People think that "divorce" somehow depreciated the value of a woman, while "divorce" means nothing (somet…

>Also, after marriage, Chinese woman will not focus mostly on work or career promotion but rather on family, so in the long term, they are 1) financially attached to the husband 2) emotionally attached to the husband. This makes them want to "fix" the marriage rather than abandon it, even if the fix is superficial and (maybe) temporary.

This was the reason for community property laws in the West. But now that women work outside the home and earn almost as much as men, community property has morphed into a divorce theft regime in which the wife can take 60% to 100% of everything the man holds dear including his children, his income, the house, and his retirement income and assets, all as (often lifetime) alimony and upwardly variable child support, all under the persistent threat of imprisonment even if he has done nothing to deserve such abuse.

Please note that, in China, the national divorce rate is approximately 2% but in first-tier cities, where women have the highest earning potential, it's over 47%. If women in China file for divorce at similar rates as they have in the U.S. for over 100 years, they they will be filing 65% to 70% of divorces.

Divorce is easy in China, for both women and men. The government policy is equality of the sexes--women hold up half the sky. And divorce rates are highest in cities where women have the greatest agency and highest economic independence.

So, in China divorcees cannot seize their ex husband's premarital assets (govt policy) often leaving them destitute through no fault of theirs. In Anglo Saxon countries, millions fathers are not allowed to see let alone raise their children. Both are sad situations but which is worse?

BTW, anyone contemplating marriage in America might want to watch the movie 'Divorce Corp' first.