Week 2, Day 1: Moving for Pleasure

Moving for Pleasure, Lilley Harris → 

Last semester, I read a 1916 publication titled Manhood and Marriage for a writing assignment. Chapter five of the book, titled "Selecting a Wife," instructed men on what qualities to look for in a woman for her to be worthy of becoming a wife. Unfortunately, much of the rhetoric in the book relied upon eugenic principles and thereby diminished the humanity and agency of women (this was a portion of my thesis for the writing I did last semester). In this pre-Internet era, eugenic sentiments called for the breeding out of bad traits and largely marginalized the non-white, non-America, and non-middle class body. However, as discussed in "Planetlove.com: Cyberbrides in the Americas and the Transnational Routes of U.S. Masculinity," the Internet and anxieties about American women entering the workforce allow eugenic language to be transformed into rationale for seeking romantic relationships with non-white and non-American women. This reversal reflects the permanency of eugenic language, but the fluidity of men's desires when seeking women as influenced by affronts to masculinity and wants for modernization and upward mobility. 

Eugenic language often reduces the subject to a non-human breeding entity. In my analysis of Manhood and Marriage for a class on reproduction, I noted that the author analogized women as viruses by utilizing eugenic language such as "stock," "transmission," "strain," and "implanted." In "Planetlove.com," the men seeking foreign wives used terms like "IT IS TIME FOR NEW GENES," (original capitalization, 340) "these women are culturally grown," (341), and the women are described as having "the right biological makeup," (341). The focus on the superior genes reinforces the eugenic notion that reproduction with these (Latin American / foreign) women results in better offspring. This is a sharp turn from early eugenic movements, which saw "racial mixing as degenerative," and this racial mixing is now perceived as "regenerative," (341). The desire by American men to wed Latin American women is due to gendered and racialized perceptions of docility, femininity, better mothering, and preservation of "traditional" values. These traditional values are threatened by U.S. feminism, which is seen as "a potent and virulent disease attacking the biological and cultural foundations of society," (344). Once again, eugenic language is utilized. The ties between feminism and a viral threat to society demonstrate that it is not just bodies that can threaten eugenic reproduction but ideologies. 

While Manhood and Marriage serves as a way for American (presumably white and middle class) men to reinforce and justify eugenic practices in wife-choosing, the piece speaks little of market logic and economic justifications for this practice. However, there is a commodity to be sold: good genes. This commodification of certain bodies allows market forces to take hold. The ebbs and flows of supply and demand explain why eugenic logic can be weaponized and used to subjugate certain people at one point in time but then harnessed to bolster them at another. In "Planetlove.com," the location of culture within the body (as evident by statements regarding Latin American women as "culturally grown") allows citizenship to be imagined "not by national or political participation, by by women's self-sacrificial relationship to men through their reproductive, sexual, racial, and gender position in the home, and by extension, in the global economy," (345). 

The economization of foreign bodies as sexual commodities, and therefore the subjugation of their desires to those of the consumers (those with purchasing power), is ironic in that one of the reasons for desiring a Latin American bride is that she is "imagined as untainted by modern capitalist relations," (334). However, in seeking a bride through Internet sites (that likely require paid memberships), the American male has facilitated the spread of consumer capitalism by contributing to the commodification of foreign bodies. 

This is not to claim that foreign bodies are operating only in response to the desires of American men or the market surrounding their bodies. In some instances, they are active participants. In "Turboconsumer," gay tourism in Brazil exposes how sexualized commodification of foreign/native bodies allows upward mobility for michês. The michês harness the power of the TurboconsumerTM and the market created by gay sex tourism as "a path out of poverty," (668). 

The leap from eugenics to economics may seem far, but as demonstrated, the commodification of good genes allows a commodification of the bodies through to contain those genes. However, while eugenics is commonly associated with the subjugation of certain bodies at the expense of others, this subjugation is not permanent. For example, Manhood and Marriage would not determine marriages between American men and Latin American women to be appropriate, but now the eugenic rhetoric is being used to justify this practice. Because eugenic language can be used in response to and in the creation of supply and demand for certain bodies, the argument can be made that it facilitates the commodification of certain bodies, as mentioned above. Once again, this does not mean the foreign bodies are acting without agency; the commodified body can mobilize the power of this consumer market for its benefit.