Letter About BagongPinay's sentiment towards Mail-Order-Bride sites The following letter was sent to me in response to my phrase: “ ...in 1986, out of curiosity, I surfed to www.filipina.com just to see what I would get...As I hit the enter-button I thought I would found a zine that Filipinas could take advantage of. Instead, I had come to a Mail-Order-Bride Web page! Aaaah! I felt shock, dismay, embarrassment, outrage and sadness. I had found not a Web site that Filipinas could take advantage of, but rather, one that, in a way, takes advantage of Filipinas.” (This is one of the biggest reason why I started this site--- to counter the trafficking stereotype of Filipinas!) This phrase has since been changed to be more exact in meaning and now reads: “a Web site that ...but rather, one that misrepresents the name of 'Filipina.'” The letter from Mr. Lee follows and my letter in answer to him also follows this. Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 17:50:41 -0700 From: robert lee <robelee@worldnet.att.net> To: suggestions@bagongpinay.net Subject: comment hi, this is my first and last visit. i was all excited to find this site so that i could learn about filipinas. but then when i read your put-down about www.filipina.com being a website that "takes advantage of Filipinas", i was immediately turned off and disappointed. turned off because you jump to a conclusion about something you know nothing about and then make a slanderous and mean-spirited disparaging remark. i could see that you are not a professional because you speak from your own personal bias rather than research the topic that a real publisher would do first. that instantly destroys any credibility for anything you say. disappointed because it simply isn't true and you do a disservice to your approximately 30,000 fellow Filipinas in the U.S. who have found a new life by corresponding with american men who adore Filipinas. many of these filipinas will read your insensitive comment when they visit your site. how do you think they will feel? do you think your thoughtless comment are consistent with the objectives of your website? and how about the guys who have married and found happiness with filipina ladies after meeting them through such sites as filipina.com? many of those guys want to learn more about filipina culture. they respect and love filipinas and think the world of them. how will they feel when they read your prejudiced remarks? do you think that filipinas who place ads thru www.filipina.com and the other correspondence clubs feel that they are being taken advantage of? look, i don't mean to fight but really, if you want to have any credibility with your journalism, do your homework first before you decide to cut down somebody. if you don't do that, you aren't doing your job as a professional and you seriously undermine the philosophy and spirit of your site. your readers deserve better. if you want to a respected site and you respect your readers to reach their own conclusions, do objective, unbiased, open-minded research on the so-called "Mail-Order-Bride" industry. present the facts to your readers and let them simply form their own opinions. you might be surprised what you learn. A lover of filipinas BagongPinay to Mr Lee: Mr Lee: With regard to newfilipina’s site, we are not a journalistic site. We are an online community for filipinas on the internet. It’s a place for sharing and increasing awareness. We want to hear the voices, stories, opinions, experiences of ALL filipinas who come to the site. My opinion. I was aware that when I made that statement that it might not be true for all who read it. But it is true for me --- that is EXACTLY how I felt and those are the exact words that capture how I felt when I came upon www.filipina.com. I and many other Filipinas think that www.filipina.com is an unfair way for ALL filipinas to be represented. I was turned off and disappointed with finding what the domain was. And even if I am Filipina I myself will never go to that MOB site again. What am I going to get out of it? It has very limited applications for Filipinas in general if you look at it.... The majority of Filipinas in the world do not want to be associated with Mail-Order-Brides I must say. I do not want people to think that I am an MOB and I myself have encountered stereotypes here in the US and have had to overcome them. Your opinion. We want to hear the voices, stories, opinions, experiences of ALL filipinas who come to the site. And that is including MOBs who have had happy or unhappy experiences. If you have stories of happy MOBs then we want to share those stories on the site in our section called Pinay Ngayon(means Filipina Today). We intend for this not to be biased. I am aware of most of my own biases and to try keep the site from being biased we shall attempt to air out the stories of people on “both-sides-of-the fence.” The New Filipina Site. We want the site to be well-rounded. It WILL BE if people like you who feel that their story has not been shared and should be will then come forward and give it. If you know of articles/features that air your side then we would love to get them. Also if you have a personal experience as a happy husband in a happy marriage and would be willing to write your own personal story and share it on the site then we will be happy to share it on the site, too. If you take a look at my People Power website, I had also requested stories from opposing sides but I really did not get any from the pro-marcos’ side. I did get a scathing letter from a disillusioned Filipino citizen and shared it on the site. Actually, when I get a chance, I will put a link to a new page that will contain your letter close by to my comments that you reacted so strongly to. After the thousands of visitors we have gotten, you are the first to come forward with this reaction, Mr. Lee, and maybe more people should hear about it. It will give people a better perspective don’t you think? BTW, Magsalita Ka means speak out. What has happened since then? We featured two pages on MOBs: American Men on Mail-Order-Brides (MOBs) Sigaw ng Mutya , November 1998, and Mail Order Brides, a research paper by MaryAnn Szyskowski, Sigaw ng Mutya Feature, Jan'99 and started an open forum on the topic of MOBs. Mr. Lee joined in after I again wrote him about what I learned in the open forum. See his entry (Entry 20). _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ | Home | Site Map | Contact Us | Established 1998. All rights reserved. ©1998-©2003 NewFilipina. ©1998-©2003 BagongPinay.