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...many times by online relationships.
The pre-research process on marriage-migration in Asia was not only a learning experience but has also led me to a process of self-reflexivity. This process of questioning my biases against cyberspace and women and intercultural relationships was a way for me to revisit what I believed to be one of the core values of feminism, and that is openness. In gathering related literature on this phenomenon, interviews with Filipino women who have experienced marrying foreign men and their various reasons for doing so, talking to women who are savvy users of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and also hearing from women who are more into online dating than going to bars to meet people, all these conversations have challenged my biases. It opened my mind to various ways relationships are formed, the reasons and circumstances of marriage in different cultures.
Being part of this research team that looked into marriage migration in Asia has made me understand, expand my knowledge, and provide an opportunity to appreciate cyberspace--understand how it participates in facilitating "services" for the sex industry on the one hand, and how, on the other hand, it builds and sustains relationships in the context of migration and at the same time provides social movements with a space for intervention.
Defining Terms
Two terms need to be defined in this discussion paper: cyberspace and women's agency. Webopedia offers a simple definition of cyberspace or the de facto synonym for the internet, and what we would later call the World Wide Web in the 1990s, especially within the activist and academic circles. Cyberspace is also used a metaphor for describing the non-physical terrain created by computer systems. Online systems, for example, create space within which people can communicate with one another (via e-mail), do research, or simply window shop.
Like physical space, it contains objects (files, mail messages, graphics etc.) and different modes of transportation and delivery. To explore cyberspace does not...
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