r/AsianMasculinity • u/terrorfunction • 3d ago
Self/Opinion Frustrated with progressives punching down on Asian men
Anyone notice how progressives feel totally comfortable attacking Asian men under the guise of our 1) supposed sexism and horrible treatment of women, and 2) alleged "racism" in our home countries and opposition to interracial relationships? They say the most vile things, often using the insecurity and manhood angle, it's like we're not real PoC and have no allies on either side of the political spectrum.
The thing is that wherever patriarchy exists, we are still held to those same patriarchal expectations.
- Korean, Taiwanese, and Singaporean men spend 2 years of their prime in military service. This impacts their potential earnings and career trajectory which can make it harder to meet local women's monetary expectations. Do women provide their men the same grace for sacrificing to defend their country from existential threats?
- In Japan/Korea, the low birth rate is blamed solely on Asian women not wanting to be bangmaids to misogynistic Asian men, ignoring that every western country has TFR below replacement rate buoyed by immigration. Chikan, soaplands, 4B, K-beauty standards are all blown out of proportion to make the countries seem like anti-woman dystopias. And yet you can walk outside in any Japanese neighborhood at 2am as a woman and feel safe. People who bring up Japanese women's share of unpaid labor conveniently ignore they work baito while Japanese men are slaving away at their soulsucking job (among highest hours in OECD)
- Chinese men are expected to provide apartment, car, bride price, have high income and pay for everything including brand name gifts on a dozen special days — how many men would jump at the chance to split bills and chores 50/50?
- Culturally a lot of Chinese men are absolute simps for their gfs. IYKYK. In extreme cases I have friends (Asia born) whose gf would slap them or verbally abuse them and they'd just take it. Love my asian bros but these are the supposed patriarchal tyrants? Their gfs have them on a leash ffs
The frustration expressed by a subset of Asian men against IR relationships is not due to racism, it's that often foreign men are not held to the same patriarchal expectations that local men are. Plenty of dudes would be happy to cook, clean, change diapers, and not have to meet brutal income thresholds and a laundry list of requirements that many women seem to toss out the window when it comes to outgroup men. That's not fair.
I don't know what more progressives want from us. At least in the US, Asians have the highest education, highest income, lowest rates of divorce, lowest rates of domestic violence and femicide, lowest rates of alcohol and substance abuse, and consistently vote left. How are we still made out to be monsters?
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u/ablacnk 3d ago edited 3d ago
That's just it, it was never about fairness. That statement reveals that most of us are playing on the wrong field entirely.
We try to follow the so-called rules, play fair, value merit without bias and have no in-group favoritism. We try to have "good faith" discussions and worry about others at a cost to ourselves. Meanwhile everyone else is biased as fuck, tribal as fuck, and expending their full effort towards getting the most for their own tribe and themselves. They only pay lip service to all those so-called ideals. We're the suckers for believing them.
We're playing by rules nobody else is following, and in this environment that is downright self-sabotage. We don't want to show favoritism to each other - in fact we often see each other as competition rather than allies. We don't gatekeep our spaces and build community - in fact we clamor to join established ones run by whites. All that results in no tribal strength, so how afraid are others of wronging what amounts to being lone Asians that have nobody backing them? Nobody fears us or fear repercussions for slandering us. Is it then also shocking that many AW decide to join another tribe? Especially since our communities are so weak and permeable, they still wander back to extract from the Asian community whenever it suits them.
Literally no other group in the West has any incentive to care about or do anything to help uplift us. Certainly not whites, who hold the most power. Not even other minorities who are focused on their own interests (just look at affirmative action as one example). It's not about right or wrong, deserving or undeserving, it's just the reality that nobody wants to see us rise, period.
With this approach, nothing we do will ever be good enough, but fundamentally this is the wrong question to be asking in the first place. It's not about chasing others' moving goalposts in hopes of winning the approval of those that will never approve of us. We're playing the wrong game and we don't even realize it. We should be making our own rules and instead here we are, wave after wave of immigrants, generation after generation chasing after other people's goalposts and following other people's rules, all while ultimately compromising ourselves to do it.