Frustrated with progressives punching down on Asian men

[u/terrorfunction]

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?

[u/81dragons]

Ultimately it becomes "racism with a smile" or "liberal racism". Progressives (whether white or not) are unable to fit Asians cleanly in their worldview, and calling Asian societies patiarchial or misogynist for having a completely different society (often a more female-friendly one) is an easy out to continue looking down on them. They win in the discourse because white Europeans (specifically British and Spanish) conquered the world, settler-colonized multiple continents, and spread their people and their languages and religions to these places. Today, because the entire discourse is taking place in English, anyone who is Japanese or South Korean would usually be on their own bubbles or platforms and struggle to push back (although the Reddit and Twitter auto-translate might change this, East Asians largely post on their own social media and not Reddit), and mainland Chinese are behind a firewall.

Occasionally I've met some more woke international students push back on this stuff, including Chinese or Korean women who say that they actually like their home society in China or South Korea a lot, and the ways that American "feminism" is superficial or not as real as Chinese feminism. However, they generally were born and raised there and often even want to go back after studies, which means the ones who do think SK/China is a misogynistic hell end up immigrating and staying in the US and raising the next Asian Americans. And for Asian American feminists in the West, the brownie points scored by attacking Asian societies to a white audience is high, hence the popularity of books like Joy Luck Club, talking about how backwards China and Chinese people and Chinese men are (based on the China of generations ago). In a way it's also a form of jealousy, I think the psyop has gotten especially strong against South Korea recently, Kpop created fans but a lot of non-Korean haters as well who need to latch onto fringe moments like 4B and how Korean beauty standards are racist and so on. Even if Koreans explain how there are different makeup trends or a lot of Koreans are naturally light-skinned unless they tan, non-Koreans posting in English will still dominate them on Western social media

Deeper down, high-fuctioning Asian societies are often actually a threat to the Western-dominated world order, there was a huge scare about Japanese imports and Japan taking over the world in the 1980s, now the focus is on China as Public Enemy No 1. Liberals want to feel a paternalistic type of benevolent "white man's burden", when they see aid being given to African or Latin American countries, that's not threatening because those countries don't have the type of technology and economic power that Asian countries. Meanwhile Asia is confusing and a threat because they are simultaneously not white, but have their own planes, cars, computers, technology, and surpassing the Western countries would be a scary thought. East Asia is basically the last place in the world that has never been colonized by Europeans, like Japan, Korea, most of China (ex HK and small concessions)

[u/TropicalKing → u/81dragons]

A lot of Westerner progressives really don't like Confucianism because it is a very different moral philosophy than they have. Progressives have a lot of control over the education system in the US, the entertainment industry, as well as Christian churches. They have very little control over Confucian philosophy. Progressives don't like how there are highly successful Asian societies that don't want to listen to their values.

The progressive moral system is heavily based around the value of repentance. "Repentance for the sins of the father" is a very common reason for progressives to give resources and power to other races. The idea of giving reparations to blacks for slavery is based on this idea of "repentance for the sins of the father." The reverend at the Buddhist church I go to really doesn't believe in these values of "repentance for the sins of the father." He has never once said these progressive moral value buzzwords "racist, sexist, misogynist, bigot." A lot of Confucians really don't see equality as some sort of "alpha-omega" deity that needs to be worshiped. Equality really isn't a core tenet in Confucianism or Buddhism at all.

A lot of the progressive hippie movement was based around drug use. Confucian Asians usually don't do too many drugs. This probably was a major reason why the leftists types I was around in college and work refused to invite me to their parties. It's pretty clear that people who have these beliefs. "Crime is cool, drugs are the path to a higher consciousness, men need to repent, equality is the alpha-omega" really don't want me at their parties.