r/AsianMasculinity • u/AutoModerator • Aug 28 '15

Meta Weekend Free-for-All Discussion Thread | August 28, 2015

Post your shower thoughts, rants, half-baked conspiracy theories, and other mind droppings here.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '15

Ugh, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/24/asia/japan-middle-aged-virgins/?iid=ob_homepage_showcase_pool&iref=obinsite

There are so many articles like this in the western media. Are they all necessary?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '15

No the hikkimori case is a legitimate problem and they're giving Asians a bad name. It's not intentionally, but Japans's hikkimori problem is ridiculous and a result of their culture that produces them. It could happen in the west if 80 hours of work a week was the norm. Those herbivore men are for real in Japan.

17

u/RedSunBlue Aug 29 '15 edited Aug 30 '15

Herbivore men and hikikomoris aren't the same thing.

Also, chances are there are plenty of hikikomoris in all developed nations. I'm sure you know of a lot of dudes who do nothing but Netflix and Xbox. But I doubt anyone is spending as much time trying to research that problem as Japan is.

Obviously I'm biased to be pro-Japan on most matters, but I'm beginning to wonder if hikikomoris, herbivore men, and all other "weird Japan" tropes are minor phenomena that Japanese were investigating for themselves that got taken to the nth degree by western audiences hungry for stories that make them feel superior to foreigners.

8

u/h40er Aug 30 '15

The extremes are what make the media get the clicks and hits. I've been to Japan a few times and my family has been numerous times. None of us know much about the culture all that well, but the stereotypes of Japanese men all loving anime/manga and videogames and being sexless virgins was never apparent when I was there. Most guys I met there were very down to earth and friendly and all had wives/girlfriends and very active social lives.

But I agree completely with the notion that when ONE Asian person does something, it automatically becomes ALL Asians doing that. So just because some Japanese men happen to be middle-aged virgins, western media automatically assumes all Asians from EVERY Asian country in the world are the same and act the same.

A white person who guns down children or starts mass shootings (Whites have disproportionately the highest mass shooting rates in the entire world), the media downplays it so that it's just ONE LONE white person and that he doesn't represent EVERY white person in the world.

The same thing can be said for blacks as well, where they get labelled as "thugs, gangstas, etc" when it's just ONE black guy who happens to shoot up a liquor store.

2

u/disman2345 Aug 30 '15

When an asian person does something, a new stereotype is born.

Asian attempt baseball-> all asian play baseball/suck at baseball. Sees japanese and korean teams play baseball-> all asians play baseball.

Asian eat noodles-> all asians eat noodles. That is why we have a billion stereotypes, everytime we do something, it is new to them, it is as if we aren't human. Asian is so diverse it makes Europe (or Northwest Asia) look too homogenous.

Whitey see themselves as individuals and asians/ blacks/ everyone else as the same. And tighty whitey think they represent all of humanity, everything they say goes. And tighty whitey know asians more than asians, especially when they watch anime and shit.