As an East Asian man, I think the “get a passport” advice makes a lot of sense
As an East Asian man, I think the “get a passport” advice makes a lot of sense.
I saw the pinned post telling single Western men to get passports and look abroad for wives. Asia is the most populous continent, so obviously it is one of the places people have in mind.
Unironically, I think this can work.
For years, Westerners have told us that East Asian women live under patriarchy, while Western societies treat women better, give them higher status and expect men to respect them more.
A lot of gender discourse in East Asia, especially in China and South Korea, makes essentially the same comparison.
In its more radical forms, sex, marriage, childbirth and mate choice are treated quite explicitly as political leverage. Women are encouraged to refuse local men sex, marriage and children, to let local male bloodlines end, and to choose Western — often specifically white — men instead.
The logic is straightforward. Local men are associated with patriarchy. Western men are associated with societies believed to treat women better. Denying the former descendants becomes punishment; having children with the latter becomes reward.
And the endpoint matters. The idea is not simply that individual East Asian men lose dates or wives. Their genes are supposed to disappear with them, while the genes of the preferred male population continue through the same women.
That turns mate choice into population-level selection.
East Asian men and Western men become two male populations judged against the same standard: which population is more feminist, which treats women better, which represents the better gender order, and therefore which population should leave more descendants.
This is where the logic starts to resemble livestock or cattle breeding.
In animal breeding, the breeder identifies desirable traits, reproduces the stock believed to carry them, and selects against the stock considered undesirable. The result is population change across generations.
The political version applies the same structure to men.
Women are not passive breeding stock in this model. They are the selectors. Men are the livestock being evaluated.
“Respect for women,” “patriarchy,” “misogyny” and “gender equality” are treated as characteristics of male populations. East Asian men are cast as the “inferior” male population because they are associated with patriarchy, misogyny and worse treatment of women. Western — especially white — men are cast as the preferred male population because they are associated with feminism, gender equality and better treatment of women.
The individual man becomes secondary. The unit being evaluated is the population.
If East Asian women who would otherwise have children with East Asian men instead have children with Western — often white — men, reproductive capacity is redirected from the East Asian male population toward the Western male population. Western male lineages, associated with feminism and better treatment of women, leave more descendants. East Asian male lineages, associated with patriarchy and worse treatment of women, leave fewer. Taken far enough, the desired endpoint is exactly what the rhetoric sometimes says openly: let the local male bloodline end and let its genes disappear.
That is why I think “sexual selection” alone is too weak a description.
Once female mate choice is consciously understood as a power to produce population-level reproductive outcomes, and women are encouraged to use that power to reward one male population and eliminate another from reproduction, reproductive selection has been weaponized.
You can call that weaponized eugenics, political sexual selection, decentralized selective breeding, or decentralized biopolitics. The name matters less than the structure: reward the approved male population with reproduction and punish the disapproved population by withholding it.
And this is where East Asian female agency matters.
A Western man coming to Asia may think he is simply entering a better dating market. He may be right.
The woman choosing him may also know exactly what she is doing.
She may regard Western men as belonging to a male population that treats women better. Choosing one can mean escaping local patriarchy, rewarding the preferred male population, and refusing to reproduce with the “inferior” local one.
She is exercising selection power herself.
So yes, Western men may genuinely have an advantage here. Part of that advantage can come from the fact that you are ranked above us under the same standard: which population is more feminist and treats women better.
From the perspective of this selection system, Western men are the preferred stock and East Asian men are the stock being selected against.
I also understand why some of you want to leave the West.
Your societies already give women much higher status than ours do, and Western men are already expected to show women much more respect than men here are. Yet the hatred directed at Western men in contemporary gender discourse seems, if anything, at least as strong as the hatred East Asian women direct at men like us.
So I understand the desire to escape.
And yes, East Asia may genuinely be a good option for lots of you. If you find yourselves more welcome here than at home, this is part of the gender politics behind that advantage.
But I would treat this as a temporary solution.
Long term, you probably still need to deal with the gender politics in your own societies rather than assume there will always be somewhere else to go. The same feminist norms some Western men are trying to escape are being exported into every modern society, including ours.
East Asia is not moving away from the Western model. It is moving toward it.
And as those norms spread, your pool of “wife material” will only keep shrinking.