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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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The descriptions of 4B make it sound a lot like MGTOW.

This is a very good point.

When women join in South Korea, are they operating from painful personal experiences, or are they reacting to a consensus that tells them that any self-respecting woman in their situation should be bitter?

It's probably a little of the former mixed with a lot of the latter. The best insight I've had into Korean gender norms came from this AAQC, which I've added to the OP. Almost anyone who dates will encounter heartbreak at some point. That, mixed with a media environment that aggressively highlights every instance of male misbehavior like men murdering their partners, could easily lead to the belief that men as a group are terrible overall.

Korean journalists - especially ones who know enough English to write for foreign journals like CNN and the NYT - are largely drawn from those upper-class women who went through college in the humanities and were radicalized on third-wave feminism.

Korean friend points out, Korean journalists frequently cite foreign (CNN, NYT, etc) articles about Korean gender wars to assert that these things are real, without thinking about the filter effect and the fact that the foreign journalists' friends are all upper-class English-speaking Koreans (i.e. filtered for feminists).

The resemblance to urban Indians is uncanny. Almost beat for beat.

  • Dads worked insanely hard to give kids a good life. Absent from home.
  • Moms over worked at home and ignored. Kids perceive dad as evil.
  • Women enter workforce en masse and start outperforming men because of affirmative action and strong preference for women in schooling.
  • Cities are bonkers expensive (Mumbai is more expensive per-sqft than SF)
  • Women enter liberal arts, and import western 3rd wave feminism whole sale
  • These women run all western MSM-aligned and portray men as trash
  • Indian men say fuck-this and live with their bros. Women ain't shit.
  • Eventually, 30+ men are married off to 30+ women in arranged marriages. Both lack co-ed socialization and have knee-jerk dislike for the other.
  • Divorce rates go through the roof.... (we are here right now)

Thankfully, there are a few main differences:

  • India is still poor. So wages haven't stagnated. There is still hope among men that their lives can be better than their parents. Optimism keeps defeatist incel-adjacent ideas sweeping the culture. (still, lots of Indian incels)
  • Indians are more outspoken. The culture is not as suffocatingly conformist as East Asia.
  • New cities are being built. So, while Delhi & Mumbai have become unaffordable, couples are moving to Hyd, Bangalore, Gurgaon, etc.
  • The majority is still rural. So, 3rd wave feminists haven't been able to quite takeover the culture like SK.
  • Lastly, other Indians speak English too. So, the voices of dissent are just as loud, even if western MSM won't platform them.

(Note: I am talking about upper middle class urban culture. Rural & Poor India is a very different world)

It seems like arranged marriage is another big difference, yes? From my understanding arranged marriages still exist in Japan but are uncommon, while they’re very rare in South Korea and the sinosphere.