Christmas Letter 2023
Read with your favourite "Last Christmas" rendition
When I had regular columns, I spent the Christmas week writing personal letters to selected friends and family members on Facebook. Congratulating them for a well-earned year, letting them know I was alright, and looking forward to a better year ahead for us.
I didn’t have anything good to write over the last four years. Breakdown, column cancellation, then Covid and the woke madness, and the problematisation of everything (which I was a part of just five years before). I tried to make sense of it all and it wasn’t provided by liberals or feminists or Asian Americans.
The sense came from those who are described as heterodox, politically homeless, or post-liberals, or the “My politics are traditionally liberal but…”. They are not exactly centrists, or Never Trumpers, or even libertarians. Not even liberals mugged by reality – I was that one liberal mugged by reality.
They are Westerners instead of Asians. Three years on, I’m yet to find Asians who say, “You know what, these politics have gone too far,”. I suppose the Asian bourgeois and internationalists keep their political orientation to the centre left, with some drifting leftward as their Western contacts do.
Perhaps because for us, Asians, turning right is corny. Right-wing Asians are religious, nationalists, and misogynists. And we believe that right-wing Westerners are racists, bigoted, and heartless.
Privately, the upper middle class knows what’s up. It’s not white Republicans who might harm us in Seattle or Paris. It’s not white Republicans who write on X that Asians are trash. It’s not anti-immigration conservatives who reject our tourist visa applications. But in Asia, we do not have to worry about the school enforcing queer policy for our children, or sitting through DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) sessions in the office. We don’t see strives in our streets.
In the West, this political divergence is also gendered (see, I cannot replace “gendered” with sexed”, although “sexed” might not be wrong). Asian men, anonymous or not, tend to criticise the far left and the DEI policy, while Asian women are likelier to go along with them.
Why? Perhaps it’s intra-elite competition among us. Whether in Asia or the West, Asian men and women have competed for academic and career excellence. We are held to be the smartest, the most hard-working, and the most driven people. On the other hand, the battle of the sexes between us is quite pronounced. We cannot trust each other, we don’t share a sense of siblinghood, and we blame each other for “Making Asians look bad”.
I suppose that Asian men know that they are not the most popular and intimidating men in the room. I suppose most Asian men expect partnership with Asian women, from the same ethnicity, class, and religion if possible. In other words, Asian men may dislike European men but hardly dream of toppling European men’s social and political status.
Asian women, on the other hand, are aware of their social potential. And yet whether in the West or Asia, they know that European women, white women in everyday parlance, sit on the top, especially in the 21st century world. It’s only logical for Asian women to demand the fall of the white women and to join other women of colour against ‘Karen’.
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When I returned to Twitter on Australia Day 2023 (yes, that day was deliberately picked), I wrote “Liberal. Conservative. Maybe just Asian” as my profile. Halfway through the year, I didn’t want to be too political (but isn’t everyone on Twitter political?) and looked for a lighter tagline.
Many personal interests from the 2010s remain the same. Women’s football. Nordic states. Taylor Swift [Liar. You went for the more halal Carly Rae Jepsen and Lorde before 2019]. Superheroines. Interacting with Western writers. But I never got into the intersectional game, and nobody expected me to be in.
“White women appreciation account”, that’s the current tagline. Honest, politically incorrect, and ironic. In a time where white women are hated online (and yet are still flourishing), go for Karen.
Luckily, I am too obscure to be cancelled including by old feminist friends. Maybe they have muted me years ago, or don’t care. Maybe it’s been a long time coming when I overshared Supergirl and Captain Marvel posts four years ago.
Good thing that Karens are not exactly rare in the West (Asia-based Karens might be on Instagram), and the definition of Karen itself is overbroad—standing for women? TERF Karen. Standing for Israel? Zionist Karen. Standing for straight Asian men? Predator Karen. Disgusted by Hamas? Genocidal Karen. Winning Person of the Year? Undeserving Karen. Playing sports while being white? All-white Karen.
May I blame the woke women for making everything, including white women, political? But on the other hand, I got the purpose, I got the brand, and I got the joy. Something to live with. I know that most white women are not interested in befriending, let alone romancing, any Asian man. But they generally don’t hate Asian men and have weird grudges against Asian men, or Asians in general. And I’m fully aware that this might be different for an Asian woman.
It’s weird that throughout my life, I only ever spent a Western Christmas once. The rest was spent in two places, Singapore and Bandung. I always regret that I missed the hot, dry, and very…Karen…Aussie Christmas, opting to come home for Christmas to see my family and friends, anime, and BoA on TV instead of touring Australian cities, one city for every year. To take that path two decades ago is to read this blog today (maybe titled The Outback Mandarin) as an Aussie dad blog on fatherhood, midlife crisis, and being a proud Australian.
A Substack publication on raising future (Indonesian) Karens of Australia.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, readers.