Taipei, Taiwan; Seoul, South Korea; and Manila, the Philippines – Donald Trump’s popularity among young men who frequent the “manosphere” online has been widely cited as a factor in his re-election as president of the United States.
After making its mark in voting booths across the US, Trump’s appeal among male influencers and their followers is reverberating much further afield.
Across Asia, where countries such as China and South Korea are experiencing a growing gender divide that mirrors similar trends in the West, Trump’s return to the most powerful political office on the planet has been celebrated in male-dominated spaces online.
“Honestly, I really admire Trump, because he is not afraid to face his battles head-on,” zhtttyzhttty, a prominent influencer who discusses the challenges facing men on China’s social media platform Weibo, posted the day after Trump’s victory.
Sima Nan, an ultranationalist blogger who has more than 44 million followers on social media, welcomed Trump’s win despite his frequent criticism of the US, citing his “transactional mentality” as a positive.
“To put it bluntly, Trump is a trader. He calls himself a great trader. Trump will cut ties with Taipei and trade with Beijing,” Nan said on Weibo, referring to Beijing’s stance that self-governing Taiwan is part of its territory.
“Everything is for sale for him. The key is the price.”
On Chinese internet forums where many ordinary young men congregate, praise for Trump, who won 49 percent of male voters aged 18-29 in the US election, has been a common theme both before and since the November 5 vote.
“Trump is a businessman, and businessmen usher in the best of times,” one Weibo user wrote after Trump’s re-election.
“Only Trump tells you everything with certainty and clarity.”
When photos of Trump raising his fist moments after being struck in the ear by a would-be assassin’s bullet ricocheted around the world in July, internet users marvelled at the Republican candidate’s act of defiance.
“What an amazing photo,” one Weibo user said. “Trump is so strong,” he continued.
The admiration for Trump among some young Chinese stands in contrast to the president-elect’s aggressive rhetoric and policies towards their country.
Trump has for years cast China as a threat, accusing it of stealing American jobs and blaming it for unleashing the COVID-19 pandemic on the world.
During his election campaign and since, he has threatened to slap steep tariffs on Chinese imports – a move that could potentially inflict huge damage to Chinese companies and the Chinese economy.
As in other parts of the world, young Chinese men report holding increasingly conservative views relative to their female peers.
According to an analysis of Chinese survey data published in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology last year, young Chinese women were more than twice as likely to express egalitarian views than their male peers.
And while young Chinese women had far more egalitarian attitudes than previous generations of women, according to the analysis, young men had become only slightly more egalitarian over the same timeframe.
Qian Huang, an assistant professor who studies digital culture at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said she was not surprised by the support for Trump from the Chinese internet despite his hawkish stance towards Beijing.
“It’s quite similar to 2016 when he was first elected, but it has intensified and more people have joined the conversations,” Huang told Al Jazeera.
“Trump projects certain masculine traits that many modern men admire and associate with success, and that includes men outside China as well.”
Whether in the West or Asia, the “manosphere” is not precisely defined beyond being a segment of the internet that is dominated by men and appeals to their interests.
Discussions among male influencers and their followers range from misogynistic diatribes about women and critiques of feminism, to complaints about the struggles of men and advice about fitness and dating.
In South Korea, Jang Min-seo, who runs RedPillKorea, a YouTube channel focused on dating culture and gender issues that takes inspiration from British-American influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, welcomed Trump’s victory, viewing it as a win for freedom of speech and male assertiveness.
“I think Trump won the election because many Americans wanted a leader who had a bulldozer personality when it came to doing what they promised,” Jang, 35, told Al Jazeera.
As for South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, whose political future is in doubt following his short-lived declaration of martial law last week, Jang likened the politician to US President Joe Biden, who “doesn’t really know what he’s doing”.
“I don’t have any expectations for South Korea’s leaders as they’re so incapable by and large,” Jang said.
“Most South Korean politicians are limited to roles like inciting the feminism and PC movement. Authentic conservative politicians who get the job done seem to have disappeared with the fall of the military regime.”
Eight in 10 South Koreans in their 20s believe that gender conflict is a serious issue, with more than half of those saying that gender issues affected how they voted in the 2022 presidential election, according to a study conducted by the daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo and Seoul National University.
Many young South Korean men now believe that women’s march towards equality, including one of Asia’s most visible #MeToo movements, has come at their expense, a perception that Yoon tapped into during his election campaign by pledging to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
In a 2021 survey carried out by the Seoul Shinmun newspaper and Hyundai Research Institute, nearly 70 percent of men said that reverse discrimination was a bigger problem than discrimination against women.
“The ministry is not doing its job properly as it’s not about equality any more. Men are put under women today,” Yang Sang-jun, a 34-year-old hair stylist, told Al Jazeera.
“I feel like a woman can get away with anything now if they show their tears.”
Yang, who lives with his three dogs on the island of Jeju, said he has given up on the idea of dating and marriage.
“I used to like going to clubs to meet women, but I can’t trust them any more,” Yang said. “The country’s laws have become so one-sided that men can easily be turned into a criminal.”
In the Philippines, the popular YouTuber known as Bisdak Pilipinas said he welcomes Trump’s return as he bears similarities to former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who attracted both criticism and praise for his hypermasculine and abrasive rhetoric.
“What I see is Trump’s strong personality, his courage, similar to that of the ‘punisher,’” Pilipinas, who has more than 200,000 subscribers, told Al Jazeera.
Like China, South Korea and the Philippines face the possibility of major disruption under Trump’s “America First” policies.
Seoul and Manila are both longstanding US allies that rely on Washington’s defence guarantees, which Trump has repeatedly argued are a bad deal for the American taxpayer.
Huang, the assistant professor at the University of Groningen, said that Trump’s admirers in Asia often brush aside such concerns due to Trump’s reputation as a businessman.
“As a businessman, he’s often viewed as a guy who is not very ideologically driven but more pragmatic,” she said.
“So, as long as there is a good deal that benefits his government and the US, there’s this idea that he will come around.”
On the other hand, many figures in male-dominated communities have expressed support for Trump precisely because they see him as an ideological ally, according to Chenchen Zhang, an assistant professor at Durham University in the UK who studies far-right activism online.
“Trump is often viewed as opposed to immigration, feminism, LGBTQ activism, and the so-called ‘wokeness’, and that aligns him with the ideological orientation of some of these communities,” Zhang told Al Jazeera.
Bisdak Pilipinas, the Filipino YouTuber, has expressed opposition to transgender rights and attributed Trump’s victory in part to his opponent Kamala Harris’s gender.
Chinese influencer zhtttyzhttty has likewise taken aim at certain groups of women in China, especially feminists, who he has accused of humiliating and taking advantage of men.
He has also claimed to have been subjected to years of witch-hunts by feminists that harmed his mental health.
But online mobbings often go the other way, too.
In October, popular Chinese female stand-up comedian Yang Li lost a sponsorship deal with Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com following a backlash over a joke she made about men’s egos.
In 2022, South Korean YouTuber BJ Jammi took her own life after enduring years of abuse from online trolls who accused her of being a “man-hating feminist”.
Huang said that clashes between the sexes online reflect a growing divide between young men and young women.
Studies have shown that young women in numerous countries have become increasingly liberal compared with men in recent years.
“It’s not that men are generally becoming more radical, but women are moving the other way,” Huang said.
Huang said the divide has contributed to a perception among some men that modern women demand too much from them, making it difficult to find a like-minded partner.
Jang Gwan-im, a 33-year-old man in South Korea’s Pocheon who admires men like Trump and Elon Musk for chasing success without “caring too much about what the world is saying about them,” said getting married today involves too much pressure.
“It’s become extremely difficult to become the man that today’s women envision. Buying a house in Seoul has become nearly impossible while many men, on the one hand, don’t want to man up and take up responsibilities,” Jang, who has a girlfriend of three years, told Al Jazeera.
As in many Western capitals, property prices have soared in East Asian metropoles, making it increasingly difficult for young people to afford a home, which is often considered a prerequisite for getting married and starting a family.
At the same time, wages have flatlined for many workers in Asian economies such as China, South Korea and Japan.
Such conditions are a cause of frustration for young men, Huang said.
“If you as a man consider manhood to be about having a successful career and you’re deprived of that opportunity, while at the same time, women are less willing to ascribe to traditional gender roles, then it’s shaping up to be a crisis for men,” she said.
Durham University’s Zhang said she does not see the frustration felt in many male-dominated communities or the gender divide between young men and women easing any time soon.
“For change to happen you have to work for it, including working to change the underlying conditions at the structural and economic level,” she said.
