Do you even have a passport, bro?

Why American men are moving overseas to meet women

Recently I watched this excellent video from Brett Cooper about passport bros. If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, a passport bro is a man who moves from a western country to a less developed locale like the Philippines, Thailand, Dominican Republic, etc. where everything is cheaper and the women are perceived to be more feminine and willing to take on a traditional role of housekeeping and/or raising children.

While a case study of the passporticus brohemiath might not appear to be a topic that belongs on this Substack, I’m going to make the argument that this social phenomenon closely aligns with the stated ideals of this publication. Namely,

• The mainstream narrative about the passport bro isn’t entirely accurate

• Economics (IMO) is the primary cause of this movement, more so than a perceived lack of feminine western women

Furthermore, I have unique personal experience upon which to draw. I’ve been living in South East Asia for the past 5 years so I can provide you with the inside scoop that you won’t hear from CNN or the Times.

Disclaimer: In this piece I am going to make generalizations and omit certain details, it is unavoidable. If I tackled every nuance you’d end up reading a short book instead of a medium length article. If you believe I’ve skipped an important detail please leave a comment below.

My experience in Asia

I’ve been living in South East Asia for the past five years. I’ve dated several Asian women and have met more than one-hundred western-Asian couples and am familiar with the dynamics of this relationship. On my small street I know of at least four westerners living with girlfriends or wives, half of whom have children together.

Your author, oceanfront

Am I passport bro? Yes and no. I wanted to maximize the purchasing power of my dollars and live a lifestyle that would be unavailable to me in the United States. However, I never counted meeting a woman as a primary reason for moving abroad. My motivations were guided more by a desire to drink beer on beautiful beaches, experience foreign cultures and accumulate crazy experiences that would keep me warm in my rocking chair when I’m 87 and life is defined by reflection rather than anticipation.

Also, my membership in the passport bro community is voided by my disinterest in marrying an Asian woman. Dating foreigners has revealed to me that I would prefer to spend the rest of my life with a woman who shares my upbringing. While the passport bros bemoan a lack of femininity in western women, they perhaps don’t fully appreciate some of the quirks of being married to a person from a different culture.

Why are men traveling overseas to meet women?

The passport bros say that western women are too entitled, demanding, unappreciative, unfeminine and difficult to be around*. The bros claim that they’re fed up with ladies laying on accusations of toxic masculinity while simultaneously expecting a man to unscrew pickle jar lids and provide them with an appropriate number of Instagram-worthy vacations each year.

*I’m only repeating what I hear these men saying, this does not reflect my opinion on the subject.

Rather than address the validity of the bros arguments, which wouldn’t be a topic consistent with the aims of this Substack, I want to direct our attention away from the ostensible reason that the brohemiath are leaving and towards what I believe is a more accurate explanation of their actions.

What’s really going on?

My thesis is that economics is a better explainer of the passport bros behavior than a lack of femininity in western women. Cancel me if you must, but I’m going to suggest that there are millions of American women who would be happy to take on a more traditionally feminine role. However, many women are denied that opportunity because it’s now nearly impossible for a man earning a median American salary to provide for his family without his wife’s income to keep the household afloat.

Source

In the realm of anecdotal evidence there is Julie, a coworker of mine from college. She explicitly said to me many times that she had zero desire to pursue a career. Her goal was to a marry a man who would work while she stayed home. To Julie, sweeping the dining room and making dinner was a damn good deal in exchange for not having to wake up early, put on makeup, go to an office for 8 hours, drive through traffic both ways just to come home late and tired. “Fuck that,” she told me as she happily described how she would spend her days at home playing League of Legends.

As you can see from this one and only picture I have of Julie, she was already preparing for a goofball life of not working especially hard.

According to the BLS the median projected salary in America for 2023 is $57,200. The very notion that a man earning $57k per year can support himself, a stay at home wife and a few younglings is laughable.

I could dredge up any number of statistics about how unaffordable America has become but I suspect you’re already familiar with that story. So I’ll just show this one chart that’s been making the rounds on Twitter lately.

According to Jeff Weniger of Wisdom Tree, you now need an annual income of $104,016 to qualify for a mortgage for an average home in America. Given that the median salary is $57k you can see the predicament millions are in, particularly young Americans who are at the lower end of the income spectrum.

Source

CREAM - Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Here then is my thesis for the motivating force behind the passport bros movement.

• Most of the passport bros who decide to leave the country have an average or below-average salary and don’t expect that to change in the near future

• While these bros may complain about a lack of feminine women in the west, most probably can’t afford to comfortably provide for a wife to stay home all day

Having experienced Asian culture I can attest that there’s absolutely some truth to the idea that Asian women are raised traditionally and are on average more inclined to take on the role of a housewife.

However, I would argue that a man earning $250,000 a year would not find it difficult to marry a western woman who would be thrilled to stay home and cook dinner every night. That same woman is probably unlikely to marry a man making $60,000 a year, though. Or if she does marry him, there won’t be a way for that household to survive without her entering the workforce too.

The passport bro moves overseas because he wants to buy a lifestyle that’s priced out of his reach in America. Are his expectations unfounded, is the Asian experience really everything that it’s cracked up to be?

Is the passport bro lifestyle real?

Honestly, yes… It’s pretty damn great. Here’s what you can get for $3k a month (after tax) in a popular beachfront town in Thailand or the Philippines.

• Rent a nice 2 or 3 bedroom house in a good location with a decent sized yard

• Own a small car or a dirt bike for him and a scooter for her

• Eat out four or five nights a week (or every night of the week, honestly)

• Health and dental insurance

• Multiple in-country vacations every year

• Engage in a moderately expensive hobby like scuba diving, camping, cross-country motorcycle trips, one-on-one yoga instruction, etc.

• Have a few dogs and pay their vet bills

• Support a girlfriend/wife who stays at home full time

As a real example, here’s what I pay for housing. I live in an exceedingly spacious 3 bedroom home in a fantastic location. Every month I pay $540 in rent plus another $60 in utilities for a total of $600 a month. Mind you that’s for the entire house, not a room.

Source

I charge my roommate $280 a month so I’m paying $320 a month to live in a large house that’s only five years old. In my neighborhood there are more modest but still perfectly nice homes that rent for $300 a month. You can see just how far the dollar goes if you take it abroad, and that’s with an annual (after tax) salary of $36,000. If you bring an after tax salary of $60,000 a year to South East Asia you will be in the top 1% and have your pick of villas to live in.

Are Asian women being exploited?

In the Brett Cooper video I referenced above there is a clip of a woman saying that the passport bros are exploiting local women. I’m sorry but that statement is laughable.

First, it corrupts the meaning of exploitation. In her book While Time Remains the North Korean defector Yeonmi Park describes a system of trafficking in which North Korean women are smuggled into China and sold to Chinese farmers as slave-wifes. That is actual exploitation and it’s an incredibly ugly thing.

Second, to argue that Asian women are being exploited by foreigners is to deny these women their own agency. These are not arranged marriages! We are discussing a system in which a foreign man asks a woman on a date and she accepts. She then chooses to stay with the man and at any time if she decides she doesn’t like him she can leave.

If the man gets belligerent or abusive, the courts are insanely biased in the local woman’s favor but it probably wouldn’t ever come to that. Most Asians are connected with a large extended family and a woman could have a few of her brothers or cousins beat the shit out of the guy. Retributional violence is a thing that totally still flies around here and the cops wouldn’t do a damn thing.

I’ve met more than a few Asian women who will only date foreigners because they perceive them to be less demanding and more considerate than the men from their own country (and wealthier, of course). As an example, my ex-girlfriend used to ask me if her outfit was OK? She wasn’t fishing for compliments or doing the “does this dress make me look fat?” gig. She was genuinely asking if I approved of what she was wearing, and if I had said no she would have quickly changed into something else.

Prior to that experience I’ve never known a woman in my life to ask me to sign off on her outfit, nor would I ever expect such a thing to happen.

“You look great!” I said every time she asked. Eventually she realized that I wasn’t going to be draconian about her attire and stopped bringing it up.

Conclusions

We can only guess at how many passport bros there actually are. I suspect that the number is somewhat smaller than what the media makes it out to be. After all, 44% of Americans don’t have a passport, a statistic that leaves many men as bros of the garden variety.

What about the men who have managed to secure documentation for overseas travel, is what they’re doing wrong? I’m in no position to judge seeing as how I’ve spent the last decade abroad. And while meeting women was not high on my list of motivations, living a privileged lifestyle was a massive consideration.

The way I look at it is this: we cannot choose the era in which we’re born. In the fifties, sixties and seventies a man could afford to live a comfortable life and support a family on a middle-class income. A man or woman could work a summer job and earn enough to pay their college tuition, and save enough for a down payment on a house after just a few years on the job. That reality is now a pipe dream, and I don’t think we should too harshly denigrate those that try to seek out a more accommodating existence where it still exists.

If we as a society wish to stop men from seeking foreign berths and betrothals the most effective approach would be to enact economic reforms that make America more affordable for the average person to live in. What reforms might those be? Well, that’s certainly not a topic for this rapidly concluding article.

Finally, while this topic is male centric it’s not as though this lifestyle is denied to women. My roommate is a woman from Philadelphia roughly my age, and she’s enjoying her time here just as much as I am. Women will find it harder to meet attractive partners in these destinations, but if that’s not a high consideration then please, join the party! The ocean is warm and the beaches are inviting.

What do you think?