Crime

A Culture of Forgetting Women and Children’s Pain

It’s hard not to feel a surge of indignation when the very guardians of justice appear to shrug off the suffering of women and...

White Coats, Bloody Hands

Outrage surges as we learn that the very people entrusted with the care of girls—the doctors, nurses and midwives of the health system—are now...

Deepfakes, Idols, and Illegality

Japanese authorities have made what appears to be the country’s first criminal case involving AI-generated pornography of public figures. On October 17 2025 the...

Statutory Rape or Shared Blame?

In the predominantly conservative state of Kelantan, Malaysia, a fresh debate has ignited over how the law should treat consensual sexual activity between minors—a...

Obedient shadows: Women of the Yakuza

Criminals, victims or passive accomplices? The role of women in the Yakuza has always drawn little to no attention, as the image of the...

Under the Harvest Moon, the Dark Side of Chuseok

Every autumn, as South Korea prepares for Chuseok — the harvest moon festival and one of the biggest family holidays — another, darker pattern...

Moral Outrage by Day, Exploitation by Night

In an entrenched but largely hidden underworld, Pakistan’s sex trade quietly persists behind closed doors. As DESIblitz lays bare in “The Reality of Prostitution...

Men on Holiday, Girls in Hell

In the dim streets of Vientiane, where the Mekong’s calm surface hides countless secrets, a darker trade thrives behind locked doors. According to the...
Auntie Spices It Out
Commentary

Asian Men’s Top Fantasy? The Woman Next Door

January 25, 2026

I’ve lost count of how many times men—usually smug, usually underwhelming—have told me that men are “visual creatures” and therefore need porn stars with impossible bodies and Olympic flexibility. Darling, if that were true, Asia would look very different after dark. What Asian men actually click on, linger over, and return to again and again is not the spectacular. It’s the plausible. It’s the woman who looks like she could borrow your charger and complain about the aircon. This does not surprise Auntie in the slightest. For decades, Asian societies...
Commentary

When ‘Dangdut’ Dancers Cross Religious Red Lines

January 25, 2026

Spicy Auntie has seen this movie before, and honestly, I could recite the dialogue in my sleep. Sexy dangdut singer appears. Hips move. Men cheer. Phones come out. Someone yells “haram”. Someone else yells “culture”. Cue apologies, moral outrage, calls for punishment, and a sudden national panic about the collapse of civilisation — all triggered by a woman doing her job on a stage. What amused me this time is the performance of shock. As if Indonesia woke up yesterday and discovered that dangdut involves bodies. As if villagers have...
Commentary

The Radical Feminism of Studio Ghibli’s Girls

January 24, 2026

Hollywood? Pixar? Disney? Princesses, princesses, mermaids, sparkly eyelashes and sidekicks who exist mainly to applaud? Pffff. Auntie yawns. Give me the girls and women of Studio Ghibli any day, every day, preferably with wind in their hair, dirt under their nails, and absolutely no interest in being “chosen.” What I love about Ghibli women—those created by the wonderfully stubborn Hayao Miyazaki—is that they don’t perform strength. They live it. They work. They get tired. They get scared. They mess up. They don’t strike power poses or announce themselves as icons....
Commentary

The Seductive, Erotic Power of Old Shanghai Style

January 24, 2026

Spicy Auntie has another embarrassing confession to make. I am weak for Old Shanghai kitsch. Put me in a dim bar with red velvet curtains, a jazz trio pretending it’s 1936, and a hostess in a perfectly tailored cheongsam, and my critical faculties immediately start fighting my pleasure receptors. I know exactly what is being sold to me — and yet, like so many of us, I keep buying the fantasy. Because Old Shanghai nostalgia is erotic in a very specific, very manipulative way. It doesn’t shout sex. It whispers...
Commentary

Rich Women, Young Gigolos, Old Hypocrisy

January 24, 2026

I have several friends in Jakarta—well… acquaintances. Women I meet at dinners, at art openings, at those polite, exhausting lunches where everyone pretends not to notice who arrived with whom. Some of them, discreetly, unapologetically, enjoy the services—sorry, the company—of younger men. And honestly? Good for them. I’m not particularly fond of rich ibu-ibu, in Jakarta, Bogor, or anywhere else in Asia, but that’s not the point. The point is the hypocrisy. The thick, sticky, moralistic hypocrisy. When older men do this—especially powerful, wealthy, “respectable” men—it barely registers. A middle-aged...
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