Southeast Asia

Gather round, because Auntie is in full volcanic mode today. The Taliban—yes, those criminal overlords of patriarchy—have outdone even their own monstrous record. Just when you think they’ve reached the peak of misogyny, they shovel deeper, proudly digging a new basement under hell. Banning women from hospitals unless wrapped in a burqa? Forcing female doctors—healers, saviours, the backbone of Afghan health care—to hide under a suffocating cloth cage just to enter their own workplace? This is not governance. This is gender-based sadism dressed up as “virtue.” Let’s be clear: these...

Every time I hear someone scolding a young Cambodian couple for “waiting too long” to have children, I want to take a deep breath, sip my iced coffee, and ask: what is this obsession with making babies as soon as the wedding drums stop echoing? As if life were a conveyor belt — marry, reproduce, repeat. Please. Auntie knows better, and so do today’s young couples. Let’s start with a simple fact that all those loud aunties and uncles conveniently forget: Cambodia is already one of the youngest countries in...

Oh, my dazzling darlings, let Spicy Auntie tell you something: Indian queer teens are not just survivors—they’re strategic geniuses, digital warriors, and full-blown partisans of Pride. You think the French Resistance was clever? Try navigating school corridors full of moral policing, WhatsApp family groups bursting with unsolicited sanskari (traditional) wisdom, and an internet eager to betray your secrets. And yet these kids—OUR kids—are building entire underground kingdoms out of emojis, private stories, and secret Finstas that would make any intelligence agency sweat. I mean, do you see what they’re doing?...

Darlings, let’s dim the neon lights for a moment and talk about the men behind them—the clients of Asia’s vast, complicated sex industry. Not the cartoon villains some activists imagine, nor the suave playboys of bad K-dramas. No, the real psychology is much messier, more mundane, and painfully revealing about our region’s gender norms. Let Auntie pour you some tea (hot, spicy, no sugar). At the core of the Asian sex buyer’s mind lies a powerful cocktail: loneliness, entitlement, secrecy, and the cultural permission slip that says men are “just...

If there is one topic that makes Auntie’s blood simmer like sambal on a low flame, it’s the long, tragic, infuriating history of gender selection in Asia. The quiet, polite cruelty of deciding a child’s worth before they even take their first breath. Selective abortions, abandoned newborn girls, ultrasound hush-hush deals, families whispering prayers for sons as if daughters were defective products—Auntie has seen it, heard it, and tasted the bitterness in a dozen countries from Delhi to Da Nang. Let’s be clear: this isn’t just a “cultural preference” or...