You may have heard of Passport Bros, a fast expanding group of men whose aim is to get coupled up with women from other countries.
The idea of exploring beyond one’s country’s borders for a spouse or to find love is not a novel one, but the passport bros “movement” entails far more than that. It’s strongly influenced by anti-feminist ideals, and even considered an offshoot of the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), a misogynistic, mostly online separatist community encouraging men to detach from women which gained lots of traction after the me-too movement’s backlash.
Many of these “passport bros” are men from Western countries that believe women of their own countries aren’t traditional enough, have “too-high standards”, are overly liberated or empowered or influenced by feminist ideals, and therefore unsuitable to be “domesticated” or make for “real” wives. So this manosphere whip out their passports and seek out their dream women in third-world countries.
They come to countries with underprivileged women, with undebatable gender divide and economic instability. Asian countries. African countries. Countries like Nigeria, one of the poorest countries in the world with women living in absolute poverty; Nigeria which is plagued with gender-based violence, where one in four girls is sexually assaulted before the age of eighteen. Yet, between 2019 and 2020, a country of well over 200 million people had 32 rape convictions.
Third-world countries like Nigeria, where married women are required to produce a written letter of consent from their husbands before applying for a passport, where barbers refuse to cut the hair of a married woman without the husband’s consent. Citizenship is the legal and supreme link between an individual and her state. Yet in Nigeria, unlike men, women are not recognized as full citizens as they do not have the right to transfer citizenship to their spouses upon marriage.
This Fox interview begins with a Black American passport bro apologizing after he came under heat for calling Brazilian women “easy” to sleep with.
In Amsterdam, a ban has been put on sex tourism, which is what the law enforcement really believes passport bros are all about, and not “finding love” or finding a wife. Likewise, Brazil has warned its women about predatory passport bros and placed a similar ban.
This Youtube channel is run by a Black American man who flaunts the women he connects with in other countries. One of his most recent videos titled “She is Wifey Material” has attracted more than thirty thousand views. In the video he announces, “Meet my girlfriend, she’s so pretty,” then asks her, “Can you cook? Tell them,” to which the Thai woman answers, “Yes, I can cook, I can clean.” This pleases the man, who says, “See? This is why I came to Thailand, to find a traditional woman.”
To argue as to whether the passport bro movement is really about seeking marriage or just a woman-hating cover for sex tourism would be to miss the main point. Because what this movement really represents, what it centers is a stark disregard, a ridiculous-to-the-point-of-almost-being-funny insult to both the women they claim to be “leaving behind” but especially to the women they are seeking out. An insult to Asian women and African women. An insult to us.
What does it mean that these men are flying out here because the women in their countries have “high standards” and won’t have them? They say their women aren’t “traditional” “wife material” “submissive.” All pretend terms for the broader reality that women living in better-secured and more privileged economies are more empowered to call out the opposite sex on their nonsense and reject mediocrity; to hold them accountable for their misbehaviours and demand better.
What does it mean that these bros would rather find sex and love in a third world country like Nigeria where women are encouraged to fast and pray for physically abusive husbands, where women are largely held accountable for the failure of a marriage? Where in many states, marital rape is not recognized? Where politicians and dignitaries wed underage girls under the cover of culture and religion?
What does it mean that passport bros would rather this climate than theirs?
It means that these men aren’t simply “masculine” men seeking out traditional women. It means we are dealing with a rise of mediocre man-children unable to adapt to a world that is no longer catering to their egos, to their breakable feelings, to their every bend and curve and breath. It means that we are dealing with a rise of men who are unable to thrive in a world where gender equality, and the promotion and protection of women’s rights have made more impact, a world that is gradually decentering their gaze. We are opening our borders to men who would rather pick up their passports and come over to our part of the world that has resisted progress and is slow to catch up.
What these men are seeking out is servitude, not partnership, and it is a slap in our faces, in the faces of the women living in the countries that these men have come to find their “ideal” romantic and sexual partners – a disrespectful, nonsensical ideal.
African women already have enough on their plates, navigating countries with social and cultural norms stacked against them. Nigeria is ranked the third-worst governed country in the world and is considered one of the most dangerous countries to live in as a woman. Passport bros are not only aware of the regressive issues that plague women from these countries, they are banking on them.
At all costs, we must avoid these men.
