It feels like a long time ago, when men in their baggy jeans, unafraid with their cups of iced-matchas and feminist literature ruled the internet. Maybe it was their existential irony. A man, who is unafraid of embodying traits attributed to women. That was entirely unheard of, and thatâs the point. Their existence entirely hinges on their ulterior motives; appealing to women with the bag-charms that innocently hang from their carabiners. A man being the Trojan horse, malice and manipulation hiding beneath the appealing exterior of the internet ‘soft-boy.’
It was funny for a whileâempowering evenâbeing able to engage with content that opened our eyes as a collective. And we saw it, and were able to poke fun at it to an extreme, it felt like having the upper-hand. I do remember watching yet another performative man skit during my nightly scroll a few months ago, but it hit me, then and there, that itâs⊠really sad. We have adapted to our mistrust, and for valid reasons. This archetype exists as what seems to be the stark contrast to the hyper-masculine, toxic man, although both act in a similar vein of bad-faith. The performative man is even used interchangeably with the term âmale-manipulator.â In fact, this is not the first weâve ever seen this trope. First, it was the ânice-guy,â a man who tries to portray himself as righteous and respectful, with the intention of, blatantly put, sleeping with a woman.Â
Rather than being somewhat reductionistâas that inches closer to gender-essentialist territoryâI think itâs important to stress the socialization of it all. To reproduce patriarchal values and the traits we attribute to men, we see how they generally have been socialized to maintain an invulnerable, highly curated exteriorâso really, every man is performing. All the time.
Plus, what is a performative man, if man ever? Gender is inherently that: a performance. While a part of many of the skits Iâve seen includes the obligatory Judith Butler references, Iâm going to echo them now. We perform gender at a constant, based on what we learn on the daily. Weâve all heard this as justification for upholding patriarchal norms, and yet, it seems all the more difficult to dismantle, especially because it both implicitly and explicitly seeps into our everyday lives. We are actively trapping ourselves in this cycle. It also saddens me that our idea of an authentic manâsomething we enforce through our reinforcement of gender norms and stereotypes, is a man who is ironically unauthentic. A man who isnât receptive is a norm. Why is this a learned behaviour?
That lends itself into a glaring issue with our humour and the image of the performative man. It is valid and inherently important to recognize patterns that can put us in hot-water in our day to day, yet simultaneously we risk posing sanctions against those who step out of the rigidity of gendered norms. This targets men who are actually comfortable in exploring femininity, or at least, what lies outside the idea of masculinity we constructed, effectively inhibiting the exploration outside of gender norms we as a society should be progressing towards.
So, what did this teach us? First of all, we should be critical and receptive to the trends we contribute to. Obviously, itâs good fun! It brought the community together! I think fondly of the performative man contest that happened months ago. Still, we need to keep what starts these trends in mind. Trends are in itself, microcosms of bigger things going on in the cultural contemporary. Trying to change what happens is a task, arduous, and it wonât happen immediately. It starts with recognizing the issues that underscore the trend.