Wanted For Theft of the Female Identity. Have you seen this man?
Last seen lurking in Spoiled Life, sipping a blueberry matcha, imperial grade of course. Tote bag slung across the back of his chair, with the pretentious espresso machines whirring so loudly that the culprit can’t even hear the beabadoobee blasting through his wired earbuds. Next to an unwrinkled copy of EmRata’s My Body, his Sonny Angel adorned phone is strategically placed face up on the table, so everyone can see his self-proclaimed “elite” music taste. His St Andrews hotspot is, according to a man with a very close and personal experience with this disease, “Combinico without a doubt, the single greatest assortment of fake Clairo listeners on this earth”, where he was overheard criticising Nolan’s inability to write complex female characters, citing the Bechdel Test, but also refusing to engage in conversation with a woman he doesn’t find personally attractive. He is the newest in the regular rotation of men that social media tells women to be aware of, the latest permutation of a manipulative male, and the diamond of the season. The peacock of the human population, ostentatious and performative in its flashy bid for attention from its preferred sex, and engaged in an aesthetic arms race with your average masc lesbian. Hello Performative Male Epidemic.
He’s everything any woman could want, the poster child of cosmetic anticonservatism. He thrifts his clothing, seems emotionally available and educated, reads female revisionist historians, can tell the difference between CBT and CBD and doesn’t exclusively listen to sexually-degrading rap music. So what’s the problem with this cable-knit-wearing-book-in-back-pocket type?
It’s spelled out in its very own neologism- “performative”. Vacuous. Unsubstantiated. He seamlessly blends feminine aesthetics and masculine entitlement. At its core, the epidemic is not about the breaking down of social and stylistic gender barriers as it appears. It’s about men who adopt progressive and often feminist visual codes without subscribing to or caring for the underlying progressive values, a modern wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a personal PR mission after being branded as a f*ckboy or misogynist, where a cardigan is a lousy attempt to wrap up a morally grey consent record. It’s more than just disingenuous; the principle of solely adopting female perspectives in literature and philosophy for possible sexual gain is actually quite degrading and even objectifying, especially with an undercurrent of unchanging misogynistic beliefs. Do I even need to clarify that weaponised vulnerability and counterfeit sensitivity are pure manipulation? The epitome of this epidemic is a man who champions awareness for women’s issues and reads Dworkin, yet still makes his female friends feel uncomfortable when he’s drunk. Despite these intentional signals of empathy and political progressiveness, his real emotional depth is no deeper than the puddle of condensation left by his iced soy milk matcha.
I experienced this firsthand when I was in Stockholm over the summer, sitting in an apartment overlooking the archipelago for the birthday of a man I’d never met. In stunned silence, I watched the Nordic culture of social equality at work. For the first time, I was seeing young men, that I’d only just met, cleaning without a second thought, cooking us all dinner, opening up about the emotional impact of ex girlfriends with the birthday boy comfortably sitting with hands outstretched, absent-mindedly having his nails painted bright yellow, which later zipped me into one of his quarter zips before leaving for the Stockholm nightlife. Fresh out of high school and hushed by the rumbling of the metro, my best friend and I exchanged excited whispers about this new type of man we’d encountered: not terrified of being seen as feminine or, god forbid, gay; relaxed about gender roles; and emotionally mature. Worlds away from the plethora of ex-boyfriends and guy best friends we’d experienced so far. I couldn’t imagine any of them being so comfortably decorated with any innuendo of femininity – without the condition that they could remove it before going out in public, or making a vaguely defensive, offhand joke to preserve whatever weak sense of masculinity they thought they were protecting. A few bars and beers later, the facade weakened as he repeatedly tried to sling himself around me. After some equally repetitive dismissals on my part, it finally dawned on him that I was not going to give him what he wanted – he didn’t speak to me again. Forgetting all about his jacket, I last saw him leave the bar with 2 women in tow. Guess this brand of feminism expires around midnight.
The soundtrack for the rest of the trip was Quinnie’s 2023 song man. I wish I could express the eye contact and the collective silence my best friend and I shared as we heard her sing, “No amount of nail polish could paint you a good man.” I think another perfect representation of the misalignment between feminine-centered styling and social enlightenment in popular media is that infamous moment from the Graham Norton Show last year. I’m waiting for someone to frame and hang that still of Paul Mescal in his cardigan, all wrapped up for the female gaze, silent and slightly red-faced at being silenced by Saoirse Ronan for his ignorance on female safety.
This representation of vapid activism and a surface-level political stance with no substance aligns with a wider trend in social media performance, where we’ve found ourselves in a generation obsessed with telegraphing their own worthiness rather than practising it. It’s about an image you can curate of yourself, a vibe curation rather than authenticity.
The accessories of the performative male are selectively curated as markers of political signalling, positioning them as a safe partner for women. In a bleak socio-political climate where the president of the USA boasts an array of sexual misconduct allegations from 27 women, Reform UK threatens to overturn The Equality Act, and Andrew Tate attracted a terrifyingly large following, young women are looking for markers of a man who won’t vote against our bodily autonomy and understands that consent must be enthusiastic and freely given.
This cultural context helps signal where this wave came from, and where a turn to traditionally feminine styling and politically progressive signalling could be a response to criticism of hyper-masculine jargon and ultra-traditionalist gender roles online. A cultural commentary from The Download argued that this pushed the modern man in one of two directions, levelling up or doubling down on masculinity. Welcome to the stage, Performative Male and Podcast bro. If we see the rise of the performative male as a response to toxic masculinity, we must also recognise that this is not a solution, rather another toxic end of a horseshoe spectrum, as neither pathway embraces healthy definitions of masculinity or authenticity to self. Adopting femininity as a ruse for sexual domination is neither healthy nor empowering, for men and women alike.
The concept of gender as a performance isn’t radical. If we take a step back, socioculturally, all gender expression, as well as styling and fashion, can be seen to be a form of performance. It’s all an effort to cultivate a visual persona that matches how we perceive ourselves, translating the intangible knot of personality traits and life experience we’re made up of into something people can perceive. Hence, even the term “Performative Male” is tautological. In the words of James Factora, “Cis people come so close to understanding that all gender is performative… only to turn right back around and reinscribe gender norms.”
Despite this perspective of gender performance being not just accepted but also normalised, we can clearly see a discrepancy in how a man with traditionally feminine tastes and styling is observed online. The key difference is that any performance of femininity or even just female allyship in the modern cultural context, where performative masculinity is men who punch drywall out of emotion yet refuse to cry, is ridiculed en masse, whereas for women, such performance is inherent to longstanding perceptions of femininity. It’s historical. The female effort to dress a certain way and adopt interests to conform to gender expectations is not a trend or cultural phenomenon that goes viral online in memes and substack essays; it’s centuries of social and cultural conformity. From bleached scalps to skin waxed bare and raw, whether up on a pedestal or down on your knees, femininity has a longstanding definition of catering to male fantasy. This performance aspect runs so deep into the female psyche that, in the words of Margaret Atwood in The Robber Bride, “Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy,” and “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman.” It’s yet another double standard, where performed male femininity becomes discourse, and yet for women, it’s always been about obedience.
In an effort to warn women of such wolves in sheep’s clothing, this media storm may only work to discourage young men from actually exploring female perspectives, so they’re afraid to leaf through The Bell Jar or bell hooks in a bookstore. This shame culture works to create an even more extreme gender environment, where the sharing of culture and media is even more difficult in an environment where we need it more than ever. It’s simply another tool for gender division culture at a time when collective understanding and empathy are so important. What’s critical now isn’t abstaining from such media and styling, but putting that image of allyship into practice. Read for the sake of understanding, rather than to be perceived as perceptive. The street credit you gained from reading She Comes First pales against your history of harassment and enabling locker room talk. We need these men to have an understanding of consent and tolerance for degrading remarks that’s as solid and precise as his eyeliner.
All in all, I think your average woman is intelligent enough to know that watching Promising Young Woman (2020) once doesn’t make you a feminist, and matcha isn’t an elixir of political enlightenment. We’re all wary of the type whose Hunter wellies are only dirtied with spilled beer from Welly Ball instead of the Highland earth they were designed to withstand. Anyways, let’s be real for a minute, have you ever seen a Crushdrews post about a man who just looked so mysterious and alluring ordering a matcha? Nobody’s falling for the performance anyway. The curtain’s up, but the charade is thin, and personally, I give it a 0/5 star on my Letterboxd.