Is matcha for the girls? Is a male Clairo stan trying to manipulate you? Are men who read bell hooks on public transport and quote Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy really wolves in sheep’s clothing? Is questioning these things just women protecting themselves from red flags in relationships, or is this conservative gender norms rearing its ugly head? To find the answer to this very online problem, I’ve enlisted the help of some friends, read articles, watched a few too many TikToks, and even consulted a potentially *performative* male.
First Order of Business: Who Is the Performative Male?
The performative male is a common sight across on any university campus or major city. They sport mullets or shaggy curls (think Paul Mescal or Pedro Pascal), a tastefully coiffed mustache, and stick-and-poke tattoos. A string of pearls adorns their neck (which they claim is inspired by Marsha P. Johnson), and they wear Carhartt or Dickies, although they’ve never been on a job site in their lives. They haunt indie cafés for matcha lattes, Slow Dance by Clairo playing in their AirPods. Their tote bags are full of annotated copies of Normal People and loose silver jewelry. Underneath this trendy persona lies a man who proclaims that he dresses for the female gaze and is a feminist. However, this is a costume which they will shed the moment they get into your bed.
Second Order of Business: What Do People Think About the Performative Male?
According to L.S., a Law and Politics student, this “faux allyship” cheapens the feminist movement as these men use it as a tool to get laid. She notes that some performative men use a “softer aesthetic” to make themselves come off as safer to women, allowing them to prey on women’s vulnerabilities. She also notes that these men will often remain silent or defend their friends when the latter make misogynistic jokes or harm women in their interpersonal relationships. This behaviour, she adds, reduces feminist politics and literature to an accessory, a commodity. However, she notes that the term “performative male” is losing its meaning; instead of critiquing how some men virtue signal feminism, we have turned to mocking men who drink matcha. She thinks that this turned a once serious conversation into just another internet meme.
On the other hand, M.M., a Forensic Psychology student at Brock University, enjoys the meme, noting that claiming to listen to Clairo for “the female gaze” opens one up to ridicule. However, she does worry that we might be reinforcing gender roles and isolating men who don’t enjoy typically male things like proteinmaxxing and going to the gym. She also thinks that “dunking” on progressive men might be counterproductive.
Some believe that this new trend is nothing new. From the “nice guys” of the 2010s to your dad dressed in a tux and surprising your mom with flowers in the 90s, men straying from their “authentic selves” to win over a potential mate is nothing new. In an era where (some) women would rather be with a “man who goes to therapy” than a dozen roses, the performative male is its natural conclusion. S.Z., an Aerospace Masters student, believes that this behaviour stems from insecurity—that these men’s “authentic” selves, they feel, are not enough to be loved and find love.
Writer and contributor to The Guardian, Rachel Connolly, states that this is another example of Gen Z’s performative righteousness, a phenomenon also present in women. She notes that both the behaviour of the performative male and the backlash against it is an example of a generation “obsessed with the idea of telegraphing their own worthiness rather than practising it” (Connolly). She also laments the growth of “red-flag culture” and how calling a man who drinks an overpriced iced strawberry matcha, while reading Angela Davis, toxic, preys on “the neuroses of anxious young women” by making them assume that any innocuous behaviour committed by a man is a covert attempt to seduce/manipulate them (Connolly). On a similar note, lecturer Alexander Stoffel added that our culture of treating every man as a potential manipulator or abuser puts them in an impossible position.
Others have noted that all expressions of gender are performative (Goodwin). I mean, one does not have to read Judith Butler to note that the girlies wearing Alo workout sets, heading to pilates, counting their calories, and talking about “living the soft life” are also performing. This observation begs the question: Is there such a thing as being an “authentic male?” One is not born listening to Joe Rogan and scarfing down four-day-old flavourless chicken and rice, after all. D.H., a third-year physics student at the University of Toronto, believes that this “softer” masculinity (reading books, listening to female artists and painting their nails) provides a healthy counterbalance to the “Andrew Tate” and other manosphere types that have dominated men’s spaces online in recent years, which he believes has been detrimental to men’s mental health. Some believe that this new meme/talking point in the discourse is an example of heteropessimism (when women voice frustrations with dating men, which sounds progressive but does nothing to solve them), and note that this is another sign of the conservative backlash to non-traditional expressions of gender (Stoffel).
V.M., a fourth-year physics student at the University of Toronto, finds the phenomenon interesting, as for most of recent history, men have been performing for other men (she used bodybuilding as an example). She believes that the recent signalling towards women reflects a shift in heterosexual dating and the dominance of dating apps, where one has to “market” themselves to a potential partner.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, I believe that TikTok’s performative male mania is telling of how things are moving in the culture, especially regarding gender. Why is a man reading The Second Sex or Wuthering Heights considered performative, but filming themselves chopping wood is not? With more and more men turning away from education (Friesen) (which has troubling consequences for our democracy), should we really be mocking men for reading and educating themselves on women’s issues? While I believe that virtue signalling and performative activism are a serious issue, I think that, given the current state of male-female relations (the UN declared in July that two-thirds of young men regularly engage with manosphere content online), there are bigger (and frankly scarier) fish to fry.
As for whether I find the meme itself to be funny, I think that we’ll all be sick of it the second the most annoying couple you know dresses up as a performative male and his Labubu.
Works Cited
Connolly, Rachel. “Why fear the tote bag-wielding, matcha drinking ‘performative male’? At least he makes an effort.” The Guardian, August 29th 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/29/tote-bag-matcha-performative-male-women#:~:text=Here%20we%20have%20the%20performative,stow%20tampons%20on%20his%20person.
Friesen, Joe. “Canadian campuses are mostly female. What are men doing instead?”. The Globe and Mail, September 17th 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/education/article-canada-postsecondary-university-college-men-women-gender-gap/.
Goodwin, Anneke. “One Is Not Born, But, Rather, Becomes a Performative Male: Gender Performativity and the New Man.” The McGill Daily, August 27th 2025, https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2025/08/one-is-not-born-but-rather-becomes-a-performative-male/.
Stoffel, Alexander. “Let ‘performative males’ be–gender has always been a performance and our need for authenticity is bad for us.” The Conversation, August 21st 2025, https://theconversation.com/let-performative-males-be-gender-has-always-been-a-performance-and-our-need-for-authenticity-is-bad-for-us-263478.
“UN Women sounds the alarm over online misogyny”, United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/delegate/un-women-sounds-alarm-over-online-misogyny. Accessed September 25th, 2025.