Chloe Shammas
Once, on a school trip, a group of friends and I wandered into a bookstore.I remember many things about that little store: the wooden walls, the cozy chairs tucked into every corner, and the feminist literature section. More specifically, I remember every boy refusing to stand near it.
“No way, bro. Are you kidding?”Before long, the section became a joke.“Hold up a feminist book!” They urged their friends while holding their phones, waiting to capture the hilarious moment.
If you have been on the internet over the past year, you have probably heard of the ‘Performative Male’: the matcha-drinking, tote-bag-carrying, indie-music-listening man who might also have a Labubu or tampons in his pocket.
The label became so well-known that many people even dressed up as the ‘scary’ performative male for Halloween. Their accessories being a Jane Austen book, headphones, and a matcha. Boo.
The term emerged as an online joke among Gen Z. A way to poke fun at men who pretend to be sensitive or progressive, purely as a way to get the girl. But it’s this pretending that is exactly the problem. By acting as if men who have an interest in books or music must be performing, it’s pushing men away from developing genuine interest in these topics. And when teenage boys are afraid of being ridiculed for being concerned about topics such as feminism, they will stop caring at all.
The ‘Performative Male’ is incredibly damaging to men because it discourages them from experimenting with healthier identities and moving away from toxic masculinity. If men expect to be ridiculed for reading feminist books or expressing vulnerability, they may retreat into more conventional forms of masculinity. Traditional masculinity already comes with expectations about how men are supposed to behave. Men are expected to be confident and strong. Independent and emotionally controlled.
Vulnerability can therefore be treated as weakness. Interests associated with women can be viewed as embarrassing.
This archetype only reinforces these expectations by suggesting that any attempt to move beyond them is inherently suspicious or ingenuine. This is especially obvious when it comes to feminism.
Immediately deeming a man as ‘performative’ when seen reading a book highlighting such a topic implies that a man cannot be interested in feminism for its own sake; he must have an ulterior motive. As a result, women’s perspectives and struggles are framed as tools for male benefit rather than as legitimate subjects of study, which is deeply damaging.
In addition, this term and the implications behind it can also be incredibly damaging to women.
Specifically, at a certain point, this can become a form of misogyny.The assumption behind the “Performative Male” stereotype reduces women’s interests to their usefulness to men. Women’s experiences and struggles become props in a male dating economy rather than legitimate subjects of interest.
Treating men’s engagement with feminist interests as inherently sexually strategic both devalues women’s intellectual worlds and enforces that narrow model of masculinity. It’s a thin line, but this is when criticism of performativity can become misogynistic.
Additionally, the idea that a man cannot read feminist literature because he is genuinely interested in it, but must instead be trying to impress women, suggests that women’s intellectual and cultural interests are not valuable enough to be explored for their own sake.
The ‘Performative Male’ came to be because some men were performing. There is no doubt about it. Performative allyship is real, and some men do hold up feminist literature purely for their friends to photograph and laugh at later.
The problem comes from the generalization aspect of it. By assuming that all men who read a book with headphones in public are performing, we are discouraging genuine interest in these topics.
Boys no longer want to be seen in the feminist literature section of the bookstore. Not because they hate women, but because they don’t want to seem performative.
But it’s a thin line. And it’s getting harder to tell which side of it they're on.
