You Don't Hate Performative Males, You Just Hate Women
I haven’t written in a while because I have been quite content in my own world now that I have social media deleted off my phone.
Well, it was, but it’s back now.
Don’t ask me how or why, I’m unsure of the reason, really. But it’s back all the same like the dark figure clouding the bedroom corner each night (just me?). The figure points to a man on my screen in baggy cargos holding a green icy drink in his hand. I shudder. Is it the polished nails? The nose ring? What kind of guy wears loafers? Are we in 18th century London? I feel a string of anger thread itself around my ribcage. Soulless eyes bore into me from the bedroom corner, a thousand tons of nothing weighing on my consciousness. I do as it tells me and I pull at this thread, I pull and pull. With it comes anger like a dam burst pouring from my chest.
How dare he take what’s ours. Words unravel, spilling forth. How dare he be something different. I reach the end of the line, a mat of rotting words is produced, hot repulsion oozing from this feeling’s center:
How dare he be a woman.
The performative male is a mythological creature of sorts with origins dating back to 2024 from deep within the bowels of TikTok. The idea originates from memes with photos snapped of unsuspecting males alone in public spaces partaking in hobbies such as reading feminist literature and listening to music with wired headphones with captions over the photos claiming that these men are only partaking in these hobbies as a trap for women to fall into. I believe this trend is likely to have divulged from another similar trend of “giving me the ick,” where women would share certain, often feminine, things men would do that would disturb them for no particular reason.
The trend of filing certain hobbies, interests, and fashion choices into the categories of what is and is not socially acceptable is nothing new, but is certainly something in which the method of doing so is consistently updated. The disdain so openly shared for so-called “performative” males instills normalized misogyny and upholds gendered patriarchal ideals.
Believing that it is purposely deceptive when a man enjoys feminine things reinstates misogynistic beliefs of rigid gendered thinking. Too quickly we will jump to humiliating a man for his fashion and music choices assuming he cannot really enjoy things “meant for girls” while in the same mind fully believe femininity is a strength. Where is the line being drawn for femininity? Who is allowed to enjoy it? Is femininity only authentic when enjoyed by cis women? We must ask these uncomfortable questions in order to face our own inner misogyny.
Countless times I have heard fellow women speak of the patriarchy as if it were some factory their fathers, brothers, and partners clock into each day rather than viewing it as the society we are all actively participating in. Bell Hooks writes in her novel The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “We need to highlight the role women play in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system.” The very belief upheld by women that we are exempt from the patriarchy keeps us separated from men as if we are on a pedestal away from society. The upholding of this pedestal is an act of dehumanizing ourselves.
The patriarchy is not some mystical factory lurking behind the street corner. It is found in our words, our affirmations, what we view as “for men to enjoy” and “for women to enjoy”, and our actions of what we choose to both love and hate. We feel more comfortable calling a man out for being feminine rather than calling ourselves out for being sexist. Denying that women are inherently taught to hate other women and femininity is the denial in the patriarchy itself. The hatred we assume is felt towards the man on our screen is not for him and this imaginary scenario that he is possibly faking his interests for attention; the hatred is for the qualities he is presenting.
There is no denying the validity to the feelings of hatred brought up when speaking of the feminine man. I saw a video of someone saying “don’t paint your nails then beat a woman with the same hands” and it had me questioning everything I have written. Many women have been hurt by men who put on a certain attitude to appease or fool them into thinking they are someone they are not. This is a tale as old as time.
What we must realize is this: The thing we are hurt by is not the feminine man, but the threat of the patriarchal man beneath it all.
Believing that males liking so-called feminine things is a performance is a misdirection of hatred in which femininity being enjoyed by men is believed to be inherently wrong. You don’t hate him because he listens to Clairo and has an organic cotton tote bag, you hate him because you feel deep down that he is betraying the patriarchal norm of what it means to be a man and it is uncomfortable to sit with the knowledge that you too cannot escape the endless bounds of the patriarchal hate towards women. The fear of a partner lying about who they are to entrap you is terrifying and valid, but blaming this on men who are feminine shifts the blame away from misogyny itself.
I have chosen to write with a woman’s perspective in mind not because I believe it is our sole job to help men, and I certainly do not feel that it is our job to save or coddle them. I have because I truly feel it is important for us as women to understand we are not the keepers of femininity. We cannot choose who gets to like what we deem as feminine, just as men have no right to be the keepers of masculinity (as hard as they may try). Gender is not some secret club. We must not be afraid of the pain in acknowledging we too have a role in the same patriarchy that keeps us ashamed in hundreds of major and minor ways. It is okay to feel this hatred, but it is not okay to let it thread itself around your life without pulling at it in hopes of sitting in the discomfort with the root of it all. Men liking feminine things is not the issue, the issue is the same misogynistic ideals that femininity is for women and the valid fear of men betraying us. We face this most often from the most masculine men we know. This pain is born from the patriarchy, not from a man liking girly things. In times where hating your neighbor tip toes on the outbreak of war, we must question the roots of our hatred. Who is it we are really hating?
"Dismantling and changing patriarchal culture is work that men and women must do together.”
― Bell Hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
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