Performative male

FangornsWhiskers · 2025-09-27T00:29:09+00:00

I keep hearing stuff like women want men to set themselves free, but women also play a huge role in enforcing male gender roles. Or at least enforcing that there is a gender role even if they can’t say exactly what it is.

I might be an outlier (probably am), but I learned to repress emotions because of pressure from women, not men, despite what feminists say about men being the ones responsible for that behavior. Women, even feminists, can be strict enforcers of male stereotypes when they feel like it.

QuantumPenguin89 · 2025-09-27T06:12:53+00:00

The performative male is a person that acts a certain way have certain hobbies to attract women or have female validation.

Sounds like these men are men that follow the usual advice given to romantically lonely men who ask what they should do to find a relationship: "get a hobby [that women like, i.e. not Warhammer or anime]", "take a dancing class, you can meet women there", "just be confident", "dress in a more stylish way", even "read more books written by women", etc.

It's more demonization of unattractive men: if you don't happen to be exceptionally attractive without doing anything to achieve it, nothing you do will be right, even following their advice still gets you slandered and ridiculed.

Joeboyjoeb · 2025-09-26T23:27:25+00:00

To be honest. I don't think men are naturally driven to any of the "performative" manly functions without social conditioning. I can say for myself, a lot of the more manly things I've learned to do all came from the stereotype of men's functions. I don't think that's a bad thing. It creates hard workers of us. I don't think this conditioning is toxic either. It builds the world and creates tough men.

Women seem to want men to simply set themselves free. But we can't because we simply don't have the freedom they have. A woman can be at the lowest point of her life, no career, and have a man come rescue her. This isn't an option for men. Men don't have a no career option. No man gets to be a stay at home or part time parent. And men typically prioritize careers with security and financial stability over self-fulfilling careers. Women get to have so much choice over career knowing men can pick up the slack.

Present_League9106 · 2025-09-27T00:37:50+00:00

To some degree, it's all performative now. Feminists perform the strong independent woman. Men perform either the stoic breadwinner or the caring shoulder to cry on. Not much of it is very sincere, but that's how it's structured. We don't want to know each other and we want to know ourselves even less.

bodyisT · 2025-09-27T00:57:27+00:00

They assume men are doing it for women because they think men should do everything with the thought of women in mind. Men can also just like those things too

MSHUser · 2025-09-26T23:06:39+00:00

I've always been my own person, and that's someone that likes some masculine things and some feminine things. I don't subscribe to being the traditionally masculine man, but I'm also not a performative man as well. The common thing I see with these things are archetypes, that's it.

It feels like with these labels, you can't even be yourself anymore. This is truly an upside down world we're living in.

lemons7472 · 2025-09-27T03:47:28+00:00

Before this trend of calling it “performative male” I mainly saw others critsize male feminist. It never makes sense to me when feminist specifically criticize male-feminist in general for being performative since the majorty of feminist or “female feminist” in this case are equally performative, and only see men as a tool to blame, or demand stuff of.

ugavini · 2025-09-27T06:56:02+00:00

Don't tie yourself in knots trying to please misandrists. You will never be able to please them. Your existence offends them and everything you do will be seen as toxic, including the opposite of that thing.

lemons7472 · 2025-09-27T04:10:16+00:00

I notice it’s also a lot of men who try and make fun of them for being feminine or seeming like they are trying to impress women. It has become a general trend to try your hardest to bash “performative males”, but it seems the internet REALLY does not believe men can have their own interest, be liberal, or hobbies unless it’s to impress women.

I can understand not liking f-boys, but in all truth…I’m not even WHERE the preformative male actually is, because it seems this isn’t a gendered thing anyway to he performative in order for gain. Is it ‘blue pill’?

I’m not saying that just because you haven’t seen it it doesn’t mean it exist, but what I mean is, I’ve seen more weirdos trying to mock the “performative male” with the assumption that they only have these hobbies to wanan fuck. Not actually pointing out these people at all. Yeah I’m sure people like that exist but it’s moreso just wokjack memes and starter pack memes, like dolls. Just kinda making memes about it. Like really? Drinking a type of tea, wearing earphones, reading in a library or cafe, and having a hand-bag, makes you performative?

I guess it’s just the trend after the whole “nice guy” thing where you mainly bag on “nice guys” until you move onto the next “type” of man that doesn’t quite fit whatever masculine standard that benefits the other party.

BlessdRTheFreaks · 2025-09-26T23:29:52+00:00

Well, when a feminist walks out door, is there anything they're not gonna hate?

Normalsasquatch · 2025-09-27T05:34:26+00:00

Yeah I've been pretty disgusted with what I've seen about this lately. Yeah sure some guys try too hard, big whoop. Everybody is into fashion to some degree whether they admit it or not.

The whole reason it's turning into a thing is because the algorithm found someone to "other" and get people to tribalistically hate.

Hate drives clicks on click bait articles.

Part of me thinks stuff like that is pushed on the left by the same people that put out fake info on the right, poking the hate button to divide and conquer.

Keep us all fighting amongst eachother.

I think there are probably lots of well educated feminists who reject this kind hate based thinking, but that doesn't mean the average person has thought long and hard about all these concepts that they reduce down into buzzwords.

Eric_The_Jewish_Bear · 2025-09-27T15:45:32+00:00

Performative male just means "guy whose personality i like but I think he's ugly"

rump_truck · 2025-09-27T14:35:07+00:00

I usually hear "performative male" used similarly to how Nice Guy TM was used 10-15 years ago, to refer to a guy who goes so far out of his way to portray traits the thinks will perceive as positive that they can't get a sense of who the real person is underneath the performance. From the receiving end, it looks a bit like a woke form of love bombing.

I do think that performative male is a far better term for this than Nice Guy TM, which had a major problem with being confused with guys who are generally nice. Performative male can't really cause friendly fire in that same way. Good on the left for finally finding a term that actually sounds like what it means.

It does still have problems though. If one is overly pessimistic, it can be easy to over-diagnose people as performative. A lot of ink has been spilled about the tendency for men to mistake basic decency from women as flirting, because they're so used to women being guarded that even the smallest connection feels like a performance for their attention. It's possible that your friend is so pessimistic about men that she's fallen into that same trap.

However, it sounds like you might be so pessimistic about women that you think that performance is the only way for them to see you as a valid human being. It sounds like you feel the need to do things that you don't actually want to do, just to not be hated. I think "manipulative" is overused because it implies malice, and I think most people who do "manipulative" things are really just desperate for approval and connection. But regardless, doing things you don't want to for approval is inauthentic, and inauthenticity sabotages genuine connection.

I've always hated the advice "Just be yourself", because it's vague and unactionable. It should be more like "Do the things you genuinely want to do for yourself, and connect with the people you encounter along the way, rather than trying to mold yourself to force a connection with people you don't have anything in common with."

Pitiful_Awareness_48 · 2025-09-27T02:40:13+00:00

Yeah this is tough, I think it can fall upon biology as a bunch of other species perform to court their mate, I’m sure humans do so too in a subconscious degree. I think some people are over the top and Hollywood makes it seem somewhat over the top though

FrankZapper13 · 2025-09-27T16:40:55+00:00

What this whole anti-performative male thing does is really show the true motivations of these people who were talking all about positive masculinity and how men should change to be better. The performative male hate comes from a segment of those people and it shows that they weren't ever interested in men actually getting better and becoming better people. They just used it as a way to hate on men, and now that these men are doing exactly what these people said they should do, these people now hate the guys because obviously no man could honestly have these "feminine" interests. Just more gender essentialism to go on top of the already out of control gender essentialism.

What's funny is the way out of this trap is to have the attitude of the men they claim to hate. Just go through life not giving a fuck about what any of these people think, and if they try to tear you down for your interests just laugh in their face and keep doing you. They're the bitter haters, you're just living your life. They're the losers all up on some random guy's dick, you're just doing you not paying them any mind. It's the only way out, nothing you do is gonna be good enough for these losers anyway. So just ignore anything these losers say and live a decent life doing what you want to do without hurting other people and you'll be fine.

POO_IN_A_LOO · 2025-09-27T10:52:51+00:00

meanwhile the performative female:

Im wearing these pants for myself not for you!

BattleFrontire · 2025-09-28T16:51:49+00:00

Why is it called "performative male" instead of "performative man"? We keep hearing about how saying female instead of woman is awful.

splittingxheadache · 2025-09-27T13:15:47+00:00

“Town I am in”

This sounds like a large city though

Lanavis13 · 2025-09-27T14:57:47+00:00

So many things I hear makes me both glad I'm gay and don't (usually) have to deal with women who strongly identify as feminist (as opposed to women who might say they're feminists when asked but don't proactively voice it as part of their personality). Not saying all proactively self-proclaimed feminists are misandrist. However, I've only met those self-proclaimed feminists who are misandrist.

PyaariNani · 2025-09-27T15:58:33+00:00

Now you can't even read a book without getting tagged as a 'Performative male'. Saw a reel where women went out of their way to comment on a guy's story because he was reading a book lol

1bnna2bnna3bnna · 2025-09-28T03:57:01+00:00

They can only ever be the victims, becuause feminism dies without this. The irony of this paradox isn't lost on thinking people - including many terrific women. Also, while these blokes arent my 'Cup of Tea' as a Gen X male, i completely remember how much thought and care I put into trying to attract a girl when I was young. There were a LOT more women who could freely express their interest in men back then. I was accidently very lucky indeed given how average I am 😀

1bnna2bnna3bnna · 2025-09-29T23:52:23+00:00

Look at you handing out behavior awards.... Jog on. You had a crack, were wrong and got corrected. I'm done with you.

BloomingBrains · 2025-10-01T00:53:00+00:00

Its a little bit hard for me to understand your post but I think I get the gist of what you are saying.

People often tell lonely men to mirror hobbies that attract women, but they paradoxically also say to "be yourself". Besides the obvious hypocrisy of this it also implies that all women are the same, which is sexist. Some women like video games and books. Maybe they're looking for a nerdy guy and not quarterback. To erase those women is disrespectful. (It's also disrespectful to erase nerdy men too, but they don't care about that part).

On one hand I can definitely understand why women wouldn't want a guy that's fake and only pretends to be a certain way to get with them. That's creepy. But its a different matter entirely when society is telling you to be fake, then punishes you for it. If you're going to complain about men being fake, don't tell them to be fake in the first place! I'd actually be on their side if they weren't creating their own problem.

Molding men into "performative males" is just a way to delay the inevitable realization that a good number of men will NEVER be wanted by the average woman, and the subsequent downfall of society when all of those men no longer see any point in supporting a system that abandoned them.

MathematicianNext132 · 2025-09-27T13:40:43+00:00

Can we than also state that wearing make-up, being overly-agreeable and cooking are traits of perfornative femininity?

No_Editor_4328 · 2025-09-27T19:08:29+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Title	Performative male
Author	No_Editor_4328
Upvotes	101
Comments	67
Date	September 26, 2025 10:10 PM UTC (10 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1nreiht/performative_male/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/performative-male.1562885 https://theredarchive.com/post/1562885

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