This September, armed with a matcha latte, a set of wired earbuds and a Sabrina Carpenter T-shirt, Queban Lee took on Free Speech Alley with a dream: to win LSU’s inaugural “performative male contest.”
He came prepared.
After pulling a vinyl copy of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” from his tote bag, Lee handily secured his place in the top four. And after successfully naming three Nirvana songs in the final round, the calculated computer science major was crowned “most performative.”
Lee’s victory speech was the most performative of all: “Men take a lot of wins in life, but I think women deserve to win way more than men ever could,” he opined to a crowd of admirers.
If you’re wondering what could have inspired dozens of college kids to enroll in an esoteric quasi-pageant, blame the internet.
Originating on TikTok, the phrase “performative male” describes an all-too-real subset of straight men who curate their aesthetic to appeal to progressive women. By definition, performative men are not genuinely interested in matcha, tote bags and wired earbuds; they weaponize popular fashion to attract girls.
As LSU’s fun-spirited contest suggests, performative men are condemnable: they manipulate women, they appropriate queer culture and — most of all — they’re cringey.
But entertaining as the performative male trend may be, I suggest that calling these manipulative Labubu-lovers “performative” is redundant. To understand why, let’s talk about gender.
According to Merriam-Webster, gender describes “the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”
Importantly, while one’s gender identity often corresponds to their biological sex, gender expression is not biologically inscribed. Rather, as Judith Butler argues in their 1990 book Gender Trouble, gender “is only real to the extent that it is performed.”
While sex chromosomes are immutable, gender expression is a function of choice. Our fashion choices (dresses vs. cargo shorts), attitudes (nurturing vs. domineering) and music tastes (Clairo vs. Hank Williams Jr.) are exercises of freedom. By contrast, imposing particular forms of gender expression onto people (by making girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks, for example) constitutes a restriction of their freedom.
Therefore, the phrase “performative man” is redundant because all expressions of masculinity are performative. Wearing jorts and a flannel is no less natural than wearing cowboy boots and driving a big truck.
Of course, criticizing the etymology of a TikTok trend might seem like splitting hairs — and it is. But dispelling the “performative man” trend allows us to formulate a more robust critique of the social media archetype.
The problem with performative men isn’t that they’re performing; in a way, we all are. It’s that they’re performing disingenuously — and manipulating women in the process.
If you take umbrage with performative men, take umbrage with macho men like Andrew Tate, trad wives like Nara Smith and pseudo-cowboys like Morgan Wallen.
Our cultural obsession with binary gender has brainwashed us into rewarding inauthentic heteronormativity, even as we openly criticize inauthentic expressions of queerness.
There’s nothing wrong with wearing jorts and listening to Nirvana. I do both of those things, and I like them. Ladies, hit my line.
But we need to stop blaming performative men on Gen Z. We’re all performing. The only question is what character we want to play.
Cade Savoy is a political science and philosophy major from Breaux Bridge, La.
