oh I get why it's called performative. It's a subtle way of emasculating them by saying what they do is performance, something commonly associated with women and femininity. It's a dog whistle to say they aren't real men.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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Or to imply that the actions themselves are performative, that is, that they are not acting on genuinely held opinions or beliefs but rather are doing it purely as a courtship ritual. Which in some cases may be the case but as you say, using it as a blanket term really belittles anyone who believes in what they're doing.
Yup, this is the context where I usually hear the term used. That the person is pretending, just to get the date
I think the article did a good job of explaining why this is a problem. It also left off on a positive note:
A positive sign is that, rather than being defensive, many male creators are leaning into the joke and using parody as a way to explore what a more sensitive man might look like.
And perhaps the “performative male” trend holds up a mirror to our own contradictions. We demand authenticity but consume performance; we beg men to change but critique them when they try; we ask for vulnerability yet recoil when it looks too forced.
The “performative male” may look ironic, but he’s also experimenting with what it means to be a man today.
Whether that experiment leads to lasting change or just another online trend remains unclear, but it’s a glimpse of how masculinity is being rewritten, latte by latte.
Nah that’s in-group jargon. In social justice circles “performative” implies superficial behavior without proper motives. For example, Nike changing their logo to a rainbow variant during pride month to sell more shoes would be “performative support” of queer culture.
In this context, I would guess it’s tongue-in-cheek, self-aware humor, since such a broad stroke would be pretty obviously unfair to many gender-nonconformist folks (as if their preferred aesthetic is all just a ruse to get laid). It’s more likely they’re celebrating the trend of non-binary aesthetics, just doing it in a humorous way.
This article feels like it's been stolen from someone who wrote it ironically.
Lol same vibe. Like wiggling eyebrows everywhere. “…is this… problematic…??”
Not really a new phenomenon. I remember kids doing the same thing in the 90's and 00's, but it wasn't named as such.
Harder to write articles titled "Men still trying to attract partners using a variety of techniques" tho
It's a popular term that's being thrown around right now, and the younger men that are a part of that discussion didn't go through it in the 90s and 00s. I've been seeing it a lot in the university-aged spaces. It's complicated further right now by the discussion around stuff like DEI, since that's also being labelled as being "performative"
Still, it IS helpful to show young men that this isn't a new conversation. The article implies that, but it could have mentioned it explicitly
I don't recall there being a phrase to categorically describe men who falsely ascribed "softer" traits to attract women from those times, tho I remember women saying they wanted a more "sensitive" man, and men trying to demonstrate that they were "sensitive" through similar ways.
I do remember sensitive men, either performative or genuine, getting homophobic pejoratives hurled at them, tho. So some things change some things stay the same.
Gen Z took post irony and prolapsed it.