Hot Take: Why We Should Let People Be Performative

Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure you are aware of the term ‘performative males’. The term concerns men who partake in a soft-boy aesthetic and pretend to enjoy feminine/feminist activities, such as drinking matcha, reading feminist literature, listening to music written by women, and having cute keychains like Labubus. This trend arose mid-2025 through social media apps like TikTok and Reddit, where influencers will mock and talk about these ‘performative men’. The main reason this archetype of man is so scorned is because these men are only doing these otherwise feminist and progressive activities for the validation, attention, and ultimate manipulation of women. However, I and many other people see that while this trend is humorous at first sight, it is ultimately problematic and damages the very movements that progressive people want to promote.

This meme may remind many people of the term ‘poser,’ which was a word used by millennials during the rise of alternative culture (e.g. punk, metal, and skateboarding) to refer to people who superficially participate in nonconformist culture without taking a genuine interest in it. However, this caused many people that were attempting to explore and join these punk and anti-establishment movements to be gatekept and ridiculed for ‘fake engagement’ in alternative arts. This was often a result of elitism, where certain members flaunted their investment into the culture and made others prove if they had ‘genuine’ allegiance through tests (e.g. asking how many songs or bands they knew). In turn, the exclusion of newcomers caused a degree of resentment to form, driving many people away and damaging the growth of anti-conformity, anti-corporation efforts. For Gen-Z, we see the same things happening with this ‘performative male’ trend, as real male feminists begin to become concerned with being seen as fake or deceptive. 

Many people who promote or enforce this trend are quick to state that this distrust of potentially performative men is because men who ‘peacock’ their involvement in progressive movement could actually be toxic and emotionally-manipulative. The idea is that these men are attempting to build false trust in women for the sake of attention and hooking up. This may cause real male feminists to be less outspoken and involved in feminist activities because of how easy it is to immediately assume that someone is faking or attention-seeking. In the end, this prevents men from showing genuine allyship and developing a real interest in feminism out of fear of ridicule. Many people may also find this ironically sexist since the distrust of men from doing traditionally feminine things enforces sexist gender norms, where the only legitimate, non-performative way for a man to act is to be traditionally masculine.

In 2026, we see this trend spreading to the rest of leftist and progressive culture. We see this from the recent Cornell 7 event, causing a massive reconcentration on rape and sexual assault. The event caused many social media users to post and repost about sexual assault, including news on the Cornell 7 event, sexual assault statistics, and most notably, a story with the Add Yours prompt stating, “Repost if you’re against rape!” This story prompt caused lots of backlash from leftists, stating that this story trend is performative, attention-seeking, and doesn’t do enough for anti-rape movements.

As someone who reposted this story, I’d argue that while reposting a story isn’t a momentous action, nor is it even respectable, we shouldn’t be insulting nor slighting people from doing small actions like this. There is still a large amount of hyper-traditional and conservative thought in America, so bringing attention to progressive fronts is the least that activists can do. But once we begin to disrespect people for doing the bare minimum, I find that instead of encouraging people to do more, it convinces people that it isn’t worth it. Others may argue that the story itself doesn’t make any sense since being against rape should be obvious, however phrases like “Black Lives Matter,” “Love is Love,” and “Science is Real,” should also be obvious to the American public, and yet we still have to fight to prove it. 

In conclusion, we shouldn’t be enforcing this idea of ‘performative people’. While this trend is built with good intentions, society’s quest to weed out the good from the bad leads to false accusations and the belittlement of people who only intend to do good. Decades before, we already saw how the term ‘poser’ drove people away from alternative culture out of fear of being seen as fake, and now we see people being driven away from progressive culture for the exact same reasons. Activists and feminists will not win the war unless they can bring people to their side, so yes, we should let people be performative, because the other option is to make people pass purity tests until no one cares to try. It becomes worse when activists make other activists prove how progressive or involved they are, similar to the elitism in alternative culture, because the tests no longer become about whether or not they believe in progressive values, but instead about how much better of an activist one person is over another. So for all of my other activists out there, we need to remember that if change doesn’t happen from just one voice, why would we silence any of them?