this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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unnecessarily serious reply to a joke post: i have been thinking a lot recently about the phrase performative male and i have come to the conclusion that it's lib trash. it identifies and singles out as somehow different or non-standard men who perfom masculinity in a different way from traditional masculinity and ascribes the "performative" label only to those men and their various non traditional masculinities. this is problematic because it assumes that traditional masculinity - driving trucks, eating red meat, making homophobic jokes with boys, etc - is somehow not performed, and that the men performing it are actually Just Being Men, as opposed to performing their own masculinity. it's a double standard rooted in stereotypes of men and a 20th century understanding of masculinity and it ultimately serves to hold men back from expressing their own masculinity in non-traditional way
tldr: calling it performative masculinity when traditional masculinity is also a performance reinforces the harmful attitude that reading (and doing anything other than being a toxic hateful shithead) is gay
thank you for coming to my ted talk
I just hate when it's applied to books. The most communist thing I can say is to read more books and harder books. The more books I read, the more communist I become. Anti-intellectualism needs to be directed at the things that hold us back from learning in liberating ways. I'll never trust anyone who tells me education is useless or reading books for adults is somehow bad. It's such a reactionary framework to adopt in a society that uses anti-intellectualism to oppress us. We're specifically alienated from those things and the time to learn or enjoy them because they're powerful if we can use them.
Oh. I thought performative masculinity was traditional masculinity. Like when men try to act "extra manly" so they don't appear gay.
so did i when i first heard it lol, it took me ages to understand what people meant by it