Who are the ‘performative males’ performing for?

I know the title makes it seem like I’m once again giving my take on men’s peculiar behaviors, but trust me, I’m going somewhere else with this.

Picture this: you’re walking in one of Beirut's lively streets, it's around 7 p.m., and tote bags rise and fall around you like waves. A man wearing headphones walks past you so that you don’t think he’s following you. You hear Who You Are by DAM bleeding through his headset.

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'Ana 'aamla diet' and other TikTok virals

عندي ثلاثية أحلام مستغانمي"

بقدر أقبس نوال السعداوي

بقدر أنقد عقيد الحارة

"بضل feminist عايش عطبيخ الماما

"I’ve got Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s trilogy,

I can quote Nawal al-Saadawi,

I can criticize the neighborhood leader,

and still be a feminist living on my mom’s cooking."

‘Progressive performative males’ is the new way of referring to men who are putting an active effort into their appearance and curating their interests with the aim of coming off as politically correct.

They’re feminists, they’re allies, they’re pro-Palestine. They might still be a little racist, but they’ll be sure to tell you they’re working on it with their therapist, whom they see twice a week (or day?). They basically weave their own green flags and carry them around.

The content online varies from warning women against the performative male who’s only trying to trick them, to criticizing the performance itself.

This is probably the traditional man’s doing. Coming up with a term to shame or intimidate a group of people just because they are edging towards the right side of history reeks of testosterone.

Another very possible factor is social media. With men like Saint Levant (a performance artist in every sense of the word) taking center stage, flaunting their kuffiyeh, girlfriends and getting adored for it. It’s only natural to expect people to follow in their footsteps, art-directing their apartments with vintage posters of Tahia Carioca and their outfits with Arabic typography

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Clementines, kuffiyeh and contradictions: Saint Levant's controlled narrative

Of course, I am guilty of this too. I don't think I've ever wasted a chance to show people my connection to the Arabic language. All it really takes for anyone to perform is the awareness that someone might be paying attention, no matter how small that chance might be.

Or is it ‘female gaze’ that created the performative male? Or the other way around? This feels like the chicken and the egg debate, except one is less scary than the other, and both were created on and exist solely in niche social media spaces.

If the progress women made over decades, demanding their rights, owning their stories and smashing standards through the glass ceiling is what prompted men to want to show us that they’re good and safe, then kudos!

The other way around, however, might mean that those green flags will fade out in the first wash.

Could it be that the men who are classified as performative and progressive have always thought the patriarchy is hypocritical and regressive, but are just now starting to feel safe enough to express that thought? Could the systematic oppression of women also be harmful for men?

Sure, any person carrying a tote bag could simply like its design, or want to support their favorite coffee shop, or got it for free at the last university fair they went to.

However, now that we have become our own and everyone’s paparazzi, documenting our lives and outfits with our own phones, the performance can last forever.

It's a tempting thought. We all get to create our persona based on what we want to see or hide, and what we want others to see in us. Am I not performing as a ‘strong woman’ when I sit in the passenger seat of a service instead of sitting in the back? Isn’t the red triangle I draw under my eyeliner a loud performance of support?

Even without social media platforms and the unfathomable access we have to become media that others consume, we’ve always been performers, haven’t we? Your Arab mom asking you to clean your room before guests arrive doesn’t mean you’re not a clean or tidy person; it just gives you an audience to perform this tidiness for. Still, they probably won't know what your room looks like, but you will.