“I don’t consider myself to be ‘performative male’ but maybe I’m part of the problem.” The metanarrative of this statement, made by one of the contestants in the Performative Male Competition in San Francisco a few days ago, is enough to send Jean-François Lyotard and his postmodernist friends into a tizzy. Here’s a young man, as far from Alpha as bell hooks (the American author) is from anything capital, incidentally, intentionally carrying a bell hooks book and looking as non-threatening to women as possible. But, he’s participating in a contest that prizes performativeness. So, maybe he’s actually threatening. But, if he’s admitting that he might be the problem, is he really the problem?

This author is almost at her wits’ end at how ridiculously performative everything is today. As a cis-heterosexual woman, she’s also unnerved at the curveball this seemingly fun, self-deprecating, and smart contest has thrown at her. Men are trying to project their softest, most sensitive, and entirely non-threatening selves. Don’t we all want it? Have we not had enough of the angry young men,........

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