Letter to the Editor: Performance as survival

To the Editor,

 

 

Ms Hagen is right: men should read without ridicule, resist anti-intellectualism, schlep tote bags stuffed with feminist literature while listening to Clairo. I agree, in the face of a rise in conservative views about gender roles, it is crucial to bridge the gap between the female and male experiences. Ms Hagen prizes earnestness, a commodity scarce in a meme-ified society. I’d argue earnestness isn’t the bridge—performance is. Men are unknowingly stepping into our shoes. Just as women birth all men, I’d like to highlight the original performer: the female manipulator.

 

 

To be a woman is to perform. The female experience is defined by existing under the male gaze. Whether I like it or not, there is a little man in my head whispering when I look in the mirror at myself, or when I write an email and overanalyze my tone. One day this year, the nine year-old girl I care for came home from her all-girls Catholic school in Manhattan. Her  homework that day was to interview a woman in her life.  She asked me a few questions, concluding with ‘what advice would you give to young women?’ I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with self-reflection. All I could think to say was this: ‘As you grow up, you will learn about and internalize what is called the “male gaze.” In simple terms, without realizing it, you might judge yourself from a man’s perspective. My best advice is to get rid of that man in your head.’  I don’t know why this came to me at that moment, and maybe it was a lot to unload on a fourth-grade girl on a Tuesday afternoon, but I think I needed to hear it.

 

 

This summer, my girlfriends and I spent our nights bouncing around the bars of St. Marks Place, a street in New York’s East Village— infamously, a natural habitat for such ‘performative men.’ By day, they sit in the area’s many cafes, reading Sally Rooney. By night, they frequent wine bars, talking some poor girl’s ear off about Palantir. Neither of these acts—reading, nor discussing the looming rise of AI—is inherently wrong. In fact, both are necessary in a productive society and it would be anti-intellectual to criticize the pursuit of knowledge, as Ms Hagen points to. Wrong, no; predictable, yes.

 

 

Amidst all this predictability in the male-manipulator type, I found myself adapting. Suddenly, I was talking golf and Entourage with ‘reformed’ frat guys who thought they were cool because they live in an ‘up-and-coming’ (translation: recently gentrified) neighborhood and work in advertising, not finance. Instead of shrinking to the male gaze, I confidently, and intentionally, gave them exactly the conversation they wanted. It was so simple to appease them—they thought I was a catch!  Better than that: they were completely oblivious to my internal monologue planning every word with intention. Consciously performing. Manipulating.

 

 

But I am far from a pioneer. Women are fluent in code-switching, living with that evil little man in our heads. It’s a man’s world, and women have been performing and manipulating since the beginning of time.

 

 

Ms Hagen writes that male manipulator memes admonish men ‘for pursuing what has been deemed a feminine activity’ —namely reading fiction in the public square. But I don’t think it’s the picking up of a book that women are defensive over; I think it’s the encroachment on the finely tuned skill of female performance.

 

 

The performative female is an adapted soldier, highly trained in survival on the patriarchal battle field. Call it manipulation if you’d like, but my performances this summer felt like a reclamation the female reality. If life is a stage under the eyes of the little man, why not distract him by appeasing him? Throw him a bone so you can turn and run away laughing.

 

 

The performative male is memeable because they are unknowingly catching onto our ways. They’re endearingly oblivious to the fact, as if they’ve discovered an unexplored field. While the performative male attempts (emphasis on attempts) to woo women with his ‘earnestness’, the performative female manipulates to survive. And they are plain bad at it—the whole internet caught on immediately.

 

 

I performed this summer to laugh. I killed the little man in my head by tricking him. Trolling him. His nemesis—female manipulator—chuckled as he was so easily played. My girlfriends cracked up at our secluded table as I described the interaction. Instead of shrinking to the little man’s gaze, we laughed at his obliviousness; a private joke only true performers can understand.

 

 

So sure, let men read their novels. Performative or not, it’ll take centuries for them to catch up. Earnestness is a privilege; performance is survival.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Quinn Burke

Amy Dunne Apologist

 

Read Kalina Hagen’s original piece, ‘Fellas, is it gay to read?’ here.

 

Words by Quinn Burke. Image by Quinn Burke.