Rating Every Book I Read This Summer Based on How Performative-Male-Coded It Is

“Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet,” claimed the late great writer and general weird guy Robert Anton Wilson, “we have never seen a totally sane human being.” In many senses, he was not without reason. Conversely, I believe the same to be true about the concept of the performative male, which has become omnipresent in social media discourse in recent months for those with the misfortune of a doomscrolling habit. Do such beings exist? On one hand, you’ve seen them. I’ve seen them. Baggy-denim-clad, matcha-latte-guzzling, and, of course, feminist-literature-gripping, these quasi-mythical creatures are seen asserting their dominance over cafes and subway escalators alike in the bleak picture of the world offered by Instagram Reels. Yet, seeing is not always believing. For every man with a Shakespeare and Company tote bag and a copy of The White Album by Joan Didion, there are countless other rarer specimens operating on levels of pretentiousness of which the average Letterboxd premium subscriber can only dream and which evade detection thanks to the spotlight on the easy target of the performative male.

Fundamentally, I believe that all people have the right to have interests and the responsibility to be no more than mildly annoying and definitely not offensive about them. The prevalent tendency to corral people into arbitrary labels as a result of such interests is reductive at best and perpetuates greater stereotypes about gender and other characteristics at worst. After all, if we believe (and heavily simplify) Judith Butler, all identity is performative. Moreover, sometimes, in the words of a truly performative male—one Stephen Morrissey—that joke isn’t funny anymore. I think it’s time to usher in a new era: Authentic Male Autumn. In our superficial and soulless late capitalist hellscape, genuine passion is what we need—and lack—the most. This being said, I am not immune to capitalizing on hot topics for content, even as they quickly turn lukewarm, and the opportunity to use the spectacle of condemning performativity to expound upon my own genuinely-held interests in what is hopefully a no-more than-mildly-annoying way.

As a man whose interests tend towards the pretentious, I will now proceed to judge myself on the rubric of summer 2025’s most iconic masculine archetype short of the Saja Boys by rating every book I read this summer based on how performative-male-coded I think they are, as represented by their score out of ten Labubus on a giant carabiner. The more Labubus, the more performative-male-esque the book and the more dangerous the hypothetical carabiner.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (9/10): Bonus points for the giant omnibus editions I bought from Bill Nelson for $10 (!), which make it clear that I’m reading a Great and Worthy Tome. Furthermore, the pathetic, infuriating waffling of the narrator as he embarks on philosophical and intellectual endeavors as a backdrop to his self-induced romantic woes feel deeply attuned to the performative male spirit. I feel obligated to give the disclaimer that I’m still not finished with the novel(s) despite starting it at the beginning of the summer and putting it down every time I got tired of reading about the same conversation for 100 pages, only to pick it back up on a whim and discover that Proust was actually on to something.

Art Sex Music by Cosey Fanni Tutti (7/10) The title alone is worth at least one matcha latte for summing up the chief concerns of the hypothetical performative male. This was a genuinely riveting account of the life and career of Cosey Fanni Tutti, one fourth of the pioneering industrial band Throbbing Gristle and a groundbreaking performance/music artist in her own right. This is also a topic that can easily be mansplained and, despite how interesting it is, used for evil in the wrong hands. 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (6/10): The potential is there, but I don’t know if it entirely fits the bill. Tom Ripley himself is definitely performative, but in a different, more sinister sense than the average Mitski listener, perhaps marking the end point of that slippery slope. This is my second time reading this book and I somehow still forgot most of the plot, despite being genuinely engaged while actually reading. 

The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault (3/10): I just don’t think performative males read Foucault. Not in the way that I don’t think they listen to Clairo, which is a skepticism I stand by in principle despite the reality as reflected by Spotify statistics, but that I genuinely don’t think anyone is reading Foucault recreationally. I’m not, for one! The Foucault reader presents a whole host of other problems not encompassed in this particular archetype. I did not finish this. I also couldn’t tell you a lot about it. This endeavor dates from the brief period at the beginning of the summer when I tried to read up on theory in preparation for the year of academic suffering ahead, before realizing that I had just spent an entire semester reading theory and wanted at least some small sliver of peace in my life. 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (5/10): I feel like the type of people who get an unearned sense of superiority over their peers for reading standard-issue assigned reading classic novels can overlap with performative males through their shared attempts to use basic literacy as a character virtue, but this is not necessarily always true. I’m not moved one way or another. It’s a solid novel but not my favorite 19th-century Russian doorstopper, and that’s alright. 

Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss (0/10): I have to confess, I’m not entirely sure how this politically charged play about the Marquis de Sade’s subversive staging of a dramatization of the execution of French Revolutionary Jean Paul-Marat as represented by a cast of asylum patients relates to our garden variety wearer of Boygenius merch. Some things may be beyond the limits of my highly intellectual Labubu classification system, and that’s also alright. 

Any discontented readers can take up this issue with me on Sunday, September 21, at the Performative Male Contest.