The “deconstructed guy”, a valued figure of post-#MeToo masculinity

Share:

Winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex features three working-class English high school girls – Tara, Skye and Em – who go out clubbing with other young people. One of them, Baddy, embodies a form of “manly” masculinity: full of confidence, he is enterprising with girls and ends up raping Tara. Badger, on the other hand, is shy and concerned with the teenager’s emotions. Within his peer group, the former proves to be much more influential than the latter. On the other hand, Badger seems to have more success with girls.

Critically acclaimed for its realism, the film suggests that while the conquering masculine attitude is still valued among men, the demonstration of virility seems less profitable among young women, including in the working classes. Could this feature film and its success reflect a recomposition of the styles of masculinity valued since #MeToo  ?

In my doctoral work on the culture of consent , I was interested in this recomposition. My research seeks in particular to determine whether the men who are most valued – both by women and their heterosexual peers – are still the “manly guys”, comfortable with seduction (even if it means insisting if their target is not receptive), or whether the more empathetic and introspective figures, described as “deconstructed guys”, are now taking over.

Young women prefer ‘deconstructed guys’ to ‘manly guys’

Between 2019 and 2022, I interviewed 67 heterosexual women and 63 heterosexual men aged 18 to 65, recruited via an advertisement on about a hundred Facebook groups not related to sexuality (to avoid targeting people with atypical sexual backgrounds). The selected volunteers had varied profiles in terms of ages, social backgrounds and places of residence.

Among the generations born after 1990 and evolving within the cultural bourgeoisie, that is to say, the bourgeoisie more endowed with cultural heritage than with economic heritage , if women tend to be attracted to mysterious, physically powerful and dominant men (the figure of the “bad boy” therefore), they aspire to partners who are also “deconstructed”, as Daria Sobocinska also showed in her recent thesis . By this we mean men who are aware of male domination, who are reflexive about the effects of their own behavior and show empathy – “feminist” men, in short.

Thus, three-quarters of the women born since the early 1990s that I interviewed attach importance to empathy and introspective practices in choosing their partners. This is illustrated by the testimony of Ségolène, a 25-year-old senior civil service executive, about the man she is seeing:

“He really pays attention to what I feel […]. Once we saw each other, we slept together and there was something he said afterwards but it had nothing to do with it, which I didn’t like. So […] I was a bit cold and I left maybe more quickly than usual. And he sent me a message that evening to tell me that he didn’t want me to feel forced to “suck” him, that he didn’t necessarily need that. It wasn’t that at all but I appreciated that he was wondering.”

Strategies to avoid “ultra machos”

Some respondents then put strategies in place to meet this type of profile. Several of them say they prefer men with degrees in human and social sciences to those with degrees in finance or engineering schools, believing that this limits the risk of “coming across an old school guy”.

Faced with this new feminine aspiration, the figure of the “deconstructed guy” appears as an attractive model for men of the new generations or evolving within the cultural bourgeoisie. This phenomenon is not only observed in France: other qualitative studies report it in the United Kingdom , Australia and Finland .

By presenting themselves as such, they can be perceived as respectful men, who do not put women down or exert violence on them; in other words, as morally “good” and reassuring. However, such an image facilitates seduction, valorization by friends – and therefore respect from boyfriends.

Experts in feminism, emotions and communication

These men therefore seek to prove that they are “deconstructed” by insisting on the attention they pay to their partners’ emotions and by giving pledges of their support for feminism, particularly in the area of ​​sexuality.

Some highlight their theoretical knowledge. This is the case of Maxime, a 26-year-old pharmacist:

“So the girl sometimes found ourselves alone and we talked about everything. And she was a feminist girl. […] And I showed her that I had read a lot of articles, about slut shaming , about rape, about consent, about women’s sexual activity, about the diversity of sexualities that exist. […] I tried to show her that […] I know very well what feminism is […]. And so, there we shifted […] towards a form of seduction.”

My survey also shows that young men from the cultural bourgeoisie or those destined to evolve there through their studies are three times more likely to present themselves as “deconstructed guys” than those from the economic bourgeoisie or working classes. On the one hand, because they consume more cultural products conveying feminist ideas and on the other hand, because their entourage discredits masculinities deemed too virile.

The Revenge of the Shy Men

My work also reveals a kind of “revenge of the shy.” If their lack of ease once led them to be seen more as friends than as potential partners, this is now less the case.

They also have the opportunity to justify their wait-and-see attitude by the crucial importance they attach to consent and by their desire to respect women.

This improvement in the erotic attractiveness of shy people is even more marked among those who join polyamorous communities – groups that encourage sexual scenarios based on verbal communication.

Pierre, a 35-year-old computer science teacher-researcher, explains that the discovery of this “world” “saved his sex life”:

“I am rather very shy, very reserved […] I have very rarely been in the situation of undertaking, I always have a lot of difficulty. […] But now there are women that I meet who are absolutely no longer in these patterns and who even prefer shy men, less dominant, less in a patriarchal logic.”

Thus, the cards in the game of seduction are being reshuffled, and profiles previously perceived as less “winning” in this market are now being valued.

So let’s expect “deconstructed guys” to invade our screens, whether on dating apps, in movies or TV series. Think of Ottis Milburn, the shy and self-conscious teenager in the British series Sex Education or Max in All eyes off me , a more confidential film by Israeli filmmaker Hadas Ben Aroya.

Author Bio: Rebecca Levy-Guillain works at Ined (National Institute of Demographic Studies)

Tags: