From “Girl Dinner” to the “Sassy Man Apocalypse,” 2023 Was Full of Cringey Gendered Memes

From “girl dinner” to “boy math,” this year’s memes were more gendered than ever. What’s curious about this trend is that the young adults who generate internet culture are less committed to the gender binary than any generation who came before them. In a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, nearly half of adults ages 18 to 29 reported knowing someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns. There’s plenty of other data showing that Gen Z is the queerest in history. So why, in the year of our Lord 2023, were TikTok and Instagram full of hacky gender essentialist humor that belongs in a 1980s stand-up routine? Whether it was “men think about the Roman Empire once a day” or “women be shopping online,” it felt like we couldn’t get away from lazy, often infantilizing stereotypes.

I’m not saying all gender-based humor is bad. Memes have increasingly functioned as mirrors in the social media age. People want to feel real, validated, and like they share a common experience. But do we really want to be out here turning “having a snack instead of a full dinner” into a cutesy byproduct of being a woman? And why, when there are more openly queer and transgender people than ever, are we still so attached to a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus mentality? I asked Them culture writer and internet connoisseur James Factora to help me unravel this mystery. People of all genders are bound to enjoy our conversation. — Samantha Allen

Samantha Allen: James, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?

James Factora: Clearly not often enough if I’m to be a Real Boy someday. If anything, I’m far more likely to think about this video of Prayag, a TikToker who was deemed the face of the “sassy man apocalypse.” In a car filled with pink and red balloons for some reason, he repeatedly asks, “Am I your Roman Empire, pookie?” in a performance that seems to mock the masculinity of the type of guy who thinks about the Roman Empire once a day. And no, none of these words are in the Bible, but they really beg the age-old question: are cis people okay?

SA: I mean, if TikTok videos are the less destructive form of wildfire-causing gender reveal parties, I suppose cis people can have “girl math.” Go off. But I do worry.

Honestly, what happened on social media this year reminds me of those old Twitter bots that used to post every adjective in the dictionary in front of some other word:“able sky,” “aching sky,” “adorable sky.” Except this time, “boy” or “girl” was always the term being modified. It was inevitable that we’d get a “sassy man” boomlet at some point in 2023. Why not? There was probably a “sappy man” day, too, that I’ve already forgotten about!

I hesitate to ask you this, because I’m worried about what happens to my mental state if you don’t have an answer for me, but: What the hell is going on? Can you help me understand why the queerest generation ever seems so intent on filtering all human experience through a rigidly gendered lens? Some of this stuff — like the Passenger Princess meme, which I’d file under this rubric as well — feels a quarter-turn away from, like, hacky Women Drivers jokes.

JF: Two things come to mind. First, I’m reminded of the phenomenon of “hipster racism.” I associate hipster racism most strongly with the “twee era” of the late aughts to mid ’10s, when irony was more of a dominant cultural sentiment. This was when people deluded themselves into believing they were so post-racial that they could loop back around to making racist “jokes” ~ironically~ to prove how Colorblind™ they were. (Naturally, Jezebel wrote a pretty good explainer about it in 2012, as did Vice in 2017.)

Something similar is happening now with jokes about gender, which dovetails neatly with the return of irony as predicted in The Cut’s 2022 “vibe shift” article. For better or for worse, trans people are more visible now than ever before: We have trans influencers, trans celebrities, VC-funded trans startups, hell, even a trans publication at Condé Nast. Trans visibility has broadly destabilized gender norms for everyone, including cis people, which is a good thing.

In the same way that people tried to use hipster racism to indicate how post-racial they were, I think people are ~ironically~ making jokes that reinforce gender roles out of a belief that the binary has been stripped of its power. This is obviously not true, which brings me to my second point: Not in a conspiratorial way, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this type of humor is emerging at the same time as a historic rise in anti-trans rhetoric and policy, in the U.S. and globally.

SA: Wow, wow, wow. I have a literal Ph.D. in gender studies and I think it should be stripped from me and given to you instead. I don’t deserve it anymore. Seriously, your answer blew my mind. That’s got to be it, doesn’t it?

To build on your point, if “hipster racism” deployed irony to disguise, or slyly express, the white nostalgia for a more overt racialized hierarchy during a time of perceived political upheaval, then “hipster essentialism,” let’s call it, may suggest that even well-meaning progressives aren’t quite as ready to let go of cisnormativity as they might think.

There are probably a fair amount of liberals these days who do politically support formal trans rights but who are privately grappling with what it means to live in a world where gender itself is being interrogated. From that perspective, posting about how you totally eat “girl dinner” or do “girl math” might be a subconscious way to hang onto an identity that has been deeply anchoring for you, and that is now perceived to be under threat. (Even if you technically believe that “trans girl dinner is girl dinner,” which is a cursed sentence I never should have typed.)

But I’ve used “perceived” twice here, because in neither cultural moment did the political status quo meaningfully change. Barack Obama’s presidency didn’t end racism, and the recent rise in trans visibility has only led to tenuous protections that can be yanked away at the whims of courts and politicians. In both cases, there’s a brief, tokenizing window of possibility for marginalized people — and people with proximity to power need to find a way to laugh nervously about it. And in both cases, there was a period of retrenchment following those supposed advances.

The challenging thing for cis people to accept is that gender has no anchor, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. Trans people seem to easily and almost intuitively comprehend this truth, but to other people, it’s rocket science. (Speaking of memes, there’s a great one for this feeling….)

Anyway, I’m starting to write another dissertation and I should stop. So instead I’ll ask you: Are the memes entirely irredeemable? I don’t want to come across as suggesting that it’s transphobic to post about how much “boys just want to listen to the GoldenEye 64 menu music” or whatever. There are bigger fish to fry. How seriously should we be taking this as some sort of canary in the coal mine, in your estimation?

JF: I’m blushing! Thank you for the exceedingly kind words. And no need to cede your Ph.D. I already earned one at Tumblr University.

I totally agree with your point about the difference between supporting trans people as political subjects/an abstract concept versus actually having to unlearn one’s understanding of gender, and dealing with the subsequent implications for your sense of self. That is undeniably a destabilizing paradigm shift, as every trans person knows, but ultimately a freeing one, as I wish more cis people would realize.

To actually answer your question, I don’t think we should be making callout posts for cis people who post their little TikToks about how eating a whole rotisserie chicken with your bare hands is Girl Behavior. I’m not even interested in placing a value judgment on this style of humor as a whole; I just think it’s worth examining the implications of its popularity. I’ll add that this popularity might also be part of the general trend of queer and trans cultures being subsumed into the mainstream, e.g.. the fact that cis, straight white people know the word “slay” now, drag makeup techniques have become general beauty trends, and everything about Beyoncé’s Renaissance. On a more granular level, the internet has given the general public access to intracommunity discussions, including those of the trans community. As we’ve discussed previously, X (formerly Twitter) once served as an invaluable forum for cultivating online trans culture, community, and a certain brand of humor.

Trans humor, broadly speaking, is deeply ironic and often absurd, occasionally veering on the outright offensive — and it works because it operates on that shared understanding of gender that you articulated. I think many cis, straight people have witnessed the ways that queer and trans people playfully engage with gendered signifiers, whether through Drag Race or through Twitter jokes, and have tried to put their own spin on things. But they’ve ended up re-inscribing the very gender roles that queer/trans humor subverts.

OK, now to actually come back to your question: I guess I have mixed feelings on whether these memes actually portend something more sinister. On one hand, it’s not that deep; on the other hand, these memes fall neatly in line with other, more worrying social media trends of the 2020s, like tradwife content and the Catholic reactionary movement among young people. While those have more of an explicitly right-wing bent, that’s what makes “girl dinner,” etc. a little more insidious. At face value, there’s nothing super objectionable about a joke about eating a bunch of little snacks. But especially on platforms like TikTok, where the algorithm is a positive feedback loop and a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation, it feels like there’s a slippery slope from hipster essentialism to outright essentialism. Where do we draw the line?

This Archive Offers an Incredible Window Into the Early Trans Internet

Almost lost to time, a CD-ROM saved this important piece of queer history.

SA: Yeah, a lot of these TikToks are definitely giving “straight person with no gay friends saying ‘slay’” energy in their imitation of a format that trans people probably invented? When trans forum users of the ’90s (and then trans Tumblr dwellers of the 2010s) were posting about things that made them feel validated in their gender, they were maybe painfully earnest, and sometimes stereotyping, but at least something productive was being accomplished. When cis women post about how they can’t imagine being behind the wheel of a car, I’m like, “Maybe let’s not put this image in people’s heads.” Because, like you point out, it plays right into that reactionary post-feminist undercurrent. Certainly, the “sassy man apocalypse” discourse, too, feels like a way to punish men for not hewing more closely to certain masculine ideals of appearance and mannerism.

I suppose I don’t have the answers here except to say, wouldn’t it be fun if we went back to the absurdist memes of yesteryear? Maybe we don’t need to endlessly shore up our own personhood every hour of every day. The mirror stage? We all went through it! We all know we’re real! Let’s get over it. Bring back Trogdor or something. I don’t care about your girlfriend not being able to decide what she wants for dinner.

JF: Bring. Back. Trogdor. Homestar Runner was absolutely queer/trans culture, but society isn’t ready for that conversation.

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