How to Do Gender Online

And why Hasan Piker is a better feminist than you.

Feminism has failed.

Three years ago the United States Supreme Court overturned the decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, nullifying one of the feminist movement’s greatest (and only) achievements. Yet, if you were to ask the women of America what the biggest threat to our autonomy is today they’d point you in the direction of Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover.

The 26-year-old pop star has become the object of pop-feminist ire since her previous album, “Short ’n’ Sweet,” which features sexual innuendos and both heterofatalist and hetero-optimist sentiments. At 5-foot-tall and fond of short, feminine stage clothes, Carpenter has also been accused of romanticizing pedophilia with her overtly horny brand.

If I were less charitable, perhaps I’d point out that “what about the children?” is an argument ripped directly from the far-right playbook; and that accusing women of infantilizing themselves while demonstrating critical thinking skills as deep as a puddle on a sunny day is not exactly the height of reflective analysis.

Meanwhile, terms like “the Male Gaze” and “intersectionality” have been completely severed from their original academic contexts; women don’t understand the history that connects radical feminism to transphobia; they’re sex negative but with none of the theoretical rigor of the Second Wave nor the literary aplomb of Andrea Dworkin; they think patriarchy is an interpersonal drama, instead of understanding it’s a systemic matrix of oppression.

It’s safe to say that whatever political movement based on women’s liberation we would have liked to find ourselves in at this moment has been obliterated by the anti-intellectualism and vapidity of the social media age.

And they’re not even enjoying themselves! They’re wasting their youths tweeting essays about sex they’ve never experienced.

It’s certainly not a good sign when one of the shrewdest takes on Carpenter’s album cover came from Hasan Piker. “The problem in this circumstance is that women get objectified regardless of how they appear. Women get objectified regardless. Okay? You try too hard, you're putting on a show, you're objectifying yourself. You don't try at all, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you sick today? Why didn't you put your makeup on? Is everything all right? It's misogyny and patriarchy that [are] the problem. It's not the way that women choose to present themselves that's the issue.”

Piker has become a lightning rod for online gender performance himself.

From The New York Times to Pod Save America (god willing they do it this time!) to CNN (to me), cultural critics and talking heads have found themselves equally perplexed and enamored by his unabashed masculinity and progressive politics.

When I wrote my essay praising that same ineffable masculine charm, one Substack user commented something about how he shouldn’t be lauded as a progressive (which isn’t in any way, shape, or form what that essay is about but okay) because he’s patronized sex workers in the past. Any frequent visitors to Piker’s chat know this is a common criticism used against him. Interestingly, this puts Piker in the same bind as Carpenter: Because he fucks he can’t be a feminist.

Beyond the sex-negativity and respectability politics and in-fighting that’s always plagued progressive movements, sex (and its relationship to traditional gender roles) seems to be the defining dividing line in the online gender wars. Men have created an entire political movement on not getting pussy; while women are more committed than ever to eliminating sex entirely. (Despite the best efforts of conservative branding, even right-wing women would rather have a career than a baby.) And at the end of the day, isn’t this all just so boring?

There are plenty of valid criticisms you could raise about Piker — or more broadly men in leftist spaces (who have, historically, been terrible allies to the women who create the backbone of their movements). But being a man who has sex with women is not one of them.

Even with all his brocialism and himbo appeal (even in light of the fact that he’s paid for sex work), Piker still managed to voice an enlightened take on Sabrina Carpenter, and it’s because his good opinions aren’t a side effect of his gender or sexuality. They’re informed by politics, not culture war.

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And now the DNC wants to learn how to do gender online. They want a leftist Joe Rogan and a Millennial Jon Stewart. When notable names from the Manosphere are either present or mentioned on the dais during Donald Trump’s 2024 victory speech, people tend to take notice of what was once an unappetizing oddity from a particularly grimy corner of Reddit. And I guess it’s time to admit that, despite my best efforts, what happens online is no longer the opposite of nor supplemental to reality. Or, as an anti-porn scholar said of men who watch violent pornography in a documentary I saw in an undergrad women’s studies class, “Men can zip up their pants — but they can’t zip up their brains.”

While this doesn’t sound that impressive to me over 10 years later, I fear it may be more correct than ever. People are losing the line between the overproduced, branded fantasy of the internet and the blood-and-bone reality of their everyday lives.

That clash of brand versus real person defines the cultural curiosity around Piker. He has impeccable instincts for what plays well for both his audience and the internet at large. That includes his “MAGA body” as well as the babygirlified fancams he reposts and his proto-Hot Topic, union-made clothing line.

But it’s all just window dressing for the substance underneath the style. I first discovered Piker as he was being canceled on Twitter for buying a house, and I was intrigued that there was a leftist creator popular enough to afford a multi-million dollar home. But when I tried to watch some of his content, I initially wrote him off based on the same gym bro brand that everyone’s going gaga over now. I only stuck around years later, when I casually watched a YouTube VOD in which he launched into a passionate, informed defense of trans rights that included both data and obscenities. That’s how easy it is to impress me these days, a man Googles a few numbers about gender-affirmation surgery regret (less than 1%) and he’s automatically smarter than the majority of online commentators.

If the Democrats want to know the secret sauce that’s made Piker a DIY success, they need look no further than the one thing they seem incapable of maintaining: Consistency.

In the literal sense that he sticks to a regular content schedule providing a consistent product to his audience while also fostering a sense of trust and authenticity. But also ideological consistency, which comes in the form of political analysis based on an understanding of history, theory and the material reality of people’s lives — not vibes or personal desires. That coupled with his innate taste, it’s something that can’t be bought.

Look, at the end of the day, Piker’s still a content creator, one who enjoys being famous just as much as someone like Addison Rae (or Sabrina Carpenter), and that probably drives him just as much, if not more, as the political project of liberation of all people from exploitation.

But I guess if we’re doomed to live in a world defined by a cyborgian fusion of digital-reality and brand-persons, I’d rather live in the cool, clear-eyed version that prioritizes ideology over reactionary clickbait.

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Of the tension between fantasy and reality that exists in the way we perform and consume gender online, on the fantasy side we have the Andrew Tates and Ashton Halls, the Ballerina Farms and divine feminine-luteal phase TikToks. They’re popular because they’re aspirational, selling something everyone wants. Easy pleasures and a set path to greater happiness and well-being. They’re also just plain entertaining, which can never be underestimated in the online media landscape. They’re also lying to you. Which maybe doesn’t matter to brand loyalists who still get what they want from the fantasy these creators dutifully craft post after post. Some people, Americans especially, just want a good story, no matter how implausible.

But what makes Piker and Rogan or Theo Von and Adam Friedland appealing to male audiences (or any audiences) is their ability to speak like normal people. They say what they believe because (or at least you get the sense that) they really believe it, not because it’s what they’re supposed to say. They aren’t trying to sell you anything, except, maybe, themselves. Rogan really is just that stupid — but that’s appealing, especially to an electorate that’s just as confused and uninformed. Piker would get much more applause if he came out and said something to the effect of, “I think men who sexualize women are disgusting and Sabrina Carpenter would look better in a pantsuit.” But literally why would he do that? Americans are being kidnapped in broad daylight by the federal government. Why does any of this matter?

These creators signal a desire to leave the unattainable, airbrushed politicking of liberals and The Daily Wire behind. The path for women will never be quite so straightforward, but perhaps a more authentic performance of femininity online can be found here on Substack, where the girlblogger (don’t shoot!) has made a triumphant, remixed return.

Progressive politics doesn’t have to always be palatable but it does have to be based in material reality. The way to reach audiences ultimately has nothing to do with gender performance but forgoing culture war entirely for real, consistent ideology.

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And still the easiest way to perform gender online is to hate women. If you’re a straight man, you talk about body counts and low-value women and “foids.” If you’re a woman, you become either a trad wife or a rad fem or a femcel. If you’re a gay man, you talk about women’s vaginas in the same tone you’d reserve for your local toxic waste site under the guise of immunity from misogyny because radical feminists taught us that hating women is predicated on wanting to fuck us and vice versa. If you’re a woman who just wants to hate herself, you get on SkinnyTok. But the message is always the same: Women (and their choices) are what’s wrong with your life.

Online, women shouldn’t work — unless our jobs are creating content about how women shouldn’t work. But if we have to create content it should never be about bows or the color pink or babydoll dresses or the completely understandable, anodyne concept of “girl math,” or anything that makes us seem at all human. In fact, we shouldn’t use the word “girl” at all — unless you’re an actual child but then you’re probably sacrificing your youth to Sephora skincare routines and 10 hours of screen time a day anyway. We shouldn’t be doing anything that infantilizes ourselves, even though we’re not going to be having or enjoying sex anyway. Women shouldn’t have a high body count — but we also need to be willing to fuck any and every man in our vicinity. We should never be horny for men because that’s the “male gaze.” But we also really shouldn’t be horny for other women either because then we’re objectifying them. We should only be doing asexual political lesbianism where we platonically hold hands and braid each other’s hair. We shouldn’t be too feminine because that’s infantilizing but we should also channel our divine feminine energy and we shouldn’t be too masculine or nonbinary because then we’re doing “gender ideology.” We absolutely cannot do, like or support sex work — both sides of the political spectrum agree on that. And above all, you can never, ever criticize other women. Because that’s misogyny.¹

Meanwhile here’s what’s happening to women in the real world: Gisèle Pelicot’s husband drugged and raped her with the help of over 50 other men for nearly a decade. Adriana Smith, a pregnant woman in Georgia, was kept on life support months after being declared brain dead until her fetus was old enough to be cut out of her and put in the NICU. Women are being arrested for miscarriages. They’re dying due to a lack of access to healthcare because of the rollback on abortion rights. Around the world, about 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence, usually at the hands of their partners. They’re losing their degrees, their jobs, and their homes for protesting genocide. Women, their children and their communities are being disappeared by the federal agents day after day. Trans women are losing access to their healthcare and being pushed out of public life. Rent hikes. Food insecurity. AI revenge porn. And anyone who can honestly look me in the eye and unironically tell me any of this is the fault of Sabrina Carpenter HAS LOST THEIR FUCKING MIND.

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So, if feminism has failed, what comes next?

Maybe actually read Laura Mulvey, to start. Or Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, Shulamith Firestone, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler. Read Marx and Engels and Mark Fisher. Hell, read Dworkin and Camille Paglia,² if you really want to. Read about the history of women’s liberation, of the Civil Rights Movement, of the labor movement.

Be prepared to take a stand about the thing that actually matters in the moment that really counts. Until then, maybe just chill out a bit.

Or, to quote one of the leading feminist voices of today: “I just think, you know, let women do whatever the fuck they want. That's my position, that's it. That's my final point on this. Let women do whatever the fuck they want.”

1. didn’t realize until halfway through this I was basically writing the Barbie monologue if it slayed

2. I’m just kidding, no one should be reading Paglia