A gay man’s front-row seat to the heterosexual apocalypse - streaming live from Grindr and TikTok.

Written by Daniel Gada

In recent years, new forms of male subculture have appeared online. Groups like incels, Groypers, and the “manosphere” may seem strange at first, but they actually tell us a lot about how masculinity works in society. These groups are not only about anger or misogyny — they show how men adapt to social rejection and changing gender norms. In other words, they are using masculinity itself as a coping mechanism.

When I was a teenager, the rule was simple: you could be gay, but you couldn’t be feminine about it. If you were soft, expressive, or wore eyeliner, you were a punchline. The “femme” boys were the ones everyone joked about but never dated. Masculinity was the currency of survival, even in queer spaces.

Twenty years later, I open Grindr and see something I never expected: straight-acting men chasing “femboys.” On TikTok, it’s the same—masc-coded guys drooling over pretty, androgynous boys in crop tops. Somehow, the traits that once marked you for humiliation are now sexual currency.

At first glance, it looks like progress. Maybe we’ve evolved beyond rigid gender boxes. Maybe straight men are finally comfortable enough to explore. But scroll a little longer, look a little closer, and the pattern becomes clear. This isn’t liberation—it’s a symptom. Masculinity isn’t expanding; it’s scrambling to survive.

Across online spaces—incel boards, Groypers, and manosphere forums—you can watch this transformation in real time. These are digital echo chambers for men who feel rejected by society, and especially by women. Feminism told them that women don’t owe them sex. Dating apps confirmed that attraction isn’t guaranteed. Society, in their eyes, turned its back on them.

So they built their own hierarchy.

At the top are the self-proclaimed “alphas”—men who claim dominance through wealth, aggression, or gym selfies. Beneath them are the “betas,” resigned to their victimhood. And now, at the bottom, a new figure has emerged: the femboy. He’s the stand-in for women. Feminised, available, and male—he satisfies desire without challenging power.

It’s a sexual and psychological workaround. If women reject them, they’ll create a substitute—someone they can eroticise and control without confronting the vulnerability of intimacy. The femboy becomes a coping mechanism for rejection, a vessel for frustrated desire.

Recent studies make the picture even clearer. Research published in Frontiers in Psychology (2023) found that self-identified incels report significantly higher levels of loneliness, depression, and social isolation than non-incel men, along with lower self-esteem and fewer real-world social networks. Around 70% of surveyed incels said they had never had a romantic relationship, and more than half reported being virgins into adulthood. Another study in Personality and Individual Differences (2022) noted that incel communities tend to frame sexual frustration as injustice—turning personal pain into ideology.

Sociologist Raewyn Connell called this structure hegemonic masculinity—a hierarchy that rewards dominance and punishes weakness. But when the system collapses, men have to find new ways to feel dominant. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity helps too: masculinity is a performance, not an essence. It’s a role that needs validation. When women withdraw that validation, the audience disappears. These men are now performing masculinity for each other.

What we’re watching isn’t sexual liberation—it’s the heterosexual apocalypse in real time.

See, this isn’t about men becoming more open-minded. It’s about rejection. Straight men are facing a kind of cultural ghosting. Women have raised their standards, feminism has made autonomy sexy, and dating apps turned the playing field into a marketplace. A lot of these men aren’t thriving—they’re being left on read.

In response, masculinity has gone into self-preservation mode. It’s absorbing what it once excluded—femininity, softness, beauty—but twisting it into something that maintains control. That’s how you end up with “straight” men fetishising femboys while condemning queer people in the same breath. The femboy isn’t liberation; he’s a workaround.

This is masculinity reorganising itself in the ruins of rejection. It’s what happens when the validation system collapses but the entitlement remains.

Recent studies make the picture even clearer. Research published in Frontiers in Psychology (2023) found that self-identified incels report significantly higher levels of loneliness, depression, and social isolation than non-incel men, along with lower self-esteem and fewer real-world social networks. Around 70% of surveyed incels said they had never had a romantic relationship, and more than half reported being virgins into adulthood. Another study in Personality and Individual Differences (2022) noted that incel communities tend to frame sexual frustration as injustice — turning personal pain into ideology.

The political machinery around it knows exactly what it’s doing. Movements like MAGA, the Groypers, and the Tate empire capitalise on male loneliness. They monetise frustration, offering faux empowerment to men who feel unseen. They tell them that feminism broke society, that “real men” are under attack, and that their resentment is righteous. It’s a perfect formula: humiliation in private, rage in public, and profit in between.

Meanwhile, the aesthetic of queerness—fluidity, play, experimentation—gets co-opted into the performance. Straight men borrow from queer culture because it gives them visibility, edge, and novelty. It looks like rebellion but costs nothing. They can paint their nails, call it gender expression, and still talk about “high-value women” in the next breath.

To me, as a gay man who lived through the years when queerness was dangerous, it’s strange to watch straight men turn it into decoration. They mocked effeminacy for decades, and now they sell it back to us as TikTok trends. They’ve made queerness safe for straight consumption—sanitised of its politics, history, and defiance.

The result is a generation of men who mistake aesthetic for awakening. They aren’t exploring queerness; they’re retreating into a fantasy that allows them to feel powerful again. The femboy gives them permission to desire femininity without surrendering control. It’s intimacy without equality.

Masculinity isn’t dying; it’s mutating. When women withdraw their participation, it creates a feedback loop where men replicate the dynamics of power within their own gender. They turn other men into substitutes for women and call it evolution. It’s not freedom. It’s desperation with a filter on.

So yes, masculinity may be entering its so-called gay era. But don’t mistake it for progress. This isn’t liberation—it’s the system glitching, clutching at relevance. The men at the centre of it aren’t discovering themselves; they’re trying not to disappear.

Bibliography

Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. University of California Press.

Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender & Society, 19(6), 829–859.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.

Frontiers in Psychology (2023). Psychosocial Characteristics of Involuntary Celibates (Incels): Loneliness, Depression, and Social Isolation. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1117065

Personality and Individual Differences (2022). Ideological Constructions of Male Sexual Entitlement and Rejection in Incel Communities. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111518

Ging, D. (2019). “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere.” Men and Masculinities, 22(4), 638–657.

Lewis, R., Rowe, M., & Wiper, C. (2021). “Online Incel Communities: The Representation of Women and Hegemonic Masculinity.” Journal of Gender Studies, 30(1), 92–103.

Tait, A. (2022, September 19). “Why the Far Right Is Obsessed with Masculinity.” BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220919-why-the-far-right-is-obsessed-with-masculinity

Nagle, A. (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Zero Books.