The other day, I came across an article in Folha de S.Paulo, written by Nathalia Durval, whose title immediately catches the eye: “Effeminate men are desired by women tired of ‘hetero tops’.” [my translation] When I finished reading it, I had that familiar feeling that quietly settles in and says: it’s time to talk about masculinities again. Once more.
Not because the topic is trending or suddenly fashionable, but because it keeps resurfacing in places where there is less noise and more feeling. In the consulting room, in conversations marked by silence, in affective mismatches, in frustrated attempts to get close without quite knowing how. Perhaps what changes is not the subject itself, but the way it appears. Before, men were expected to prove how masculine they were. Now, many seem to wonder whether they have become too rigid, too closed off, too exhausted.
It is within this shift that new names, categories, and expectations emerge. The term “effeminate,” for instance, appears in the article almost as a compliment, associated with sensitivity, care, and emotional openness. Still, it invites a pause. Effeminate in relation to what? When set against the figure of the “hetero top,” do we not risk merely flipping the sign while preserving the same logic that has long positioned the feminine as something lesser, strange, or out of place?
Even when the intention is positive, the word carries a long history of mockery, insult, and devaluation. For decades, calling a man effeminate was an effective way of pushing him out of bounds, a clear signal that he had failed the expected performance of masculinity. Effeminacy was not only about gestures or clothing; it functioned as a moral accusation: you have come too close to the feminine, and therefore you have lost value.
When this term returns today clothed in desire, perhaps the most honest question is not whether it is good or bad, but what exactly is being praised. Sensitivity itself, or simply distance from a macho ideal? And more importantly, why do we still need to label qualities such as empathy, listening, gentleness, and affection as “feminine,” as if they could not simply be human?
This discomfort is not new to me. It has been taking shape for some time, across different reflections, texts, and contexts, whenever I encounter men trying to orient themselves in terrain that no longer offers reliable maps. Gradually, it became clear that the crisis was not limited to a specific model of masculinity, but extended to the very idea that there might be a correct, desirable, or safe way of being a man.
This text seeks to shift the focus away from categories such as “effeminate” or “hetero top” toward a broader reflection on the exhaustion of rigid masculine frameworks and on what begins to emerge when those structures no longer hold.
Masculinity was never just one thing
One of the most persistent illusions surrounding masculinity is the belief that, at some point in history, there existed a stable and shared model of what it meant to “be a man,” as if there were an original manual that was somehow lost. History tells a very different story.
Masculinity has always been constructed, contested, taught, and policed. It does not arrive fully formed in the male body; it is learned through the gaze of others, through explicit rules and, above all, through silent ones. Elisabeth Badinter has shown that masculine identity is not a natural given, but a continuous process of tests, renunciations, and affirmations. To be a man, in this sense, was never simply to be, but to demonstrate.
To demonstrate strength, control, virility, distance from the feminine. And here it is important to be clear: the problem was never strength or virility in themselves, but the way they were historically organized against everything associated with the feminine. Pierre Bourdieu shows how masculine domination weighs not only on women, but also on men themselves, forced to conform to a narrow, competitive, and often violent ideal.
When we speak today of the “hetero top” or the “macho man,” we are referring to a long inheritance. A model that links masculinity to domination, sexual performance, emotional invulnerability, and control. This model did not emerge by chance, nor did it persist accidentally. Virility was gradually invented across centuries, shaped by medical, military, moral, and political discourses. The male body was trained to produce, to fight, and to command.
What seems to be happening now is not exactly the collapse of masculinity, but the exhaustion of one of its central myths. Olivia Gazalé refers to this as the trap of virility. A trap because it promises power, recognition, and desire, while demanding a high price: emotional silencing, difficulty with intimacy, fear of dependence, and an impoverished relationship with one’s own body and with others.
In the face of this exhaustion, movements of refusal emerge. Men who no longer recognize themselves in this model. Women who grow tired of relating to it. New narratives that attempt to point toward alternatives. The risk, however, lies in turning this refusal into yet another rigid ideal, replacing the invulnerable man with the sensitive man as an obligation rather than a possibility.
Perhaps the contemporary challenge is not to define which masculinity is the correct one, but to sustain the idea that masculinities have always been plural, and that the current crisis does not demand a new performance, but something far more difficult: the ability to inhabit contradictions without rushing to resolve them.
The body on stage and the fear of getting it wrong
When masculinity enters into crisis, the body is often the first to give it away. In the way one sits, walks, dresses, speaks, and occupies space. For a long time, this body was trained to be strong, resilient, hardened. A body that endures, does not fall ill, does not complain, and displays muscles as signs of value and control. Physical strength, rigidity, and an appearance of invulnerability functioned for decades as guarantees of belonging to masculinity.
Today, this same body is crossed by new demands. Brighter clothes, looser gestures, aesthetic care, visible tears, a voice that does not need to harden all the time. All of this begins to be read as a sign. And in unstable terrain, signs quickly become criteria for judgment.
The male body, once authorized to be merely functional, productive, and strong, now faces a paradoxical demand: to express itself, but not too much; to differentiate itself, but without excess; to be sensitive without losing its place; to care for itself without seeming fragile; to shed its thick skin without becoming too exposed. The problem is not clothing, gesture, or aesthetics in themselves, but the fact that they begin to function as identity certificates.
Before, a rigid, muscular body guaranteed belonging. Now, an expressive and self-aware body seems to guarantee legitimacy. In both cases, the body becomes a stage for performance. This produces clear effects. Many men describe a diffuse fear of getting the tone, gesture, or word wrong. Of appearing too macho or too sensitive. Of being read as outdated or artificial.
It is worth recalling something simple: there is no neutral body. Every body carries history, desire, and contradiction. The problem begins when it must constantly justify itself, when strengthening oneself, caring for oneself, dressing, or feeling cease to be experiences and become strategies for acceptance.
Affection, desire, and the silent retreat
If the body is the first place where the crisis appears, affective bonds are where its effects become most painful. Many men have retreated from love not due to a lack of desire, but due to an excess of fear and exhaustion. Loving implies risk. It implies not knowing exactly how one will be read or interpreted. And in a context where codes seem to change constantly, this risk becomes too high.
These men do not recognize themselves in the macho model, but they also feel uncomfortable performing a demanded sensitivity. They remain suspended in between. They do not know whether they can desire without seeming invasive, or show themselves without overexposing themselves. The result is often silence, postponement, superficial or avoided relationships.
Curiously, this occurs at a moment when we speak a great deal about listening and empathy. But talking is not the same as sustaining. Intimacy requires time, mistakes, and misunderstandings. When error becomes intolerable, the bond itself turns into a threat.
This retreat carries a cost. Male loneliness tends to be discreet, rationalized, camouflaged in work or irony. But it grows as men feel there is no safe place to experience desire without constantly explaining themselves.
Many masculinities, few places to exist
Saying that multiple masculinities exist has become almost a consensus. Yet in practice, this multiplicity does not always translate into greater freedom. Often, it is organized as a new identity menu, in which the subject must choose a place and remain coherent within it.
The problem is not recognizing diversity, but turning it into an expectation. When each masculinity becomes a closed category, space for contradiction shrinks. Men must define themselves, explain themselves, align themselves. Those who hesitate are left at the margins.
Perhaps the most critical point is this: when masculinity must be constantly performed, even in supposedly liberated versions, it ceases to be an experience and becomes a task. The subject disappears behind the effort to maintain a coherent image.
Perhaps it is not about being a man, but about being able to exist
At its core, this conversation may never have been solely about masculinities. It may be about the possibility of existing without constantly asking for permission. Being a man today seems to require continuous translation: translating the body, desire, and affection. The exhaustion likely comes from there.
There is something deeply human in wanting to be recognized without being reduced, in being able to move between strength and fragility without turning that movement into moral failure. When we call a man effeminate as a compliment, it may be time to ask why this displacement is still necessary. The problem is not the feminine, but the historical difficulty of recognizing it as a value without hierarchy.
The true gesture of rupture lies not in creating new labels, but in opening zones of indeterminacy. Places where the subject can exist before being classified. Where affection does not require a caption.
In the end, perhaps the question is not “what kind of man should I be?” but another, more unsettling and ethical one: in a world so eager to define, label, and correct, is it still possible to exist without constantly having to defend oneself?
References
Badinter, E. (1993). XY: De l’identité masculine. Paris, França: Odile Jacob.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). La Domination masculine. Paris, França: Éditions du Seuil.
Corbin, A., Courtine, J.-J., & Vigarello, G. (2013). Histoire de la virilité: De l’Antiquité aux Lumières; Le Triomphe de la virilité; La virilité en crise? XX–XXI siècle (3 vols.). Paris, França: Éditions du Seuil.
Durval, N. (2026, 25 de janeiro). Homens afeminados são desejados por mulheres cansadas de “hétero top”. Folha de S.Paulo.
Gazalé, O. (2017). Le mythe de la virilité: Une piège pour les deux sexes. Paris, França: Robert Laffont.
Nunes, R. (2025). The modern man: navigating the shifting landscape of masculinity.
Nunes, R. (2025). Manhood for sale: the comic tragedy of being a man.
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