TikTok’s #WomenInMaleFields trend should be a wake-up call to men
There’s nothing quite like meeting up with a bunch of your besties and diving into one hell of a debrief about the rat-infested trash pile that is your current dating life. Honestly, it’s the definition of catharsis. Luckily, we longer need to wait until our friends are free — an almost impossible feat when you’re a bunch of adults attempting to align schedules — to do just that. Instead, we can simply open TikTok.
Yep, the social media app is more than just a home to viral dance routines and cat clips, for many women it’s become the go-to gossip space for sharing their dating experiences. Take the #WomenInMaleFields trend, for example, which has dominated our FYP for the last week or so. The trend has seen women (like, millions of women) satirically flip the script on dating dynamics and highlight toxic relationship behaviours that are all-too-often committed by heterosexual men.
“He was crying in bed so I said ‘here we go again’ and turned around and fell asleep,” says one. “He sent me a paragraph explaining how he felt and I replied with ‘idk what you want me to say rn’,” writes another. My personal favourite? “When I kiss his forehead and play with his hair but tell him I don’t want anything serious because my grandma died seven years ago.”
While many of the trend’s videos are humorous — which for a lot of us serves as an entry point to discussing tough topics — #WomenInMaleFields is about more than just a few seconds of mindless entertainment. “[It’s] not just a trend, it’s something deeper, like a love language between me and all my girls out there,” one TikToker says. And she’s right. There’s power in shared experiences — in discovering you’re not alone, in having your feelings validated. Scientific studies have even shown that gossiping (the act of talking about others when they’re not around) is beneficial to us as it creates a sense of connectedness and belonging.
Beyond that, trends like #WomenInMaleFields can serve as a lifeline for those in the most unhealthy relationships. “TikTok has had a huge impact on feminism in the last five years,” one TikToker says. “[The] women in male fields trend is teaching women that it’s not our fault,” she continues, describing it as a “guide to red flags”. For many, those red flags may never have registered as such until now. “TikTok made me realise I was being verbally abused four years ago,” one user writes of the impact that trends like this can have, with another commenting: “This app opened my eyes to the divorce I needed.”
Critics might argue that this trend is a case of women being irrational and overreacting to ‘perfectly normal’ behaviours. But, while the trend proves that these behaviours have very much become normalised by men, that doesn’t mean they should be.
“My husband asked me why the house was so messy and dirty but I just shrugged and told him ‘I don't see it’ and that he ‘just has higher standards than me’ so he should do all the cleaning and housework from now on,” one woman writes in her TikTok, mocking men’s habit of weaponising incompetence. It’s fair enough that women want to vent their frustration with this, considering research shows that women do 36 hours of household tasks per week — nine hours more than men. The same study reveals that cleaning is five times more likely to fall on women’s shoulders than men’s.
Cheating is another common theme among those taking part in the trend. “He was being loyal so I cheated on him and fucked the boy I told him not to worry about,” writes one woman. There’s truth to this, too, given figures show that men are nearly twice as likely as women to cheat on their partners. So go on, tell us again that we’re being too sensitive.
In response to the trend, men have shared their own role reversal clips — some poking harmless fun, some taking it too far. Classic. Has the realisation of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of this behaviour touched a nerve? If it hasn’t, it should have.
“When I have a bad day, so I keep complaining about it to her and I try to pick a fight with her because I just feel like arguing, but she's cool and that makes me even more mad,” one man says in his rebuttal. The concept of being a supportive partner and asking ‘what’s really going on?’ is clearly lost on some.
Other men have used the trend as a time to reflect. “Men are just posting things women do when they don’t like them and they think they’re absolutely gagging these women [with their posts],” one says, pointing out that in the men’s examples, most of the women haven’t “done anything wrong”.
“On the other end of the spectrum, women are posting some of the most absolutely psychotic behaviours of all time from men,” he adds. “Like, you guys are dating serial killers.”
Although we hope none of the women taking part in the trend are *actually* dating serial killers, it’s clear that we’re all just out here having pretty much identical dating experiences. “ARE WE ALL DATING THE SAME MEN?” one TikToker asks (read: shouts) in response to the trend, as another agrees: “This makes me realise I’ve never had a unique experience.” With this in mind, it’s not surprising that women are opting out of dating altogether, instead choosing celibacy or going ‘boy sober’. Is it any wonder experts predict 45% of women will be single by the end of the decade? (Though given that, according to science, single, childless women are the happiest subgroup of the population, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.)
Is the answer to swear off men altogether? I’m not so sure (although, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it). Instead of cancelling our male counterparts, I encourage them to take serious note of the trend and question whether they’ve played a part in its conception. Ask: ‘Has my behaviour ever crossed the line from fuckboy-ish to abusive?’
Ultimately, the satisfaction of collective catharsis might be the only thing we as women gain from the #WomenInMaleFields trend. Our sharing of these clips on TikTok won’t change the way men behave — that’s on them. After all, you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink… and you can flood a FYP timeline but you can’t make men think.
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