


“…We have been told that we can have it all, but so far we have noticed that it is extremely hard work having it all, because you still have to do everything that your mother did but now you have to do everything your father did as well. Malewife is about “stepping-up” to “take on” “female” social roles, and it’s something that at least some women would be happy to see in society: I do think it’s important to also note that although these words are being “glamorized slightly” they’re still intended and being used in a memeing manner, but they’re also used to quickly denote arbitrary traits in an individual and categorize those traits…Īlthough there’s lots of conversations to be had for a variety of reasons about the origin and use of the word “girlboss” in relation to sexism, up until recently the world “malewife” was something claimed by men, something men wanted to be called, and something that men who used the term wanted to reference them. There’s a variety of reasons someone might do this, but it can generally be summed up as a mixture of personality and also personal wants.

Urban dictionary’s explaination of “malewife” is not only harsher than what malewife was intended to mean, but also removes the context of origin from the word- making it something new, different, and erasing the history of who originally used this word.īecause of Malewifes origins vs Girlboss origins, malewife is a less problematic term than girlboss and is more “affectionate” because the term malewife and it’s use (up until recently) involved the man acknowledging that he wanted to be the “wife” in his relationship. The post was screenshotted and reuploaded by Twitter user on the same day, garnering over 14,200 likes and 2,800 retweets in the same span of time (shown below). On February 15th, Tumblr user posted, “Manipulate, mansplain, malewife” as a male-themed opposite to “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss,” garnering over 27,000 notes in four days. Malewife doesn’t hold those same implications however… The term malewife which is now being used to parallel girlboss achieves it’s origins from p*rn, now I’m not an nsfw blog or someone who blatantly discusses nsfw concepts on my blog so I’m not getting super into it but there’s a few places it comes from: femdom, bdsm, and feminization kinks… All of which have a connection to queerness in their own right but I don’t feel comfortable going into the complexities of that with so many younger people following me. On January 18th, the image was reposted to Twitter for the first time. On that day, Twitter user posted, “my agenda is gaslight gatekeep and #girlboss,” the first instance of the phrase on Twitter.Īnd a day later on JanuTumblr user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e reblogged the post along with a photoshopped image of “Live, Laugh, Love” wall art instead reading, “Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words” (shown below). On January 12th, 2021, Tumblr user missnumber1111 posted, “today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss,” garnering over 43,500 notes in a month (shown below). In example the original meme (created on Twitter) is intended to make mockery of Karen-types: Girlboss mocks the idea of 2014 (largely) white feminism within America. So yeah, the whole concept is mocking sexism within corporations and and modern relationships and showing how ridiculous it is. “Manipulate, mansplain, malewife” was created to parallel the original meme “Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep” was a meme started to pick on the idea that women should become men and enforce the sexism within corporate society, and I’m sure it was a jab at the book the word came from as well…. In the malewife/girlboss “system” it’s essentially the swapping of the problematic aspects, expectations, and socialization of men and women within a relationship The word girlboss comes from a book quite literally called #girlboss, in parallel to the negative aspects of this book people eventually rebranded the term “malewife” to parallel it (malewife was originally an nsfw type thing) In the void left after the end of the corporate feminist vision of the future, this reckoning opens space to imagine success that doesn’t involve acing performance reviews or getting the most out of your interns.” ( here) “it becomes inescapably clear that when women center their worldview around their own office hustle, it just re-creates the power structures built by men, but with women conveniently on top. It’s a parallel to girlboss which is conformity to the sexism within corporate America:
