Alli Adams
On Oct. 29, 2025, British Vogue author Chanté Joseph published her viral opinion piece titled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” The piece went viral on social media platforms, sparking discourse about the article, which evaluates why women — particularly heterosexual women — are no longer posting their boyfriends online.
After speaking with various women about why they don’t post pictures of their boyfriends, Joseph discussed a concept that has come to be known as decentering men.
“Women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man, with elevated social status and praise,” Joseph wrote. “From my conversations, one thing is certain: The script is shifting. Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore; it is no longer considered an achievement, and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single.”
Amanda Espinel, a graduate teaching assistant and student in the department of race, gender and ethnic studies at Colorado State University, further explained the concept of decentering men.
“I think it’s a great movement that is happening; … it doesn’t mean you hate men,” Espinel said. “It doesn’t mean that you’re not attracted to men or that you shouldn’t like men. … It means decentering them, not having their gaze and their attention as your only source of what you need.”
Joseph attributed the rise of decentering men to the increased politicization of women’s identities and the deconstruction of women’s traditional roles, causing them to re-evaluate their “blind allegiance to heterosexuality.”
“We are watching Roe v. Wade be reversed,” Sherese Charlie Taylor, who originally coined the term “decentering men” in her 2019 book, told Cosmopolitan. “We are watching incel culture go mainstream. We are watching our rights be stripped away, our safety threatened, our labor exploited and our autonomy questioned. We are watching the rise of fascism cloaked in tradwife aesthetics, where women’s value is reduced to submission and domesticity. And we are done pretending that this is normal. That is why it’s resonating. Because women are waking up, and we are tired.”
Espinel said women’s political disappointments aren’t a partisan issue.
“Misogyny is always around, regardless of who is in our administration,” Espinel said. “Roe v. Wade was overturned during the Biden administration. … Regulation on women’s bodies, it doesn’t have a party. … It’s not new with (the Trump) administration.”
As women’s bodies are increasingly politicized, data indicates that young men are leaning more conservative in recent years. According to a 2023 survey conducted by the American Survey Center, young men lean to the right, with 31% of young men identifying as conservative, 24% liberal and 43% moderate. This trend was reflected during the 2024 presidential election, with President Donald Trump winning 56% of the young male vote, in comparison to his 41% in 2020.
However, a 2025 national poll from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, suggests Democrats hold an advantage in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections among young men and women who are registered voters.
Globally, movements like South Korea’s 4B movement, which calls for women to not have sex, date, marry or have children with men, have been a form of resistance against violence toward women and economic inequality. Movements like 4B reflect similar ideas of decentering men and focusing on woman relationships, according to Allison Goar-Rogers, senior instructor in the department of race, gender and ethnic studies at CSU.
Goar noted an irony from the article: How some women express a commitment to building their lives around female friendships to seek their approval, but who also post men in “soft ways.”
“What’s ironic is that many of the reasons given for blurring out their boyfriend’s pictures or not posting their man are based in sexism, like the idea that other women will get jealous and sabotage their relationship,” Goar said.
Goar said the conversation is missing elements of evaluating why it is “cringy” to have a boyfriend or center men, citing a comment from the original article that reads: “(men) won’t come back in until they start acting right.”
“It seems to suggest a gender essentialist logic: that men have innate, unchangeable characteristics that make them fundamentally different from women, and that the relationship is unchangeable, so the only way to counteract the embarrassment is to pretend he doesn’t exist,” Goar said.
CSU student Omar Eltayeb said he hadn’t heard of Joseph’s article, but he did note that dating is a difficult scene for people in their late teens and twenties, specifically people’s fear of being themselves.
For student Keely Tennyson, the conversation around the Vogue article was empowering.
“(The discourse) almost encourages women to think about who they’re dating and almost question if they’re in the right relationship or if they’re in it for the right reasons,” Tennyson said.
Espinel said the virality of the article could be attributed to the piece being published in Vogue, a publication she said has historically centered men and promotes a “manufactured presentation of women.”
In response to the discourse, Joseph published a follow-up article in November 2025. Joseph responded to points made by people like Tennyson, who said having a boyfriend is only embarrassing if a man doesn’t meet a certain criteria, and that it is more about a specific relationship dynamic.
“We should be focused on pushing for better — and that’s a shared fight, not a private one,” Joseph wrote in response.
Joseph also faced “hateful abuse” from men who she said reacted in rage after reading only the headline of her article.
“When someone presents an alternative to a normalized social construct — in this case, that having a boyfriend is good, desirable and you should be proud of it — people who are strongly invested in that social construct being true often take it personally when it’s strongly challenged,” Goar said.
Reach Chloe Rios at news@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.