“Girl, Are You a Fuckboy?”
By Gayané Orujyan
Publishing by Mel
Photo by kevin turcios
“ I once went on a date with a lesbian who told me that she didn’t really have exes, “but a lot of
people would probably consider me theirs”. She continued “I just let them think what they want.”
She sat beside me instead of in front of me, asked many questions, listened intently. She looked
away, seemingly deep in thought every now and again. She was funny without trying too hard,
observant, charismatic.
There was something particularly compelling about the fact that she seemed
slightly out of reach, too.
On the taxi ride home, I found myself scrolling through her instagram following: an endless list of
strange, beautiful women; their micro bangs and mullets, their perfect selfies taken in near darkness.
“I just admire beauty,” she said.
Later, she explained that she used to be very different. There had been a time when she would
pretend to really love a girl just to sleep with her. “I’ve done terrible things,” she said.
“Things that disgust me now. But I’ve done a lot of work on myself since then.”
And of course, she still insisted that she was actually more than capable of really, genuinely committing to someone.
I judged her immediately. If this was simply an appreciation of beauty, then why were there no
accounts posting forests or paintings or bowls of delicious food in her following, only an endless
array of beautiful women? And beneath the stories of manipulation and detachment, there was an
even more pressing concern: If you have to lie to someone just to get them into bed, is that really
something to be proud of? Why was she telling me all of this?
None of these questions came close to the most unsettling thing about this situation: I was not
surprised. I had heard these lines before somewhere, maybe with different ornaments, but the bones
were the same. The sentiment echoes through stories from friends and friends of friends, from tv
shows and literature, tweets to old Tumblr reblogs. Less like a confession, being “bad with feelings”
was just good branding. Somewhere along the way, aversion had become a kind of social currency.
It occurred to me then that, for most of us, sincerity is far more humiliating than performance ever
will be. And with that came an unnerving kind of empathy for her.
It pains me to acknowledge this, but I do believe that this performance only works because, on
some level, we understand the appeal of it. There is a certain excitement in trying to be the
exception to someone emotionally unavailable. Even the idea that someone is overcompensating
can be seductive, because it creates the impression that behind the performance, there is something
real waiting to be uncovered. Perhaps this is part of why the lesbian fuckboy can become so
desirable before they even do anything wrong: the projected distance becomes an obstacle to
overcome. In my case, I wanted her, but more than anything, I wanted to be the person she would
stop performing for.
The lesbian fuckboy is also remarkably easy to profile, perhaps because we have become so
accustomed to profiling them. Their instagram is all soft lights and cigarettes, nights out and
candids. In photos, they are always pressed up against someone, cheek to cheek, an arm around a
waist, a friend on their lap. You can’t quite tell what these people are to them, only that they are
unusually close. They can talk in detail about boundaries and attachment styles, while their reposts
are full of reels about healing and solitude. Maybe their ex is still a very important part of their life,
or maybe their ex is now described as narcissistic or avoidant. Past affairs were “lessons”, ghosting
becomes a matter of “protecting my peace”. The vocabulary suggests an advanced level of self-
awareness, but it also provides a convenient language for staying difficult to know.
Wanting attention, flirting freely, or struggling to understand what you want are not inherently bad
qualities. What bewilders me is not the behaviour itself, but the contradiction that it sits inside. They
say they are really into you, but can’t quite remember what you studied at university or what you
actually want from life. They insist they are tired of superficiality, that they want something
genuine, but casually give their Instagram to anyone who asks, reply to messages as they come in,
and maintain a particular availability because there is always the possibility of someone better
arriving next. Their posts suggest they have evolved beyond toxic dynamics, while in conversation
they can still sound oddly nostalgic about how “bad” they once were.
Everything points in opposite directions all at once, without ever fully resolving into a single, legible story.
But mocking this archetype feels lazy. The lesbian fuckboy is easy to parody because the character
is already so familiar: confident, sexually assured, difficult to access. And yet, reducing this persona
to narcissism misses something. People do not simply wake up one morning and decide that
detachment and disorientation is attractive.
To appear too invested, too quickly, is to risk looking clingy, desperate or embarrassing. Nowhere is
this flawed logic reinforced more than by social media. Platforms like Instagram rally people to
market themselves as desirable in controlled, curated fragments while also giving us an endless
succession of desirable strangers, mutual follows, messages and possibilities. Under these
circumstances, indifference can genuinely feel like the default setting for modern dating. In turn,
any form of commitment starts to resemble a closing of possibilities rather than the development of
a meaningful connection.
For queer women, there is yet another complication. Many of us begin dating without a clear script
for romance and intimacy. Mainstream representations of lesbians are scarce. Arguably the closest
thing lesbians have to a cultural handbook, The L word, demonstrates a world of constant cheating,
blurred boundaries, and extreme levels of both attachment and detachment. Shane is compelling
precisely because she is so difficult to pin down. When a character like that becomes one of the
most recognisable images of lesbian desirability, it’s worth asking what we have quietly consumed
from them.
This doesn’t mean lesbian media is bad, or that queer women have no models for healthy
relationships. Straight culture has its own long tradition of romanticising emotional unavailability.
From Mr Darcy to Mr Big, distance has often been framed as depth, sophistication and desirability.
The difference is that straight audiences have historically absorbed these dysfunctional romances
alongside hundreds of alternative models of love, commitment and intimacy elsewhere. Queer
women have had much fewer mainstream representations to take influence from, and so the
characters who do become culturally significant acquire a disproportionate amount of weight.
This is particularly complicated for masculine-presenting and gender non-conforming lesbians.
There can be a subtle yet pressing demand that they should be emotionally restrained, sexually
confident and difficult to access. Often expected to initiate, lead, pursue, they become symbols onto
which the fantasy of confidence and dominance are projected. In many lesbian spaces, vulnerability,
hesitation and awkwardness can feel incompatible with the role. Beneath all of this, there is a fairly
standard fear: of being too eager, too soft, and in turn, unattractive.
Queer culture projects “player” characteristics onto masculine-presenting and gender non-
conforming lesbians before they even have a chance to define themselves. Being friendly or
flirtatious can be interpreted as predatory, confidence becomes arrogance, and emotional reservation
becomes a role well played. A masculine lesbian walks into a bar with some femme friends, and
someone immediately assumes they must have slept with all of them. They post a mirror selfie from
the gym, and suddenly their confidence read as vanity or attention-seeking. They walk into a room
full of men, and their masculinity is enough for some to assume they will be misogynistic or
sexually aggressive, projection, much? Even when none of these assumptions have anything to do
with their actual behaviour, the presentation alone is enough to construct this character around
them. The irony is that this stereotype can become self-fulfilling. If everyone around you, including
the internet, treats you as though you are playing games, you may eventually find yourself
performing the role, whether consciously or not.
Not to mention that the list of supposed warning signs for a lesbian fuckboy seems to grow
everyday, with masculine or gender-nonconforming physicality becoming a benchmark for
suspicion. Baggy clothes, buzzcuts, tattoos and chains, are these really red flags? Or are they simply
another way to be a lesbian? Aside from appearance, there are many ways to fit the mould. Maybe
they have an ex who is quite present in their social orbit, or a reputation that extends across a large
proportion of the local queer scene. At some point, the distinction between identifying a pattern of
toxicity and policing a particular kind of lesbian becomes distorted. You might literally just be a
lesbian who likes having short hair or Spider-Man, and suddenly you’re pelted into this stereotype.
None of this is an excuse for dishonesty or general debauchery. But it does help explain certain
behaviours, especially when they are expected and socially rewarded. The lesbian fuckboy, then, is
not just a personality type. It can also be an exaggerated reflection of the roles queer culture
sometimes encourages lesbians to play.
Another part of this is the growing shame surrounding inexperience. Some lesbians spend years
suppressing attraction or misidentifying it. By the time they begin dating, they may be navigating
first experiences while people around them seem vastly more emotionally and sexually experienced.
It is here that confidence can become performative. A successful lesbian fuckboy is experienced,
unbothered and sought after. It’s easier to imitate the detached coolness associated with desirability
than to admit you are uncertain, inexperienced or scared of rejection. Perhaps this is why the lesbian
fuckboy can be so seductive even to those performing it, it offers a safe refuge from embarrassment.
Over in straight world, the fuckboy notion persists. From what my straight friends tell me, the
emotionally unavailable man is embarrassing in theory and riveting in practice. We like to think we
have become too self-aware for this sort of thing. It’s 2026; we all know therapy-speak and red
flags.
Who could possibly be fooled by this anymore? But dating culture has only given the persona
better vocabulary. It seems that modern dating has turned intimacy into something that can be
performed or strategically withheld. And in that performance, the lesbian fuckboy thrives.
But so much is lost when detachment is performed, regardless of the kind of relationship. To build
something on the grounds of dishonesty can compromise the possibility of any genuine connection.
Even then, there are holes in my criticism. The desire to seem nonchalant can often be attributed to
fear, insecurity, or self-protection rather than cruelty. Looking at the reasons someone chooses to act
this way doesn’t remove harm from their behaviour, but it does make it harder to reduce them to a
villain.
The lesbian fuckboy and I have gone our separate ways. There was too much tension between my
experience of her and the very idea of a lesbian fuckboy that I had begun to construct around her.
There was something almost depressing about how much the persona depended on pretending not to
care. The lesbian fuckboy is a peculiar mechanism: running towards a persona in order to seek
refuge from shame. Maybe you’re an inexperienced masculine lesbian trying not to be a
contradiction, trying to fit a role that seems to chiefly align with your presentation. Maybe you’re
scared of real intimacy, so you make lovebombing a defence and nonchalantness a form of armour.
Maybe you’re just a lesbian who enjoys sex and is now demonised for it. There are many reasons
someone might turn towards this persona in order to avoid shame, only to encounter another kind of
judgement altogether: for enjoying sex, wearing chains, being casual, and so on. There are also
many reasons someone may profile you as a lesbian fuckboy: convenience, expectation,
stereotyping.
The lesson here isn’t that we should hate lesbian fuckboys, or that any lesbian who remotely
resembles the ever-growing list should immediately be cast in that role. If anything, I think the
archetype deserves a little more scrutiny, including those of us who are quick to recognise it. lesbian
fuckboys exist because we live in a culture that makes living openly and comfortably as a lesbian
complicated. Sometimes that manifests in someone who confuses you, lies about their bodycount,
or makes a big song and dance about how wanted they are. That doesn’t make the behaviour
harmless, but it does make it more intelligible. Perhaps the point is not necessarily to excuse the
persona, but to ask what it is protecting someone from, and why looking like you care still feels like
such a terrifying prospect. ”
Photo by kevin turcios
Girl, Are You a Fuckboy? explores how the fuckboy archetype has survived and adapted within lesbian dating culture. It is a humorous and reflective essay that calls to question why emotional detachment can be so desirable, and what it costs us.
‘I don’t really have exes, but a lot of people would probably consider me theirs’
‘My instagram following is more of an aesthetic archive, I just admire beauty’
‘I used to be awful to women, but that’s not who I am anymore’
If you’ve heard something like this before, chances are you probably recognise the character. With this article, I want to define, address and unpack the lesbian, fuckboy an alluring yet controversial archetype. The persona itself is used as a catalyst to explore the pressures placed on masculine-presenting, butch and gender non-conforming lesbians to perform, the influence of social media and online desirability, the shame around inexperience, and the logic behind performative nonchalance. Ultimately, I argue that what often seems like confidence or even arrogance is rooted in fear, insecurity and the near absence of healthy relationship models for queer women.
I think my piece balances humour with cultural commentary and draws on lesbian media, internet cultural and personal anecdote to analyse a familiar figure in a way that feels both entertaining, nuanced and open-minded.