The feminine urge to build a murder board helped an 87-year-old novel go viral on TikTok last week. After becoming popular on Tumblr and Twitter, the “feminine urge to…” construction has moved to TikTok. And, of course, so has the masculine urge.
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The feminine urge trend took off earlier this month on TikTok, and it includes some general urges which could apply to any gender, as well as more specific ones. The hashtag #thefeminineurge has more than 33 million views.
The masculine urge TikToks, which also trended this month, are a little darker. While there are some humorous examples (weightlifting TikToks are popular), a lot of men referenced their own masculine urge to not talk about their emotions or to inflict pain on themselves or others.
There are TikToks comparing the two urges, and pointing out the glaring differences between the two. “The ‘feminine urges’ on this trend are quirky jokes and the ‘masculine urges’ are literally just men admitting they’d @buse women if they got the opportunity to,” said baddingtonbear.
As Know Your Meme notes, the “feminine urge to…” meme goes back to 2009, and examples from earlier this year were more primal, but TikTok allows for hyper-specific situations. Some of them are aspirational, though.
Audra Schroeder was a senior entertainment writer at the Daily Dot, focusing on streaming, comedy, and music. Her work has previously appeared in the Austin Chronicle, the Dallas Observer, NPR, ESPN, Bitch, and the Village Voice.
