Recently it’s been a little hard to talk about male sexuality and horniness without it quickly devolving. For some very good reasons, abuses of power come up quickly. Creepiness lurks around the corner. There’s a reason so few sex advice columns are written by men—and so many pick up artist books are written for them. Let’s be clear: men have canonically been little sickos. And the internet is often a breeding ground for real dangerous discussions around male sexual entitlement (see: incels). It’s become a little difficult to talk male desire in a wholesome, non-threatening way.

But there’s a new meme in town and it’s surprisingly tender, especially for one with the word “slut” in it.

According to Know Your Meme (yikes for me) the earliest example of riffing on male sluttiness was @asapasseater‘s poetic declaration that “a man skating is ultimate slut behavior that’s the sluttiest thing a man can do no respect for themselves fr fr,” in 2021. But the meme took off this summer with a tweet claiming that, actually, having a big nose was the pinnacle of sluttiness for men, and reached new heights this month when this post about the intrinsic thirstiness of male cat ownership spread like wildfire.

Some of the iterations are basic and corny, some are boring and literal, some are just an excuse for a fandom to post, some are mild erotica, some are full-on porn. But best of them are the ones that get at the little things men choose to do because they’re trying to be hot.

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The most important characteristic of the things these men are choosing to do? They aren’t creepy. A least according to the rules of the meme, there's nothing slutty about obnoxious persistence, or cat-calls, or sending unsolicited dick-pics. It’s not about men chasing partners down, it’s about the things men do that attract people. It’s about effort that actually connects. It’s flirtation rather than pursuit. It’s a gentle appeal to others via attractive behavior rather than a celebration of body counts.

It's all just for laughs and retweets, of course, but the jokes are refreshing in their clarity. They inherently and cheekily acknowledge the fact that straight, cis men are not generally labeled sluts, and that there is little downside to being promiscuous for them. But perhaps this meme moment points to a small shift, an almost sweet or wholesome kind of male sex talk one that is about them but not by them.

The friction comes from having others describe what they’re doing that’s so thirsty. This is—not to play into the gender binary and hetero-ness too much—the female gaze at work, and we’re having fun. These tweets are a place to simultaneously tease and celebrate men for all the things they are doing to try to get laid, the things they’re doing that are try-hard, sweet, adorable, and well, slutty. And maybe we’re creeping into a new era of a more gentle—but still very adult and sexual—discussion of male horniess. (And maybe the sexualization of America’s dirtbag sweetheart Jeremy Allen White and the fact that we all got turned on by “yes chef” supports this idea.) Again, it's just a meme, but hopefully these jokes are just the beginning of a new more fun, less aggressive way of talking about men’s sex lives.

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