He has developed both class consciousness and an undiagnosed personality disorder.
For a westernized Arab woman on the cusp of 30, swiping through dating apps feels like wandering through a digital souk: everyone’s selling something, and after a while certain storefronts start looking familiar.
Arab dating apps aren’t where romance goes to bloom—they’re where it goes to die… choking on too much cologne. You’ve got two main categories: the unapologetic fuckboys who treat Bumble like Tinder, and the performative feminists who say things like “I love that you’re so empowered” right before asking for nudes.
Profiles are a genre of fiction. Some write entire paragraphs about “healing,” “alignment,” and “building a safe container” (translation: sex). Others cut straight to it: “Not looking for anything serious, unless you’re the one.” Bonus points if they use spiritual language to mask horniness. I matched with a guy once who called our conversation “an energetic awakening.” Another one called me “ethereal,” which I’m not going to lie was pretty good.
At the messy intersection of culture, taboos, and the hopeful chaos of dating—or at least validation…welcome to the bazaar of Softboi Shayateen.
The Softboi on Dating Apps: A Field Study (Unwilling, Underpaid)
This place is special. If you look to the shop on the right, you’ll see the Art Br[hoe]s. Soft-spoken with wispy bangs, they are the kind to write you poetry but always seem to need a shower. To your left, a struggling music “producer” (ehem, he’s a DJ) with impending bicuriousity and prone to substance abuse. Think Tame Impala on loop, tote bags from obscure art exhibits, and a collection of film stills he’s never actually watched.
The softbois come in prettier packaging, but at least the overt sleazeballs are honest. But these sneaky yoga-doing shayateen—the liberal creatives, the open-minded spiritualists—they weaponize sensitivity like it’s a kink. They’re not challenging patriarchy. They’re just dressing it up in thrifted sweaters. I hate them.
He’s easy to spot if you know the signs. His bio says “feminist,” but you can already hear him explaining how monogamy is a colonial construct. He’ll send you a Hozier song at 2 a.m. like intellectual foreplay. He uses terms like “emotional availability” and “divine feminine,” but couldn’t identify either if they slapped him in the face.
Last summer, I was coerced by such a specimen to a quaint cafe for a morning coffee after about a week of light but pleasant conversation. In the dead middle of our very normal meeting (until that point) he casually mentions that he has a German girlfriend overseas, and they practice polyamory. It was his way of life, he insisted. In his view, it is through romantic endeavors that he knows himself better and that to stop meeting new people would equate to his spiritual death. About 20 minutes after driving away from him, I had a car accident. God was screaming at me.
Misogyny in a Silk Shirt
The most frustrating thing about the Softboi Shaytan isn’t that he’s sexist—it’s that he pretends he’s not. He’ll never call you “crazy” outright. He’ll call you “intense.” He won’t ask you to be submissive. He’ll just slowly lose interest the moment you assert yourself.
This is misogyny dressed up in mindfulness. It’s not the loud, hairy chest-thumping kind. It’s the subtle, slippery kind that hides behind therapy speak.
He’ll tell you he values “emotional intelligence,” but what he means is: he wants you to understand him, but he has no intention of understanding you. He’ll praise your independence until it threatens him directly. He’ll say he respects your boundaries, then try to slime past them.
The softboi knows exactly how to perform being a “good guy.” He knows what women want to hear. He knows how to say all the right things about feminism, trauma, healing, and consent and yet the second you expect him to live by those words, he evaporates.
If you call him out, he’ll frame you as damaged. He’ll weaponize his sensitivity to position himself as the victim. You become the aggressor. He becomes the misunderstood empath. It is a narcissist’s favourite tool: reactive abuse.
He’s not a better man. He’s just better at hiding. His emotional manipulation comes cloaked in vulnerability, his “embrace of the feminine” a soft cover for deep-seated mommy issues.
What makes him dangerous isn’t his libido, it’s the performance of depth. He’s cracked the code that in a region where patriarchy is loud and crude, all he has to do is whisper sweet liberal nothings, and women will believe he’s different. Better yet, he believes it too.
But he’s not. He’s just the latest model of the same old machine, this one happens to have read The Bell Jar and wears linen.
This isn’t about heartbreak. It’s about a systemic bait-and-switch: men performing wokeness to access intimacy, then ghosting when emotional labor is required.
Swiping Left on the Performance
In the Arab dating world, even the ones who claim to have unlearned misogyny still practice it, just with better lighting. This isn’t a complaint. It’s a dispatch. Because if I have to suffer through another “deep” conversation with a man whose idea of intimacy is trauma-dumping, the least I can do is write about it.
In the end, let it be known that the worst thing you can do on Arab dating apps is show up as a fully formed woman. If you’re too secure, articulate, or self-aware, they don’t know what to do with you. You’re either intimidating or “just not a vibe.”
But here’s the thing this writer has realized: I don’t need to play therapist to a man who found three words in a self-help book and decided it was his personality. I’m not here to teach a grown dude how to re-parent his inner child.
Let the Softboi Shayateen spiral. Let them quote Nietzsche, I shan’t text back. Let them drown in their own performative politics. I am not bitter—I’m bored. After reading enough bios, decoding enough archetypes, and smiling through enough nonsense to know the truth. Here’s my parting question: have you really unlearned sexism or have you just forgotten how to be a man?
fashion editor & content creator 