Girl math vs. Boy math: an insight into the internet's tit-for-tat battle of the sexes

Girlboss and millennial progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is really good at Twitter. So good that she schooled the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy by tweeting, "Boy math is needing 15 attempts to count the votes correctly to become Speaker and then shutting down the government 9 months later." Joining in on the girl math vs. boy math memes, AOC insinuated that the speaker was incompetent for his inability to keep the government open as the clock ticks and a government shutdown looms.

But if you aren't as chronically online as AOC, boy math means absolutely nothing to you. So let me break down the origins of this fast-growing internet meme, beginning with the phrase "girl math." The viral meme infiltrating our fraught politics began obscurely on a New Zealand radio show on which the hosts help rationalize absurd, illogical purchases their listeners share with them. So for example, it's suggested that using girl math, using cash for buying means a purchase is basically free because it's not considered real money (why??), and the money in your bank account isn't decreasing. Girl math rocked the internet world with this same pattern of women justifying each other's spending habits with light-hearted, ridiculous reasoning.

But girl math was co-opted and evolved to apply to all types of illogical thinking or ineffectual action based on real-world situations. A meme that was created to poke fun at women's silly and sometimes justifiable spending habits began to be applied to the entirety of the female experience from dating, traveling, periods, friendship and makeup. A person on X (Twitter) said, "Girl math is packing a minimum of 14 pairs of underwear for a 7 day trip." Another shared, "Girl math is not taking pain meds when you have cramps to see how long you can take the pain for and if you take the meds it means you're weak." 

In contrast, some men on the internet wielded the girl math meme against women, you guessed it, to be misogynistic. A tweet with misogyny-laden girl math "jokes," read: "Girl math is feeling entitled to ask a man for financial favors in the talking stage but feeling offended when a man asks for sex just like that too." Another part of the tweet said, "Girl math is being a single mother but wanting the same options & standards in men like the single chicks."

In spite of the misogyny, women hit back harder with the genderswapped version "boy math." This time around the boy math tweets held a level of vim that women on the internet were holding onto and ready to fire off. One user posted, "Boy math is thinking feminism means u should be able to punch women in the face." Another shot off, "Boy math is what led to the 2008 financial crisis btw." One dug into some straight men's fetish with women who love other women: "Boy math is being homophobic but loving lesbians." One person replied to a tweet using girl math to slut shame the number of people women have slept with, "Boy math is having 12 bodies and only having consent from 5."

The fun in the memes was snatched like a rug from right under women's feet. As one would expect, something silly, light and for women to bond over on the internet has been converted into a larger insight into the internet's battle of the sexes and a peek into how easy it is to wield misogyny against women on the internet. The internet is no stranger to being a breeding ground for this kind of perpetuation of violent rhetoric against women.

It is most importantly fascinating to me how this girl math exists in this new era of girl coding just about every part of our female experience. As YouTube personality, Mina Le said in one of her video essays about girl trends, "Hot girls are walking. Girls are blogging. Dinner is girl. 40-year-old men are baby girl. We are in a girl economy." While the girlhood reclamations of this year have allowed girls, women and people in general to detach from the shame and guilt attached to girlhood, it's made way for violence against women in the spheres in which these girl trends are popularized. In short, women reclaiming their womanhood isn't being received with open arms by the misogynists running wild on Elon Musk's unmoderated X, or tin he corners of Reddit, TikTok and YouTube that I fear in my sleep paralysis.

Inherently, I think this competition between men and women will always exist because of the role that misogyny places in our interactions with one another, especially with how the many areas of the internet that skew towards men that have funneled through the alt-right pipeline. Women have reclaimed spaces on the internet but due to the growing number of lonely, disgruntled chronically online men, they will always be there to unjustly strike back at women.

I myself may be tired of seeing internet trends solely based on the girlhood aspect of womanhood. But in defense of girl math, a meme this fun and comical deserved to have its moment without being clouded by guys on the internet ready to pounce on women for enjoying themselves and finding the humor in their experiences. As a chronically online Zoomer, I find that it is increasingly difficult to be in these online spaces without subjecting myself to some kind of misogyny one way or another even if I'm not making any girl math or girl trend-related content. It just feels like every part of the female experience, even the experiences that are supposed to be playful and ironic, is about how we have to be on guard because there will always be a person out to demean our existence. It's a chronic Debbie downer.

Masculinity seems to believe it's in crisis as more women are growing content with their identities. Masculinity and femininity only exist because of one another and in that binary, we begin to see the limitations of what the constructs of our gender confine us in. Yes, femininity has its pitfalls too but harmless memes don't affect the way women perceive themselves. It's troubling that the fragility of masculinity in fact does affect the way that men see themselves even if a dumb boy math meme is stating the obvious and it's not meant to be taken so personally. If girl math wasn't having its moment right now, some men online would find another way to dogpile onto women for no reason. Besides the misogyny and the endless discourse surrounding gender online, I can say one thing for sure: women on the internet are funny as hell.