Confused? Here’s Why Are Guys Calling Each Other "Submissive and Breedable"

Since 2019, summer has been branded “hot girl” summer, a phrase coined by Megan Thee Stallion. Summed up, it encourages people to celebrate embracing who they are and find joy in being wholly themselves.

It’s an anthem, and calling yourself a “hot girl” in a conversation is totally normal now.

But there’s a new phrase that’s slowly entering the territory, mostly for the guys this time.

The cool thing now is identifying as “submissive and breedable," and it's used as a compliment, typically for the guys. Not sure what that is? Let’s explain.

If you’ve cut down on your social media time over the past few months, the phrase may seem like it's come out of nowhere. But for people who are active on platforms like Twitter or TikTok, chances are you’ve come across the “submissive and breedable” meme at least once.

The history of the meme and phrase is pretty innocent, and it's not exactly what it sounds like or what the initial assumption might be.

The term “breedable” has been used offensively for a long time, in a Handmaid's Tale kind of way and it's full of misogamy and sexism in that context. But that's not what this meme is all about.

Mashable warns that the phrases are often used across NSFW subreddits and other various spaces online. The terms “breedable,” and, of course, “submissive" have been interchanged in online forums to mean people who are looking for pregnancy fetish photos.

However, in the case of this meme, the phrase “submissive and breedable” is mostly used playfully. Sort of like a tongue-in-cheek way to compliment themselves as “desirable,” in a very similar fashion to “hot girl summer."

Twitter users began to reference themselves as “breedable” or "submissive” and have been urged to pass on the compliments to other guys in their lives.

According to Know Your Meme, the “submissive and breedable” meme began with a Twitter user @T4RIG. On June 23, T4RIG tweeted, “normalize platonically telling your bros they look submissive and breedable.”

And from there, it took off, mostly as part of a copypaste meme, a term used to explain memes where users put the phrase as text on a variety of different images, which are often used with other words too.

According to Mashable, the phrase seems to have stemmed from a phrase a TikTok user wrote in the caption of one of their videos back in March 2021. Writing, “feelin petite right now maybe a lil vulnerable in this cardigan, perhaps breedable.”

The TikTok profile @yeahthataintme has been deactivated, according to the publication. Still, the meme became popular in fan club communities, specifically to describe cis anime characters or K-pop stars.

"The phrase was also used for beautiful inanimate objects," Mashable reports, “like the new line of colorful iMacs.”

Basically, being submissive and breedable is kind of the new “hot girl summer,” in a way, for guys. And a reminder that we can all do with complimenting our friends, in a platonic kind of way, more than we already do.