boysober
adjective
abstaining from romantic or sexual relationships with men
What does boysober mean?
Boysober (also styled boy sober) describes someone who is abstaining from romantic or sexual relationships with men.
Examples of _boysober _
There’s also been a greater acceptance of people being single later in life, with trends like going “boysober” leading the way when it comes to de-centering romance.
—Alyssa Goldberg, USA Today, 13 Oct. 2026
There was a couple of years there where I was basically boy sober and they were the few best years of my 20s and I really should have had a stronger mindset and just kept going with it.
—Platforms like TikTok are teeming with young women publicly declaring themselves “#boysober” – a rapidly growing movement rejecting dating, hookup culture, exes and even the idea of emotional dependence on men.
—Men who nod along to manfluencers’ calls for women to lose their bodily autonomy and the right to vote are unlikely to shoulder their fair share of the laundry. Women have responded with understandable mistrust: Over half (55 percent) of women who are currently single believe that single women are by and large happier than their married peers, according to research by the Survey Center on American Life. Their online rhetoric dovetails with this belief, with women going #boysober, celebrating celibacy, and describing "protecting my peace" by avoiding men altogether.
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Where does boysober come from?
The coining of boysober/boy sober is often credited to comedian Hope Woodard, who used the term in a TikTok video in 2023. Woodard has clarified that it was coined by her sister.
… Hope deleted all her dating apps and made a promise to herself: No more dates for a year. Then, armed with a catchy new term coined by her sister, Hope started documenting her “boy sober” journey to her half a million TikTok followers. … In a later video, Hope laid out the rules of going boy sober, among them “no dating apps, no dates, no exes, no situationships,” and “no hugs and kisses—etcetera.”
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How is boysober used?
Boysober is often used as a hashtag on social media for those looking to share their experiences, or read about others’. Although it is chiefly used to describe people abstaining from relationships with men, its potential application may be considered broad.
Before introducing the lineup of comics, Ms. Woodard explained that she intended “boysober” as an all-encompassing term, one that meant abstaining from romantic relationships with people of any gender.
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