Boys Will Be Boys

Is not an excuse

Photo: Paolo Pescada for Unsplash

When my younger self imagined motherhood, there were always daughters. Raising girls was something I took for granted, like the rising sun or garbled announcements on the uptown 4/5/6.

Tiny Feminists, fierce and loud, their chunky toddler fists raised in an Angela Davis salute. At night, those girls would fall asleep to a Helen Reddy lullaby while visions of equity danced in their heads.

The universe had other plans. One boy, then two, and I was awash in 50 shades of blue. Now those boys, young men already, love to taunt me.

Admit it, you were disappointed we weren’t girls.

That’s wrong, of course. I was never disappointed. There was, though, a moment when I ran headfirst into the very real possibility that instead of raising tiny Feminists who would smash the patriarchy, I might be raising the next generation of the patriarchy.

Well played, Mother Nature. Well played.

But as I rocked my sons to sleep, it was impossible to imagine them growing into misogynists, monsters, or the kind of men who trawl the dark web to learn how to drug and rape their wives. Then again, what mother gazes down at the babe in her arms and thinks that her little boy blue will grow into a Brock Turner, a Brett Kavanaugh, a Jeffrey Epstein? What maman listens to milky sighs and worries a monster like Dominique Pelicot is nursing at her breast?

Not my boys. Never my boys. If I needed to, I would nurture the essence of boy right out of them.

And for a hot minute, I thought I’d cracked it. As my son pushed a toy stroller to the playground, I smiled smugly. And I smugged that stupid mug of mine until the day he abandoned that stroller for a gargantuan stick, which he used to bash the ground, like a tiny cave person. More boys joined in, and, off to the side, a group of mothers stood open-mouthed watching this mass awakening of toddler testosterone.

My kid wasn’t raising his fist in a tiny Angela Davis salute. He was raising a stick over his head like a pre-school pirate. He wasn’t smashing the patriarchy, he was gleefully smashing the ground. Bam! Bam!

Turns out you can’t love or nurture the essence of boy out of the boy. And honestly? It was shitty of me to have thought that I could or should.

I had one last trick up my sleeve, the hardest of them all: raise boys who showed emotion, cared, understood consent, and knew who Rosalind Franklin was.

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What do you propose we do?

That was a comment left on another post. What do you propose we do?

I propose that we stop coddling boys.

I don’t mean stop loving them, cuddling them, and helping them navigate the quicksand emotions of childhood and adolescence. The opposite of that, in fact. Boys need to be loved hard and shown that it’s ok to love hard in return.

I mean, stop babying them. Stop swooping in to manage their emotions and excusing problematic behavior just because it jives with ideas of puppy dog tails and “boyishness”.

Boys are getting messages about masculinity from every angle, and most of those messages don’t include accountability for misogyny, how to care for themselves and others, or how to manage their emotions and actions.

In short, we need to stop telling boys that the rest of the world is responsible for their comfort and happiness.

Boys will be boys. We all know what it means, and it’s not skimming rocks and casting a rod down at the old fishing hole. And boys should absolutely get to be boys in all their stick-bashing glory, but boys being boys is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s not a blanket pardon for problematic, misogynistic, and sometimes violent behavior. Behaviors that, compounded over time, have led us to the most clustery of fucks we’re in today.

Coddling is continually excusing the “jokes”, the banter, and the locker room talk. It’s diminishing assaults, sexism, and belittling. And most of all, it’s encouraging the kind of entitlement that is born of the understanding that no one is going to hold you accountable for any of those things.

Those things are not a boyish phase. They’re a test. And we’re flunking.

Boys will be boys is teaching boys that they’re incapable of controlling themselves, but not to worry, because there will rarely be consequences.

Then we’re surprised when some grow into men who can’t control themselves and face no consequences.

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We focus on the way things like dress codes harm girls, but less on the way they stunt boys. Every time Emma G. is flagged because her bra strap is showing, we’re undermining the ability of boys to manage their emotions, their bodies and desires.

It’s not your fault you’ve got a woody, Chad. Ella P. never should have worn that dress. We got you, bud.

Boys don’t need to be protected from slipping spaghetti straps. Or leggings, or cleavage, or a stray Victorian ankle in a time-traveling plot twist. Do we honestly believe that a teenage boy is going to lose the ability to tell an acute angle from a right angle because Ella T. is wearing shorts? Don’t be obtuse.

You can’t tell me with a straight face that men are natural leaders but also that they’re too delicate to manage an algebra boner. That math ain’t mathin’, Chad.

When boys aren’t given the tools to manage emotions and desire, when they’re told it’s out of their control, it’s someone else’s responsibility, we’re not just putting the burden on girls and women to manage men’s desire; we’re squandering opportunities for boys to learn and grow.

No one’s died because they pitched a tent in calculus, but girls and women die every day because boys feel entitled to their bodies and no one has taught them otherwise.

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Coddling boys means not challenging the expectation that a woman will meet every anticipatory need. Learning to care for yourself and others is not a gendered activity. Women aren’t born with spatulas for hands and a genetic predisposition for laundry. Curating friendships and meaningful relationships aren’t sex-segregated skills.

Coddling boys means negating or diminishing their capacity for judgement. They didn’t know any better, it was a silly mistake, it was 20 minutes of action.

When we excuse accountability, we’re explicitly teaching boys, hey mate, no worries. How could you have known that was wrong? That’s bullshit. Teach boys what misogyny looks like from an early age. Teach them how to make mistakes, apologize, learn, and move on. We live in a society that will bend over backward to forgive a white man for the most heinous act and throw a woman under the bus before it even leaves the curb, simply for telling the truth.

Too many of us let boys believe that’s the natural order of things.

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If the headlines hold any truth and we are failing boys, it’s not because of girls. It’s not because girls are doing well at school or graduating college at higher rates. And it’s definitely not because Emma R. wore a tube top.

If we are failing boys, it’s because too many people are giving them a scapegoat wrapped in protein shakes and a podcast rather than the tools they need to survive and thrive.

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault; boys will be boys.

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It took me a while, but I finally realized that the most Feminist thing I could do wasn’t to teach my kids how to raise their chunky fists in a salute, but to raise boys who will disrupt the system from the inside.

If my sons are going to benefit from a shitty system by virtue of a chromosomal lottery, let them be sand in the wheels.

I always imagined I would raise tiny Feminists. They would be loud and fierce, know who Rosalind Franklin was, and that the R on the tampon means regular and not right.

And dear reader, I did.

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