“Boys will be boys.” Sound familiar? Put on your seatbelts, because I’m about to blast that old-fashioned way of thinking out of the water. It’s 2016 and there’s absolutely no reason for that adage to still be stunting boys from growing as people and restricting girls from speaking up for themselves.
As soon as we are born—sometimes before—we’re assigned a gender at birth based on our biological sex. People with penises get assigned male. People with vaginas get assigned female. This assigned gender colors how we are raised, which ultimately shapes our basic worldview. For example, boys are usually allowed and encouraged to play sports, get dirty, and make a mess, while girls are expected to be neat and tidy, play with dolls, or play house.
What I'm saying isn't that young boys and girls should both be expected to act like adults, it's that they should be expected to act their age and receive appropriate rebukes for their age. A child of any gender should receive a punishment that covers what they did wrong and how they can fix it and avoid doing the same thing another time. Punishments like this allow children to become more empathetic and grow as human beings, rather than getting a free pass to act however they want.
“Boys will be boys” grants boys a free pass to be loud, rude, or even hurtful towards other people on the grounds that their behavior is uncontrollable and they can’t be taught to be any different anyway. This means that young boys learn from this allowance that, basically, they can do whatever they want. If “whatever they want” only extended to playing sports, getting dirty, or being loud, then it might not be such an issue. Unfortunately, “whatever they want” extends to more insidious things as they grow older—pulling pigtails, snapping bra straps, and pressuring others, most often girls—into unwanted sexual activity.
At the same time, girls are often punished for speaking up when boys hurt them, hearing “He only does it because he likes you,” or “Just ignore him. Boys will be boys,” that dangerous phrase. In this way, girls learn to expect harassment from boys all their lives.
Let’s take a look at the expectations placed upon girls. Another old adage is that “girls mature faster than boys”. Is this because girls actually mature faster—physically and mentally—or is it because there are pressures placed upon girls that boys don’t experience? For example, girls are groomed from a young age to be quiet, respectful, and helpful. There is no equivalent to “Boys will be boys” for girls, and few if any allowances are made for girls based on their gender. In fact, girls are expected to grow up faster than boys—praised for being “more mature than their age”. It reflects in one major physiological way: According to The Guardian, the onset of puberty in girls has fallen from about 13 in the 1980s to as low as 8 or 9 in the 2010s. A contributing factor to this ever-younger onset of puberty may be the expectations placed upon girls from an extremely young age, among other physiological factors.
So what are some of the effects of these expectations? First of all, like I mentioned earlier, boys learn that they have social permission to do whatever they want with few to no consequences. Just look at the infamous Brock Turner case, in which the rapist only served three months of a six month sentence despite being convicted of three separate charges of felony sexual assault. While other factors, including race and socioeconomic status, were clearly playing a role in his case, it’s clear from the media surrounding this case that people thought he shouldn’t be blamed for his actions because “boys will be boys”. Some went so far as to blame the victim for drinking, or not protecting herself adequately.
Victim-blaming isn’t a new concept. Throughout history, women have been blamed for their own rapes, assaults, and murders for a variety of reasons. These include sexual promiscuity, intoxication, socioeconomic status, and attire. Victim-blaming throughout history teaches young modern girls one critical thing: you are responsible for your own actions at all times, as well as the actions of everyone around you. This puts an unfair amount of pressure on girls to account for the actions of boys—who are and always have been human beings perfectly capable of controlling themselves and acting appropriately.
The bottom line is this: by making allowances for boys’ inappropriate actions, people are dehumanizing them. By taking the pressure off boys to act in appropriate ways, we are simply placing additional burdens on girls to be responsible for boys’ actions.
Isn’t it time we treat boys like human beings who are accountable for their own actions instead of saying “Boys will be boys”?
