Boys Will Be Boys
I've always been a little irritated by the phrase boys will be boys. Not because I think boys and girls are the same. They're not. I knew boys who climbed everything in sight. I knew girls who did the exact same thing, just as hard. And actually, now that I'm writing this down, I also knew boys who didn't climb anything at all and just stayed inside drawing — but nobody ever says a phrase about them. I don't think that expression is really about boys anyway. It's about what we're willing to forgive.
That difference only hit me years later, during a conversation I honestly can't fully reconstruct anymore. Something about a night that had gone wrong. He was drunk sounds almost like a reasonable explanation. As if he couldn't really help it. She was drunk feels completely different, oddly enough. Same words, but suddenly it sounds like an accusation instead of an explanation. Her own fault. She shouldn't have had so much to drink. The question stops being what happened to her, and becomes what she should have done differently. I've never seen that gap show up more clearly than in sexual assault cases. There, it's not about generous interpretation anymore. It's about who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who has to explain themselves. Maybe that's a heavy comparison for a piece that opened with a tired cliché about little boys. But I don't think it is.
I find that fascinating, not because people think this way on purpose, but precisely because they don't. Most prejudice doesn't arrive with a drumroll. It shows up quietly, in slippers.
That makes me think of a father I once saw in the supermarket. On a Saturday morning, it was raining, I think. He was walking around with two small kids, one crying in the cart, the other one dead set on a jar of Nutella. An older woman smiled at him and said, "How great that you do this." He smiled back. So did I, probably. It wasn't until I got home that I realised I've never once heard anyone say to a mother, "How great that you do the shopping with your kids." Compliments sometimes say less about the person receiving them than about the person giving them. She almost certainly meant it kindly. That only makes it more revealing.
You see that pattern everywhere. When a father works long hours, people say he's doing it for his family. When a mother does the exact same thing, the conversation shifts fast to what her kids are missing out on. Nobody teaches you this in school. And yet somehow we've all agreed on it. Or maybe nobody agreed on anything — maybe it just grew that way over time, like a worn path across a field. Nobody draws it. Enough people just keep walking the same direction.
Language quietly helps that along. He's ambitious. She's career-driven. I genuinely don't know why those words feel so different, because on paper they mean roughly the same thing. They don't, though. Words apparently carry a history too, even if I can't pinpoint exactly where it starts.
Sometimes I wonder how many of my own thoughts are actually mine — which sounds deeper than I mean it to. Why do I still find it slightly more notable when a man carries a baby in a sling than when a woman does? I know there's nothing special about it. And yet my brain registers it anyway. Like there's some old piece of software running in the background that never got an update. Annoying to admit, but there it is.
Men get caught up in this too, by the way — something I forget myself sometimes. Boys will be boys doesn't just mean boys get away with certain behaviour. It also means they're expected to show certain behaviour. Anger, fine. Sadness, not really. Toughness, sure. Doubt, as little as possible. That's a box too. The only difference is that one is a judgment and the other is an excuse.
Maybe boys will be boys was never really about boys.
Maybe it's about stories. About who gets a story. And who gets a verdict.
He gets context. She gets consequences.