Boys Will Be Boys: A Dangerous Idiom

Blenheim and Amherstburg players scrum during a 2015 playoff game – Photo by Kelsey Vermeersch/ CKSN.ca

“When people excuse bad behavior by attributing it to “just being boys,” they’re removing personal responsibility. If we don’t hold our kids accountable for their actions, we can’t be surprised at the future results. When young kids are taught that being mean or physical with someone else is basically expected and justified because “boys will be boys,” they learn they don’t have to be accountable for their actions. And, as they get older, they become accustomed to having their inappropriate behaviors exempted and they become bolder and commit more egregious acts.”

Those were the words of Jennifer Hicks, written this past October in the Huffington Post. They couldn’t ring more true, and they accurately speak to the fact, that the saying “Boys Will Be Boys,” is a dangerous idiom to use.

Locally, I’ve heard this too much lately. Following an incident where a sign was stolen from Blenheim, and ended up in the Amherstburg Admirals dressing room last week, many people wrote in, and commented on social media that we shouldn’t have covered the incident, because let’s be honest, “boys will be boys.”

Those same boys also used the “N-word” in those social media comments. A part of the story glossed over because people found the action funny, a little good ‘ol fashion fun by the boys.

Only a week before I spoke to members of the Blenheim Blades themselves for a string of profanity laced online comments, that included gay slurs toward other teammates. You know what one of the players involved told me? Guess. He said it was just “boys being boys.”

Well there it is. Those teenage “men” have learned that their irresponsible and inappropriate actions are justified, because from a young age, these very actions have been justified by the fact they have a Y chromosome.

Or as Hicks put it more bluntly in her article, “Boys are not a**holes by nature. It’s not in their genetic makeup to automatically be mean-spirited or cruel. Being born with a penis does not predispose anyone to being the kind of person who will bully or hurt others. Boys may be more likely to engage in physical play and want hands on activities, but there’s no connection between being kinesthetically oriented and intentionally damaging others or causing them pain.”

If you read the sports pages, you’ll see many tough, kinesthetically oriented women, who play physical sports. So being a man can’t be the only factor in enjoyment of these actions, and thereby can’t be the only determinant in the often correlated inappropriate actions that supposedly come with this.

A few weeks earlier in Chatham, 9 and 10 year old Atom hockey players heard male coaches and parents screaming, swearing, and trying to physically fight each other following a house league game. Boys will be boys.

Bullying happens at our schools, and on sports teams from youth to Junior. Often this bullying, or actions in general, involve hazing, verbal harassment, physical violence, and sexual harassment and assault. Oh well, boys will be boys…right?

Wrong.

The longer we brush off bad behaviour, whether benign or malicious, as simply “boys being boys;” the longer we allow young men to grow up in, and foster a culture of misogyny, violence, inequality, and acceptance for things like bullying, hazing, assault, and other crimes; the longer boys, who grow into men, will continue believing they can act inappropriately simply because of their genetic make up.

Boys will be what we teach, and expect, boys to be. If we expect boys to be ruffians, bullies, racists, and misogynists, they will be. If we expect boys to be respectful, polite, humble, to stand up for equality, and to stand against these skewed ideals, they will.

Men continuing to use this phrase, is an attempt to justify the inappropriate behaviours of men that are now culturally unacceptable, or in many cases against the law in North America.

Hopefully someday when we hear the phrase “boys will be boys,” it will be after we see a young boy help up a fallen opponent, apologize for their mistakes, report or stop a bully, and treat another human equally. That would be a great world of boys being boys.

Until then, it’s time we kicked this dangerous idiom; and it’s time we stopped lowering our expectation of what it means for boys to be boys.