[Mb-civic] What Does 'Boys Will Be Boys' Really Mean? - Deborah M. Roffman - Washington Post Sunday Outlook

[William Swiggard]

What Does 'Boys Will Be Boys' Really Mean?
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By Deborah M. Roffman
Washington Post Sunday Outlook
Sunday, February 5, 2006; B04

Three of my seventh-grade students asked the other week if we might view 
a recent episode of the Fox TV cartoon show "Family Guy" in our human 
sexuality class. It's about reproduction, they said, and besides, it's 
funny. Not having seen it, I said I'd have to check it out.

Well, there must be something wrong with my sense of humor, because most 
of the episode made me want to alternately scream and cry.

It centers on Stewie, a sexist, foul-mouthed preschooler who hates his 
mother, fantasizes killing her off in violent ways, and wants to prevent 
his parents from making a new baby -- until he realizes that he might 
get to have a sibling as nasty as he is. Then he starts encouraging his 
parents' lovemaking. At one point he peers into their room and tells his 
Dad to "Give it to her good, old man." When his father leaves the bed he 
orders him to "Come here this instant you fat [expletive] and do her!"

Of course I know that this is farce, but I announced the next day that 
no, we wouldn't be taking class time to view the episode, titled 
"Emission Impossible." When I asked my students why they thought that 
was, they guessed: The language? The women dressed like "bimbos"? The 
implied sexual acts? The mistreatment of the mother?

Nope, nope, nope, I replied. I didn't love any of that, either, but it 
was the less obvious images and messages that got my attention, the ones 
that kids your age are less likely to notice. It's not so much that the 
boy is always being bad -- sometimes that sort of thing can seem so 
outrageous it's funny. It's the underlying assumption in the show, and 
often in our society, that boys, by nature, are bad.

I said I thought the "boys will be bad" message of the show was a 
terribly disrespectful one, and I wouldn't use my classroom in any way 
to reinforce it. It was a good moment: Recognizing for the first time 
the irony that maybe it was they who were really being demeaned, some of 
the boys got mad, even indignant.

You can hear and see evidence of this longstanding folk "wisdom" about 
boys almost everywhere, from the gender-typed assumptions people make 
about young boys to the resigned attitude or blind eye adults so often 
turn to disrespectful or insensitive male behavior. Two years ago, when 
Justin Timberlake grabbed at Janet Jackson's breast during the Super 
Bowl halftime, he got a free pass while she was excoriated. As the 
mother of two sons and teacher of thousands of boys, the reaction to 
that incident made me furious, but perhaps not for the reason you may 
think: I understood it paradoxically as a twisted kind of compliment to 
women and a hidden and powerful indictment of men. Is the female in such 
instances the only one from whom we think we can expect responsible 
behavior?

That incident and so many others explain why, no matter how demeaning 
today's culture may seem toward girls and women, I've always understood 
it to be fundamentally more disrespectful of boys and men -- a point 
that escapes many of us because we typically think of men as always 
having the upper hand.

Consider, though, what "boys will be boys" thinking implies about the 
true nature of boys. I often ask groups of adults or students what 
inherent traits or characteristics the expression implies. The answers 
typically are astonishingly negative: Boys are messy, immature and 
selfish; hormone-driven and insensitive; irresponsible and 
trouble-making; rebellious, rude, aggressive and disrespectful -- even 
violent, predatory and animal-like.

Is this a window into what we truly think, at least unconsciously, of 
the male of the species? Is it possible that deep inside we really think 
they simply can't be expected to do any better than this? How else to 
explain the very low bar we continue to set for their behavior, 
particularly when it comes to girls, women and sex? At a talk I gave 
recently, a woman in the audience asked, only half in jest: "Is it okay 
to instruct my daughters that when it comes to sex, teenage boys are 
animals?" Do we stop to think how easily these kinds of remarks can 
become self-fulfilling prophecies, or permission-giving of the worst kind?

Thanks to popular culture, unfortunately, it only gets worse. Not too 
long ago, I confiscated a hat from a student's head that read, "I'm a 
Pimp." This once-derogatory term is a complimentary handle these days 
for boys whom girls consider "hot." I asked the boy whether he would 
wear a hat that said "I'm a Rapist." Totally offended, he looked at me 
as if I had three heads. "Duh," I said. "Do you have any idea what real 
pimps do to keep their 'girls' in line?" Yet the term -- like "slut" for 
girls -- has been glamorized and legitimized by TV, movies and popular 
music to such an extent that kids now bandy it about freely.

Just as fish don't know they're in water, young people today, who've 
been swimming all their formative years in the cesspool that is American 
popular culture, are often maddeningly incapable of seeing how none of 
this is in their social, sexual or personal best interest.

Adults I work with tend to be a lot less clueless. They are sick and 
tired of watching the advertising and entertainment industries 
shamelessly pimp the increasingly naked bodies of American women and 
girls to sell everything from Internet service to floor tiles (I've got 
the ads to prove it).

Yet from my perspective, these same adults aren't nearly as clued in 
about how destructive these ubiquitous images and messages can be for 
boys. It too often takes patient coaching for them to see "boys will be 
boys" for what it is -- an insidious and long-neglected character issue: 
People who think of and treat others as objects, in any way, are not 
kind, decent people. It's bad enough that boys are being trained by the 
culture to think that behaving in these ways is "cool"; it's outrageous 
and much more disturbing that many of the immediate adults in their 
lives can't see it, and may even buy into it.

The "boys will be bad" stereotype no doubt derives from a time when men 
were the exclusively entitled gender: Many did behave badly, simply 
because they could. (Interestingly, that's pretty much how Bill Clinton 
in hindsight ultimately explained his poor behavior in the Lewinsky 
affair.) For today's boys, however, the low expectations set for them 
socially and sexually have less to do with any real entitlement than 
with the blinders we wear to these antiquated and degrading gender myths.

I think, too, that the staying power of these myths has to do with the 
fact that as stereotypes go, they can be remarkably invisible. I've long 
asked students to bring in print advertisements using sex to sell 
products or showing people as sex objects. No surprise that in the vast 
majority of ads I receive, women are the focus, not men.

And yet, as I try to teach my students, there's always at least one 
invisible man present -- looking at the advertisement. The messages 
being delivered to and/or about him are equally if not more powerful.

In one of my least favorite examples, a magazine ad for a video game 
(brought to me by a sixth-grade boy) depicts a highly sexualized woman 
with a dominatrix air brandishing a weapon. The heading reads: "Bet 
you'd like to get your hands on these!," meaning her breasts, er, the 
game controllers. And the man or boy not in the picture but looking on? 
The ad implies that he's just another low-life guy who lives and 
breathes to ogle and grab every large-breasted woman he sees.

Many boys I've talked with are pretty savvy about the permission-giving 
that "boys will be bad" affords and use it to their advantage in their 
relationships with adults. "Well, they really don't expect as much from 
us as they do from girls," said one 10th-grade boy. "It makes it easier 
to get away with a lot of stuff."

Others play it sexually to their advantage, knowing that in a system 
where boys are expected to want sex but not necessarily to be 
responsible about it, the girl will probably face the consequences if 
anything happens. As long as girls can still be called sluts, the sexual 
double standard -- and its lack of accountability for boys -- will rule.

Most boys I know are grateful when they finally get clued in to all 
this. A fifth-grade boy once told me that the worst insult anyone could 
possibly give him would be to call him a girl. When I walked him through 
what he seemed to be saying-- that girls are inferior to him -- he was 
suddenly ashamed that he could have thought such a thing. "I'm a better 
person than that," he said.

Just as we've adjusted the bar for girls in academics and athletics, we 
need to let boys know that, in the sexual and social arenas, we've been 
shortchanging them by setting the bar so low. We need to explain why the 
notion that "boys will be boys" embodies a bogus and ultimately 
corrupting set of expectations that are unacceptable.

We'll know we've succeeded when girls and boys better recognize sexual 
and social mistreatment and become angry and personally offended 
whenever anyone dares use the word slut against any girl, call any boy a 
pimp, or suggest that anyone reduce themselves or others to a sexual object.

We'll also know when boys call one another more often on disrespectful 
behavior, instead of being congratulatory, because they will have the 
self-respect and confidence that comes with being held to and holding 
yourself to high standards.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020400220.html
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