When you have been with someone for six years, you eventually have the talk about children – how many you want and when you want them. Which for me is mid-thirties, because how can I be a responsible parent any time soon when I eat popcorn and cheesecake for breakfast?
Our discussion turned into which gender children we would prefer and how many of each, which seems like such a trivial topic because you get what you get and you better be happy about it. He told me he would prefer boys because “they are so easy, you do not have to do anything and they will be just fine” but as he told me this, a thought abruptly clouded my mind – that that is probably why we have so many rapists in the world.
But boys will be boys.
I worked at Texas A&M University for three years as a student worker in a department head’s office with two boys, another girl and a female boss. After a year of doing absolutely nothing other than attempting to edit her selfies using Microsoft Paint, a task that is nearly impossible, she was fired for being unproductive.
Since I was hired, I had become the pack mule of the group, doing nine hours of grueling clerical work every day as the boys watched HBO on government computers. The bar was set much higher for me and while I faced punishment for my errors, my coworkers’ mistakes and laziness were laughed off as my female boss said time and again that “boys will be boys” as if the fact that they were born male out of a fifty-fifty chance gave them a pass in life.
It is a saying that, though intended playfully, ruined our culture. What does it say about us as a society that we set the bar so low for males, for the gender we view as more dominant and make the decisions for our people?
Boys will be boys as the male faculty members in my department at A&M stored porn on their government work computers.
Boys will be boys as two Steubenville high school football players raped an intoxicated and unconscious female student of theirs. They videotaped, photographed and shared on social media their urinating on her, digitally penetrating her, exposing her naked body, attempting to orally rape her and leaving her body covered in semen. The acts went without punishment from the school and the media portrayed a story of how two victimized star football players’ lives were destroyed so early in life.
Boys will be boys as my male coworker laughs as he tells me that his roommate in his first year of college digitally raped an unconscious girl that had been abandoned in a stranger’s bed at a house party.
But boys will be just fine, right? Whereas girls are just a raging bag of crazy emotions and require too much effort to raise.
From the day I was born, like many other girls everywhere, I was told to look out for myself because there will always be men out there trying to hurt me. That is why I have to carry knives and pepper spray with me at all times and carry my keys between my fingers as makeshift brass knuckles.
So maybe I am emotional because the stress of always having to guard yourself and meet the bar that is set exceptionally high simply because you are female is a lot to handle. The second we have “too much fun” or get “too comfortable” we are taken advantage of, an experience that I and other girls I know are no stranger to.
Nobody is born to be a rapist but a lack of proper parenting leaves a child to be raised by what they see present in society where men are perceived to be dominant and entitled.
So no, boys will not be fine on their own, and if anything, it should take more parenting to correct the entitlement that society places on the male sex.