“Boys will be boys” was appropriated by some real slimeballs. It was supposed to me more like this: !stick@sh.itjust.works
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Right! "Boys will be boys" is "we turned away for 5 seconds and now they painted themselves with mud, lost 3 shoes, and ate a worm"
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“Context is all.”
—Margaret Atwood
I feel like it's worth mentioning that this post is about being held accountable socially. When it comes to the legal system, there are severe discrepencies that favor women in a lot of different ways. Please don't think I'm coming from some Manosphere bullshit because this has been studied and reviewed extensively. When you factor in everything, it becomes a lot less clear which gender is "more accountable" in society. I think it makes much more sense to meet in the middle and normalize (in the math way, not the social media way) accountability.
If you imagine accountability as a table of things you can be held accountable for (rows) vs how accountable each gender is held for them (columns), simply copying the woman column and pasting it over the man column would be significantly reducing men's accountability for a lot of things. Notably, it would make the legal system about twice as lenient on men for sexual misconduct and obviously nobody wants that. The right thing to do would be to evaluate each row and decide whether it is most just to copy one side to the other or average them.
Edit: And while we're at it, do the same process across racial groups, which I would argue is probably a lot more clearly fucked up and unbalanced in one obvious direction
Men control the legal system, the financial system, and the institutions of the state. Women have been pushing for radical social change since the late 19th century. Men are and have always been the resisting force against women's rights. Men, in the sense of the class of men. Individual men can be and are sometimes feminists. Patriarchy means that the class of men is privileged to the disadvantage of the class of women.
The system by which boys are indoctrinated into an ideology of male superiority starts at birth. Young children are subjected to highly gendered worlds, where boys are literally not held accountable for their actions towards girls. Because of justifications like "boys will be boys," which this post is about. Boys and men should be held accountable for their actions.
Thanks, this is a woman's only community so I've banned you. Have a good weekend!