'Boys will be Boys'.... or will they?
Stereotyping and poor role models
“Boys Will Be Boys”…… Rescripting the Male Stereotype
“Boys will be boys,” said the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, dismissing the recent childish trading of public insults between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro.
This isn’t just a flippant remark—it’s an insult to boys and men, and part of a wider problem.
It reduces masculinity to its most regressive traits, and normalises the idea that power paired with immature behaviour is acceptable because its ‘natural male’ behaviour.
Chat GPT produced this summary or Boys will be boys
Culturally Reinforced Traits
These are behaviors encouraged or tolerated due to societal expectations of masculinity:
Aggression or roughness – Physical play, fighting, or competitive behavior often seen as typical.
Dominance/assertiveness – Taking charge, speaking loudly, or resisting authority.
Risk-taking – Engaging in dangerous or reckless activities.
Emotional suppression – Avoiding vulnerability, crying, or expressing sadness.
Sexual entitlement or inappropriate humor – Sometimes used to excuse crude jokes or unwanted advances.
Stereotypically Perceived Natural Traits
Often argued (controversially) to be innate or biologically driven:
High energy or restlessness – Tendency to be physically active, fidgety, or struggle with focus.
Curiosity and impulsiveness – Acting without thinking or exploring boundaries.
Competitive drive – Strong desire to win or outperform peers.
Desire for independence – Reluctance to follow rules or be told what to do
Chat GPT also produced this image when asked for a picture showing Boys will be boys. These large language models can tell us a lot about our stereotypes - this group of all white boys is a statement about social norms in itself!
There are many boys who like a bit of rough and tumble, and also many girls who do as well. There are also many boys and girls who hate this kind of play, and prefer quiet play, lego building, reading, chess and video games. There are many boys and girls who like both in different contexts.
This is part of a wider problem: how society talks about boys, and how this shapes the men they grow into.
The recent TV series Adolescents has struck a chord and has
triggered reflection across many circles about what is really happening to boys and young men today, and how it impacts on their behaviour.
Boys are being shaped by a tiny minority of powerful yet negative role models that dominate the media right now. They are also shaped through less in-your-face influences, which is from the ‘Big Other’ of society that essentialists both genders. This creates normative stereotypes we hear everyday that entrap both genders into reductionist ways of being ….. men are like this….women are like this…. How can we divide humanity into two groups and say one has these traits and the other these traits…. it’s ridiculous! Feminists who have fought for women’s rights can also fall into this trap. I hear in DEI conferences that ‘women make better leaders because they are more caring and better listeners’ which immediately denigrates men putting them into the not-caring, and unable-to-listen box. It is also paradoxical as it repeats the narrative that feminism is trying to escape from i.e. of women being trapped in caring and nurturing roles, rather than being open to a whole range of roles that are dominated by men, such as in law, politics and science.
Nature and Nurture
Biology and society/culture shape us. Men and women have different bodies, genetics and hormones, yet within these binary categories their is a huge range of physical difference. Different cultures have different gender expectations, in many countries women don’t fight in combat units in wars, in Kurdistan and Vietnam this was not the case. I recall the women I admired as I grew up as being powerful, wilful and demanding rights; “we are women, we are strong” was the chant at Greenham Common. As a nurse in a female majority profession, I witnessed very poor aggressive and uncaring women’s leadership alongside some very good individual leadership; but overall there was a very hierarchical approach that certainly did not encourage a caring-listening culture. Recognising developmental differences in boys and girls is important; so many boys fail school simply because the classroom culture of sitting still at a desk completely misses their developmental, physical and hormonal needs. I speak of personal experience of being told I was naughty, lazy and stupid and being thrown out of school at the age of 16 with no qualifications and finding my first job in a factory. It took me years to discover my potential, that led to a Phd and successfully writing books on leadership theory. Had a different approach been taken in the classroom, I would have thrived rather than internalising such a negative message about myself. Many boys get these labels and don’t get the second chance I did, ending up in mundane jobs, or worse in crime.
What can be done?
1. Stereotyping Boys Is Part of the Problem
Feminism has done a great job (with more to do) of helping us understand how harmful stereotypes are to girls. Tell a girl that “girls aren’t good at math,” and she may internalise that belief, perform worse, and live out the very limits society projected onto her.
But we’re slower to apply that understanding to boys and men.
Boys are depicted as “naturally aggressive,” or boys are simply more “trouble.” These stereotypes are internalised and become self-fulfilling.
Frantz Fanon wrote, described his experience of being Black in Paris thus:
“The movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other fixed me there, in the sense that a chemical solution is fixed by a dye … sealed into that crushing objecthood the look imprisoned me …”
When society looks at boys and sees aggression, trouble, or emotional lack, they can become trapped in these narrow frames.
2. Role Models: The Good, the Embarrassing, and the Invisible
Right now, media headlines are flooded with a few powerful men acting very badly. Their influence is outsized. It’s even worse in the algorithm-fuelled corners of podcasts and YouTube (places I avoid) where isolated young men who feel impotent and unheard find negative role models who amplify their negative feelings to a world in which they don’t fit. In these spaces showing emotions and vulnerability makes you a ‘woke man’, and women become a target for pent up anger and misogyny is the result.
The “boys will be boys” comment was not an innocent phrase. It was an attempt to normalise the embarrassing, morally vacant behaviour of two powerful men who should be setting a higher bar. These men display their fragile egos with seemingly no insight or sense of embarrassment, as do many of the populist reactionary leaders of today: but they do not represent the majority of men. This is the fight we need to take up.
There are other role models. Real ones. Everyday ones.
At the school gate, I meet fathers who are emotionally available and deeply involved in their children’s lives—far more than in previous generations.
At work, I see men showing care, empathy, and strength under pressure.
Last week, I visited a manufacturing company. In this high-stakes environment, men and women alike demonstrated loyalty, resilience, and real human compassion to each other and their teams.
As one man left the company after 30 years, I saw two men hug tenderly as he left the factory gate holding a bunch of flowers. A moment of friendship, affection, and shared history.
These are the men we need to claim as the role models challenging the minority that dominate the media.
More women in boardrooms: More men in nurseries.
As a male nurse in the 1980s I was one of the 5% of nurses, today it’s 10%. Nursing was a wonderful profession for me, as it would be for many men. The stereotypes of gender hold both men and women back. In my children’s school there are no male teachers, no role models for the boys! This is accepted but if it was reversed and there were no women teachers in the school this would be unacceptable. Patriarchy has meant that it has been acceptable for all male boardrooms and all female nurseries….. change is happening but an awakening of what is happening to boys is way behind the curve.
Time to Rescript
It’s time to rewrite the story of masculinity, not with idealised or performative tropes, but with real, lived examples of male role models.
Recognising differences, whilst not entrapping either gender into fixed roles and ways of being is the challenge.
It's time to rescript the stereotypes.
Let’s stop saying “boys will be boys,” and start asking “What kind of men and women are we helping our children to become?”