Rape Culture and The “Boys Will Be Boys” Mentality

“Not All Men” is a tool that shadows the realities of rape culture and excuses men from taking accountability.

The number of times where I felt violated by male figures in my life is far too great to count, and it’s too nauseating to name them all. Yet, with each story or moment where I was certain that I felt uncomfortable or violated, I second-guessed myself.

Did I do something to let this happen to me?

As a survivor, I return to this question frequently. It’s also the same question I hear from almost all the women in my life. Friends, colleagues and even my own mother bear so many stories where men take advantage of them and force them to cultivate habits that would seemingly protect them — to “avoid” allowing something to happen to them ever again (as if we are the reason for men’s violence). Yet while we constantly deal with these uncomfortable feelings of self-validation versus self-blame, men are encouraged to violate consent.

Phrases like “boys will be boys” are said early on, and the kids listening to that grow up into believing “not all men” because it’s easier to blame women than for men to take accountability. “Not all men” may be the perpetrators in every woman’s story, but all men are responsible for upholding the culture in which these stories are invalidated.

When most people think about rape culture, I think we envision a scene set in “Law and Order: SVU,” where a woman walking alone at night gets assaulted at a park in the dead of night. The woman that pops up in our minds is probably wearing a short skirt and the man trailing behind her is wearing a hoodie with a knife stashed in his pocket. Hardly do we think about rape culture as being catcalled on the street, having to lie about being in a relationship to politely reject someone, receiving unsolicited dick pictures or covering up when male family members come over.

When I was 15, my uncle came to visit for the first time in seven years. I remember the unease I felt tying my hoodie around my waist to cover my leggings and my mom’s hushed whispers echoing in my head: “Cover yourself up, those leggings are too tight. Your father’s brother is coming over soon.”

A part of me felt indifferent about seeing him since we weren’t really close, but the moment he walked through that front door and stood before me, I started panicking.

His eyes trailed my body from head to toe as he smirked and said, “Wow, what a fine, young woman you’ve grown up to be.” The comment seemed harmless until he pulled me in for a hug and rested his hand on my lower back, slipping it underneath the hoodie I had tied so tightly around my waist.

When we associate rape culture with criminal offenses like rape and sexual assault, we ignore the other ways rape culture constantly exploits consent. If we actually start naming all the violations of consent and how every woman has experienced multiple of these violations in her lifetime, we’ll see how normalized rape culture is and how often it happens.

Because that encounter when I was 15 wasn’t the first time, and it surely wasn’t the last.

I’m 22 now, and every time I reflect on that moment, I think about how often I wanted to express how that interaction made me uncomfortable. But every time, I hesitate because there’s a jury of voices in my head doubting and gaslighting me. These voices sound like toxic male friends, uncles, randos on the internet, abusers, men who’ve called me “mami” and “bitch” in the same breath — a whole collection of voices that automatically antagonize victims who come forward because “boys will be boys.”

Sayings like “boys will be boys'' and “not all men” perpetuate very dangerous language around what constitutes a nonconsensual experience. Since nonconsensual experiences are so widespread, it reinforces a patriarchal narrative that regularly protects abusers from taking any ounce of accountability.

So when “not all men” is used as a rebuttal against victims or when women try to start discourse about rape culture, it becomes a scapegoat for abusers and accomplices to avoid confronting their friends, brothers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers and especially themselves. This long-held argument, and others like it, amplifies abusers while silencing victims.

Recently, I watched clips of YouTuber David Dobrik’s apology addressing the video he filmed and posted of his friend sexually assaulting a girl while she was intoxicated. I don’t subscribe to the theatrics of YouTube apologies, but one of the things he said is something that I think is the root of the problem: “I couldn’t wrap my head around a childhood friend of mine doing this to people and actually hurting people.”

Rape culture doesn’t only appear only in dark alleyways and desolate parking lots at night. It occurs among the very people you stay silent for simply because of your relationship with them. Not speaking up is built on a false narrative that because it’s “not all men,” all women are safe enough.

“Safe enough” is not enough, because while it’s not all men, all women have a story.