”Boys are told from a young age that whatever they do
will be excused under the “boys will be boys” mantra,
and that “boys will be boys” mentality leads to what
I call the “BOILING FROG” problem of women’s
sexual boundaries. I call it that because if you put a frog into
a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out, but if you put a
frog into a pot of room-temperature water and slowly heat it to a
boil, the frog will acclimate as it heats and never jump out,
eventually boiling to death.
Similarly, when we learn as young girls to tolerate
“low-level” boundary violations like the ones we
often are forced to suffer in silence at school, at home and on
the street – bra-snapping, boob-grabbing, @ss pinching,
catcalling, d1.ck flashing “all in good fun”
relentless violations that adults and authorities routinely
ignore – it makes it harder for us to notice when even
greater boundaries are being violated, eventually leading to the
reality that many women who are r@ped just freeze and fall
silent, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do
over and over since day one.
You tell me what’s more infantilizing: repeatedly letting
boys (and grown men) off the hook for their behavior because
“boys will be boys” and we can’t ever expect
any differently, or creating a consent standard in which all
partners take active responsibility for their partner’s
safety, and which acknowledges the truly diseased se.xual culture
we’re soaking in every day.”
—
The (nonexistent) terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad consequences of enthusiastic
consent - Jaclyn Friedman