How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

I want to tell her that this was self-defence, that Tellis started it. And that, no, I’m not ‘just like the others’. Because the one thing I hate hearing more than ‘You’re not like the others’ is ‘You’re just like the others’. Confusingly, the others don’t seem to think that they’re the others either. Guys, hands up who are ‘the others’? None of us are the others. Except for when we are. But that – please understand – that’s only because of the others. We’re the nice ones, you see. The problem is those others.

It’s incredible, the way we stereotype girls and boys. Do it with race or religion and people would rightly look at you as if you were out of your mind.

‘He has masculine qualities.’ Like what? Bravery? Honesty? Stoicism? That’s great, but I’ve also seen various women exhibiting these qualities all my life. ‘He’s proud of his masculinity.’ OK, well, good for him, but – what? He’s got a leather wallet? He’s glad he isn’t a woman? He’s better at doing man-things than other men seem to be?

promise I am not being wilfully dense about this. I don’t know what the words ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have to offer. Avoiding them, we still have a massive language of more precise words to describe individuals and their behaviour which somehow manage not to come pre-loaded with a steam tanker of gender manure from the last century.

The phrase ‘It’s what she would have wanted’ really comes into its own when you’ve got a foreign holiday booked and then someone in the party dies.

The stereotype of the Nagging Wife has proved very useful to those of us who are often the primary cause of all the nagging: the Useless Husband. Because these days, women who find their domestic situation deeply unsatisfactory won’t just need to complain, they’ll need to apologise for the complaining.

In other words, the girl picked up the bill when the boy turned fear and grief into anger.

Bad things happen; I get miserable beyond belief; I randomly recover.

who can’t be sexist because he doesn’t like football, who can’t be sexist because he’s read Man Made Language by Dale Spender and votes Labour, who can’t be sexist because he once had a secret boyfriend, who can’t be sexist because he’s been writing anti-sexist comedy sketches since school and now gets paid to perform them on TV – that guy can’t possibly be in the grip of sexism. That guy might quietly notice that he’s broken his promise to be an equal partner in the home but . . . OK, fair point.