I’ve said “boys suck” more times than I can count. Whether to ease the pain of a friend or to make myself feel better, sighing and moaning the phrase always seems to do the trick. For me, the statement seems to go hand-in-hand with female empowerment, functioning as a coping mechanism as I vent over the tragic endings of recent love affairs.
“I don’t need boys after all,” I tell myself as I dig into a gallon of ice cream. “They are stupid, testosterone-driven jerks, and I’m better off without them.” But why do I insist on saying something I don’t truly mean?
Just the other day, I was sitting with a friend as she spilled about her current romantic life. Naturally, the conversation ended with the ever-comforting maxim, “Gosh, boys suck!” It wasn’t until after that particular conversation, though, that I finally realized how unfair this statement is.
No girl genuinely believes all boys suck. Yes, I understand where girls are coming from when we say this. We are angry and hurt and don’t want anything to do with one particular boy in our life. In the vein of female empowerment, we tell ourselves we don’t need boys anyhow. And yes, we may not need boys to make us happy — but, as human beings, we do need relationships with other people to make us happy.
Yes, boys frustrate me a lot of the time — but girls can be frustrating too. At some point in our lives, we’re all frustrating and hurtful to some extent. That’s just part of human nature. Unfortunately, until now, my use of generalizing language has unfairly ostracized about half of the world’s population.
Next time I try to comfort a friend, I want to change my response, striving to protect the dignity of all the boys out there who really don’t suck at all. Rather than tearing down our enemies, it seems we ought to build each other up.
Instead of saying, “Screw him. Boys suck,” let's try, “Hey, you know what, he didn’t make the best decisions and didn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated, but you are a kind and loving person and I am confident that you’ll find a guy who sees that in you, and respects you for that.” Isn’t that what we mean to say after all?
We know not all boys suck, and for any guys out there, I promise not all girls suck either. We are all just people — running the same race, doing the best we can and sometimes making some not-so-great choices, inevitably hurting each other along the way.
I’d like to believe that we are all trying our best, learning through our fumbles and fouls just what it looks like to love each other well. Hopefully we’ll get there some day. In the meantime, I’d like to apologize to the 99.9 percent of guys out there who are generally pretty awesome.
Peyton’s column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at p.williams@cavalierdaily.com.
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