Boys Suppress and Girls Prepare

From a young age, girls are taught how to stay safe around men. Boys are rarely taught how not to be dangerous.

Most girls grow up with rules. Don’t walk alone at night. Text when you get home. Cover your drink. Don’t lead him on. Share your location. Be polite, but not too friendly. Be friendly, but not too cold. We learn early that our safety depends on managing male behavior. What we don’t often talk about is why that burden falls on us in the first place.

Patriarchy does not just limit women. It also shapes boys in ways that are emotionally restrictive. A lot of boys grow up hearing things like “man up” or “boys do not cry.” Vulnerability is treated like weakness. Instead of learning how to talk through sadness, rejection, or insecurity, many boys are taught to push those feelings down. Anger becomes one of the only emotions that feels acceptable. But emotions do not disappear just because they are ignored. They build up.

We can see this idea play out in the Netflix series Adolescence, which follows the investigation of a thirteen year old boy accused of killing a classmate. The show looks at online radicalization, toxic masculinity, and the pressure boys feel to prove themselves. What stood out to me is that the boy is not shown as some obvious monster. He is portrayed as a kid shaped by isolation, internet spaces, and emotional neglect. The series makes you think about how someone that young ends up in that place.

Screenshot from Netflix’s Adolescence trailer via YouTube

That question is important. But so is another one. Why are girls expected to live in fear of becoming the outcome of that process?

When boys and young men commit violence, public conversations often focus on their background. We hear about their struggles, their loneliness, their potential, and the tragedy of their future being lost. These conversations can be necessary. However, they often center understanding the perpetrator rather than centering the people harmed. We ask what happened to him. We rarely ask why girls and women must organize their lives around avoiding harm.

This pattern shows up beyond television. Women are expected to perform emotional labor in relationships. We are told to be patient with emotionally unavailable partners. We are encouraged to communicate better, to reassure more, to be understanding when a man struggles with anger or insecurity. When harm happens, questions frequently shift toward what she could have done differently. Was she too distant? Too independent? Too trusting?

I want to be clear that this does not mean men are inherently violent or incapable of growth. The issue is not that boys feel pain. Everyone feels pain. The issue is how that pain is shaped by a system that ties masculinity to control, dominance, and entitlement. If boys are not taught how to handle rejection in healthy ways, rejection can feel humiliating instead of normal. If vulnerability is discouraged, resentment can replace reflection.

Meanwhile, girls are taught survival strategies from childhood. We learn how to carry keys between our fingers. We learn how to scan parking lots. We learn how to calculate risk without even realizing we are doing it. Rarely are boys taught how to sit with uncomfortable emotions without turning them outward.

If we want safer communities, we cannot focus only on teaching girls how to be careful. Girls are already careful. We need to examine how boys are socialized, how emotional suppression is normalized, and how online spaces amplify resentment toward women. We need to treat emotional literacy as prevention rather than an afterthought.

When boys are hurt, they deserve support and guidance. But that support should never come at the expense of women’s safety. Maybe the real shift starts earlier than we think. Not by giving girls more rules, but by giving boys better tools.

Girls should not have to design their lives around male unpredictability. Women should not have to carry fear as a normal part of existing in public spaces. And boys deserve better models of masculinity than silence and rage.

If we want real change, we cannot just teach girls how to stay safe. We have to teach boys how to be safe.