Ask any little boy what his friends call him when he’s not behaving in a way that’s acceptable for boys and he’ll tell you that they call him a girl. Have you ever thought about the implications of this? That the worst thing you can call a boy is a girl?

The harshest insult boys hurl at each other is to say they’re acting like a girl. When they grow into men they say, “stop acting like a little bitch!”

What does it say to girls that the worst thing you can call a boy is exactly what you are? How does it affect us as women to hear men deride each other by accusing them of being like us?

It doesn’t go both ways. Women love to brag that they were tomboys when they were young, which usually means they were athletic and eschewed girly things. We say this with pride because it’s looked at with a bit of admiration. Like, you were cool when you were little because you acted like a boy.

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When I was a teenager we all hung around at a large park in our neighborhood. We’d meet there on summer evenings to find out what the plans for that night were, play softball or volleyball, drink beer, smoke cigarettes and weed, blast our music and just be together.

Lately I’ve been thinking about those long ago summer nights, and remembering the girl in the bushes.

Every once in awhile when we were hanging out on one of these nights, there would be a line of boys in front of the bushes by the tennis courts. We’d all laugh and say to each other ‘she’s in the bushes again.’

What that meant was that a certain girl from the neighborhood was crouched in the bushes on her knees and the guys were all in line waiting their turn with her.

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