Here & there: Hey Harvey Weinstein, this is how real boys will be boys

October 14, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — No more “boys will be boys.” Harvey Weinstein and Roger Allies, among others, have ruined that phrase.

Gross. Lecherous. Unconscionable. Those are the phrases that really come to mind when I think of those two. And the others like them.

Men in power who use that power to exploit others who are without it and vulnerable are not real men. They’re not real boys.

I know real boys. I’m raising three of them.

And when we talk about “boys will be boys,” I think of boys building mud castles at the park and making truck sounds while they play with their French toast sticks and needing a break to toss the football in the front yard between doing their math homework and their piano practice.

I think of boys who laugh at Captain Underpants and boys who make swords out of – everything.

I also think about the refugee boy with a homemade bow and arrow standing in the middle of a field pointing his wares up at an empty sky at the Mihatovici refugee camp for Srebrenica survivors.

The image was part of a traveling photography exhibit about several recent world conflicts from the Eastern Europe and Africa. It was housed temporarily in a small, upstairs gallery up a long, narrow alley off a main square in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and advertised by only a small sign hanging from the entrance.

There were hundreds of compelling photographs in the exhibit: intimate headshots of deeply-lined faces and eyes that seemed to have seen it all; dead bodies left like forgotten papers on the street, shoes askew; entire neighborhoods of rubbled buildings.

It was all tragic. And heartbreaking. And powerful.

But the image I keep thinking about is that little boy with his wooden bow, juxtaposed with the expanse of the grey sky.

I imagine this little boy, a little boy housed in a refugee camp, was fighting innumerable physical and emotional obstacles then. His image now conveys that – and it also makes me think about how, among it all, he was still a little boy. Playing with a bow and arrow. He was a boy being a boy. And that is a beautiful thing. A hopeful thing, even.

So let’s not let the Harvey Weinsteins of the world redefine what it means to be a boy, or a man. Let us choose to cultivate the notion of “boys being boys” in its truest and purest sense: lovely, thoughtful, funny, silly and physical creatures who, while liking to play with sticks and mud and bows and arrows, are also respectful, sensitive and decent human beings. No, good human beings.

Yes, boys will be boys, indeed. Let’s make it a compliment. Let’s make it an aspiration. Let’s redefine it entirely.

Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News, any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News.

Email: katdayton@gmail.com | news@stgnews.com

Twitter: @STGnews