Boys will be boys

An American philosophy intended and used to justify all sorts of antisocial behavior which adolescent human males engage in. "Boys will be boys" has been used by public school administrators and/or members of the mainstream American public to justify and/or downplay such things as:

• Assault on other students.
• Assault resulting in serious bodily injury to other students.
• Getting girls half-stoned/drunk and having sex with them.
• Unprotected teenage sex with multiple partners.
• I heard it once used to downplay a gang rape.
• Harassment of other students.

In general, "boys will be boys" is a braindead philosophy some Americans came up with. Note that while breaking the back of your fellow classmates is not even given a slap on the wrist, taking a swing at a school teacher or official gets the youth charged with such lovely crimes as assault on a civil servant.

There is, of course, a much more worrying interpretation of the phrase boys will be boys:

I (or someone I love/honour/cherish) did that (or something very like it) when I I (they) were young; therefore it can't be that bad.

This is essentially cultural inertia at work. An older generation are bending the rules because the rules were different (or appear to be different) when they were that age. The real problem is when certain portions of the younger generation take on the mantle of the bent rules rather than the `real' rules.