Spare a kind thought for the polite, horny teen boy
The horny teen boy is a very flexible trope in fiction. He can basically be whatever you want him to be.
He can be comedy!
He can be sexy, but, like, in the dangerous, unavailable way.
And, of course, he can just be dangerous.
But outside of Michael Cera movies circa 2009, rarely are we shown the polite, horny teen boy. He’s not much fun to watch because he doesn’t have much agency over his own life. He’s stuck in his head and passivity doesn’t make good screenwriting. But he very much exists, so let’s try to help him.
Who is the polite, horny teen boy?
The polite, horny teen boy is the one who truly, genuinely learned and internalized lessons about gender equality and care for the vulnerable and the siblinghood of mankind.
Over the years, I’ve learned that women are bombarded with attention from men who didn’t learn those lessons, who are impolite and unkind and push boundaries.
I’ve also learned that, by god, there are many many boys and men for whom those things are so unthinkable that they will too-actively manage their own selves to avoid even the possibility of coming across like The Other Guys.
That second group — the polite, horny teen boy — still grows fire in the loins during adolescence. Absent the advice of a trusted male friend or family member (all the advice on the internet is bad, 100% of it, read the instruction manual to your air fryer instead) they will experience gender roles in a very specific way as polite, horny teen boys.
“Be confident!”
Politeness and confidence intersect at an odd angle.
Politeness, done right, is performance of civility that means, but doesn’t really mean, that the person you’re interacting with is doing you a favor. You’re polite to the checker at Aldi, but you know damn well she’ll continue to ring up your Oaty-Os if you clam up.
Confidence, done right, is a performance of incivility that nods at one’s own charm and persuasion skills, but carries with it the option to say no. Winking and saying “you should let me buy you dinner” to a girl you met ten minutes ago is confident; she still has every option to say no, but it’s framed to imply that she’s definitely going to say yes.
(there is an argument to be made that I just described charisma, which, yes. They’re similar but not identical concepts. Confidence can mean a great many ways of acting and I picked one to serve my argument; you are entitled to sue me for it.)
It’s almost trope status that chicks dig confidence, and that sits uneasily on the polite, horny teen boy. How does he perform both politeness and confidence at the same time? This is a very narrow skill that a given semi-charming adult man can muster, but communicating it’s safe to reject me, but you really shouldn’t, I am awesome as fuck is a very new highwire act to the polite teen boy. He might just opt not to shoot his shot and instead watch his peers succeed while not even bothering with politeness.
They don’t grow confidence for polite, horny teen boys on trees
I write this often so I won’t belabor the point but: literally everyone on Earth hates teen boys, except teen boys themselves. Girls your own age call you immature to your face. Adult women do not disguise their contempt for you. Teachers have a tendency to treat you like a wild, smelly animal. Adult men mostly don’t have the patience for your energy levels.
It would be different if there were comprehensive programs for adolescent boys explaining how, yes, society is going to treat you differently as you age into a man, and yes, sometimes that hurts, even though you did nothing wrong personally.
But those don’t really exist, and to the polite, horny teen boy, who’s maybe a little sensitive? The transmogrification from cute kid to scary teen isn’t a confidence boost, it’s an albatross.
The rules are gendered and funky
(disclaimer: if you never enforced any of these rules, congratulations! I am not talking about you!)
The polite teen boy thrives in defined systems. This is why politeness is correlated with academic success; everyone’s quite clear on the process to get into Brandeis.
(no, I don’t have data for that claim and shan’t find any)
The girls you might be into were braised in the gendered sauce as you were, and the rules are both unstated and very clearly existent. Boys cannot be passive; they initiate confidently; they are tall but, like, normal-tall; they are sweet and kind but can still protect you from The Other Boys. Bonus points for having a car!
Not only are you, the polite, horny teen boy, intended to know these rules, you are the one who leads that dance. If you are a polite, horny teen boy, you know, deep down, that you cannot be passive. Is it polite to ask out the girl in Shop? What about your friend’s friend who you only met once? What if you have no money for dates? Why are you in the drivers’ seat here? Is it impolite to escalate a makeout session? How scrupulous must you be if you don’t want to come off as one of Those Other Guys?
The internet is terrible for this and it is not going away, so
Girls and women are absolutely entitled to discuss their experiences, full stop.
The polite, horny teen boy is on social media, because we are all disgusting online zombies in 2023, and he will come across some of those discussions. And he will internalize them.
Girls and women often don’t sanitize those experiences, and in the context of venting, will have “ideas” about dating and sex and relationships that are functionally unworkable. And in the context of venting, hot takes tend to rise to the top.
No one is doing anything wrong in this scenario, but the outcomes for the polite teen boy reading those takes aren’t great, because a healthy proportion of them are “men, go the fuck away and leave women alone”-adjacent. If he’s a polite, horny teen boy, well, that’s as close to fuck off as you’re gonna come. Why would he be one of Those Other Guys chasing skirts and tail when girls complain about them publicly?
Get to yes-and-how, not no-and-don’t
I have seen many questions get asked about dating and sex and relationships. In many places, many times.
If it’s a place frequented by shitty people who don’t mind (or even enjoy!) harming women, the advice freely given is actionable, helpful, and effective, if by “effective” we mean the polite, horny teen boy stops being polite and starts getting ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶ harass-y.
If it’s a place with good people and a commitment to being better, the advice tends to come in a couple flavors:
1: social justice and feminism are not intended to help guys get their dicks wet
2: do not harass or hit on women in [RNG output of every social space on Earth except a literal speed dating scenario]
3: the very first thing you need to do is become a completely self-actualized person, so get to work kid
Aha, you say! That means there’s an opening here! These polite, horny teen boys need resources, so let’s provide them.
And yes, there is a need! There’s only one problem: you will get pilloried if you do it wrong. For reasons I don’t think I need to explain, women are quite sensitive to anything that even smells like “one simple trick to convince your local barista to crave your polite, horny teen boy dick!”
I talked about rules earlier, and the honest answer to life, the universe, and everything in this scenario is that life doesn’t have a rulebook. The polite, horny teen boy is going to need to make mistakes before he gets it right, and (again, for extremely obvious reasons) lots of the advice given to him is how not to make mistakes around girls, not how to do any given helpful thing.
I have a few very gentle ideas before I violently end this piece because conclusions suck to write.
a) please believe that these guys exist and need better guidance. The polite, horny teen boy is deeply embarrassed at himself and won’t ask for help, so he’s often invisible.
b) dating is gendered. Boys and girls, and the men and women they turn into, experience sex and relationships very differently. The polite, horny teen boy gets a very specific ass end of the deal. Allow him this grace.
c) try to bias these kids towards healthy, age-appropriate, safe action. Give him as many dos as possible and as few don’ts as you can muster.
The conclusion to this article is a picture of young Liam Neeson.
