# @thecut on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DIXKIpdR11Q
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/29376226-thecut-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/4bb3e09c7c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-04-12T22:01:00.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Cut (@thecut) — https://gondola.cc/thecut

## Caption

To hear MAGA people tell it, the thought police have been on patrol for the past eight years, rooting out unwoke behavior. But try telling that to anyone who spends time around teenage boys and you’ll be corrected. Whether or not they follow manosphere influencers, preteen- and teen-boy culture is steeped in the language of casual discrimination; they compulsively call one another “gay” and use the r-slur. Boys from progressive families, boys who attend schools with robust cultures of inclusivity — you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d time-traveled back to the mid-’90s, hearing them talk. The F-slur, while still taboo, is nonchalantly thrown around.

For parents who remember just a few decades ago when homophobia and ableism were defining features of mainstream culture, this comes as a painful shock. Didn’t we leave this stuff behind? 

But it’s ironic how many of us who are very comfortable rejecting binaries in other areas of social life seem to have trouble letting go of them when it comes to assessing the behavior of teens. Are they tender sweethearts, or are they crueler than ever? When you talk to teens themselves, the picture quickly blurs. God love ’em — they really do defy everything, including characterization. For the #Brooding column, kjezermo spoke to a group of ninth-grade public-school boys, all of whom identify as straight, about how they speak to one another and why. Find out what they said at the link in bio.

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## Tags

brooding

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