Lately I've seen a trend on social media that whenever a woman is describing a negative encounter she had with a man the comments will inevitably be flooded with people saying "that was a boy not a man" "real men don't do these types of things"

To me this seems dishonest because if it was indeed a fully adult male who said or did these things then why is he suddenly a boy. It feels like they're shirking responsibility. By saying it was a boy it almost seems like they're distancing themselves from it, "he was a boy, I am a man".

But it is men who hurt, men who harass, men who assault. I don't fully know what point I'm trying to make or what I'm really trying to get at but it just irks me. Because all the men that harassed me, that hurt me, that assaulted me, they knew what they were doing. They were adults choosing to cause me pain.

And when men say "he was a boy not a man" it almost feels like it doesn't matter what he did only that he was "not one of them". It feels like another idiotic way of saying "not all men".

Anyway what are your thoughts on this?