Are Boys Any Less Fragile?

Lux Alptraum highlights a double standard:

I think that, by worrying about young women while assuming that–no matter what trouble they get up to–-boys will, in the end, be all right, we are doing boys a tremendous disservice. To wit: like Miranda Cosgrove, Angus T. Jones (of "Two and a Half Men" fame) turns eighteen this year. Unlike Miranda Cosgrove, he hasn't spent the decade sheltered in the bosom of Disney–he's spent it at the side of a womanizing, drug abusing, violent, emotionally disturbed man (yes, that would be Charlie Sheen).

Given the two situations, I'm vastly more concerned about the long term mental wellness of Jones–yet I've yet to see any columnists agonizing about his future, or how he'll successfully navigate to adulthood given the trauma of being exposed to someone so unhinged at such a young, impressionable age. Are boys really as resilient as we give them credit for–-or are we just fundamentally less concerned when they do drugs, go to rehab, shoplift, abuse women, and have sex (or any of the number of activities that cause us to fear for the futures of young women)? And, regardless of what the answer to that question is: why is it so?

Alyssa Rosenberg searches for the root of this bias.