Recently, I overheard a girl talking about her guy friend and how he was a "slut." Her guy friend walking with her replied, "You can't say that." Why? "Guys can't be sluts," he reasoned. Huh?

This infamous double standard is everywhere, and while America has come a long way in many aspects, sexual stigmas persist. I wonder, what do we really mean when we call someone a slut and who can we apply the term to?

Generally, the term slut is applied by men to women they find rather promiscuous, however, there is a central problem to negatively stigmatizing women for their promiscuous behavior. Truth is, if girls are being promiscuous, there is someone with whom they are being promiscuous. I’m not saying that guys who want to commit are nonexistent, but I have found that the majority of college aged men are looking for casual flings and furthering their sexual experience. So, why is it that they find themselves justified in calling a girl a slut for doing what they want?  And, why do some find it unacceptable to apply the same term to guys themselves?

If you Google "slut," you’ll get “a woman who has many casual sexual partners,” and if you use Urban Dictionar,y you’ll get “a woman with the morals of a man.” Now, Google what's the corresponding term for a man? You’ll get answers like “player” or “womanizer,” but none of these words criticize him for sleeping around. Rather, they criticize the manner in which he sleeps around. Taking these two sets of definitions, I’d like to propose that maybe what makes someone a slut is the intent and behavior backing the action.

When someone sleeps with someone else, one of two mindsets is held: (1) what they are about to do it completely casual, and they don’t expect anything to come from it, or (2) they have some sort of interest in the other person and are interested in seeing where their relationship will go. It’s when we sleep with someone knowing that we want nothing else from them, the first of these two mindsets, that we make a decision that can be called “slutty.” 

This idea contrasts with the negative connotation that society has placed upon the number of sexual partners one has. Sleeping with someone doesn’t change who you are as a person. It doesn't make you any dumber or any smarter, any less caring, humorous, beautiful, etc. – absolutely nothing changes about your character. It is the character and behavior of a person that determines whether or not they are a slut, not a meaningless number of sexual partners. If it takes someone ten honest mistakes to find Mr. or Mrs. Right, they are no sluttier than someone who found that special someone after the first go at it.

Women are not innocent of implicating double-standards in the dating world. Often, we believe that only men can use someone for sex or play the field casually. In reality, gender doesn’t affect one’s ability to do these things. The worst double standard, to which both men and women are guilty of, is believing that we should be treated in one way and not treating others in the same. If you expect your partner to act a certain way or treat you a certain way, then you need to do the same.

The world is full of double standards and, honestly, we’ll probably never escape them entirely. This, however, doesn’t rid us of our duty to steer society in the right direction. Initiative is how change happens. By treating each other equally and understanding the true meaning of the slanderous words we throw around, we can start to make a difference.