I can imagine you are all quite familiar with the idea that men can sleep around, but it is looked down upon for women to do the same. How has our society constructed such an absurd idea and from where does it stem?
The double standard finds some of its roots in the way we are raised. Traditionally, women experience more pressure to wait to have sex until marriage, than men do. When talking about sex with their children, parents tend to emphasize abstaining and virginity being sacred with their daughters, whereas their sons learn more about how to protect themselves and use contraceptives. Even from childhood, the double standard is engrained in the minds of young people only to be perpetuated.
“My parents knew I was having sex. I was just told to protect myself. My dad even gave me condoms. If they didn’t care about it in high school, of course they won’t care about it in college. I never felt like having sex was wrong,” says a male UAB student when asked how he was raised to view sex.
A female UAB student tells a completely different story. She states, “I always felt like I had to be the good girl. I never told my parents about anything sex-related, even just feelings I would have. Although they never would flat out say it, I just knew it’d be wrong, somehow, if I was having sex.”
Early on, women are expected to meet higher standards and to have less (if any at all) sexual partners than males. Males are less likely to be punished for having sex at younger ages than women, implying that it is more acceptable for males to start having sex earlier. When it comes to high school and even college, attitudes towards sex contrast greatly.
As men and women get older, the double standard is propagated by peers more than the parents. Men are often encouraged by their friends to have sex; it is even glorified for men to have multiple sexual partners. Women are pressured to have sex, as well, but are also met with judgment and negativity for expressing their sexuality.
Isn’t this the basis for the double standard? We have been raised to think that women should be “pure” and should remain virgins until marriage or until they find the “right one.” We have also been raised to automatically assume that men will have sex, regardless, and that we shouldn’t be concerned with when they start, or with how many sexual partners they've had. But this double standard is neither fair, nor logical.
“It’s irritating, really,” says a recent JSU graduate when asked about his sentiments on the topic. “I’ve heard guys talk about how they want to marry a virgin, a pure woman, but they sleep around freely. How can you expect something of someone that you yourself can’t offer?”
Another UAB student voices her frustrations with the double standard. “Men are so concerned with how many people women have slept with. They’re so ready to set requirements for us. I’ve talked to guys before who have said they could never date a woman who has slept with more than three people, but they’ve been with way more than that. What if women had that same mindset? How many guys would we be ‘cutting out’ because they didn’t meet our requirements?”
Isn’t it a bit silly, if we think about it? How can we demand standards that we ourselves couldn’t meet? How can we project a set of unspoken rules onto one gender and not the other? It all starts at an early age, so early that we hardly think about it. We must make conscious efforts to deconstruct these double standards and set equal expectations for both genders. Otherwise, the double standard will continue to infect more generations to come.
