An interesting recent study has shown that three-quarters of college students judge men and women’s sex lives with complete equality. The breakdown is as follows:
- 48% egalitarian conservatives who lose equal respect for men and women they believe are “sleeping around.”
- 27% egalitarian libertarians who don’t lose respect for people for sleeping around.
- 12% traditional double standard holders who lose respect for women but not men who sleep around.
- 13% reverse double standard holders who lose respect for men but not women who sleep around.
Do you notice that last bit? More college students (not a whole lot more, but more) believe in the reverse double standard than the double standard. The hell?
Of course, this is just of college students, with the usual caveats that apply. People who are older or not able to attend college may be more likely to believe in the double standard (of course, they may also be more likely to believe in the reverse double standard, not slut-shaming people, slut-shaming everyone equally, etc.). But nevertheless this suggests that as my generation takes over, one kind of misogyny that has lasted too fucking long may finally get the stake in its nasty sexist heart. Victory against the patriarchy! Fuck you, assholes, we’re winning.
Err, kind of.
Even though it is not sexist to judge everyone equally based on their sex lives, it is still sex-negative to criticize people for being ‘sluts.’ (Or for being virgins. Other people’s sex lives are none of your business, is my point.) I think that sex-positivity may be, and perhaps already is, evolving from criticizing the double standard where men can be studs but women are sluts into criticizing the idea that you should slut-shame people at all, regardless of their gender. (While, of course, keeping a firm commitment to intersectionality, to fighting rape culture, and to the idea that whether celibate or promiscuous anyone’s sex life is a good sex life, as long as it’s consensual, honest, and emotionally and physically healthy.) Because, seriously, the new consensus that it’s bad to have too many sexual partners? That shit sucks, and has the potential to suck almost as hard as the traditional double standard.
It is okay to have lots of sexual partners. It is okay not to have any sexual partners. How many sexual partners you have has no bearing on your worth as a person. Until that’s accepted, sex-positivity still has work to do… even if the new shitty consensus is a less sexist one.
Ozy, nothing about this study says that students are discarding the double standard. The study only asks what students say they think of a man or woman who sleeps with “lots of people”, whatever that means. It doesn’t tell us whether the respondents define “lots of people” the same way for men as for women. It also doesn’t tell us how students judge men and women who have a number of partner short of “lots”. If a student thinks “lots” means 3+ for women but 10+ for men, that’s still a double standard, but they’d be defined as “egalitarian” by… Read more »
I have zero interest in what others do sexually. Much less judgement about it.
Hank: I wish I could say I 100% agree but 1% of me gets concerned when I know people who sleep around and are dishonest and they’re trying to get involved with someone I know who wants something more serious. Simply because of the potential for hurt involved. Then I get a bit judgy because I feel obligated to speak to one of them about the situation.
Well, I think we can separate a person’s integrity from their sexuality. If someone is a dishonest lover, than passing judgement on that is completely consistent.
I personally judge both women and men for “sleeping around” if I have reason to believe that they lied or mislead the other person to get them to agree to sleep with them. Most people I know who “sleep around” (in these cases 6 or more different people a month) lied to the person they were seeing or led them to believe that there was some kind of exclusiveness. I don’t judge people who are honest with their partners about what they want in a relationship (or lack of) but I think it’s unfair to say that all these disapproving… Read more »
12% traditional double standard holders who lose respect for women but not men who sleep around. 13% reverse double standard holders who lose respect for men but not women who sleep around. I’m curious as to why one is considered a “traditional” double standard while the other is the “reverse” double standard? I’m wondering if it really is the case that people have been losing respect for women that sleep around since humanity first learned how to put Tab A into Slot B and but people just started losing respect for men that sleep around so in the year or… Read more »
Because everyone for the longest time believed in the “slut/stud” standard. Indeed people still do despite the fact its not real.
That said, the belief it exists still messes with people, but you can dispel that myth with facts.
The problem Lamech is that so called stud simultaneously exists as a “beast” (in relation to Ozy’s knight/beast dichotomy).
I’m wondering how much respect people actually have for men if they are supposedly congratulated on having sex while at the same time being assumed to want sex at every waking moment.
Do you notice that last bit? More college students (not a whole lot more, but more) believe in the reverse double standard than the double standard. I would be really shocked if that 1% (really <1.5%) of students was deemed statistically significant in the study and not, say, chance. I'd say, looking at these numbers "a roughly equal number believe in the double standard as the reverse" since it's likely if you polled the same demographic again, you could get the extra percentage point moved to the other category or have them come out dead even and not interpret that… Read more »
I suspect that Social desirability bias may be involved.
I guess one big reason for the reverse double standard would be the assumption that the non-reverse double standard is still going strong: “I think less of men who have many sex partners because they only are able to get away with that because of the stud/slut double standard!”
The reverse double standard is kind of interesting. I guess I am cognitively biased toward it, even though I know it’s wrong. I guess one can make reasonable-sounding arguments for it, though: 1(from fundamental beliefs): It is wrong to criticize women for their sexual behavior, because that would be Patriarchal and Bad. Male sexuality is dangerous, either in theory or probabilistically in practice. Therefore, it is wrong for a man to sleep around, but not for women. 2 (from a pseudo-utilitarian perspective): All instances of initiating sexual contact carry a cost if it is unwanted, in that the other person… Read more »
You’re joking, right? There’s nothing reasonable about it. It’s as bullshit as the double standard the other way around and anyone who subscribes to it should be pilloried as much as the people who believe the inverse. People wonder why men have a problem with feminism and it is stuff like this. It is the “well, the double standard when it negatively affects women is horrible, bad, and you’re a terrible person, but if it affects men negatively there are tons of legitimate justifications for it.” It’s like saying it isn’t racist to hate white people, because, you know, white… Read more »
But it ISN’T racist to hate white people. Because every system in place — education, criminal justice, politics — is set up to favor white people. You can’t be racist against white people except by the barest bones dictionary definition because if you’re racist against white people, you’re exerting power from underneath all these power structures. Pretty different from white people deserve it. Or men deserve it. Not saying the original comment was entirely justified, but “This would make people angry, therefore never say it.” sounds worse to me. There’s wrong, there’s deliberately inflammatory, and there’s musings you dislike, and… Read more »
No. It is racist to hate white people. Hating any person or group based on their skin colour, is racist.
“It’s like saying it isn’t racist to hate white people, because, you know, white people deserve it.” I’m more thinking like “Some things that would be racist against one person would not be racist against another” and “Some double standards may be justified because even if they are unfair, they are better than all alternatives”. For example, there is a racist (and apparently untrue) stereotype that black people disproportionately like watermelon. Some statements about watermelon could be perfectly fine to a white person but hurtful to a black person, because only one is affected by that stereotype. And regarding double… Read more »
That’s a terrible comparison, and this double standard is NOT better than the other one. Why, exactly, is it better to have a double standard that hurts men vs one that hurts women? Your assertions are offensive and patently absurd.
The opinion that the reverse double standard is acceptable is itself reactionary. It’s also patriarchal and conservative (“men are beasts” is a patriarchal and conservative notion, of course). I agree more women should initiate and less men feel forced to. But you kinda have to do the former for the latter to happen. Men who initiate are filling a void (no one initiates with them, if they don’t, nothing happens ever). Fill the void with women, and there will be less compulsion to initiate on men. I’m not proposing this solely as a measure to diminish the harm men initiating… Read more »