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Gender Double Standards Essay

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As one looks through society, one starts to see many cracks and loopholes where one set of standards does not apply the same way for men as it does to women, and vice versa. One of the main and most discussed double standards when it comes to gender is the fact that men are praised for being promiscuous, while women are put down and called names. This double standard goes way back in the societal memory. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that these gender differences have resulted from males’ and females’ different reproductive capacities. A woman can go have sex with a man, but she then will be limited to carrying his baby for those nine months. In the meantime, the man can go out and have sex with many women, and have all of …show more content…

In ancient Israel, the husband could issue a divorce, but the wife could not, and it was very much the same throughout much of England’s history (Magnus Hirshfeld Archive for Sexology). What is even stranger is that women fully enforce this sexual double standard. Over 99% of woman agree that women enjoy sex as much as men do, yet when asked to describe a woman who has had many sexual partners, over 59% percent of women used words that fell under the negatively connotative ‘Promiscuous’ category, using words like “slut,” “cheap,” “loose,” “whore,” “easy,” and “dirty.” Twelve percent of women even used words that would suggest that sexually liberal woman are psychologically damaged, using words like “insecure,” “lonely,” “desperate,” “needy,” and ‘unfulfilled.” Only 8% of women tagged a sexually liberal woman in the more positive category of “sexually focused,” the respondents feeling that “these women were uncommitted and focused on sex rather than the relationship” (Milhausen and Herold). In addition, “Women were more likely to discourage a female friend from dating a highly experienced male that a male friend from dating a highly experienced female” (Milhausen and Herold). This fact furthers the case for women’s involvement in maintaining the double standard. In a one study researchers found that “Women will endorse a sexual double standard in which women are judged more

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