As we walk down the hall each day, we see the various flirtations and squabbles among the student body—talking, chasing, laughing, and hitting. Have you ever wondered why it is that it is socially acceptable for girls to hit guys, but as soon as a guy lays a hand on a girl, everyone goes off yelling rape and abuse? Society defends the girls by saying they were just teasing, but guys get nailed with the full force of public disapproval. This is evidence of yet another double standard.

Our society is peppered with double standards; sexually, ethnically, economically. How did these discrepancies come about? It isn’t just the hitting, either; there are two different ways our culture views individuals, depending on their sex. I believe the answer comes from our cultures’ history. For thousands of years now, since the first cave man told the first cave woman to get her butt in the kitchen where she belonged, we have had a culture of male dominance. Women have had to fight every inch of the way to where they are today. Only in the 1920s did our country finally acknowledge that we have valid opinions and give us a right to vote. As recently as 50 years ago, men and women’s roles were very clearly defined, with men in charge, making the money, calling the shots.

With such a history, who should be surprised that our society has such double vision? A double standard, according to the World Book Dictionary, is a standard applied more leniently to one group than to another, and while they are often condemned when being discussed, and in the abstract, they are also very common in individuals mindsets towards various experiences they come across in their day to day lives.

As an example, it is acceptable for high school guys to have sex, but when a girl goes out and has sex, she’s labeled whore, and slut. Why the disconnect? Why is it that our beloved mayor was publicly caught having an affair and checked into rehab for alcoholism, and he gets away with a slap on the wrist and a sly grin, but when Britney Spears tried to clean up her life, she gets never-ending grief from the press and is labeled out of control and crazy. You would think that we would be harsher on an individual who screws up while running our city than an individual who screwed up while adding pop culture. You would hope, at least, that they would receive the same amount of critisism on the subject.

However, double standards don’t only favor the guys. What about the prevalent assumption that guys pay for prom? How about the fact that some take it for granted that you are probably homosexual if you are a guy who takes ballet lessons. It’s commonly accepted for a woman not to have a job, but when a wife starts supporting her jobless husband, all hell breaks loose. As women are trickling into more androgynous roles, men are still being left in their stereotypical, football playing, clueless, baggy-pants-wearing, lazy smelly roles.

So double standards affect all of us. Yet, still, we constantly perpetuate them. We add to them by going along with the acceptable assumed roles society has put on us. Why don’t we all, pardon the cliché, break free, do what we want with no regard to the norms of society? Perhaps we are all too concerned with what thought of us, more than what we ourselves think