When it comes to sexual expression, it is nothing new to anyone in the contemporary American society that men and women have unfair and unequal standards. According to the sexual double standard, if women have sex more frequently or with more partners than society deems appropriate, or at an age society deems too young, she is stigmatized, the big scarlet S for slut pinned right on her collar. However, when men engage in similar activities, they are praised as “studs”. Even more, according to Social Psychology Quarterly, “greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys’ peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls’ peer acceptance,” leading to the common practice we call “slut shaming”.

Slut shaming is defined as the act of criticizing a woman for her real or presumed sexual activity, or for behaving in ways that someone thinks are associated with her real or presumed sexual activity. Even the word “slut” is typically only associated with women, and is defined by Oxford Dictionary, as “a woman who has many casual sex partners,” yet there is no male equivalent. The days of holding a woman’s virginity as sacred as a reflection of character are dated, and only one person should set that standard, and that is the woman whose body seems to be such a topic for discussion.

An example I can draw from my own experiences is a scandal that occurred in my high school. During my senior year, a group of boys collected nude pictures of girls that either they personally or their friends had received at some point over the last few years. After they collected hundreds of pictures from about forty different girls, they organized them in a DropBox and sent the link around the school, where it spread like wildfire until the majority of the three thousand people in my high school had either seen it or heard about it. After a few weeks, teachers were finding out, and eventually the police became involved, and it was covered on 6abc news.

Now despite the fact that these girls only intended to share these private photos with one person, who were more often than not their boyfriends, there was still an overwhelming population of students at our school that supported the claim, “it’s the girls’ fault because they were slutting around,” failing to recognize that these boys not only broke the law, but likely traumatized so many girls and damaged their self-esteem and reputations by taking their private lives and publicizing them.

Even as I have come to college, I have heard boys and girls alike refer to sexually active girls as “sluts”, but they always fail to react to the fact that boys who demonstrate the same behavior, if not more commonly, receive no penalty, only social reward.

In order to change this damaging practice, we must take it upon ourselves to remember that each person is entitled to his or her own private and public life, and as long as they are safe and comfortable, we do not get to stigmatize someone for what makes them happy. We must recognize when the double standard is being perpetuated, and we must speak out against it.