Numbers

Double Standards

A "double standard" is when someone states that they have only a single guiding principle, but, in reality, they apply it in different ways to different people.  This results in permitting different outcomes or behavior, and therefore the person having more than one principle.

How It's Used

“In follow-up interviews in countries surveyed about the results, Muslims attributed the poor relations with the West to a variety of causes. But many pointed to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as the main cause and accused the West of double standards on terrorism. ‘Whenever the Israelis strike the Palestinians, the international community and the U.N. turn a blind eye or keep quiet,’ said Saleh Bayeri, a politician and Muslim community leader in Jos, Nigeria. ‘But when the Palestinians launch a counterattack, it is condemned by America, the U.K. and other friends of Israel as a terror attack.’”

“Given all of the slut-posturing, one may be inclined to think that society’s attitudes about women and promiscuity have changed. But it’s not entirely so, say authors who have studied popular culture. An entrenched sexual double standard is not easily uprooted. A promiscuous single man is lauded for being a player or a stud, but a woman who sleeps around rarely is.”

“He needs to challenge the uneven human rights performance of allies like Colombia and Guatemala. Washington’s double standard on human rights undercuts its credibility when pointing to Chávez’s intimidation and prosecution of critics.”

“To what was then the burning question of the 'double standard'—was a woman allowed to pursue men on the same hedonistic terms that men had traditionally been allowed to pursue women?—Shearer responded maybe yes, probably no. Her characters throw themselves into casual relationships (in 'The Divorcée' she sleeps with a foppish Robert Montgomery after discovering that her husband, the stolid Chester Morris, has been unfaithful), but soon find, as the heavy hand of MGM respectability presses down upon them, that such dalliances are meaningless without love, marriage and the promise of a family.”

“After all, there's a massive double standard in how we think about the age of consent. When an older man courts a teenage girl, it's predatory and sleazy; but when it's a teenage boy receiving advances, gay or straight, we have trouble believing he's being wronged. (Indeed, Breedlove was aggressively chasing Adams; he even has a dog named Lolita.) Critics see the movie 'The Reader,' wherein a 36-year-old Kate Winslet beds a 15-year-old boy, and they speak of a 'tender sexual awakening,' as every straight man in the theater (including me) thinks, 'I would have sold my siblings into bonded labor to sleep with Kate Winslet when I was 15, you little bastard.' Portray a 36-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl, though, and you're in…well, Lolita territory—no mercy there.”

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