Double standard

The role that the gender of someone plays in determining people's moral, social, political, and legal responses to them has been long-debated. Some believe that differences in the way men and women are perceived and treated is a function of social norms, thus indicating a double standard. One claim is that a double standard exists in society's judgment of women's and men's sexual conduct. Research has found that casual sexual activity is regarded as more acceptable for men than for women.[5] According to some, double standards between men and women can potentially exist with regards to dating, cohabitation, virginity, marriage/remarriage, sexual abuse/assault/harassment, domestic violence, and singleness.

Other research contends that women are held to stricter standards of competency than men, as shown in studies involving the completion of perceptual tasks.[6]

A double standard may arise if two or more groups who have equal legal rights are given different degrees of legal protection or representation. Such double standards are seen as unjustified because they violate a common maxim of modern legal jurisprudence - that all parties should stand equal before the law. Where judges are expected to be impartial, they must apply the same standards to all people regardless of their own subjective biases or favoritism based on social class, rank, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or other distinctions.

A double standard arises in politics when the treatment of the same political matters between two or more parties (such as the response to a public crisis or the allocation of funding) is handled differently. This could occur because of the nature of political relationships between those tasked with these matters, the degree of reward or power that stands to be gained/lost, or the personal biases/prejudices of politicians.

Double standard policies can include situations when a country's or commentator's assessment of the same phenomenon, process or event in international relations depends on their relationship with or attitude to the parties involved. The following phrase became an example of such double standards: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter",[7] entered into use by the British writer Gerald Seymour in his work Harry's Game in 1975.

Double standards exist when people are preferred or rejected on the basis of their ethnicity in situations in which ethnicity is not a relevant or justifiable factor for discrimination (as might be the case for a cultural performance or ethnic ceremony).

The intentional efforts of some people to counteract racism and ethnic double standards can sometimes be interpreted by others as actually perpetuating racism and double standards among ethnic groups. Writing for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher quotes the account published in Quillette by Coleman Hughes, a black student at Columbia University, who said was given an opportunity to play in a backup band for Grammy Award-winning pop artist Rihanna at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards Show. According to Hughes, several of his friends were also invited; however, one of them was fired and replaced because, according to Hughes, his white Hispanic background did not suit the all-black aesthetic that Rihanna's team had chosen for her show. The team had decided that all performers on stage were to be black, aside from Rihanna's regular guitar player.[8] Hughes was uncertain about whether he believed this action was unethical, given that the show was racially themed to begin with. He observed what he believed to be a double standard in the entertainment industry, saying, "if a black musician had been fired in order to achieve an all-white aesthetic — it would have made front page headlines. It would have been seen as an unambiguous moral infraction."[8] Dreher argues that Hughes's observations highlight the difficulty in distinguishing between the exclusion of one ethnic group in order to celebrate another, and the exclusion of an ethnic group as the exercise of racism or a double standard. Dreher also discussed another incident, in which New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, who is Jewish, was heavily criticized for tweeting, "Immigrants: They get the job done," in a positive reference to Mirai Nagasu, a Japanese-American Olympic ice skater, who Weiss was trying to honor.[8] The public debate about ethnicity and double standards remains controversial and, by all appearances, will continue to be a subject of public debate.