Why are men praised while women are shamed?
Arriving at college is exciting and there are all these new feelings that come along with it. For many, there is this new found freedom, and relief that no one is making sure you don’t screw up. This is liberating, but also scary. You can study all day and night, but you can also party all day and night. Everything’s up to you, and for what may be the first time, you are your own boss.
With this new found freedom, there are also many more chances to meet and hook up with people. While hooking up with people in high school did happen occasionally, it was nowhere near as common as it is in college. I would also like to note that while hooking up can mean different things to different people, for the purpose of this article, hooking up will refer to having sex with someone. For the most part, going to a party, meeting someone, and heading back to their place, is normal. But there is one huge difference in expectations depending on if you’re female or male. As a male college student, if you ask a girl back to your dorm, all the guys will assume you’re going to hookup and congratulate you. The more girls you bring back or go home with, the more you will be congratulated. Guys tend to see women as conquests. They act like they’re a number and just another name to add to the list.
But, if you’re a female, people will look at you like you’re trash when you hook up with someone. While they are objects of conquest, they are not allowed to have their own conquests. People will talk about you behind your back, calling you names. If you hook up with two guys from the same team, you’re labeled a slut and accused of trying to sleep your way through the team. However, if this were a guy, he’d be called a player and told he’s lucky.
There are so many women I know that have lied not just to their hookups, but to their partners about their body count because they don’t want to have to deal with people’s judgements. Women are constantly shamed for their body count because of the preconceived notion that they must maintain a certain level of innocence.
This leads me to speculate : why is there such a difference between gender and how you are perceived based on your sex life? Why can men brag about a high body count while women feel the need to make it more suitable to society’s standards? Why is it that a man can sleep with a different person every night, and no one will think twice, while if a woman does the same, she will be known as “that girl”? Why are men considered experienced, while women are considered used and dirty? The answer: we live in a society that likes to put men up on a pedestal while tearing women down.
It is truly disgusting how sexist college hookup culture is. A woman should be allowed to live her life and experience her freedom however she wants without judgment. A simple right that men have always had.