In October of 2013, Lily Myers won the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational with the poem “Shrinking Women.” The poem is about women being suppressed in society, versus men, who are taught to be outspoken. The video of her performing her poem has now gone vial with girls posting it all over social media networks.

Ever since I was a little girl, I struggled to understand why there was such a big social difference between men and women. I like to call this social difference “the double standard.”

So what exactly is the double standard? I would define it as an action or event that becomes a norm for one gender, but not the other. In other words, it’s okay for one gender to do something but it’s not okay for the other gender to do the exact same thing.

“Society has different expectations for men and women,” said senior Emma Lazar. “Men are praised and accepted for promiscuous actions, while women are slut shamed and ridiculed for doing the same.”

Even from my earlier memories in gym class I was aware of this social difference between genders. For example, when we would play soccer in middle school and one of the boys made a mistake, they were told to ‘stop playing like a girl and man up,’ but when I made a mistake in the game, I was patted on the back and consoled. Now, I’m not going to lie. Back then I didn’t really mind being the consoled gender, but as I grew older I started to wonder what was so wrong about ‘playing like a girl’ and why couldn’t I develop one of those “tough love” relationships that all the boys had with the gym teachers.

Let me paint another picture for you. You’re at a party with all of your friends. You’re all having a great time and it’s about time to go home because of course, you have a curfew. One of your guy friends walks out with two girls on his arms and his friends are calling him a stud. Then, one of your girl friends walks out and she’s holding hands with two guys, and behind her are a group of girls rolling their eyes and calling her not so nice names. Sound a little more familiar?

Well, even if this specific situation doesn’t seem familiar, this is applicable to so many other situations you have probably have experienced. This is what I like to call the typical “boy, girl” double standard.

I feel like double standard topics are so taboo to talk about. Over time, whenever I brought the idea of double standards to any man’s attention the classic reaction was an eye roll, a tiny smirk and a response similar to “Is it your time of the month?” How about, no. As Lily recites in the poem, “My brother never thinks before he speaks./I have been taught to filter./”How can anyone have a relationship to food?” He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs./I want to say: we come from difference, Jonas,/you have been taught to grow out/I have been taught to grow in/you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much/I learned to absorb.” I feel like I am forced to absorb this type of treatment because it’s looked at as “traditional.” I’m going to go over a few specific instances where I have experienced this double standard later, but I just want to reiterate that this is not some weird construct that I’m creating in my head. These double standards are real, and they need to stop.

“I think these double standards stem from the inequality that’s rooted in our patriarchal society,” said Lazar. “Women aren’t ‘allowed’ the same… freedoms as men, and just like we had to work to get the ability to vote, we have to change society’s mindset to gain acceptance and respect for what women choose to do with their body.”

The last few lines in the poem are “I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry”./ I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza/a circular obsession I never wanted.” I’ve never heard anything more true than those last few lines. I’m going to speak from experience, I feel like I’m forced to morph into something that is considered acceptable girl behavior. It’s not considered acceptable to eat a lot for a girl or for us to ask questions during class. We have to say “sorry” after each question we ask because we feel like we’re out of line and look stupid. But in the situation where it’s a boy, they run up for their fifth piece of pizza without judgement. They know they are in an open area in their classroom for as many questions as they need answered. No one rolls their eyes or says that they are pretending to be dumb to look cute, but if it’s a girl, it gets all twisted.

Before I go any further, no, I am not trying to be the classic “misunderstood teenage girl” like I’m sure you’re assuming I’m trying to be. And see, that’s the exact thing I’m writing about. Maybe we are misunderstood. If you watched the video that goes along with this article already, did you stop and wonder why only one guy was interviewed? It was because every other guy (we asked about ten) denied an interview. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to be on camera or express their opinion, it was because they didn’t believe that there was such a thing as a “double standard.” It may sound like a “crazy” idea (even though it’s really not) but maybe boys really are misunderstanding girls.

I’ve been called this misunderstood teenage girl so many times I probably couldn’t count them all on my fingers. I am very opinionated person and as a woman I have had such mixed responses because I don’t meet that image of “the silent girl” that men usually want. And see, there you have it. Another standard that society expects women to meet. Men are allowed to be outspoken and speak their opinion whenever they want, why do you think some of the most powerful people in our country are men? Society views them as more capable of “getting stuff done,” being smarter than women and more disgustingly, being more dominant. Men have been the dominant gender since… well, since forever. Women have always been shown as the weaker gender for reasons I’m still unaware of.

Women are looked at as the gender that has to cook in the kitchen all day, clean the house and be stay-at-home moms, because according to society being a women and the breadwinner doesn’t mix. I’m sure you have all heard the phrases “go make me a sandwich” or “shut up and get back in the kitchen where you belong” come out of a man’s mouth before. I can’t even begin to explain how demeaning those phrases to women are, but men keep repeating these sayings because women don’t stick up for themselves. The more we don’t stick up for ourselves, the more men think it’s okay to say these things and that it’s funny. It’s not funny. It’s not a joke, either. Men may start saying these types of things as a joke, but later in life they’re going to turn into expectations if women don’t start speaking out against them.

“Women… are so much more and have important roles in society equal to a man’s. The side effects of society strong holding women into the role as domesticated mothers and wives restrain them from… freedoms males have been accepted to indulge in. While women have progressed in society, society hasn’t kept up the pace and holds unreasonable standards of purity that subjugate women into second class citizens,” said Lazar.

Going back to the double standard of women being looked at as a gender who shouldn’t speak out with opinions, about three weeks ago I published an article called “Expose These Bros: Stop Female Objectification.” I got a lot of really great responses, but with that, I also got a lot of bad responses. People just didn’t understand why I was ‘complaining’ about female objectification in the media. Of course, all of these bad responses came from men.

It’s hard to understand what women have to go through since men have been put on a pedestal their entire lives. If you think either of these articles are just me complaining about being a woman, can you please put yourself in the shoes of a woman, for just a second. Try and see the world through our eyes. You, as a man, have never had to fight for your rights or prove yourself worthy of being able to be professional in the work force or make important decisions. That’s everything women have to do. We have to prove ourselves. In professional careers, women are usually automatically assumed to be less smart than her male colleagues. There are more men in big power positions than women (i.e. there’s never been a woman vice president or president before in America). Women always have to fight. Men, when do you ever have to prove yourselves worthy of doing something right? The point is that you don’t.

Marriage is also an issue. Why do women have to change their last names later in life for marriage? I brought this idea up to some friends and I got horrified reactions when I told them I wanted my husband to change his last name to mine. I was told that I can’t do that because it’s not traditional, and the girl always has to change her last name. I was also told I would never find a man that would actually change his last name because that makes him less “manly.” Honestly, I think changing your last name is kind of a big deal. You’re ditching your family name that you grew up with and has become your identity. I don’t want to be one of those couples with different last names or even with hyphenated last names, I want to be one of those couples who make equal sacrifices. He can have my last name, and I can hold his child in my body for nine long, painful months. I think it’s a fair trade off.

Alright, I was just kidding about that last part (sort of), but if you think about it, relationships are all about sacrifices with time, money, your life and I feel like women get the brunt of the deal. Girls are perceived as the weaker gender, but this perception is biased by a lot of different traditions on how to treat a girl that have been passed down from generations. After I have children, I’m not planning on being a stay at home mother. I’m one of those people that want to go out in the world and do something. My marriage isn’t going to be what’s considered the typical marriage where the husband is the breadwinner and the wife stays at home cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children. My marriage is going to be about equality and equal sacrifices between me and my husband. 

Other female students at Niles West have had similar demeaning experiences.

Senior Janat Ahmed is a part of the Niles West debate team. She attends quite a lot of national tournaments, where she is judged by people from different schools across America who come from a lot of different backgrounds. “I have experienced the double standard once so far in my life,” said Ahmed. “I debate for Niles West and in one of my [debate] rounds I was trying to get a point across to another debater who… happened to be male. Somehow in the process of doing so the judge thought that I was being extremely rude. What really upset me was the fact that the guy I was debating was even more passive aggressive than me, but the judge didn’t call him out for this.”

Lazar has had a similar experience like my first example in the introduction paragraph.

“I have been called a slut for simply talking to boys or having guy friends.”

Men — and even women for that matter — have been taught that women are the weaker gender. They have been taught that women can’t have positions in power and if they do, they don’t have to be taken seriously. A girl has to change her last name when she’s married, but when a boy does he’s less manly. A boy can be in a bad mood, but when a girl is, it’s her time of the month. A boy can speak his mind whenever he feels like it, but girls have to stay silent because they’re not smart enough to form opinions or they’re just acting dumb to look cute. I’m honestly tired of all of this.

“I think the first step is to recognize that [double standards] do in fact exist in the status quo,” said Ahmed. “And then we have to start sticking up for ourselves.”

After reading through all of this article I hope you realize that there is a problem within our society and although under the law women are supposed to have equal rights, it’s not being completely pursued in society. This is your chance to stand up. Every single person deserves to be treated equally, and there’s no justification for treating women as a weaker gender. We’re not the weaker gender, and in fact, we’re not a weak gender at all, and we don’t derserve to be treated as such.

“Perhaps women can band together to demand respect for their choices,” said Lazar. “By raising awareness about the harms of slut shaming, which is a form of bullying, the best thing to do is to speak up against any uncalled for judgement. Through sexual empowerment we can force society to see that we have an equal place and deserve equal treatment for actions women may choose to do or not to do.”

Michelle Sproat filmed and edited the video with contributions of Gretchen Sterba.