It’s the 21st century and women are still not treated equally as men. Key reason – double standards of men and their arrogance to accept that women can also have “their” type of fun. 

In the United States, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was eventually approved on August 18, 1920, enfranchising all American women and stating for the first time that they, like men, are entitled to all citizenship rights and obligations. Not sure if other countries have similar laws but they are just laws, meant to be ignored in real life.

Today women are no longer confined to the four walls of their home, they are taking up employment in offices, working in places which were dominated by men, refusing marriages and delaying or in some cases not opting for childbirth. Many things have changed for women in the last 50 years but one thing that cannot be denied is the “double standards” of society towards them. 

Being a woman in the early 40s, I have seen so many shades of men that they cannot be put down in just 1 blogpost but it’s safe to say that in all those shades, one was a common color – the color of hypocrisy. I’m not being biased here when I say that men are hypocrites, of course women are sometimes worse, but the fragile ego of men makes them a lot more vulnerable to step into the shoes of hypocrisy.

• A man who speaks his mind is strong and passionate, a woman who speaks her mind is bitchy and arrogant
• Men who like sex are powerful, women who like sex are sluts
• A man flirting with a girl is sexy, a woman flirting with a man is characterless
• An angry man is acceptable because it means what he wants, an angry woman is just labeled as irrational
• A loud man is confident, a loud woman is ill-mannered

In all fairness, even men are subjected to double-standards for e.g. a woman without a job is a homemaker but a man without a job (even if he keeps the house impeccable) is a failure. A woman who cries is soft-hearted and sensitive, a man who cries is weak and sissy. A woman raising a child is “natural” but a man raising a child is someone who has nothing better to do. However, most of the double standards that men have to face comes from their own rules that they made ages ago related to the roles of a man and a woman in the society. 

A recent experience on this double standards left me laughing to my wits. It so happened that a friend of mine once felt offended when I came on too strong on him (even going ahead and making fake stories), very conveniently forgetting how he had tried to make out earlier. It was ok when he made the move but when I did the same, I was labeled names I would rather not mention. It’s hilarious how men can get by with any sort of nonsense but they can never accept when the tables are turned. 

It took me a long time to figure out the hypocrisy that surrounds men in general and how they mold facts and create narratives that suit their glass ego. But now that I know, I love to play with these egos, I love to manipulate their thoughts and leave them rattled and confused, afterall, why should only boys have all the fun!

Personally, I have no double standards, I don’t judge people based on the stereotypical roles that the society has superimposed on us, I judge them on who they are as a person but never on gender roles. I have learned to step outside of the typical ideas about how men are and how women are, I just see others as complex human beings. A guy friend who wants to be hugged is not a needy man, he is my friend who likes to feel compassion. A girl friend who is loud-mouthed is not ill-mannered, she’s my friend who is opinionated and confident.