I've noticed that our society tends to tell women that can't do a lot of things because they are women. Now I'm not talking about things that may jump into your mind like receive equal pay or equal treatment in the workplace, I'm talking about how they are treated romantically/sexually/casually. I have seen women get criticized for not going on dates with pushy men and for not having enough sex or having too little sex.. Society often acts like women need to be nice to people who are getting on their nerves even though a lot of men are not held to that same standard.
If you need examples I have a few, some from me and some from friends. First off, I've noticed if a man hits on me and I tell him politely to leave me alone or that I'm not interested, I'm a prude, mean or stand offish, but when when men tell women they aren't interested or to leave them alone they are just simply being honest and expressing their need for space. I've had this happen to me several times. When I was in high school a boy that I had only met once asked me out and when I told him no he began to harass me daily and threaten me with death and worse. He even went as far as to smash up one of my male friend's mailboxes just because I talked to them more than I talked to him. When I brought this issue up with the school's resource officer he asked me "Well, why didn't you just go on a date with him? It isn't nice to turn a man down." Now, when one of my male friends was being harassed by a girl that he said no to going to prom with he had no trouble getting the resource officer's help. The same officer that denied me help immediately acted for this young man and stopped the young woman from bothering him. Why? Because society thinks women shouldn't say no to men.
The one that really bothers me though is the issue of how much sex a woman has. Mainly because that's HER business and not for anyone else. In high school, mine specifically, a lot of girls were called prudes and uptight because they weren't having sex. Then the girls that had had sex were whores and sluts. Yes, men deal with this too but more often than not men are called pimps for having multiple sex partners. I saw so many high school girls have their values or self esteem torn down by the people they went to school with even though the boys were praised if they were or were not having sex . Now in college, I have seen a lot of girls still going through the same exact thing or dealing with worse. I have heard men say things like "That girl is such a prude, she needs a good f*** to fix that," about women who haven't had sex. I've also heard men accusing women of having STD's because that have had sex more than once. The fact is it's not anybody's business. So what, if a woman is choosing to not have sex or choosing to have sex? It's her life, and her personal choices should not be broken down and examined unfairly by society.
While these problems can also apply to men I have seen them apply to women more often than not. Society needs to get out of the "Mad Men" mindset and realize women can do whatever they want and that they shouldn't have to worry about what is taboo or not. Women should not have separate standards of behavior than men. If men can say no to dates, so can women. If men can choose how much sex they have (even none at all) than so can women. We, as a society, should not be treating the same issues differently.
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