He-sluts and She-sluts

This is interesting. According to a survey of American college students, men are judged just as harshly for having many sexual partners as women are. Of those polled, 12% answered yes to the question “if (wo)men hook up or have sex with lots of people, I respect them less” for women, and 13% for men. A few facts from the article stood out to me:

• There is no quantification of "lots of people". While it seems likely that each respondent would use the same definition of  "lots of people" across the two questions, there were a significant number of people who lost respect for one sex but not the other. Those two groups may not have the same idea of what constitutes "lots of people". Second, there's no quantification if how much respect is lost. If slutty men get the occasional side-eye while slutty women get the occasional stoning-to-death, there's still a pretty substantial double standard. But the article doesn't go into that.
• Men are apparently judged marginally more harshly than women for hooking up with too many people. Given sex-positive commentary on the slut/stud dichotomy, this is a little surprising. After all, aren't men supposed to be congratulated for having lots of different partners while women are pilloried? The article linked doesn't go into why this might be, but as an unscientific guess based purely on anecdotal evidence I'd say that it's because men with a high number of previous partners are judged as "players" by women: likely to cheat, emotionally detached, and potentially predatory. While the article doesn't say as much, given the discrepancy between men and women in judging women, it seems likely that the group judging men negatively is largely female.
• Only 6% of women lose respect for women who've had sex with lots of people. This seems odd, given how much they slut-shame each other.
• American college students are a pretty conservative bunch. Only 27% of those polled didn't judge anyone negatively for having a high number of sexual partners. And as this article notes, this "egalitarian libertarian" attitude is more common among non-heterosexual students, indicating that heterosexual students are even more conservative than the overall figures. Over half of women will negatively judge anyone with a high number of partners.
• While double standards are rare overall, it's fairly common so long as you're negatively judging the other gender. A quarter of men held the traditional double standard. While the figures are not broken down for the reverse double standard, given the rest of the article it seems likely that this is primarily held by women. People suck.
• At the top of the social hierarchy, double standards abound. Male athletes and fraternity members were far more likely to hold the traditional double standard than other men (38% and 37%, compared to 25%). The reasons why are unexplored in the article, which means that it's conjecture time. My guess? High-status men are unlikely to judge male promiscuity negatively because they're getting more pussy than anyone else on campus. It would also go some way towards explaining why women think that the traditional double standard is so prevalent: people listen more to the men at the top of the social hierarchy than the men at the bottom.

That said, it's just one article, based on one survey from perhaps the most sexually screwed-up culture in the Western world. Drawing too many conclusions might be dangerous. But given that most complaints about the sexual double standard come from that very same culture, it's still worth a look. I'm interested to see any other responses to this study. And if accurate, it's also a kick in the teeth to the feminists that see the sexual double standard as a patriarchal method for controlling women.