We live in a world of double standards, where treatment for thee doesn’t necessarily guarantee the same treatment for me like we always think it should — and it’s often infuriating .
It’s tough to put an end to all of these ingrained double standards, but we can at least call them out . Let’s delve into responses to the r/AskReddit thread, ” What is the most infuriating case of double standards you’ve come across? “
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Sometimes teasing only goes one way.
“Someone posted on reddit once (and it really made me laugh so it stuck with me) that a woman he worked with would make fun of him and call him chicken legs and stuff (wearing shorts) so he finally called her elephant legs and got into trouble with HR.”
When you just can’t win.
“My mom gets mad at me for being at home all the time and never going over to friends’ houses and stuff.
“I get a girlfriend and a job so now I’m never home and she gets pissed off about it.”
Dumb dress codes.
“Got written up for wearing nice shorts to work. In an IT position. No customer facing roles at all. My female manager and all other women in the company were permitted to wear any type of dress or skirt. My manager always wore her athletic skirt she worked out in. It was less than knee length.”
Don’t start smoking, but don’t worry about me.
“When my dad lit up cigarette #2 of 3 during a 20-minute talk about the dangers of smoking and how he’d kick my butt if I ever started.
“Meanwhile, I had asthma and chronic bronchitis from all the secondhand smoke in the house.”
Banks for nothing.
“That tenants can be paying $2000 a month in rent, but still can’t get approved for a mortgage with $1400 a month repayments.”
Deferring to the elder.
“I was going to buy a car on my own. My dad only came along because it was a nice drive and we could go down to grab dinner at the beach afterward. I was 34 at the time. The whole damn time the guy kept looking at my dad, who was futzing on his phone and trying to ask him questions. At one point, my dad went outside to take a call, and the guy said ‘I’ll wait to get back to continue….’ For what? He’s trying to watch football on his cellphone!”
Not even going through the person who set it up.
“When we bought our house my wife set up all the utilities. I’m on the spectrum, I really really hate dealing with that stuff, bills, money… I go to work and earn the money, she does the budgeting and makes sure everything gets paid. It’s crazy to me how often a company will have to have me get on the phone to make a change or whatever on an account that SHE set up! I’m the husband so I must be in charge of the finances?”
When some teams get all the perks.
“Senior year in high school..
“The football team got brand new uniforms, gear, and buses for tournaments paid for by the school. They had the only bus with AC and window tinting, and nice Alcoa rims, reserved for their use only. They even cancelled a couple elective classes my senior year to free up money for the team.
“The girls softball team had to do year long fundraisers to pay for EVERYTHING, down to the softballs, uniforms, and chartering busses for tournaments.”
When you get the short end of the stick.
“We had a really expensive camping trip in middle school. Get to this place and the girls’ rooms are in camp; thick clay walls, fridges, plugs. Totally decked out. The boys’ cabins? A 15 minute walk away from the main place, and right next to a dam; the walls were CARDBOARD and the place had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. I still feel robbed.”
When teachers use too much sway.
“Me and a classmate wrote the same answer with different wordings in a test. My classmate got the answer marked wrong. Luckily because I am her favourite (I don’t enjoy it) I was able to negotiate with her and she changed the mark.”
– u/Fi11a
End of life plans aren’t always humane.
“It’s considered kind and noble to put down a pet that is old and suffering, even if you can’t really tell how they are feeling or coping but if someone is suffering majorly and in pain and at the end of their life and is fully communicating, they still can’t give you permission to go forward with euthanasia.”
When women are trusted more than men.
“When I was a school nurse I was always alone with whatever children needed assistance, even after I would ask for help. New male school nurse started, all the sudden three other people are available just to watch him. I felt terrible for the guy, but literally no one trusted him with the diabetic kid or the kid with the trach alone. ‘Oh he can’t be alone!’ But me a woman was never questioned, double standards abound.”
Men’s public washrooms with no changing tables.”
“My boyfriend had complained about this. Someone once came up and suspiciously asked him what he was doing at his car while he was changing his daughter’s diaper on the back seat. He told them there was no changing station in the men’s room and he wasn’t going to change her diaper on the floor of a public bathroom.”
Problem? Call mom, never dad.
“My dad literally worked in the school I went to and was one of my teachers and for the first year I was there they always called my mom. Like, he’s literally in his planning period right now just walk six doors down and ask him”
Different students, different treatment.
“I got detention in high school, no biggie…I did the crime. However I was scheduled to work so I asked for detention to be delayed for one day. Request denied. I pointed out that football players routinely had theirs rescheduled to accommodate games and practice. Only answer I got was, ‘That’s different.'”
People assuming your daughter is your girlfriend.
“My daughter and I have some things that have become tradition. We always go to Starbucks before school on Fridays, we like to go eat sushi for lunch on Tuesdays when she gets out of school early and we usually go just the two of us. I get all kinds of dirty looks, because people assume that a 45 year old guy who’s out with a beautiful young woman (16 going on 25) is some sort of lecherous monster. It sucks, but I’ve been learning to brush it off.”
Why would they need his consent for that?
“Couldn’t get my tubes tied without my husband’s consent. Meanwhile he had a vasectomy without even my knowledge.”
– u/kw66
Hairstyle double standards.
“When I worked for a supermarket in the UK, I bleached my hair. I’m a man.
“They ordered me to cut it all off then changed my shift to be an outdoor trolley collector. And I had to wear a hat.
“The person who told me to do this had bleached blonde hair. They were not a man.”
Shamed for arriving late, no credit for working late.
“In work, if I am 5 mins late they will certainly let me know about it. But if I stay behind 15 mins later than my finish, not even a mention.”
People glued to their phones, yet judging others for playing video games.
“This is the one for me tbh, scrolling through feeds does nothing for your brain compared to playing a video game, properly reading, etc. Don’t know if the science backs it up but most of the people I know who just scroll socials all the time have such short attention spans it’s unreal.”
