Enforcing the Double Standard

The other night at work, I heard this girl talking incessantly about one of her friends. She nattered on about how this other girl was such a slut, then discussed some of the guys she'd been with, wondering if one in particular was number twenty or number twenty one. She also asked one of the guys in there why in the world he'd been with her if he'd known how many other men she'd been with. Not satisfied with discussing her "friend's" sex life with everyone within earshot, she also said the girl didn't know how to behave in public, which I took to me that the girl was too enthusiastic about things from how this one described it.

After ripping her up one side and down the other, she said, "But I'm still her friend; she's a lot of fun to be with." I gave her an incredulous look, as if to say, "With 'friends' like you, who needs enemies?"

When she called her libertine friend a "slut", I had to control myself from asking her, "You know, a 'slut' is just someone who gets more sex than you do!"

The other guys there didn't seem to know just how to respond, either. Though the young guys were laughing a bit at the appropriate pauses, I saw that they were mainly just letting her talk and vent, particularly the one that had been with the girl under discussion.

This is but one example of why I believe that while men may have instituted the double standard, nowadays, it is more often women who are the ones enforcing and perpetuating it. During the entire time this girl was cutting the other one down for being a slut, she never once spoke disparagingly of the twenty plus guys the "slut" had been with. What's up with that? No one is a "slut" all by themselves in a vacuum. As for me, I'm very appreciative of all the "sluts" in the world, the ones who believe that sexual freedom is for both men and women.

The gossiping girl knew that her friend was more "fun" that most of her other friends, but couldn't quite grasp the idea that part of what made her friend uniquely so was her libertine attitude.

Thoughts?