Not One Sexual Double Standard but Two? Adolescents' Attitudes About Appropriate Sexual Behavior

Popular belief holds that sexual behavior is evaluated more liberally for males than females. However, the assessment of this "sexual double standard" is controversial. Therefore, we investigated measurement equivalence of commonly used items to assess sexual double standards in previous research. Based on established measurement equivalence, we investigated whether adolescents endorsed a sexual double standard. Using data from 455 adolescents (M-age = 14.51,SD = 0.64), confirmatory factor analyzes showed that the sexual double standard concept was measurement equivalent across sex, and partly across evaluations of the same and opposite sex. Factor analyzes demonstrated that there was not one, but two sexual double standards. Male adolescents evaluated male sexual behavior more liberally than female sexual behavior, but female adolescents evaluated female sexual behavior more liberally than male sexual behavior. This contradicts the traditional notion of the existence of one sexual double standard that favors male and suppresses female sexuality.