the.com/double standard
One rule for you, another for me, both claimed as justice.
means A principle or rule applied unfairly, with stricter conditions imposed on one person or group than on another in the same situation.
from Built plainly from 'double' (two, twofold) and 'standard' (a measure or criterion of judgment, from Old French 'estandart'). The phrase itself seems to be a 19th-century coinage, emerging from debates over moral and sexual codes — most famously the unequal rules applied to men's and women's conduct — where critics needed a compact term for 'one yardstick for them, another for us.' No single inventor is recorded; it hardened into fixed use as that kind of hypocrisy kept needing a name.
- origin
- Term popularized in 20th-century debates over gender norms
- logic flaw
- Judges identical acts by who commits them
- spot it
- Someone praised and blamed for the same trait
- self-proof
- Everyone sees it in others, rarely in themselves