Women reject promiscuous female peers as friends

College-aged women judge promiscuous female peers - defined as bedding 20 sexual partners by their early 20s - more negatively than more chaste women and view them as unsuitable for friendship, finds a study by Cornell developmental psychologists. Participants? preference for less sexually active women as friends remained even when they personally reported liberal attitudes about casual sex or a high number of lifetime lovers. Men's views, on the other hand, are less uniform - favoring the sexually permissive potential friend, the non-permissive one or showing no preference for either when asked to rate them on 10 different friendship attributes. Promiscuous men favored less sexually experienced men, however, if they viewed other promiscuous men as potentially interested in stealing their girlfriends. The findings suggest that women still face a double standard that shames 'slutty' women and celebrates 'studly' men, said lead author Zhana Vrangalova, a graduate student in the field of human development in the College of Human Ecology. The study, 'Birds of a Feather? Not When It Comes to Sexual Permissiveness,' published online May 19 in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, reports that promiscuous women, therefore, are at greater risk for social isolation and poor psychological and physical health. 'Sexually permissive women are ostracized for being 'easy,' whereas men with a high number of sexual partners are viewed with a sense of accomplishment,' Vrangalova said.