Arizona and Mark are essentially gender-swapped versions of each other, yet the women on the show interact with them differently.
We see the nurses become possessive of Mark in S2, but none of them were trying to date him. They never give any clue about it being anything other than sexually fueled. None of them try to genuinely get to know Mark as a person. Yet when Arizona encounters these issues, it stems from women wanting to get to know her despite the fact that she and Mark make it clear that they aren’t interested in these women outside of sex.
The most obvious example that I can think of is Callie declining Mark’s invitation to give Sofia a traditional family with no hesitation and then immediately leaving to ask Arizona whether she was “in” and would be willing to give her the very thing Callie declined from Mark.
Arizona, for a lack of better words, has whored her way through the hospital just like Mark, but unlike Mark, her liaisons do not cause problems in her life until she’s married.
Would the women on the show be less forgiving of Arizona’s philandering if she left behind evidence like Mark? (Sloan Sloan, unnamed baby w/Addison & Sofia)
If the roles were reversed, I don’t think there is a single scenario where Callie would forgive Arizona if she “fathered” a child in Africa or during their S6 break.
And last but not least, I also think the women on the show interact with them differently when they’re in relationships. I think they are more dismissive of the women Arizona is in relationships with. Both Lauren and Leah deliberately went out of their way to disrespect Callie because she was Arizona’s wife.
Lexie disliked Julia (Mark’s S8 GF) outside of hitting her with a ball, but despite Lexie’s hidden anger, she didn’t go out of her way to disrespect Julia, and I don’t think she would have thrown it at her if she wasn’t being belligerent on top of them losing. Callie crossed the line a bit while Mark was with Lexie, but it wasn’t intentional, and she backed off once Lexie made it clear that it made her uncomfortable.