What does it mean when it says "Deviance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder"?

Let's go into meaning of this word to word.

deviance means , "the fact or state of diverging from usual or accepted standards, especially in social or sexual behaviour". And it is in eye of beholder. As sociologist John Curra writes, "Deviance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and it exists because some groups decide that other groups ought not to be doing what they are".

Explanation:

Erich Goode defined deviance as "behavior or characteristics that some people in a society find offensive or reprehensible and that generates—or would generate if discovered—in these people disapproval, punishment, condemnation of, or hostility toward, the actor or possessor" (1997, p. 26). While this definition of deviance is acceptable to much of the academic community, there is no consensus among academics or in the general public over what should and should not be considered deviant. Certainly, large groups of people may be able to agree on very general precepts of acceptable behavior. For example, most people in the world may agree that the killing of another person is unacceptable and therefore deviant. However, the heated debates that exist over capital punishment, abortion, stem cell research, or the permissibility of one country engaging in military action against another all highlight the difficulties in identifying something like the killing of another person as deviant. Beyond these sweeping generalities, a closer look at what is and is not permitted reveals that deviance is truly relative; what is considered deviant changes from society to society and over time within any given society, and often changes based on who carries out the particular behaviors. In academia, definitions of deviance tend to fall under one of four major categories: natural law definitions, normative definitions, labeling definitions, and critical definitions.