Evaluating Hookup Culture

Across the U.S. college students on a variety of campuses have part taken in what is commonly known as the “hookup culture.” The hookup culture does not always have to include sexual intercourse although it most often does, but it is merely the idea of having physical pleasure with another person outside of an emotional relationship. College students, even at some of America’s most prestigious colleges realize hooking up has completely overthrown the idea of being in an actual relationship. Emily Foxhall a Yale student wrote an article for the Yale Daily News in 2010 stating that the hookup culture is so prevalent on Yale’s campus because students have enough stress to worry about, casual hookups are easy (Foxhall, 2010). The question becomes, is the college hookup culture vital and normal to the college experience or should it be condemned for being harmful to college age persons mentality.

It is midnight at the last party I ever went to because I turned down a one-night stand with Rebecca from math class: Does this sound like you? Many college students seem to believe this to be a true statement. What if you just were not that type of person? Donna Freitas wrote, “Time to stop hooking up. (You know you want to.)”, published in 2013 with The Washington Post. Donna concludes, most students in college would rather go on a date than have one-night stands but fear their social status may be called into question. Donna begins to build her credibility with experience in hookup culture, quantifiable surveys conducted by

Free-and-easy sex prides itself on being commitment free, no emotional ties attached. Today, this idea of leaving all emotions at the door is the supposedly, sophisticated choice on campus. It is now well understood that traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline, replaced by “hooking up”- an ambiguous term that can signify anything from making out to oral sex to intercourse - all complete without the emotional entanglement of a real relationship. As times have changed, students begin to view a relationship as “too time consuming” and something that no longer takes priority amongst their busy, high achieving schedules. However, hooking up threatens the sexual, physical, and psychological health of college-age youth. Today’s youth may want to think twice before engaging in the prevalent hook-up culture. Despite the popularity of positive feelings, hookups can include negative outcomes including emotional and psychological injury, and even more concerning consequences such as unintended rape. In order to protect our generation, and more specifically our women, society must acknowledge the detrimental effects of a hook up culture to create a greater understanding surrounding this risky sexual behavior and ensure a more powerful, positive presence for women in our society. The combination of a society seeped in rape culture and an alcohol infused hookup culture creates a compromising sexual environment where women have limited control, opening the

In his essay, “Sexism in Practice: Feminist Ethics Evaluating the Hookup Culture,” Conor Kelly argues that the hook up culture prevalent in today’s society is sexist towards females. He argues that this culture gives off the illusion of freedom, but it instead disempowers women. Kelly begins by giving the definition of hook up culture. He defines it as, “the practice of pursuing sexual activity without any expectation of a relationship.” He then states what he believes are the four main factors that contribute to the disempowerment brought on by this culture: a lack of commitment, use of ambiguous language, alcohol use, and a social pressure to conform. Kelly then gives his argument as to why hookup culture should be concerning.

In the book, Hooking Up, the author, Kathleen Bogle, devotes most of her research to interviewing male and female undergraduates and alumni. Throughout her book, she uses various methods to expose the complexity of hookups and the actualities of the gender “rules” on college campuses. The techniques Bogle uses are: explaining the norms of the hooking up culture prior to the twentieth century, describing how the ambiguity of the term “hooking up” on college campuses creates misconstrued ideas about other college students, and comparing the difference between males and females in the hook up culture.

For our final book, I read American Hookup by Lisa Wade. In the book, Wade shines a light on the prominent hookup culture in universities today. From exploring changing dynamic from ‘calling’ to hook up culture, the experiences of enthusiasts that participate in hookup culture, and the reality for those who decide not to participate in hookup culture. In the end, Wade make several conclusions on the process of hookup culture like the participant is typically drunk or under the influence of some type of drug, girls and guys both look at their opinions of their friends when deciding whether or not to hook up, and that it’s most important be having ‘fun’ while sticking to the many unspoken rules of hookup culture.

Citation: Armstrong, E. A. et al. ""Good Girls": Gender, Social Class, And Slut Discourse On Campus". Social Psychology Quarterly 77.2 (2014): 100-122. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.

I hope you have packed all your things and told your family goodbye because you are leaving for college to experience a whole new world full of different people. Studying and doing your homework will consume most of your time and energy, leaving little effort to be invested in relationships. Nonetheless, there is no need to worry for college hookups have been a solution to this dilemma for decades. Despite being a solution, there are several controversies that surround hooking up with random people during the college experience, which that became a topic of discussion and research involving different styles of writing, including various rhetorical appeals. In relation to that style, the author of the article “Gender, Agency, and Sexual Decision Making in Collegiate Hookups” effectively establishes her credibility through her resources, logic through her personal research, and emotions through her words.

In the book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, By Lisa Wade, she addresses the issues and concerns that she sees within the “hookup culture”. Lisa Wade’s book is a mixture of important statistics and personal accounts of what happens in the hookup culture on various college campuses. To define the hookup culture that Wade is addressing, we can look to the book as Lisa defines the hookup culture as essentially casual sex with no strings attached, another sociologist Kathleen Bogle described this as a “new norm” for campuses and that this an be very harmful for women especially (Wade, 2017, p.16). Michael Kimmel a well-known sociologist of masculinity was quoted saying that hooking up is “guys-sex” and that guys run the

Bogle (2007) states that there has been a noticeable shift towards a hookup script, replacing the traditional dating script, suggesting that young adults today are less likely to develop romantic relationships. However, dating relationships often develop as a result of a couple hooking up (England and Thomas, 2006 as cited in Uecker, Pearce, & Andercheck, 2015) meaning that college students have the potential to form romantic relationships; it is the process of forming such romantic relationships that has changed.

The movie “Spring Breakers” is not just a horrible movie, but it boosts rape culture. This movie turns young women into sex objects. In the beginning of the movie, we get a slow-motion shot of breasts as the college students’ dance and drink on the beach. Despite the fact that men are also involved, the camera only focuses on the females. The message is clear, the females are the ones “letting loose.” Even a scene in the lecture hall shows two of the female protagonists imitate “blow jobs” in the middle of their boring class. In the book “Language and Sexism” by Sara Mills, explains, “Language does indeed reveal to us the values of groups and institutions within our culture in the past who were instrumental in

Hooking up has become an increasingly studied culture by many sociologists around the country. These studies have been done to understand the shift from the old culture of dating to the new culture of hooking up that we experience now. Many people find it interesting that the kids of our generation have become so sexualized and carefree compared to the college days of our parents. Many people wonder how we got to this point and how the dynamics of hookups work, and why we continue to go on with them even sometimes at cost of our mental and physical help. One of these people was Kathleen A. Bogle, who wrote an entire book on the subject called, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, which is the focal point of this essay.

Throughout the world, chaos and conflict is prevalent in today’s society. Such as sexual assault and alcohol abuse in colleges and parties. In the article “Straight Talk for College Women” by Jennifer Braceras and the HBO miniseries called “The Night of” both discusses these issues in a very unique way.

I do not agree that millennials are part of the "hook culture". I feel as though hooking up has been around back then and not just now. Although it is known as the college thing to do, I believe that most people want a relationship and not just some hook up all the time. Even in the article it said "both men and women reported that they would rather have a traditional dating relationship than simply a hook-up". I am not saying that everyone thinks like this, some people are into hook ups which is fine. I mean if you are both single with no kids go for it. I feel that the younger generations coming up view hooking up as the cool thing to do, they don't really understand the seriousness of a relationship (once again this is not towards every adolescent). I think a lot of this hooking up scenerio comes from social media like facebook, instagram and snapchat. A lot of individuals care more about how many followers they have than their education or just living life.

There are two reasons related to politics. One of them explains why this generation think Stephen Colbert should be president of the U.S., and the other one is that they know nothing about politics from the fact that a few Millennials could not name some senators from their home state. Another reason is that these young people do not know how to manage their money because from a survey done in 2013 over half admit they are living from paycheck to paycheck. Furthermore, millennials oppose to vaccination more than any other age group by the theory that it can cause a lot of diseases. On the other hand, they smoke more than any other generation, at least one in every four of Millennials admit to smoke according to Ipsos. They are lazy as well,