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.

Of students who reported hooking up, 41 percent used words such as “regretful,” “empty,” “miserable,” “disgusted,” “ashamed,” “duped” and even “abused” to describe the experience. An additional 23 percent expressed ambivalence, and the remaining 36 percent said they were more or less “fine” with hookups — “fine” being the most common description.

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.

Cultural dating techniques and sexual practices among youth has changed drastically over the decades. From a postmodernist perspective, this is largely due to society, the morals, values and lessons that are taught in our social institutions. Dating practices have become less formal which is now considered the new norm, “we have moved into a “late-modern society” that is increasing anomic (or less normed) in certain respects” (Cote & Allahar, 2006, p. 28). There is no more ‘traditional roles’ of dating or even clear guidelines. How girls are supposed to behave is constantly changing and reinforced by various authority figures, society and our educational institutions. Dating and sexual practices have gone from the relationship first then, sexual activity, to sexual activity and then commitment. Media and society are now telling females to explore their sexuality before settling down except continue to look down upon the females who do so. Males continue to be taught to have multiple sexual partners and look for a female partner whom has only had very few sexual partners if any. Not only has institutions and other influences taken away the standards from dating, they are sending mixed messages. Encouraging females to have the best of the

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.

Throughout history the need to reproduce has been the driving force in continuing the human species. This need to reproduce has acquired the name sex, which can hold various different meanings and have a wide range of actions that attach to the word itself. In the 21st century there has been this new phenomenon stemming from sex known as hooking up. Now you may ask, what it hooking up? The general definition is casual sex between two individuals who could be either friends or acuminates (who please each other’s physical need for sexual intercourse.) Usually there are no strings attached meaning that there is no emotional attachment from the sex, just a physical trade of pleasure between the two parties. The

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

The reading that interested me most was “The Decline of the Date and the Rise of the College Hook Up” by Paula England and Rueben J. Thomas. The initial motive for this research was that an undergraduate student of England’s “wanted to do a research paper on why students on campus didn’t date much anymore” (pg 69). The two researchers, England and Thomas, then began questioning students on Stanford University’s campus about what they thought about the increasing occurrence of hook ups as compared to going out on dates.

England, P., Shafer, E. F., & Fogerty, A. C. K. (2008). Hooking up and forming relationships on today’s college campuses. In M. Kimmel (Ed.), The gendered society reader (3rd ed., pp. 531– 593). New York: Oxford University Press.

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.

College and universities have made great strides over the years. The campuses have grown, and the resources have improved tremendously. However, it is questionable if that social scene on these campuses has changed for the better over the years. “Work hard, party hard” has become the motto of college students to live by. Students spend the week focused on their academics, striving to grow as intellects. However, the weekend becomes the time when students look to go out and socialize at the various parties. And this is exactly what the weekend is for. With growing causal party scenes, college students have been more inclined to have a casual relationship with the opposite sex. Traditional dating on college campuses is rarely seen anymore

Take the 1960s notion of free love, combine with today's sexually active teenagers who expect no emotional commitment, and you have the modern definition for “hook up.” The term evolved just as many ideas about sex have in this last century. Hooking up is no longer just kissing, it involves oral sex and also intercourse, it is all about the casual sex.

Orenstein began her quest for an honest account of today’s hook-up culture as her daughter approached adolescence. Prior to this point in her life, she had only heard from friends about how teenage girls were treated in today’s culture, now she needed to know if this type of culture really did exist. Since she had been chronicling girl’s lives for over twenty-five years, it was an obvious place to start (Orenstein, P., 2016). She interviewed girls, psychologists, sociologists, pediatricians, educators, and journalist to uncover the ugly truth.