The Hookup Culture : What Is Hooking-Up?

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.

     Traditional Dating has changed over the years. In my generation the girls can ask the guys, there is no telling where they might go on a date, or they might just hang out at home, which did not happen as much 25 years ago. My generation's moral values are changing too: sex on the first date happens more frequently now. Many Years ago a guy would go pick the girl up at her house, was introduced to her parents and have a talk with them before taking their

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.

Modern dating and relationships, as they are today, would never be considered a social norm for past generations. Other, earlier, generations were much more conservative. For instance, today’s version of dating is ‘Netflix and chill’ and online dating. Dating as a social norm changed nearly every decade. In the 1900s and 1910s it was considered a social norm to ask permission to date a woman from her parents and be supervised by the woman’s parents when they were together (Dating 2). In the next decade, the 1920s and 30s, dating had a significant change in what would be considered socially acceptable during that time period. Young people of the time considered dating a relaxed way to get to know another person (Dating 2). Dating at this time was more about social status than the person themselves. In the time of the 1940s to 1950s, women were significantly more concerned with a man’s likelihood of surviving the war than his social status (Dating 2). During this time, there was more of a chance that people would have premarital sex within a committed relationship (Dating 2). Teens and young adults “went steady”, which was the precursor to getting married (1950s 2). The final intention of the relationship was marriage, so more individuals had premarital sex. Around the mid-1960s, birth control made an appearance, and this time was also considered the end of dating

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

Allison, Rachel, and Barbara J. Risman. "A Double Standard For “Hooking Up”: How Far Have We Come Toward Gender Equality?." Social Science Research 42.(2013): 1191-1206. ScienceDirect. Web. 20 Nov. 2016.

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.

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.

The majority of the time the person who is left longing for more than just a casual hookup is the female. Women, by nature, are more likely to become more emotionally attached, especially when it comes to sexual activities. However, most of the time, girls will be willing to play along with the game of hooking up. Perhaps, in hopes, that it will someday lead to something more. But, if and when it doesn’t, they can be left emotionally distraught. Girls will become attached to the person they are with and grow to have a sincere care for them. However, when it comes to picking a mate, boys are not as particular about the girl. A study, Age and gender differences in mate selection criteria for various involvement levels found that “men should be equally as selective as women with respect to long-term mates, but less selective than woman with respect to short-term mates criteria (Kenrick).” Boys are less likely to think about all aspects of girl when planning on hooking up with her, unlike girls. They are not as particular because they are just looking for

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.

In our society today a person can often look around a room of people and see nothing but the top of their heads, along with their eyes staring down at lit up screen filled with tremendous possibilities. One thing you doubtfully will view is everyone surrounding talking to each other making kinship with in their proximity. Instead, making connections through their phones. In the article written by Nancy Jo Sales “Tinder and the Dawn of the“Dating Apocalypse””, Sales speaks of the dating culture of the current twenty-first century and her views on how online dating has affected thus creating a sort of “Dating Apocalypse”. In the culture of intimacy may it be consciously or subconsciously people are seeking love and security in their lives through hookups and technological dating cites such as Tinder.

In today's post-modern society, dating practices are both vast and varied. People meet their romantic partners in any number of locations including at work, at the bar, and increasingly, on the Internet. Online dating has become very popular over the past decade, and according to a study done in Washington DC, over 74% of single Internet users in the US have taken part in at least one online dating-related activity. In addition, this study found that 15% of American adults (that's 30 million people) say that they know someone who has been in a long-term relationship with a partner they met online (Biever, 2006).

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.