Parents, teachers, the news media, your grandparents – everyone loves to lament the “hookup culture” that has allegedly infected today’s youth with a standard of hypersexualized behavior and a lackadaisical treatment of sex. While this current state of affairs is often exaggerated by the media and popular culture, for many collegiates the consistently growing list of sexual partners, the waking up next to new strangers every weekend, the revolving door of 2 A.M. “you up?” texts, are all too familiar, and to some, disturbing.
But Donna Freitas, author of “The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy, ” offers a new perspective on the hookup culture pervading our society – one in which “hooking up” has become obligatory, a duty. Individuals are expected to act with reckless sexual abandon, so it’s not even considered reckless anymore. Caring about your sexual partner or getting too attached is seen as taboo instead of the other way around. In this way, Freitas views hypersexuality to “be just as oppressive as a mandate for abstinence.”
Cultural standards that guide our behavior like “you must hook up” and “you must not care,” may seem sexually liberating, but they are just as, if not more, taxing than demands such as “you must not have sex.”
Freitas identifies one of the major problems with today’s hookup culture as: “The guiding commandment of hookup culture: Thou shalt not become attached to your partner.” While this feigned indifference towards your sexual partner might at first protect you from emotional vulnerability, it almost always ends with one or both parties harboring negative feelings towards the sexual act or even sex in general.
Age-old traditions like courtship or even just dating have been supplanted by a new standard of what types of behavior are seen as expected: one-night stands, multiple sexual partners, etc. Now, not engaging in casual sex is what’s considered “sexual experimentation,” and is looked upon in an admirable wonderment that used to be reserved for nonchalant sexual promiscuity: “Oh, you don’t have casual sex? Wow good for you, that’s so cool!” Since casual sex is the norm, individuals who “rebel” by refusing to engage in it are marvelled at, and sometimes even praised.
Of course, statistics will tell a different story. 24% of college students aren’t hooking up, says one study. Less than 20% of students are having casual sex more than once a month, says another. But it’s not always the actual numbers that matter, but instead it is our perception of our peers’ behavior that influences how we think about sex. Studies show that collegiates tend to overestimate the amount of casual sex their peers are having, making it harder to squelch the idea that casual sex is the norm, resulting in an endless cycle of conformity. You don’t necessarily have to be an active participant in sex to be a part of the cultural narrative. The way we gossip about those who are having sex, the casual language we use when we discuss it, it’s not just a culture of hook-ups, but a culture of negativity that forms our attitudes towards sex.
So, how can we stop this cycle? With one simple word: respect. Respect those who choose to have sex. Respect those who choose not to have sex. Respect your sexual partners. Respect the act itself.
Sources:
http://faculty2.ucmerced.edu/lhamilton2/docs/paper-2010-hooking-up.pdf
http://www.livescience.com/24653-college-hookup-relationship-sex.html
https://arbiteronline.com/2016/03/08/lisa-wade-explores-hookup-culture-o…