The night always begins innocently enough. A young,
college-age girl with beautiful blonde hair and an innocent smile enters a
crowded party with her group of similarly attractive young friends. Smoke
clouds the air and loud music throbs from nearby speakers. Sweating, drunken
bodies press together, moving to the beat of the music. For a moment, she looks
afraid.
Then, a smiling boy in a fraternity jersey appears at her
side, presses a beer into her hand and asks her to dance. The rest of the
night is a blur of drink and laughter and a parade of faces and names she’ll
never remember in the morning, and at the end of the night her friends shoo her
back to his dorm on campus, giggling and whispering to each other as the two
stumble away.
In his room, they fall into his too-small, twin size bed.
Hands venture, bodies awkwardly move in tandem, he fumbles for a condom. It is
over just as quickly as it began, and the bliss of drunken sleep subsumes the
post-coital awkwardness. She will probably sneak out of his room in the early
hours of the morning, and they will never speak of this night again…until the
next party.
Whether this story has unfolded next to you in the
fraternity house or appeared on the movie screen in the latest chick flick, it
is not a new or surprising progression of events. Hook up culture on American
college campuses is a phenomenon that has received much attention in recent
years. Responses range from the unequivocal support of pop culture feminists,
who herald hooking up as a way to finally liberate women from patriarchal and
moralistic boxes that inhibit their sexuality, to the religious fundamentalists
who link hooking up with sexually transmitted diseases, binge drinking,
depression, and damnation.
In an article for the Los Angeles Times published in 2013,
Bob Laird expresses the common belief among numerous journalists and concerned
citizens that hook up culture is a particularly sinister condition of today’s
youth. He quotes columnist Emma Tietel, who writes with unintentional hyperbole
in Maclean's that, “if you have empty, meaningless sex throughout college,
you'll become an emotional cripple, contract gonorrhea and, most likely,
vomit.”
On the other side, author Jessica Valenti writes in her
book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young
Women (2010), that the problem is not casual sex, but the “moral panic” that has
arisen as a result of it. She focuses on America’s obsession with virginity in
young women, outlining the still-prevalent relationship between female worth
and archaic notions of purity. She outlines the ways that the ‘either/or’ trap
of Madonna/whore imagery creates an impossible standard for women, and causes
the emotionally-damaging guilt many women experience after a sexual encounter.
Whether positive or negative, it is clear that society as a
whole is still very invested in the question of what young people are doing
with their bodies, particularly when it comes to controlling them.
In
response to all the chatter, psychologists and sociologists have begun to
investigate the phenomenon of adolescent hook ups more systematically, and
surprisingly, their findings have worked to dispel many of the myths that are
circulating about notions of hooking up today. In fact, not only have
sociologists proven that young people today are having no more sex than the
generation before them, research has also proven that, though some hook ups can
have emotionally detrimental effects for both men and women, experiences vary
from both very positive to very negative results.
Though 90 percent of college students said in a 2010 study
conducted Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura Hamilton, and Paula England that their
college or university took part in hook up culture, surveys proved that no more
than 20 percent of students hook up very often. The study also found that
one-third of students abstain from hooking up altogether, and the remainders
are occasional participators.
In 2009, the National Survey of Family Growth found that the
percent of women who have had premarital sex by age 20 (65-76 percent) is
roughly the same for all groups born after 1948. In the same year, the results
of the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by The Center for Disease Control
reported that rates of sexual intercourse among 9th-12th graders decreased from
1991-2007, as did numbers of partners. Reports of condom use increased.
According to these numbers, hooking up is not as rampant as
both supporters and critics are asserting. Young people are having just as much sex as their parents, and are using more protection when they do. It is also
important to note that sociologists like Paula England have proven through
studies like this one, “Hooking Up and Forming Romantic Relationships on
Today’s College Campuses” (2008), that casual sex hasn’t replaced committed
relationships. Students often participate in both at different times during
college, and by their senior year, 69 percent of heterosexual students that
participated in her survey had been in college relationships of at least six
months.
This information therefore begs the question: if casual sex
is not emotionally crippling the youth of America, if it is not unnecessarily
perpetuating depression or unhealthy dating habits, and if it is not even a new
phenomenon…what then is the problem with hooking up on college campuses?
Returning to Jessica Valenti’s notion of The Purity Myth,
and her assertion that today’s culture has forged many problematic links
between sexuality and self-worth, the problem with hooking up is not the act of
sex (or any form of that behavior) itself. The problem is the ways that society
has mythologized sex, transforming it from a fun and often intimate exchange
between two people to a primary means of proving one’s value to others.
For most, the problems with hooking up do not become
apparent until the sex act is done, when friends suddenly transition from
applauding a sense of adventure to making ‘slut’ jokes, and whispering to
everyone what happened. Memories of middle school sex education classes or
church services that preached abstinence as the only appropriate way to
approach sex before marriage will suddenly return to mind. The analogy of the
chocolate bar, of giving a piece of one’s self away that can never be gotten
back, may haunt young women for days.
Problems arise when the guys grabs drinks later on that
Saturday afternoon, and the obligatory rendition of the night’s events
transforms his partner from a person to a conquest used to affirm his
masculinity. The trap of hyper-sexualized language and demeaning stereotypes
gains him further credibility, and at the suggestion of his friends he waits
for days to call or text, not wanting to appear needy or un-manly.
The problem with hooking up is the gendered double standard that associates female sexuality with guilt and
shame, and male sexuality with affirmation and power. A woman may feel insecure
after sex because of heightened levels of oxytocin that promote feelings of
attachment, or she may experience feelings of worthlessness because, after the
sex act occurs, words like ‘slut’ or ‘ho’ become parts of her identity. Message
boards on campus label her as ‘easy’ or as a ‘tease’, or worst of all, a
‘prude’.
Jessica Valenti asks the question in The Purity Myth,
“What's the difference between venerating women for being fuckable and putting
them on a purity pedestal?” In both cases, society is basing a woman’s worth on
her ability to impress men, or conform to a certain sexual standard; her worth is
invariably tied to what is happening between her legs. It is for this reason
that hook up culture is so detrimental, not because of what it is, but the way
we talk about it.
Many university communities are realizing
this social tendency to be the true villain of hook up culture, and a movement
known as “Sex Week” is circulating as a means of finally
telling students the “truth” about sex.
The idea was first conceived at Yale University in 2002, and
has since been imitated at many different universities across the country, including Harvard,
Washington University, Kentucky University, and Northeastern. Douglas Quenqua
writes for The New York Times in 2012 that these programs have arisen in
response to a rising concern among students that the sex education offered to
young people through schools and churches is not adequate preparation for the
reality of the experience.
He writes that, at these events, students seem less
interested in debating the various political agendas surrounding sex, such as
contraception accessibility or reproductive rights issues. Rather, they are
more interested in considering how these issues relate to their own lives. In
the spring of 2012, Harvard’s Sex Week schedule included a lecture called,
“Hooking Up on Campus”, in which Dr. Lisa Wade used survey data and
first-person stories to reveal the reality of hook up culture, arguing that it is
a mythical world constructed of media-based stereotypes (such as the sexually
liberated woman who can have sex with anyone without consequences, as seen in
the hit HBO series, ‘Girls’). More recent years have included conversations on
masculinity and sex, redefining virginity, and even workshops about sexual
health.
As Sex Week has spread to more campuses, it has maintained
an effective balance between discussions of sexual health and sexual pleasure.
Unlike typical student run, university sanctioned orientation programs that
have been standard on college campuses since the discovery of H.I.V./AIDS, Sex
Week organizers seeks to go beyond instruction on safe sex, rape prevention,
and sexually transmitted diseases. They intend to break the problematic silence
that surrounds conversations about sex in the current cultural moment, ideally
seeking to create a judgment-free zone where people can bring their questions,
and learn how to have more comfortable and fulfilled sex lives on campus.
Harvard student Danny Bicknell of the class of 2013 writes
on the Harvard Sex Week web site that, “I’m supporting Sex Week because I
support open, honest communication that empowers individuals to feel confident
and respected amongst their peers. Sex Week will initiate greater sustained
conversation and awareness of gender and sexuality issues that are relevant to
all college students.”
He is one of many who openly voice their support of this
growing phenomenon on college campuses, and despite faculty and parental
pushback, students who take part in these events believe that they are merely
working to address the reality of today’s college student. Many students do
have sex for the first time in college, and it is important to foster a
community where this experience is not paired with shame, secure in
the knowledge that this experience is one of many crucial moments in the
maturation process.
Movements like Sex Weeks are only one of the many ways that student communities are fostering openness and comfort with issues of the body and sexuality on college campuses today. Other universities opt for programs such as Love Your Body Week, which target similar issues. Regardless of the name, it seems that more and more students and faculty alike are aware of the necessity of decoupling sex and silence within American culture, and are instead attempting to transform the bedroom into a place of equality and mutual respect.
