College Hookup Culture?

There was a recent New York Times article talking about the college hookup culture in America. Based on isolated cases (which they take to be representative) and misrepresented statistics, the Times writer comes to the conclusion that the college-aged youth of the US are eschewing relationships in favour of random sex with strangers, or purely physical relationships based on sex but no romantic or emotional connection. Better still (from my point of view), it’s not just white dudes doing it, but this phenomenon crosses genders and races – everyone is taking part in the new hookup culture! Especially emphasized is the fact that girls are into this hookup culture too. (This is accompanied by a bit of hand wringing about the fact that these poor, deluded girls might not be able to find husbands.)

Now, you should be aware that the Times’ Trends section has a history of writing specious articles which take isolated incidents or people and try to use them to “prove” some new trend, which Slate likes to debunk from time to time. That’s definitely the case with “A” in this article, their poster child who has a hookup buddy instead of a boyfriend, and who never has sex at her place “because then she would have to wash the sheets.” (By the way, A is also a “true feminist,” which is important because, as I’ve discussed before, that term means a lot in this day and age.) But they don’t stop with just claiming that college kids are immersed in hookup culture, they double down, claiming that it has become a “social taboo” to have a relationship!

When it comes to this college hookup culture, I think my view on it can be summed up thusly: I wish! If that’s what college was like I’d hang around college campuses every night, buying drinks for pretty coeds and helping them achieve the emotion-free orgasms they’ve been seeking. (Seriously, ladies, I got skillz. We should go back to your dorm, though, rather than doing it in the bar’s bathroom or the backseat of a car, because when you cum so hard that you pass out it’s better to be on a comfy bed.) I’d fucking love it if this were the case. I want this article to be correct. But you know what? Something doesn’t smell right.

Which brings us to a Slate article, which is, surprise surprise, essentially debunking the Times article and anyone else who’s bemoaning (or trumpeting) this supposed hookup culture. When I quote the first two paragraphs of the story, you’ll see why it piqued my interest and kept me reading:

Let me lay out some statistics that, considered together, seem quite improbable. First, 91 percent of college students agree that their lives are dominated by the hookup culture. Second, the median number of hookups for a graduating senior is seven. That’s fewer than two hookups a year. Only about 40 percent of those hookups include sexual intercourse so, technically, the typical student acquires only two new sexual partners during college.

If students agree with the rest of the panicked culture and the recent New York Times story that they are embedded in an alcohol-fueled, porn-soaked, party scene that welcome casual sex, how is it possible that their actual sexual activity can be described with numbers like two and seven?

A very good question, Ms. Wade. And may I say kudos on using the phrase “alcohol-fueled, porn-soaked, party scene that welcomes casual sex,” which, if I were more adventurous, I would have tattooed on my body somewhere.

But I digress.

Ms. Wade, like so many other researchers, had been focusing on the gendered aspect of this equation: are girls hooking up as much as dudes? Are they just doing it because they have no choice, or are they starting to embrace the hookup culture (as dudes always have)? But then, as indicated above, common sense started to sneak in, and she started taking a closer look at the data. Are you ready for a huge dose of “I could have told you that”?

Buried in the statistics is information about who is participating in the hookup culture more or less actively. And, it turns out, not everyone on campus embraces the scene equally. Only 14 percent of students hookup more than 10 times in four years and these students are more likely than others to be white, wealthy, heterosexual, able-bodied, and conventionally attractive, according to quantitative studies of hookup behavior. Students who do not fall into these categories hook up significantly less and are more likely to disapprove of or be uninterested in the whole endeavor.

Maybe it’s not immediately obvious why that’s a common sense finding, but it becomes more clear if you phrase it a different way: Those who feel more entitled in general, who have less to lose and who have the means to handle the consequences of living however they’d like, happen to be those who are more likely to “hook up,” and damn the consequences. Now, phrased that way, doesn’t it seem like common sense?

The article goes into a number of reasons why less entitled students are not into the hookup culture, and, again, they’re pretty common sense. If you have more to lose, it’s much less attractive of an option. And frankly, aside from anything mentioned in Slate, aside from any statistics, just think about one of the things said in the Times article: Do you really think it’s become a social taboo to have a relationship? Honestly? Does that sound even remotely realistic to you? Or does it sound like sensationalism under the guise of journalism?

And the result is summed up by the last paragraph of the Slate article:

So what we are seeing on college campuses is the same dynamic we see outside of colleges. People with privilege—based on race, class, ability, attractiveness, sexual orientation, and, yes, gender—get to set the terms for everyone else. Their ideologies dominate our discourses, their particular set of values gets to appear universal, and everyone is subject to their behavioral norms. Students feel that a hookup culture dominates their colleges not because it is actually widely embraced, but because the people with the most power to shape campus culture like it that way.

Suddenly the world seems rational again. But, just for a moment, can I return to one of the phrases used by Ms. Wade? That tattoo-worthy phrase, that college kids are immersed in an “alcohol-fueled, porn-soaked, party scene that welcomes casual sex”? Because my favourite part of that quote is the term “porn-soaked.” I’ve posited on this blog, probably numerous times, that college kids these days are probably consuming porn way more than they were in my day.

Old Coot Alert: Any time I, or anyone else, talk about “kids these days,” you should mentally prepare yourself for the wild generalizations which are sure to follow.

And you know what? Assuming that college kids are “porn-soaked” is in no way counter to Ms. Wade’s conclusions in the Slate article. If you’re going to start hooking up there may be consequences to deal with, and it will be much easier to deal with those consequences if you’re white, well off, and hetero, so if you’re not those things you might think twice about hooking up. But the only potential consequence to consuming porn is dehydration – and water can take care of that lickety split!

Non-English-Speaking Reader Alert: The phrase “lickety split” doesn’t mean what you might think it means, even when used on a porn blog. It just means “fast.” If you’re female, good looking, and have good hygiene, I’d be quite happy to “lickety” your “split,” but that’s not what the term means in the context above.

In my mind, if kids are consuming a lot of porn, it might partially explain why so many of them – a whopping 91% – self report to have their lives dominated by the “hookup culture,” while only 14% of them actually do hook up on any kind of a regular basis. If you’re consuming a lot of porn, sex becomes a regular part of your life (in a way), even if you’re not actually having it yourself. When you do have sex, with an actual partner, you might even be open to trying some of the things you’ve been seeing in porn, and you might be more open and less inhibited about the whole thing. So that one time that you hooked up with a guy you met at a bar and fucked him might lead you to report in a survey that you’re actively participating in the hookup culture of your college campus, even though that’s not really your normal thing and the rest of your sexual experiences have been with regular boyfriends, and you never let them get past second base until the third date.

The most important conclusion I bring from all of this is that I really wish I’d read these articles before I started this blog, because Porn Soaked would have been a great name for it.