I began by asking the people I interviewed some background questions, and then I posed many questions about their experiences and observations of how men and women meet, get together, and form relationships. Although most people I spoke with were similar in terms of race and class, I tried to interview a diverse group of students in terms of gender, grade level, and major. I also made a conscious effort to interview different “types” of students. For example, I interviewed some students who were in fraternities/sororities and very much a part of the stereotypical, alcohol-centered college social life, as well as some students who neither drank alcohol nor attended parties. For the alumni portion of the study, I interviewed people from many different professions. Additionally, I have spoken to hundreds of college students about these issues as well as many twenty-something singles.
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These conversations have taken place everywhere from bars to living rooms and from classrooms to dormitories.
Like most studies, my findings do not necessarily speak to the experiences of all college students or recent graduates. Nor can I say what percentage of college students (or young alumni) are hooking up, or how often they do it. What my study can show is what hooking up means, how it works on the college campuses I studied, and how it changes after college.
SPEAKING OF HOOKING UP
“Hooking up” is not a new term. Although media references did not begin until around the turn of the twenty-first century, there is evidence that the term “hooking up”—and presumably the practice—was being used by college students across the country since at least the mid-1980s.26 But “hooking up” is a slang term and slang by definition is an informal and nonstandard language subject to arbitrary change, so it is not surprising that there is some confusion and disagreement over the meaning of the term. In fact, the young people I spoke with use many slang terms to describe their intimate interactions. By examining the phrases they use in context, from “hooking up” to “friends with benefits” to “booty call,” I discovered not only what they mean in general, but also that they mean different things to different people, particularly men compared to women.
My challenge as a researcher is being able to find the right language to explain what I uncovered about these relationships. This has been a particular challenge with regard to hooking up. Can hooking up be characterized as a “phenomenon” or is it a “system”? Perhaps a more sociological way of talking about it would be to refer to it as a culture (i.e., the hookup culture on campus). Rather than choosing among them, throughout the chapters that follow I use these terms interchangeably to describe what hooking up is and how it differs from traditional dating. Ultimately, I found that one of the most useful ways of comparing today’s hooking-up culture with the dating era is to look at each as a “script.”
Sociologists believe that how a person behaves in a social setting can resemble an actor following a script.27 In other words, the cultural norms that we live by can dictate how people act in a given situation. In 8
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their classic sociological analysis, John H. Gagnon and William Simon argue that sexual behavior is socially learned.28 Contrary to biologists and psychologists, who often discuss sexuality in terms of “drives” and
“urges,” Gagnon and Simon believe that individuals internalize what they call “sexual scripts” in order to interact with the opposite sex.29 For instance, in the United States, sexual scripts suggest that sexual interaction begins with kissing, then sexual touching, and ultimately culminates in sexual intercourse (i.e., the “bases”).30 What is called “scripting theory” not only sheds light on the content and progression of sexual interaction, but also on the appropriate scenarios defined by society for sexual behavior to ensue. Thus, cultural norms can dictate a “script” for when, where, why, and how sexually intimate interaction can occur.
Without these scripts, sexual behavior can lose context and meaning.31
These sexual scripts are different for men and women and, some sociologists argue, largely determine the roles men and women play during sexual interaction.32 Traditionally, men take on the role of aggressor while women take on the role of gatekeeper. Men initiate sexual interaction; women decide if men will “get any” sexual contact and, if so, how much women will “put out.” There are also culturally prescribed roles that both men and women play in seeking potential sexual partners.33 The roles that men and women play are shaped by cultural influences in the context of both a specific social setting, such as the college campus, as well as a specific historical time period.34
In the next chapter, I will detail how from the 1920s through the mid-1960s the traditional sexual script dictated that dating was the means for men and women to become sexually intimate. The dating script permeated all social classes, including middle- and upper-class men and women attending college.35 However, in the second half of the twentieth century, a series of changes in the culture, as well as in the environment of the college campus, created the possibility for a new sexual script to emerge. These changes set the stage for the new hookup scene to emerge and flourish, particularly on college campuses.
PLAN OF THE BOOK
A
