Despite the double standard, women do have more sexual freedom today than they did in the dating era. But, it was not only women who gained sexual freedom since the sexual revolution; men did also.
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(while society looked the other way) had to do so with women of ill re-pute.68 In the hooking-up era, men have many more women to choose from for potential sexual encounters. For better or worse, men also do not have to put forth the amount of effort (e.g., phone calls, flowers, expensive dates, etc.) that their grandfathers did for sexual interaction to take place. Men today also do not have to propose marriage or walk down the aisle in order to have regular access to sexual intercourse. Indeed, men can have sex without entering into a relationship at all. Thus, hooking up is a system whereby men can engage in sexual encounters without the pretext of a relationship and where no guarantee of an ongoing or future bond with the woman is required. In a sense, it can be argued that men are the ones who really benefited from the sexual revolution. Robert, a sophomore at Faith University, opined: Robert:It almost seems like [the hookup scene] is a guy’s paradise.
No real commitment, no real feelings involved, this is like a guy’s paradise. This age [era] that we are in I guess.
KB: So you think guys are pretty happy with the [hookup] system?
Robert:Yeah! I mean this is what guys have been wanting for many, many years. And women have always resisted, but now they are going along with it. It just seems like that is the trend.
Clearly, women’s rights activists who called for sexual equality with men did not intend to promote a form of interaction that would be considered a “guy’s paradise.”
Despite the increase in sexual freedom since the dating era, the hookup culture is not as out of control as some observers (and college students) believe. Hooking up is dominant on campus, but it represents a wide range in terms of level of participation and sexual behavior.
There are many students who do not take part in hooking up at all and others who, for various reasons (e.g., they are in a relationship), have only hooked up a few times.69 For those students who have engaged in hooking up, many encounters involved nothing more than kissing. Although a hookup can involve casual sex between two parties who just met that evening, a hookup could also mean two people kissing after having a crush on each other for a year. Likewise, a hookup encounter may happen only once or evolve into repeatedly hooking up or even become a relationship. The point is that hooking up can mean different 184
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things, and it is too often assumed, by scholars and commentators alike, that it refers to only the most promiscuous scenarios.
This is not to say that extreme behavior is not happening in the hookup culture. For some students, college life can become an endless spring break. These are the same students who consume a dispropor-tionate amount of alcohol on campus and hook up with different partners on a weekly basis. This behavior raises a variety of health concerns, particularly with regard to the level of binge drinking and the potential for STD transmission or rape. It is students caught up in the extremes of the hookup culture who, to the exclusion of their more moderate classmates, have captured the attention of critics. Although this behavior needs attention, it can also distort the reality of life on campus for the student body as a whole.
Acknowledging the variation in the hookup culture is important not only for students generally, but also for understanding differences between genders. Although I chose to highlight the differences between men and women throughout the preceding chapters, there is, no doubt, as much variation within gender as there is across it. Just as not all students fit the mold of the most raucous partiers, not all men want sex and not all women want relationships. I spoke with some men who preferred being in a relationship over hookup encounters with new partners. I also spoke to some women who enjoyed the freedom and experimentation of the hookup scene (at least during freshman year). Therefore, it would be unfair to oversimplify the behavior of the sexes.
However, I found that women’s interest in hookup encounters evolving into some semblance of a relationship and men’s interest in “playing the field” was a theme that fundamentally affects the dynamic between men and women in the hookup culture.
Given that there is a wide range of possibilities available to men and women coming of age in the hookup era, it would seem that there is an almost endless array of choices an individual can make. For example, if a student wants to go to parties and hook up every weekend, he or she can choose to do so. Likewise, if a student wants to be part of the hookup scene, but as a more moderate participant, he or she can do that too. However, in many ways, the hookup system creates an illusion of choice. Although students have many options about how they conduct themselves within the hookup culture, they cannot change the fact
