Earlier this week, I was in Virgina speaking at Emory & Henry College at the school's winter forum - it was a day-long group of discussions on gender and sexuality. This talk was different than others I've done - generally I speak about Feministing and my writing. But the organizers at E&H wanted me to speak about the so-called hook up culture on college campuses, and they wanted me to have a "discussion" (a debate) with this woman, Elizabeth Marquardt. (I actually felt very odd about debating Marquardt because she was so damn nice and friendly - I don't know that I'm cut out for this kind of thing. More on this in an upcoming post...)
In any case, I had a lot of fun with the talk, because a lot of it related back to the work I did for The Purity Myth. So on the chance that anyone gives a shit, I thought I'd repost my speech here...dirty jokes not included.
I have to admit that when I found out I would be speaking on "hook up culture" today, I was somewhat at a loss.
Because the truth is, I actually don't believe that hook culture exists.
Do I think young people in college have sex and hook up? Of course.
But I don't think that this means that there's some nefarious culture of wanton sexuality rampant across college campuses - at least, not any more than there ever was - and I don't think that the fact that young people have sex or are otherwise physically intimate with each other is necessarily a cause for concern.
What I do think is cause for worry is the way that conservative and anti-women organizations, writers, and media makers are using this myth of a hook up culture to promote regressive values surrounding gender and to roll back women's rights.
So just to get some context - let's talk a little bit about what "hook up" culture actually is as its imagined by the media and conservative organizations.
In 2007 alone, nearly 1,000 news and magazine articles referred to the "girls gone wild" or "raunch culture" phenomenon.
The topics of these articles ranged from general finger wagging about girls' supposed promiscuity and spring break, to op-eds about college women's slutty Halloween costumes.
I found headlines like "Spring Break, Broken Girls," "Dying to Date" and "Girls Gone Bad."
One article for Newsweek even wondered whether America was raising a generation of "prostitots." (That would be slutty toddlers.)
Another piece from The Washington Post - and this one is actually my favorite - said that young women hooking up was tantamount to "a mental health crisis on American campuses."
There should be two things that are immediately evident to you - even from just these small sampling of articles. 1) The concerns about young people hooking up and having sex aren't about young people at all - they're about young women.
And 2) The attitude is definitely that young women having sex is a bad, bad thing. There's a whole lot of shaming and scare tactics going on.
And it's not just limited to the media. Also in 2007, when all of these articles were coming out, five books were released, all arguing that pre-marital sex and hook up culture are terrible for young women.
One book, Unprotected, by Miriam Grossman, told readers that sexually active young women are more likely to be depressed and more likely to commit suicide.
In another book called Prude, the author writes that pre-marital sex "often condemns young women to a life of poverty and deprivation." (So just to keep this straight, women who are hooking up are supposed to be depressed, suicidal, AND looking forward to a life of poverty.)
And these books are just the latest in a long line of publications and reports - almost all put out by conservative organizations (and I'll explain why that's important in a minute) saying that hooking up is the most dire issue facing young American women today.
A short publication - a little booklet meant for college women - put out by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, for example, says that the more sexual partners women have, the more depressed they are and that young women who have sex are just going to end up sad, lonely dropouts with HPV.
(I'm paraphrasing obviously, but this is in fact what was written in the publication.)
The booklet hinges so much on scare tactics that it goes as far as to wish STDs on fictional characters.
"It's easy to forget, but the characters on Grey's Anatomy and Sex in the City are not real. In real life, Meredith and Carrie would have warts or herpes. They'd likely be on Prozac or Zoloft."
Just as an aside, I think it's really telling that a lot of anti-hook up books rely on anecdotes from TV or the movies - characters that are totally fictional - because they often can't find real life examples for their scare tactics.
And if the content of these publications wasn't obvious enough, their visuals really say it all. The covers of these books and publications - and if you can ever look them up online, I highly suggest that you do - frequently show young women, head in their hands, dresses ripped, and slumped over, or naked in the fetal position - just generally looking in trouble.
The message seems to be that the only kind of sex young women can have is dangerous, drunk sex that leaves them disheveled and traumatized.
But the thing is, despite what these books and articles are saying - sexually active young women are in fact not diseased, depressed drop outs. They are doing just fine.
The truth is, 95% of Americans have premarital sex, and this has been true for decades. Even for women who were born in the 1940s, nine out of ten had sex before marriage. (And even back then there was moral panic about young women having sex - so this is really nothing new.)
Teenagers are using contraception more often than in past years, and more effectively. Unless they've taken abstinence only education classes, of course, in which case they don't use contraception and have increased rates of oral and anal sex. And that's according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Women are also attending college at the highest rates in history, and we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students.
In addition, a national survey of five hundred thousand high school seniors from 1975 to 2005 showed that 70 percent of young women today report being happy with themselves, and that 77 percent are happy with their lives. The same study showed that 70 percent of young women think it's important to make a contribution to society, and that 90 percent hope to have a job that enables them to help others.
So these stats - showing happy and socially engaged young women paint quite a different picture than conservative organizations and the media do - of oversexed, apathetic, young women going wild.
So what's the disconnect? If young women are doing so well, whether they're having sex or not - why spend so much energy arguing that hooking up is ruining them?
The simple answer is that well-educated and socially engaged women don't make for sexy headlines and they certainly don't sell books.
But there's also something more insidious going on here. Almost all of the books and reports written about hook-up culture are done by writers and researchers with ties to conservative or anti-feminist organizations - some are even outright funded by them.
Miriam Grossman, who wrote Unprotected, for example, is a senior fellow with the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute - the same organization that put out that anti-hooking up pamphlet and which also spends a good amount of money trying to shut down college performances of the award winning play The Vagina Monologues. (They think it's pornographic to say the word vagina, apparently.)
The statistic that sexually active young women are more likely to be depressed and suicidal actually comes from a study done by The Heritage Foundation - a conservative think tank that's a strong proponent of abstinence only education, and that is against issues like same sex marriage and CEDAW (which is a major international women's rights treaty in the UN.)
And also I believe the study Elizabeth did on hooking up was funded by the Independent Women's Forum, an organization which argues that pay inequity doesn't exist and actually fights against Violence Against Women Act - legislation which allocates billions of dollars to domestic violence shelters and rape centers.
So I think it's really important to think about where these statistics are coming from when we talk about so-called hook up culture and to remember that this kind of manufactured panic is really just one part of a larger conservative strategy.
Because talking about women's sexuality in this way is an incredibly effective tool that's being used to reinforce traditional gender norms and to regress women's rights.
And if you're at skeptical about this, besides looking at who is doing the writing and the funding, you should also pay close attention to what they're actually saying, and specifically what solutions they're suggesting to the "problem" of young women hooking up.
Laura Sessions Stepp, who wrote Unhooked, writes that young women don't belong in bars, "that's a guy thing," and that they should consider baking cookies to impress men. (Not that there's anything wrong with baking cookies, I'm a big fan myself, but I think you see where this is going...)
Miriam Grosmman advocates that young women not wait long to get married and get pregnant - in fact both authors seem to assume that the main goal of women in college isn't academics or finding themselves, or even having fun - but instead, finding a husband.
Again, nothing wrong with getting married and having babies, but when you assume that should be the main goal of young women in college - something is amiss.
Of course, it's worth mentioning that none of these books talk about gay or lesbian youth - the only young people who exist in this narrative are straight, and generally white.
And this isn't just about talking points or press releases on how college women shouldn't be having sex. The work that they're doing around "hooking up" is doing actual tangible damage to women.
For example, when the FDA was considering making the HPV vaccine available in the United States - the vaccine that prevents cervical cancer - the single biggest public concern cited wasn't health related or about the vaccine's newness. It was about the worry that girls would become promiscuous if they were vaccinated.
Charlotte Allen, of the Independent Women's Forum, wrote that the HPV vaccine gives girls the message that "it's just fine for them to have all the sex they want, 'cuz now they'll be vaccinated!" Bridget Maher, of the Family Research Council, said that giving girls the vaccine is harmful because "they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."
Dozens of other conservative pundits and organizations repeated the sentiment.
Now, I rarely quote Bill Maher, but he was right on when he joked, "It's like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot, she'll want to jab rusty nails in her feet."
Similarly, emergency contraception - also known as the morning after pill or Plan B - was held up in the FDA for years for over-the-counter status (meaning, you would be able to get it without a prescription) because of fears that young women would go all slutty.
It later came to light that an FDA medical official wrote in an internal memo that over-the-counter status for emergency contraception could cause "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B."
Let's be clear, this was an FDA official holding up a safe contraceptive that because of the fear of teen sex cults.
So really, all of this writing and talking about hooking up is about a lot more than just wanting young people to have less sex, or to date more. This is about a return to traditional gender roles - a world where women go to college not to get an education, but to find a husband; a world where women don't really like sex but just do it to have babies. A world where women have no reproductive choices.
Now, all of this is not to say that I don't think there's a problem with how oversexualized the media is, or how women and women's sexuality are portrayed in pop culture - I do think that there's a problem.
I also think we need to have a serious conversation about sexual assault, rape and alcohol on college campuses - these are issues of sexuality that are immediately dangerous to both young men and women.
I even think that there's a lot more we could discuss about hooking up. But let's have that conversation with nuance and realism, and let's certainly have it without an agenda.
And fact is, focusing on hyped-up problems that sell newspapers, titillate the imagination and line the pockets of conservative organizations make it that much easier to ignore actual problems young women are facing, issues that take a lot more than a moral scolding to fix.
For a young woman living in poverty, spring break isn't even an option, let alone a concern. For a young woman who has no health insurance, the "moral" debate over STDs won't do anything for her the next time she needs to see a doctor. And for a young single mother, hearing about herself as an unfortunate statistic isn't going to make her life any better or easier.
If the same people who are working themselves into a panic over women's sexuality spent half as much time advocating on behalf of issues that young women really need help with, we might actually be getting somewhere. But instead, we're stuck talking about what a shame it is that young women are having sex, when the truth is, it isn't a shame at all.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Speechifying: So-called hook up culture and the anti-feminists who love it.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12058
Awesome awesome awesome :) can you speak at my college?
ditto!!!
This was a concise, well-organized speech with a relate-able, reasonable tone that I think instills the listener with a sense that you know what you're talking about.
But I'm interested to know how it was a "Debate." Did you and Elizabeth M. get to address one another directly and make rebuttals to each other in front of the audience, or was it just two women giving two contrasting speeches?
I'm not saying that to belittle either of your speeches; they sound great. But I am interested in the audience reaction AND Elizabeth Marquardt's reaction to your points. (I will look up this school to see whether they skew conservative).
Thanks Okra! We each gave our own speeches and then there was a "discussion" session afterward moderated by a professor.
Elizabeth responded to some of my points, but mostly in a defensive - I don't agree with everything IWF says! - kind of way.
The discussion/debate portion was polite, but there was definitely a back and forth. Mostly, I tried to ask why - if her organization is so fond of marriage and thinks it's such a great institution - they spend so much energy trying to convince yong straight college women to get hitched (when they prolly will without any help from an org) and not fighting for equal marriage rights for same sex couples. That did not go over well. ;)
Do schools EVER skew conservative? I go to a school in SC, and even we're liberal.
Those kind of schools are out there. Often, they have religious sponsors (like Brigham Young or Bob Jones Universities) or were specifically founded by conservatives to eschew "liberal academia" (Grove City College or Hillsdale College) or both.
I go to a women's college in Georgia (Agnes Scott, with my obvious username and all), and we are super liberal, but plenty of other schools in Georgia skew very conservative. Georgia Tech is probably 80% Republican and Berry College is a small private school in Rome, GA that is super conservative. (Thank goodness my sis decided NOT to go there. There record on LGBT issues is abysmal. They wouldn't give approval to an LGBT club and their discrimination statements don't cover transgenders or homosexuals.)
In another book called Prude, the author writes that pre-marital sex "often condemns young women to a life of poverty and deprivation."
No, being born poor condemns young women to a life of poverty and deprivation. Think Bristol Palin and her baby are ever going to want for anything?
Great speech. I might direct some of my students to read it.
One thing I didn't like: You left out the dirty jokes! *whine*
Round of applause! That was so well-put Jessica- intelligent, succinct and free from hand-wringing or finger-pointing. I am glad there is someone like you out there representing feminism so well.
I would be interested to know what Elizabeth's response to this was, or if there was even a response at all. Also how did the audience members respond- did your arguments resonate with them at all?
A great overview on why our cultural narrative on female sexuality is so messed up.
Where is all the worry and fear that young men are engaging in premarital sex? I'd love to see some good old-fashioned hand wringing about teenage boys sinking into the depths of poverty and low self-esteem because of hook-ups. Oh wait, I forgot! Conservatives aren't trying to control the male population!
I really don't like the patriarchy. Under the patriarchy, I as a male would face social pressures to marry a woman that I impregnated.
I believe women should not be called whores for experimenting with their sexuality, just as men have done for centuries, but, of course my position is biased.
I've seen a few films (including some shown to my grandfather as a serviceman during WWII) that often portray the "dangers" to men having sex as all coming from women: be careful, and only sleep with a nice, virgin girl or you'll get the clap!
They basically treat it as if women are the only vectors for STDs and that men are just boys out having fun until the evil temptress starts flaunting her flesh around, causing men to lose all control.
It's sort of weird how the same culture that glorifies men as strong, intelligent, and independent also believes that men are slaves to irrational passions any time we catch a glimpse of hip or breast.
thank you!
that was a great speech. and it's so true too, my college is always having conversations about the hook-up culture and i never know what to think, but this has definitely put it in a different perspective.
you should come to my college too!
and
i also want dirty jokes...
An intelligent and relevant speech! I was very pleased.
Thanks for posting this, Jessica! I’m reading “Unhooked” by Laura Sessions-Stepp right now, and it’s truly making my blood boil. I’m only a few dozen pages in, and already the book is dog-eared with anti-feminist sludge. Stepp paints women as stupid, boy-crazy bimbos, who are on the road toward unhappiness in their love and sex lives.
7 years ago I worked for Shannon Ethridge, author of "Every Woman's Battle" and plethora of other "only white married women can have sex" books. Those were the days when I did everything to not be myself - oh, and I was paying the org to work.
Happily unmarried with a blossoming career in the frigid North, I plan to "hook-up" with a Caribbean man tonight - ha!
Great speech! What always gets me about when people complain about "hook-ups" hurting young women is that it always seems to kind of rest on the notion that women are automatically hoping every encounter will lead to some deep meaningful relationship, and they're being sold-short. Is it terribly inconcieveable that a young college age woman just stepping out on her own may want to experiment a bit and try out new things, just like the guys do? Why is there no female equivalent of the concept of a young man "sowing his wild oats?"
Also, why do people act like hooking up is this brand new thing that's never been done? From what I hear it doesn't really sound different from what my mother's generation might term a "one night stand" or a "casual encounter".
Please please please come and talk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee!!!
Lol.
Great speech!
Jessica,
Thank you for speaking at our college. That was the least well-organized Winter Forum I've ever attended (normally the topics are more intellectually challenging and reserved to one point of view) but you were a bright spot in the day. My husband in particular was very impressed by your ability to speak well and intelligently on that poorly chosen topic, and admitted that you'd challenged some of his assumptions regarding "hook-up culture."
I’m very impressed with your presentation. I admire your style and the way that you highlighted your points without defensiveness which, I think, allows for the other side to be more likely to listen with an open mind. You illustrated your points well, especially how the impact of these scare tactics negatively affects women’s role in society by reinforcing outdated gender norms. Good job.
Anti-feminists who speak on the topic of “hooking up” often present feminists as people who encourage young women to objectify themselves sexually, and to “hook up” even if it’s for the wrongs reasons. Fact is, as Jessica wrote in her speech, feminists recognize many of the same problems in the media that these anti-feminists speak of. Of course, we don’t want young women living vicariously through fictional television characters and/or having unprotected sex. In fact, feminism educates women against these exact things.
I saw Jessica speak in Toronto last year, and one young lady got up and asked how feminism and this so-called “hooking up” culture relates to feminists who would consider themselves sexually modest. It seemed to me as though she believed what many anti-feminists believe, meaning that feminism encourages young women to get out there and experiment sexually, which can be frustrating for someone who has had zero or one sexual partner. I hope that the Purity Myth touches on this.
Again, great speech! Congrats!
Thank you SO MUCH, Jessica! I was going to comment on your blog here, but when my comments turned into a long rant on media culture, I posted my entire response over at my own page, Touching An American Sky. For anyone who's interested, it's here:
http://www.eightyfeettall.com/touchanamericansky/
Warning: I am sorta unPC (in its present meaning), but am a dedicated feminist and have been since I was a young'un.
Dirty jokes are indeed a spice of life ;-D
Elizabeth responded to some of my points, but mostly in a defensive - I don't agree with everything IWF says! - kind of way.
So ... you handed her her ass. You so tied her to a set of views she couldn't defend that she spent all her energy trying to cut herself loose from the social conservative anchor. You won -- own it.
Good speech.
I disagree that hook-up culture does not exist. Hook-up culture is a form of backlash against women’s sexual liberation, in which women’s sexual liberation is used as a means to sexually exploit women. As a female college student, I have been exposed to incidents where hook-ups have disadvantaged and put female friends at unnecessary risk.
Some of the most socially aggressive women I know transform into meek, complacent girls around men. They wait for a guy to text message them for sex. They drink too much at parties in hopes of attracting male attention. They wonder if the guys they sleep with are sleeping with other women, but do not ask for fear of being pegged as un-cool. They do not insist on using protection when engaging in sexual activities because the men they sleep with protest. They do not insist that their sexual partners get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The women I speak of are strong women in various arenas: academics, sports, and social circles. These women are not shrinking violets in any arena other than when it comes to men.
There is an expectation on college campuses that women are and should be sexually available. Men are not expected to financially chip in for birth control. The meaning of a sexually liberated woman has been changed to mean a woman who is always willing and available for sex. This definition of sexual liberation is not what my feminist foremothers fought for; hook-ups or sexuality on men’s terms is not what sexual liberation means to me. For me, sexual liberation means being able to make the decision if and when to have sex. Women’s sexuality being exploited is just as damaging as women’s sexuality being ignored and denied. Patriarchy has taken women’s sexual liberation and turned it on its head for the benefit of men. Women feeling compelled to have sex with men in order to be cool is not sexual liberation.
Women’s sexuality and decision-making must be respected by society and men. Often times, college men think that persistently harassing women to have sex is an appropriate method to obtain sex. They think that if they are persistent long enough that the red light will become a green light, and they will get sexual favors. This perspective of women’s sexuality is flawed and lacks a respect for the woman’s decision-making. Young women need to know that they have an absolute right to their bodies, to their individual sexuality, to their ideas, to themselves.
This doesn't sound like "hook up" culture to me, sounds like plain ole patriarchy.
Lindsay: Thanks for saying this much more articulately than I could. This is definitely more in line with what my experience was like in college, and it's what I think of when I hear people talking about the hook-up culture.
I do think that one of the reasons the conservative writing about "hook-up culture" has gotten so much attention is that there is a realization that this is what the social and sexual scene is like at a lot of high schools and colleges--women are expected to provide sex as the price of admission into the social world, and if they don't they're nerds or losers--and that it is harmful to young women. People know it's wrong but don't know how to respond to it. And I don't think feminist groups have provided a viable counter response to these sort of concerns, other than talking about date rape, which is important, but doesn't address the broader problem of what is going on here, and defending the right of young women to have casual sex if they want to, which is also fine but only one side of the issue. This creates an opening for the Laura Sessions Stepps of the world to come in and attach their own ideological baggage to what is a valid concern lots of people have.
I wish we could develop the language to have a frank conversation here about the social pressures lots of young women are under to have sex before they're ready or with people they don't necessarily want to have, rather than just the social pressures not to have sex, which in my experience have been far less pervasive.
I agree that hook up culture does appear to exist. I agree that the problems lindsayscallan brought up exist even in dating cultures, and are attributable to patriarchy, not hook ups.
I'm a little older than the writers and most of the readers on this site. Not a lot older, but a little older. Based on reports from actual young people read here and other places, and on writing by both feminist and anti-feminists, heterosexual relations have changed a lot since I was in my early 20s. When I was that age, yes, people hooked up, but dating, with actual dates, where one party asked another party to engage in a non-sexual activity in a public place and it was quite clear that they were a couple, was very common. (We also walked uphill both ways in the snow to get to these "dates.") Based on multiple sources, dates are much, much less common now and hook ups much, much more common. Now, the dating culture I experienced had all the same characteristics as the hook up culture that lindsay describes. So, plain ole patriarchy, yes, by all means. But I don't think anything is served by denying the change in how young, heterosexual men and women relate to each other.
well i think that experience can vary greatly by where you're in college and what kind of environment it is. i recently attended a large state university in the south and found that dating and relationships were quite common, as well as hooking up. i'm sure it's still the case there today. i don't think things are changing the way that the anti-feminist-close-your-legs-and-put-down-that-beer crowd claims.
Yeah, I thought it was a backlash too until I read Tim Hartman's "Logic of Life" were he explains how skewed sex ratios leave one group with more social power in the dating world. And the imbalance doesn't have to be very large before you can observe differences in behaviors and attitudes.
One of the things that has happened in that last decades is that more and more women are enrolling at colleges to the point where at many colleges there are more women than men, especially in the undergraduate departments. (Many colleges have implemented affirmative action for men, to lessen the gap somewhat).
So when there is a surplus of men with respect to women (or if 50-50) lower STI rates and fewer unplanned pregnancies are documented. This is explained by higher acceptance of wearing condoms by men and less casual sex overall.
Flip it around. When the there are shortages of men, higher STI rates are observed as are unplanned pregnancies. Lower rates of marriage are also documented. No place is this more evident than the African American community (the ethnic community with the lowest men:women ratio, the lowest rates of marriage, highest rates of unplanned births, teen births, HIV rates, etc).
Even when you tease out socio-economics, such as racism and poverty, the effect for blacks still persists: the data for HIV rates for historically black colleges is compelling, in this regard.
I think the "hook up" is perhaps another result of the same dynamic here. It seems like men and women are still acting as a whole with different interests. Otherwise one wouldn't see such dramatic differences when sex ratios become out of balance.
And from a woman's perspective, one of these pictures is a lot worse in terms of overall public health and well-being. Nope, this isn't a backlash. It's showing us how little things have actually changed.
oops the author's name is Tim Harford. He's an economist, but don't hold it against him :)
Incidentally in his book he also cites data that suggests that the slightly related teen "oral sex craze" was in part due to implementation of laws requiring parental notification for abortions...
Great speech.
I think it's absolutely true that a lot of women of all ages are having dangerous sex and so are men. But I look at a lot like the quote about free speech, "The best cure for the ills of free speech, is more free speech." The more you censor healthy sexuality and sex education, the more people will get their examples from glorified, unhealthy examples in pornography and other media. And that's all the anti-sex types end up doing - they prevent open discussion. Women still have sex just as they have throughout history, but they are burdened with all sorts of social baggage that can bring shame and prevent them from asking/demanding what they want or need.
I think there's an idea that there is an "appropriate" amount of lovers for women in college. Something between zero and maybe five (over the entire course of your college life).
I honestly don't believe that any but the most extreme (agenda-leaden) organizations think women having any pre-marital sex in college is "shocking" or even unhealthy. Although I'm sure groups life Concerned Women for America probably do think that.
But those newspaper editors and even your debate partner are probably thinking there's some mythical "middle-ground" between a few lovers and being a hook-up slut. One-two boyfriends in college=normal.
More than five = you are some kind of hook up slut and doing serious psychological damage to yourself and have low-self esteem.
I'm not clear, NewsCat--are you saying you hold this position or not yourself?
YES. YES. YES.
great speech, jess!
i want to print it out and just air-drop a zillion copies somewhere--everywhere! but that wouldn't be very green of me, would it?
i'm so glad that there are feminist writers standing up to this bullshit and doing so with the stats to back it up, not to mention style.
Excellent speech. But I also agree with the point that was raised about how women's liberation has been coopted by the patriarchy to enslave women as constantly sexually available in order to be visible in the social order. It's true it has nothing to do with promiscuity and everything to do with freedom twisted into exploitation.
Ok, wow...I nearly spewed beer all over my brand-new laptop when I read that you'd been at E&H, 'cause I went there for two years. First of all, kudos for landing the gig - when I was there, the Winter Forum speakers were Dr. Jocelyn Elders and Morris Dees, so you're in excellent company.
I apologize if this is disjointed, because I have some pretty intense feelings relating to Emory, and I want to keep this from being a personal attack. I'm really interested to get your take on the campus culture, based on what you saw. My experience was that there's a massive divide between the people who want to examine, as intentionally as possible, issues such as sexism, racism and classism, and the Greek/jock culture that couldn't care less. Even when I was a student there, I wondered if the Winter Forum weren't already preaching to the choir, so to speak. For instance, E&H is a dry campus. If you stayed on campus, you probably noticed that this hardly means that drinking/partying don't take place. As at many colleges, events that involve cancelling classes (such as Winter Forum) usually are excuses for staying up all night drinking. The difference is that E&H's administration tends to hide behind their image - we're a dry campus, so of course we don't have drinking, drugs, the attendant problems with sexual assault, etc. - rather than dealing with those issues head-on. It doesn't help that they're a religious school in an extremely conservative area.
I really, really hate to say this, because I love what you do and everything you said in this speech...but I'm willing to bet that the E&H students, faculty and staff that most needed to hear this weren't even in the room.
Loved how the speech carved out a space for women's sexuality without giving in to the right wing hype about the effects of pre-marital sex.
I totally agree that this idea of "hook-up culture" and all the conservative scare-tactics regarding sexually-active women are just aimed at shaming young women into feeling guilty. I wish we could have a discussion about female sexuality without agenda either - and I want to stop focusing on the behavior of women! I also want to stop pretending that we live in a post-patriarchal society. As much as I try to be sex-positive I find that it's difficult to feel good about having sex with men in a culture that still teaches them it's ok to be nice until they get you in bed, pressure you to do things you don't want to, and then treat you like shit once they finally get their way. I can't do "hookups" anymore because I just can't take this kind of treatment anymore - and it bothers me that the conservative response to my feeling bad is to put the blame on me. This is what I get for having sex - it's not the sex that's the problem, it's the behavior of my partners towards me that is. I'm sick of asking for respect and honesty from people I sleep with and being accused of trying to "trap a man" or unable to accept the realities of modern hooking up.
Can someone put out a book or press release about the horror of young men being sexually promiscuous? If anyone has time, I think that it'd be a great tongue-in-cheek book that one could sell to feminists everywhere!
Can you please come to Johns Hopkins? Please please please!
That was awesome!
"As much as I try to be sex-positive I find that it's difficult to feel good about having sex with men in a culture that still teaches them it's ok to be nice until they get you in bed, pressure you to do things you don't want to, and then treat you like shit once they finally get their way. I can't do "hookups" anymore because I just can't take this kind of treatment anymore"
YES! I totally agree. My ethics has always been that you should respect your partner enough to be honest with them. If you are male or female, you should have enough respect for the other person to let them know what you are looking for from them. If it's a hookup, then say that and let the person decide whether they are okay with that. But do not lie to someone to get them to have sex with you. That's just pathetic.
And it is a problem of 'the patriarchy' that men feel the need to 'bamboozle' women to get them into bed. This narrative treats women as though they're silly little children who need to be tricked into doing something they don't like (which apparently is sex... or, at least, sex with men who are dickheads). This leads into rape culture (the idea of forcing women to do something).
Amanda from Pandagon once wrote a great post about how the current concept of sex is that it is a game and men are women (because obviously any patriarchal mythos must be heterosexist) are on opposing sides and men are constantly trying to 'score' and are sometimes willing to play dirty to do so. She said that the problem is that a healthy sexuality is more like a musical ensemble, where people are working together to contribute to musical (or sexual) satisfaction. This concept of sexuality is more cooperative and mutual, instead of competitive and confrontational.
I do not like being lied to. I do not like being manipulated. I also do not like people who see women as objects, so I generally do not 'hook-up' with random men. If I have sex, I want to have sex with a man who has a similar feminist idea of what sex should be and who respects me enough to be honest with me. This means that I do not have as much sex as I might like, but it means that my sexual encounters are with men who I respect and who respect me.
I think as feminists we really do need to start talking about men's sexual behavior and the need for men to understand the importance of mutuality and respect. This doesn't mean the end of hook-ups, but it does mean a step away from rape culture, a step towards an honest, satisfying, and mutual sexuality for all.
I enjoyed reading this SO MUCH. It is truly wonderful - informative, calm and witty all rolled into one. Great speech :-)
Oh and I agree with every word!
I am a liberal feminist who is concerned about the hookup culture. I am 52 and have a 19 year-old daughter. She enjoys being sexually active, but laments the lack of opportunities for sex within the context of a relationship. On her college campus, NSA sex is the norm, and exclusive relationships are relatively rare. Consider the following stats:
• 91% of students reported that hooking up was very common or fairly common on their campuses.
• 87% of college students report having hooked up.
• 73% of girls wish dating was more common.
• 12% of hookups eventually lead to relationships.
• 61% of women who say hooking up makes them feel desirable also say it makes them feel awkward.
• During hookups, guys have orgasms 44% of the time. Girls have orgasms 19% of the time.
• 12% of women say that it is sometimes easier to have sex with a guy they don’t know than to make conversation.
Much of this data is from Kathleen Bogle's "Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus", a work of scholarship recognized as unbiased.
Women enjoy enormous freedom in their ability to make choices about when and how to be sexual. But as a blogger about relationships, I hear from many, many young women who are discouraged, and yes, depressed about the fact "guys just want to hook up." Ignoring their point of view will not advance feminism.
Susan Walsh
www.HookingUpSmart.com
You've already done a drive-by with the same stats in this older thread, with almost identical wording, too;
http://www.feministing.com/archives/012426.html#comment-200666
Reading the replies, the stats were deemed dubious.
*Consider* this request: cite your sources.
Jessica, this is wonderful.
But I want to address what lindsayscallan said upthread. I think we need to listen to college women and those recently out of college and take into account what they report about hook-up culture. I do believe there's a culture on college campuses that privileges male sexuality over female sexuality and treats women like disposable masturbatory aids. I am 100% supportive of (and desperate for!) expanded sexual freedom for women, but what's happening on college campuses looks nothing like that. So I'm not really going to defend the reality of campus life, because I don't think it's an environment where women are sexually empowered. Rather, it's the same old, same old dynamic left over from the sexual revolution (led by men), wherein women were expected to be sexually available for men but not sexually autonomous or assertive. BIG, big difference. I want the latter; "hook up culture" seems to be nothing but the former. Anti-feminists attack it from the wrong angle, of course, but we can criticize it from a feminist angle as well.
Totally, totally agree. And I hope my quick response to lindsayscallan didn't make it seem as if I was brushing off her concerns. (I was actually trying to get out of town for the weekend but that plan failed miserably. That's a whole other story.)
The reason I didn't get into this in my talk was that I wanted to stay focused on conservative orgs and how they're using "hook up" culture for their own goals. But YES, to everything you say.
I think a big problem also related to all this is the way that feminist rhetoric has been appropriated by gross consumer sexuality (think the Pussycat Dolls, etc) making hetero-male-defined sexuality the supposed "empowered" sexuality young women are looking for.
I think there's a tremendous conversation to have there, and on the realities of sexuality on campus. But I def think, as you said, we need to start by listening to women on said campuses - not orgs with an agenda.
Permit me to add Wellesley to your ever-growing to-do list of college visits.
I think you touched on the real problem of the new sexual dynamics: 'how women's sexuality is portrayed in the media' definitely relates to the idea that women are supposed to be screwed and not heard. I would have liked to see more on this, because I think it is important to address the commodification and depersonalization of sex. It does hurt women (and men, for that matter) when sex is a goal in itself or a form of exchange rather than a pleasant, intimate experience.
Other than that, though, phenomenal speech.
SarahMC, you have put it beautifully. Hookup culture deserves much closer scrutiny by feminists. Just because conservatives oppose casual sex, that doesn't mean that the norms of hooking up serve women well.
Alexandr, I cited my sources in the link you provide and am happy to do it again here. I have a page devoted to Sources at www.HookingUpSmart.com.
Re the notion that the hookup culture is a myth, I would like to see some (any!) evidence to support that claim. Jessica rails against the media and various authors, but nowhere does she provide any concrete information about how young women actually feel, other than herself, of course. There is, in fact, real unbiased data about how the hookup culture is affecting women. Call your college counseling center or Women's Resource Center. Ask them what challenges women face on campus. Try telling them the hookup culture is a myth. You'll be racking up the evidence in no time.
I think the speech would be great if the topic were something along the lines of "Young Women and Premarital Sex". That was not the topic, however.
The hook up culture is very real, and was never actually defined in the speech. It was also not addressed, either.
I would be interested in hearing the speech writer's thoughts on the actual topic of hook-ups, not just about premarital sex.
I think the speech would be great if the topic were something along the lines of "Young Women and Premarital Sex". That was not the topic, however.
The hook up culture is very real, and was never actually defined in the speech. It was also not addressed, either.
I would be interested in hearing the speech writer's thoughts on the actual topic of hook-ups, not just about premarital sex.
Hi I am a graduate student and recently (within the last three years) graduated from undergrad.
I have to say I disagree with two things
1)that there is a large hookup culture on college, at least more so than any where in youth culture. I mean what purpose do 90% of bars serve but to get drunk and meet people to hook-up with. In our culture young adults hook up- both if you are going to college and if you are not. This tends to stop when you get a long-term partner and settle down.
2)That hookup culture disadvantages women any more so than the rest of our society. It has been my personal experience that the only people in college that look down on hooking up are people that have ideas about saving themselves or only wanted to sleep with people that they date.
In my mind yes some men treat women as existing for their sexual pleasure. Some don't. In hooking up both sides run risks with STIs and hurting the other person's feelings if one person wants more than the other person. I think this comes less from hook up culture and more from both sides feeling peer pressured into being normal-- which in some circles in college means hooking up. But fortunately as people go through college they tend to realize there is no one right way to live and people tend to find what works for them.
http://community.sparknotes.com/index.php/2009/02/18/the-worst-sex-education-in-history/
I found this when looking up literature on Spark Notes today, and even though it's kind of off topic of this thread, I thought some would enjoy it. I find it humorous and odd that this kind of an article would be on Spark Notes, which is an academic site and used mostly for literature help, but then again, it tells us that abs-only sex ed is a very very bad thing if it's on this type of site.
dog-eared with anti-feminist sludge
My favorite new phrase.
As someone who was once on the conservative anti-hookup bandwagon, I agree with almost all of these comments. In particular, I agree with this comment from SarahMC:
"I do believe there's a culture on college campuses that privileges male sexuality over female sexuality and treats women like disposable masturbatory aids...So I'm not really going to defend the reality of campus life, because I don't think it's an environment where women are sexually empowered."
When I was young, I was in a loveless (on his end anyway), friends-with-benefits relationship with someone who treated me like shit. Our "relationship" could be summed up by the lyrics to LeeAnne Womack's "Last Call." It was so devastating, and it was what inspired me to later write things like this:
http://townhall.com/columnists/AshleyHerzog/2007/05/23/the_college_hook-up_culture
So I joined the conservative anti-hookup brigade. However, rather than encouraging women to say no to unhealthy sexual relationships, I found that it was mostly a lot of finger-wagging about girls looking and acting (as opposed to actually being) like "sluts," and using the hook-up culture as a reason to push abstinence til marriage education, early marriage, and "modest" dress. One higher-up in the conservative movement even tried to yank my column from Townhall because I had "immodest" Facebook pictures.
None of this finger-wagging would have helped me walk away from that terrible relationship years ago. Instead of encouraging college women to be proper ladies who are offended by "The Vagina Monologues", I wish conservatives would focus more on encouraging women to stand up for themselves and walk away from these situations where they are being used.
In defense of Grossman, though, she is not at all a finger-wagger. I've worked with her, and I believe she is genuinely concerned about her patients and other women like them (she was a psychiatrist at UCLA).
-Ashley Herzog
Ashley, thanks for sharing your experience - and I'm sorry you went through such a terrible relationship and the finger-wagging (immodest Facebook pics! wow).
On Grossman, I have no idea what she's like in person - but I have to say that I'd classify the work she's put out as mos def finger wagging and slut shaming.
The thing is, and this thought became even clearer to me after this talk with Elizabeth, I don't doubt the personal motivations of anti-hookup folks. I'm sure they think they're looking out for the best interest of women. I just wish they'd be more transparent about the fact that they think what's in the best interest of women is conservative values and traditional gender roles.
Thanks so much for speaking at Emory & Henry!
Great site, btw!
Looking forward to reading The Purity Myth,
Lauren
One thing I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned in these comments (or it has and I've missed it?) is the intersection between "hook-up culture", and rape culture. (If you're less familiar with the term "rape culture", please do go read "Yes Means Yes", the anthology co-edited by Jessica and already discussed a few times on this site. Amazing!). Anyway . . .
I could be the poster child for the supposed evils of casual sex and hook-up culture. I've had my share, and I have experienced some decidedly negative consequences. However, to me, these consequences were not the result of hooking up. They weren't even the result of feeling pressured to hook up. They were the result of freely choosing to hook up in a patriarchal society whose take on human sexuality is, on the whole, terrifically f----- up and harmful to all parties involved. Read: my bad experiences can be directly attributed to rape culture, NOT to any "hook-up culture" per se.
You see, I've had some amazing hook-ups. In situations where I was respected, and heard, and an equal participant on all counts, "hooking up" has been nothing short of fantastic. I would go as far as to describe it as life-affirming rather than life-destroying. But then there was the other type of situation: sex where I may as well have been an object interchangeable with any other, as far as my partner was concerned. Pressure of many kinds, recklessness, trickery, and yes, force made an appearance on these occasions. (Refer back to "Yes Means Yes", specifically the essay "The Not-Rape Epidemic . . .")I've spent some time looking and feeling a lot like the debilitated "cover girls" on the scare tactics books, as cited by Jessica in her speech. Rape culture, meet wyo_cowgirl.
But let me just stress once more that hooking up in and of itself did not damage me. The good hook-ups have been very, very good. Unfortunately, those experiences were in the minority. I could chalk that up to terrible taste on my part--wink--but instead I choose to view it as symptomatic of the ways in which we 21st century humans, of all genders and orientations, are suffering and suffocating under layers of socially imposed sex negativity. The ways in which we frequently participate, knowingly or unknowingly, in rape culture.
We can attempt to define and defend the existence and use of the term "hook-up culture" until we all lose our eyesight for staring at our computer screens. As far as I'm concerned, that term is a smoke screen primarily generated and colored by the anti-sex, anti-woman crowd in order to mask the real nature of the desperate problems we face when we confront contemporary sexuality. Forget "hook-up culture": there's no inherent damn reason that casual sex can't be positive sex. No reason, that is, except patriarchy, patriarchy, and patriarchy. The perils of sex in a patriarchal society--and the resulting rape culture--are what we should be alarmed about, and focusing on, when we attempt to study and write about gender and sexual relations.
Trouble is, "rape culture" just wouldn't market itself in the same way as "hook up culture." It wouldn't be an easy sell. It would be dark and disturbing and complex and it just might f--- with the status quo. . . and we all know how that usually goes over . . . so "hook-up culture" it is. Or--it isn't.
Brilliant. Utterly Bang-On.
Thank you so much for this.
Yes, that's pretty much it.
I know my guy that I described above was more of a sexual abuser type than anything else. He didn't give a damn if I was a proper, modestly dressed lady who had been schooled in "abstinence only" education. It wouldn't have changed anything.
I'll have to read Jessica's book.
Wow! This is such a "white girl" discussion! Once again another debate about making the sexuality and sexual habits of white women the norm. Another debate about how the "freedom" of white women might be hampered. Doesn't this line of debate ever become boring?
I wonder how many young women of color are even included in these studies of "hooking up." In fact, I have never heard anyone of color even use that phrasing.
Hook-up culture, if it truly exists, is not new. Folks getting together for casual sex has been occurring on college campuses for decades. Folks are only interested when little Miss Suzy starts having problems, regrets or feeling a might too liberated for the comfort of white men.
And it seems to me the wrong issues and questions are being discussed here. What about the young women that are not "hooking up" - for whatever reason? How many of these young women are getting bombed out of their minds on alcohol first, then having sex? That's not sexual liberation, that's liquid courage. I have sexually enlightened friends, they don't need one drop of booze to get busy if they wish too.
And what about my all-time favorite "hook-up" on a predominantly white campus? The temporary sex "hook-up" with the black male athlete that ends as soon as the white female student's parents come to town. I witnessed this "hook-up" in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate and see the same rule in effect as a Professor in the 21st century. The only difference was nobody called it "hooking up" in the 1980s.
Yes, all young women should be allowed to engage in healthy sexual activity if she chooses, without being labeled or studied for that matter, but let's stop acting like the issues that young white women have about sex and sexuality are the same as every other young woman. They are not. The issues may be similar, but with different reasons, impacts, and influences.
I feel like I'm being really obtuse here, but I can't figure how to address the concerns of women of colour without continuing to use white (class privileged, hetero, able-bodied) women as a reference point, when deconstructing a moral panic about the behaviour of white women. What would you say to a finger-wagging purveyor of moral panic? Could you elaborate on your previous post?
Jessica,
Was the name of the FDA official who wrote the internal memo made public? It wounds like something W. David Hager, now thankfully no longer affiliated with FDA, would have said.
I just completed a feature documentary called Spitting Game: The College Hook Up Culture. I spent three years researching and documenting interviews with diverse groups of college students. My job as a documentarian was to report, as accurately and unbiased as I could, what I heard, saw, and came to understand through in-depth research and interviews with college students and experts. And that is precisely what I did.
Surprisingly, my findings have nothing to do with the fact that college students, male and female, are having sex. That's a given and as far as I am concerned, a completely natural part of human relationships. Yeah for sex! What I observed in my studies is that the hook up culture, as it is so called, has absolutely nothing to do with having "the sex" or repression of female rights. It has more to do with an over sexualized society and a technologically tuned-out generation with insufficient sex education. Mix that together with a lethal cocktail of over consumption of alcohol and a lack of understanding about healthy boundaries and Viola! The college hook up culture is born.
While it is true that there is a certain portion of the college population who do not ascribe to the behaviors associated with "the hook up culture" it is not the majority. Just ask any campus counselor or psychologist and they will tell you about the high number of, mostly female, clients they have coming into their offices with emotional, mental, and physical complaints brought upon by irresponsible, often drunken choices or circumstances they have found themselves in. And this is not hearsay, it is just not common knowledge because students are not telling their peers the truth about what they really think or feel about participating in the hook up culture.
The bottom-line is that it is not "the sex" that is the issue, it is the fall out from the behavior that is wreaking havoc on the well being of millions of students. The over 90% of unreported acquaintance rapes on campuses across the nation is enough of a testament to show how the "lets get drunk and screw" model of social behavior is not working out.
And you want to talk shame? Lets talk shame. Women who feel peer pressure to "hook up" (and peer pressure is there whether anyone wants to admit it or not) are shamed if they do and shamed if they don't. I have had many college women and men tell me they feel outcast from social groups if they don't hook up. As if the choice to not have sex is somehow not an acceptable choice.
And the old double standard is still alive and kicking on campuses. Watch out if a woman wears something sexy, has a few drinks, and then puts herself in a situation to have sex with a guy. If anything non-consensual occurs it will most definitely end up being the woman's fault, because somehow she was "asking for it." The laws defining consent are still so grey that the woman just blames herself and the shame of coming forward to tell the truth prevents her from reporting it. Guys might feel shame after a hook up as well, but you will never, ever hear about it. They can't share it with their buddies for fear of looking like a wuss. And you would never hear this on campus. " Hey,look at that guy, he is drinking a lot of alcohol and wearing provocative clothing he must be a man-whore and deserves what he gets."
At the end of the day or the evening (ha-ha) it is all about the choices we make and how those choices affect our lives. So, call it "the hook up culture" or call it "the just say yes to drunk people having frequent, no-strings attached, irresponsible sex, culture" Call it whatever you like, but just make sure you call attention to it, because it is out there and it is happening. The irony is that there are an awful lot of "strings attached" to irresponsible sexual behavior at any age and we all know what they are. So, no matter what your personal views on sex are, the fact remains that there is no sexual liberation or equality in a social strata that supports binge drinking, perpetuates sexual assault, and blame shifts acquaintance rape to women.
For an interesting point of view, one should also consult Roissy in DC
Everyone's posts are great! And whether or not you agree with Jessica fully, I don't think that's the point. The point of all this discussion is discussion. They say that the truth lies in between two extremes. So I am extremely happy that we are hashing this out and helping people come to their own conclusions. I agree that the pressure to have sex in university is a bit on the crazy side. I don't know what it would have been like 10 or 15 years ago.
I see people dating less, in a traditional sense, and hooking up more. I have also read in one of the latest issues of Psychology today, that when it comes to hook ups, both guys and girls (can't remember the percentages, but fairly equal numbers of both genders) hook up in hopes of having a relationship.
Not saying all people do this with a relationship in mind, but that guys do it almost as equally as girls.. or men and women (my bad!). So, for me...I think we need to address both men's sexuality, and women's sexuality. Because for us straight gals, it affects both of us.
I agree with the posts speaking about sex with respect, and understanding. And that's why I too have yet to have a good sexual experience. I have a hard time saying no to men, because of this idea that men are entitled to pleasure. That's my issue...but I think I also need to find men that I can be with without feeling judged, or disrespected.
Why is it so hard for "liberals" and "conservatives" to have a frank open, and honest conversation about sexuality... without going to extremes? Don't we all want the same things? To be free and happy and feel good about our bodies and sexuality? If a woman wants to wait for marriage, then all the power to her. But why does her decision have to be what everyone else should decide? And why when they're talking about purity, and respect your bodies, modesty. Why does none of that refer to men? Are women the gatekeepers of hethero relations? Are women the ones who have to keep the men at bay, control them?
Why aren't men taking offense to this implication that they can't be responsible or control their own bodies? They're just walking penises. Their only desire is sex.... blah blah blah. I would be extremely upset. Because this is what happens to women too. We are all put into boxes. I'm sick of it. Why can't everyone cooperate to make a better world?
WOW
"So really, all of this writing and talking about hooking up is about a lot more than just wanting young people to have less sex, or to date more. This is about a return to traditional gender roles - a world where women go to college not to get an education, but to find a husband; a world where women don't really like sex but just do it to have babies. A world where women have no reproductive choices."
No where before did you mention the fact that the "conservatives" said women don't like having sex. And the quote by Bill Maher: "It's like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot, she'll want to jab rusty nails in her feet," is the WORST quote I've ever heard in my life! You can't compare sex to jabbing nails in your feet. Sex is something that the majority of people would say is pleasurable, while jabbing rusty nails in your feet is not. A better analogy than the stupid rusty nails one would be: making HPV available without a prescription would be like handing out "Get out of Jail Free" cards once a day. Because a human being's natural tendency is to do something that pleases them. Clearly stealing something to have for themself would be more pleasing than shoving nails into your feet.
You don't even try to understand where the opposition is coming from in this argument.
college is all about hooking up. It is just taking over the U.S. even with all the diseases out there.
Marknadsnyheter