Lisa Wade - American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus

LISA WADE

American

HOOKUP

The New Culture of
Sex on Campus

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

New York / London

To the students
who shared their stories,
with gratitude for their insight,
alacrity, and candor.

None of the students referred to in this work appears here under his or her real name. Students physical features and potentially identifying characteristics have also been changed in many instances, as have the names of places such as residence halls and bars. In rare cases, an individual student appears under different pseudonyms in different sections of the work.

I love it here, Owen said happily, a freshman in college just back from winter break. Last semester, he told me, was one of the most interesting, exciting, and strangest times of my life.

Owen had grown up in a farming town in central California, graduating from a high school of about sixty students. Such a small group of peers made puberty awkward. Everyone knew everything about everyone else, he said, so sexual experimentation was rare and, when indulged in, secretive. Hed had one clandestine affair, which he remembered fondly, but despite his good lookslean and tallish with a broad, lopsided smile and tousled dark hairOwens sexual activities in high school were limited.

College promised to be a whole new world. His campus offered what felt like an endless supply of potential partners and more anonymity than hed ever dreamed of. In his first semester, he sought casual sexual encounters with what he called gusto, and he had his fair share of good luck. Im shy and nerdy, he admitted, but I clean up pretty well. It was everything hed hoped it would be. Im basically in a paradise full of girls Im attracted to, he said, exhilarated, everyone is fucking each other.

As his second semester progressed, though, his excitement started to waver. A lot of the social life Ive experienced, he observed wryly, is some twisted sort of self-perpetuating vicious cycle of unrealistic expectations, boundless enthusiasm, and copious amounts of alcohol. He complained about mind games, soured friendships, and women who liked him only for his looks. I cant expect any of the girls Ill meet on a Friday night to care about my personality or my favorite books, he grumbled. Thats just unrealistic. Some only talked to him when they wanted to share his weed. It was discouraging.

He partly blamed himself. Oftentimes I just flat-out lack grace, he conceded. Other times he wasnt as openhearted as he wanted to be, acting distant or dismissive toward women to avoid being rejected himself. But he also felt like there was something particularly difficult about negotiating casual sex on campus. I find it especially hard to try to smooth out a relationship with a girl whom I barely know beyond what color underwear she wears, he said, with a characteristic degree of self-deprecation.

As Owens second semester progressed, he sounded increasingly uncertain, even morbid. When I think about my sex life, he confessed, it feels like my insides tie themselves tight together before they boil and rot. He hated the gossip that often followed an encounter. He began doubting himself. Things got dark and he started obsessing. Worrying about it saps a lot of time and energy from my life, he said in frustration. By the end of the year, despite his initial interest, he had sworn off casual sexual encounters entirely: I cant handle another negative sexual relationship in my life. My heart might break.

On campuses across America, students are sounding an alarm. They are telling us that they are depressed, anxious, and overwhelmed. Half of first-year students express concern that they are not emotionally healthy, and one in ten say that they frequently feel depressed. The transition from teenager to young adult is rarely easy, but this is more than just youthful angst. Students are less happy and healthy than in previous generations, less so even than just ten or twenty years ago.

As Owens transformation suggests, the sexual environment on college campuses is part of why. He anticipated an erotic and carefree life and, at first, thats what college seemed to offer. But, over the course of his first year, he became increasingly disillusioned. The reasons why are related to his specific encounters and are complicated by his personal story, but there is nothing unique about his disappointment.

One in three students say that their intimate relationships have been traumatic or very difficult to handle, and 10 percent say that theyve been sexually coerced or assaulted in the past year. In addition, there is a persistent malaise: a deep, indefinable disappointment. Students find that their sexual experiences are distressing or boring. They worry that theyre feeling too much or too little. They are frustrated and feel regret, but theyre not sure why. They consider the possibility that theyre inadequate, unsexy, and unlovable. And it goes far beyond the usual suspects. Owen, for example, is not the kind of student who usually attracts concern. Hes a handsome, heterosexual white guy with a healthy sex drive. He should have thrived. He didnt.

Thus far, the culprit seems to be the hookup. Sociologist Kathleen Bogle sparked the conversation in 2008 with Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus. She described a new norm on campus that favored casual sexual contact and argued that this was especially harmful to women. Michael Kimmel, the well-known sociologist of masculinity, agreed. Hooking up is guys sex, he explained in Guyland that year; guys run the scene. More recently, journalist Jon Birger added math, concluding that a shortage of men in college gives them the power to dictate sexual terms, making campuses a sexual nirvana for heterosexual men. These thinkers, and many more, argue that hooking up is just a new way for men to get what they want from women.

Journalists Hanna Rosin and Kate Taylor have countered the idea that hooking up only benefits men. At the Atlantic and in the New York Times, theyve suggested that casual sex allows women to put their careers and education before men. In their view, its a way of giving the middle finger to the Mrs. Degree, that now outdated but once quite real reason why women sought higher education. Rosin goes so far as to say that future feminist progress depends on hooking up, with serious relationships a danger to be avoided at all costs. Their anecdotal evidence is backed up by social scientists like Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton, who show in Paying for the Party that women with economically stable families and ambitious career plans are more likely than other women to be successful at hookup-heavy party schools.

Meanwhile, at Rolling Stone and New York magazine, the whole scene is portrayed as a poly, queer, bacchanalian utopia with lots of skin and a little light BDSM. Not only is it not sexist, its non-binary. Maybe this is what the future looks like. At Elle, columnist Karley Sciortino seems to think so. She defends hooking up, but only because she thinks that worrying about it amounts to little more than old-fashioned fuddy-duddery. All this talk about young people and their sexual choices, she insists, is just moral panic and reactionary hysteria. Whats really harmful, she argues, is suggesting that women might not enjoy casual sex. Shes not alone in expressing annoyance at the kids these days fretting. It can seem like a lot of hand-wringing to students, many of whom wish everyone would just mind their own business.