Donna Freitas - The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy

How Hookup Culture Is

Leaving a Generation Unhappy,

Sexually Unfulfilled, and

Confused About Intimacy

DONNA FREITAS

BASIC BOOKS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York

Copyright 2013 by Donna Freitas

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Book design by Cynthia Young

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freitas, Donna.

The end of sex : how hookup culture is leaving a generation unhappy, sexually unfulfilled, and confused about intimacy / Donna Freitas.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-465-03783-4 (e-book) 1. College studentsSexual behavior. 2. YouthSexual behavior. 3. Sexual ethics. 4. Dating (Social customs) 5. Intimacy (Psychology) I. Title.

HQ27.F74 2013

176'.4dc23

2012042226

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

It was while teaching an undergraduate course at a small Catholic college that I first heard students talk extensively about hooking up. Suddenly, the students who had been speaking about hooking up in the most spirited of terms reversed themselves entirely. They confessed that they had been lying to one another about their real feelings.

This single day of confession changed the direction of student discussion for the remainder of the semester. From then on, my students explored what they felt was the real truth about sex and hooking up on campus. They started to question whether most people were satisfied with hookups as the norm, suspecting that their peers, if given the choice, would prefer to date and have long-term relationships. Their discussions revealed an intense longing for meaningmeaningful sex, meaningful relationships, and meaningful dates, and their corresponding classwork presented a devastating analysis of how and why hookup culture deprives students of the opportunity to fulfill their true desires and to experience sex that is good, while leaving many of them feeling isolated and lonely during their college experience.

The students became so passionate about the subject of what was missing from hookup culture that they created a newspaper to expand the conversation campus-wide. In it, they wrote of how they had learned to resist monogamous relationships in order to avoid being left out of hookup culture. As a consequence, they had become unable to create valuable and real connections. They talked of deserv[ing] more than 3 am10 am, three nights a week, from a partner, and of their desire to go on actual dates, and insist on commitment. They wondered what it would be like to stop tolerating the hookup as the norm. Was it possible, they wanted to know, to break the cycle of hookup culture and replace it with sex that was healthier on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level, and even meaningful, special, and sacred?

The class was something of a revelation to me, and I began to wonder if students at other universities felt the same way. students from all over the country with three private forums for discussing their spiritual and religious leanings (or non-leanings), and, in particular, how they felt about sex during college. I conducted an online survey; did in-depth, in-person interviews; and collected a series of journals that students wrote for the purposes of the study over a two-week period. The assembled data provided an extraordinarily rich picture of how students experience college today. Much like my own students, the subject they brought up over and over again was hookup culture.

Altogether, seven colleges and universities participated in this formal research on sex, romance, hookup culture, and dating on campus. heterosexual culture that revolves around waiting to have sexor in some cases even a kissuntil marriage. The results of my study were published in 2008 in Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on Americas College Campuses. That book chronicles my initial, general findings about sex, hookup culture, religion, and spirituality on campus (including extensive data from the participating evangelical colleges).

In this book I both reiterate and refine some of those initial findings, but more central than this, I focus in greater depth on the data I gathered on hookup culture. Hookup culture is a complicated phenomenon and I believe it deserves a book of its own. Many students resist defining their hookups with specific, sexual content, so even a basic understanding of the term hookup requires a certain amount of analysis. The gender and sexual identity politics of hookup culture are also complicated, as are the personal experiences of those who participate in it.

My research into hookup culture has continuedand expandedsince the publication of Sex and the Soul. Over the course of my study I have learned about almost every aspect of this topic on college campuses today. Even more importantly, I have been afforded an extensive, inside look at hookup culture that few can claim, including fellow researchers and journalists who have written on the topic. Professors have taught Sex and the Soul across disciplines from education and sociology to psychology and religious studies, with some developing entire courses around the subjects I covered. Higher education professionals working in student affairs departments have used the book for professional development and to justify new programming on their campuses, and offices of campus ministry have devoted retreats to discussing how my findings might affect their work with students. I have lectured at dozens of educational institutions across the United States, from small colleges to huge universities, in rural America and in major cities. These lectures have given me the opportunity to informally continue the conversation on sex and hookup culture with thousands more students as well as concerned faculty, staff, and university administrators and their colleagues.

Taken together, these experiences have deepened my understanding of how students manage to find meaning (or not) within hookup culture. I have learned from these visits that hookup culture continues unabated, and that many, many students struggle in silence with their lack of options for sexual and romantic intimacy. These experiences have solidified for me not only what is at stake for students during their university experience, but also what is missing from their discussions both inside and outside of the lecture halls.