Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus by Kathleen Bogle (e book reader android txt) 📗

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The Hookup

What does it mean to hook up? Consulting a dictionary won’t help, since most dictionaries do not even include an entry on hooking up.1

Even college students have trouble articulating a definition. My exchange with Tony, a senior at State University, demonstrates the uncertainty.

KB: Define hooking up.

Tony: Taking someone home and spending the night with them. I mean intercourse is probably like a big part of it, but I think if you take someone home and hook up, then that’s hooking up.

KB: So, could hooking up mean just kissing?

Tony: Yeah.

KB: What does it usually mean?

Tony: Having sex.

KB: So most people you know when they say “hooking up” they are having sex with somebody?

Tony: Yeah (hesitantly) . . . it depends who the person is, like I can read my friends like really, really easily. Like if my one roommate says he “hooked up,” that means he brought a girl home and this, that and the other thing. . . . But, like if other kids tell me they hooked up, you got to ask, not pry into their life, but it could mean a lot of things.

KB: What do you mean when you say it?

Tony: When I say “hooked up”? [I mean] that I took someone home.

KB: But, [you are] not necessarily explaining what happened?

Tony: Right, I don’t like to kiss and tell [laughs].

Collectively, the college students and recent graduates with whom I spoke were able to convey the meaning of hooking up as well as the norms for following the hookup script. However, as individuals they 24

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were often unsure whether the specific way they used the term reflected how the student body in general used it. As Tony pointed out, the meaning of hooking up depends on whom you ask.

Despite the confusion over the term, college students at both of the universities I studied indicated that “hooking up” was widely used on campus to refer to intimate interaction.2 Although my interviewees may have used the term somewhat differently, they consistently identified hooking up as the dominant way for men and women to get together and form potential relationships on campus. This does not mean that everyone on campus engages in hooking up; but students do consider it to be the primary means for initiating sexual and romantic relationships. Among those least likely to participate in hooking up are racial minorities, students who are very religious, and those who are already in exclusive, committed relationships (who therefore have no need to be looking for new partners). Most other students participated in hooking up, albeit to varying degrees.

DEFINING HOOKING UP

Some students, like Tony, feel that “hooking up” generally refers to

“having sex”; however, many others indicated that when they say

“hooking up” they are referring to something less than intercourse. To some it means “just kissing” or “making out.” Others said hooking up involves “fooling around” beyond kissing, which includes sexual touching on or underneath clothing. Still others suggested that hooking up means “everything but” intercourse, which translated to include kissing, sexual touching, and oral sex. Most students acknowledged that different people use the term differently. In fact, many students were already familiar with the term “hooking up” from high school.3

Their previous exposure to hooking up added to the confusion because the definition they used in high school did not always match their college classmates’ use of the term. Thus, you cannot be sure precisely what someone means when he or she reports having “hooked up” unless you ask a follow-up question to see how much sexual activity took place. Nevertheless, some students feel they know their close friends well enough to know what they mean when they say it (i.e., their group has a shared meaning of the term). This is the case with Faith University senior, Trent.

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KB: Define hooking up.

Trent: Kissing.

KB: So, if someone did more than kissing then it’s not hooking up?

Trent: It is, but I don’t know. Yeah, like hooking up in one sense is like you hook up with a girl and if you’re hooking up with someone and it happens a few times, then I guess whatever happens, happens.

KB: Could hooking up mean sex?

Trent: Nah.

KB: So, it’s different than sex?

Trent: Yeah.

In another conversation, Kyle, a senior at State University, offered the following:

KB: How would you define hooking up?

Kyle: Just kissing and maybe a little groping.

KB: Hooking up isn’t sex?

Kyle: No. I know a lot of other people define it differently.

KB: So some people say it and it might mean sex?

Kyle: Yeah. None of my friends would. But I have heard it used that way.

KB: So if someone says they hooked up you don’t know what they mean, you just know it is something sexual?

Kyle: Yeah. It involves that. But not sex, everything but sex.

KB: Oral sex could be hooking up?

Kyle: Yeah.

Lisa, a sophomore at State University, had this to say: KB: Can you define hooking up?

Lisa: I don’t know, anything from kissing to having sex.

KB: So, it could mean intercourse, it could mean to kiss someone?

Lisa: Well, usually if it’s a good friend and we’re talking about it, they’ll tell me if they had sex, but if they say “hooking up” it could mean anything from, in my opinion, kissing to having sex.

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Clearly, “hooking up” does not have a precise meaning; it can mean kissing, sexual intercourse, or any form of sexual interaction generally seen as falling in between those two extremes.

The ambiguous nature of the term should not be surprising. During the well-publicized scandal of 1997 between former president Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the public debated what it means to say

“have sex” or “have sexual relations” after the president emphatically declaimed, “I did not have sex with that woman,” only to have DNA tests confirm the presence of semen on her clothing. Still, Clinton and his supporters argued that his statement was truthful if one defines sex only