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

many different partners. Indeed, women must be careful not even to appear to be conducting themselves in an overtly provocative manner or they will be perceived as “easy.” Kyle, a senior at State University, summarized it this way: “One night can screw up a girl’s reputation.”

Another pitfall for women is going “too far” sexually during a hookup. Many of the students I spoke with took for granted that it is a woman’s responsibility to decide “how far” a sexual encounter will go.

Lee, a freshman at Faith University, explained this attitude: “Because I think guys will always try to make [sexual] advances and it’s up to the girl to go along with that or not. And I think girls are scared to say no and to say that they are not into doing that because they don’t want to look stupid. . . . But I think ultimately it is up to the girl.” In the hookup culture, college women’s reputations can be affected not only by their own behavior, but even by whom they associate with on campus. For example, certain sororities on the campuses I studied were given nicknames having a sexual connotation. Similarly, an arti-cle in Rolling Stone magazine about Duke University quotes an anonymous blog entry entitled “How-to Guide to Banging a Sorority Girl,” which ranks the women of the “Core Four” sororities on campus in terms of their attractiveness. The blogger contends: “I would include a ranking for sluttiness, but in general all four are equally slutty.” The blogger goes on to say it may be difficult to have sex with women in one of the “hottest” sororities, “unless you are part of the lucky group of dudes that pass these bitches around.”60 Although this blogger’s point of view may be more extreme than that of most students on campus, it demonstrates how college women exist in a fishbowl, for others to watch and judge.

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In the dating era, women’s sexual behavior was also scrutinized.61

Women were permitted to allow some necking and petting, but were absolutely supposed to maintain their virginity. Advice books were filled with suggestions for women on how to conduct themselves in sexual matters.62 These books suggested that women were responsible for playing the “gatekeeper” role during sexual interaction on dates.63

The 1958 advice book The Art of Dating warned young women about what men really think about girls who go “all the way.” It suggested that if a girl allows a guy to go all the way, afterwards he is haunted by the question: “If she went all the way with me, how can I be sure there have not been others?” It continues by saying that men do not want to get “stuck with a tramp” for a long-term relationship.64

Although the dating script and the hookup script differ with regard to specific sexual norms, women’s sexual conduct continues to be scrutinized in a way that men’s behavior is not. Thus, the sexual double standard, which prevailed during the dating era, is still very much a part of the hookup scene. This scrutiny makes navigating sex and relationships in the hookup era difficult for women. Women want “romantic” interaction with men, but there are many pitfalls for them in doing so. The catch is that a woman needs to hook up in order to find someone with whom to have a potential relationship, yet her very participation in hooking up can mean that she is not taken seriously as a potential girlfriend, is exploited for sex, and/or is labeled a slut. Women of the dating era faced the same dilemma. For example, student nurses found themselves in a difficult situation because of the stereotype that they were promiscuous.

If she is not cooperative and does not meet the college boys’ expectations of sexual permissiveness, she is likely to be dropped immediately and have no further dates. If she is cooperative, she easily builds a reputation and becomes fair game for her current dating partner and later his friends and fraternity brothers. The authors suspect that more girls than not choose to solve the dilemma by being more permissive than they normally would, just in order to keep dating.65

Despite this dilemma, women actively participate in hooking up, as they did in dating. Why? Because the prevailing script in any era is seen 182

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as the only way, or at least the most likely way, to get together with men and feel a part of the social scene of their peers.

CONCLUSION

In the final analysis, much has changed since the dating era. Some of the changes can be seen as an improvement, and others can be viewed as negative. One of the most interesting things to examine about the shift from dating to hooking up is its impact on women. Since the emergence of hooking up can be traced back to the sexual revolution period, it begs the question: Have the goals of the women’s liberation movement been met? If the objective of women’s rights activists was for women to be able to have sexual experiences without having to barter exclusive sexual access in exchange for a wedding ring, there is evidence that it has been realized. Women’s sexual behavior has changed more than men’s since the 1960s, and on several key indicators women are reaching “parity” with men. For example, historically men had their first experience of sexual intercourse earlier than women; today, it is roughly equal.66

Historically, men also had a higher number of sexual partners than women; however, in more recent decades gender differences are less pronounced.67 These changes were precisely what many architects of the women’s liberation movement had in mind.

However, even as similarities between men and women increased, the double standard remains. On the campuses I studied, contemporary college women may be permitted to engage in a wider variety of sexual behaviors under a wider