Posted on 03/09/2007 2:30:28 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
During a class discussion on adolescence, a high school teacher recently asked her students whether they go on dates. We don't "date," the 12th graders reported. We "hook up."
If you're in your 40s, "hooking up" might mean catching a friend downtown for lunch. But to people in their teens or 20s, the phrase often means a casual sexual encounter _ anything from kissing onwards _ with no strings attached.
Now a new book on this not-so-new subject is drawing fire in some quarters for its conclusion: That hookups can be damaging to young women, denying their emotional needs, putting them at risk of depression and even sexually transmitted disease, and making them ill-equipped for real relationships later on.
For that, Laura Sessions Stepp, author of "Unhooked" and a writer for The Washington Post, has been criticized as a throwback to an earlier, restrictive moral climate, an anti-feminist and a tut-tutting mother telling girls not to give the milk away when nobody's bought the cow.
The author "imagines the female body as a thing that can be tarnished by too much use," wrote reviewer Kathy Dobie in Stepp's own paper, and suggested that Stepp was, in one part, trying to "instill sexual shame." For Meghan O'Rourke, literary editor at Slate.com, Stepp is "buying into alarmism about women," and making sex "a bigger, scarier, and more dangerous thing than it already is."
Stepp argues these critics have misconstrued her ideas.
True, she regrets that "dating has gone completely by the boards," replaced by group outings that lead to casual encounters. True, she regrets that oral sex "isn't even considered sex anymore." But she isn't saying girls should not have sex; just that they should have it in the context of a meaningful connection: "I am saying that girls should have choices."
Too often, Stepp argues, girls and young women say proudly that they like the control "hookups" give them _ control over their emotions, their schedules, and freedom to focus on things like schoolwork and career (the students she profiles in her book are high achievers).
But she says they frequently mistake that freedom for empowerment. "I often hear girls say things like, 'We can be as bad as guys now,'" she says. "But I don't think that's what liberation is all about."
Stepp says her book stems from an experience she had almost 10 years ago. She and other parents were summoned to her son's middle school. The principal informed them that all year long, a dozen girls _ ages 13 or 14 _ had been performing oral sex on several boys in the class. (Her own son was not involved.) Stepp wrote about the sex ring in a front-page article for the Post, which led to further research.
She's had her share of positive feedback, including from educators and from young women like those in her book.
One 18-year-old student, who calls herself a feminist, e-mailed her to say she had approached the book warily, but came to believe it "will change the way my generation views sex."
Contacted later by telephone, the student, Liz Funk, said she agreed with Stepp's contention that "real relationships among college students don't really exist anymore."
"If I or my friends had the opportunity for real relationships, we'd take it," says Funk, who attends school in New York City. "But my generation hasn't really been conditioned for it." Hookups, she adds, which she rejected for herself long ago but some of her friends still embrace, "are like Thanksgiving for guys. They don't have to do anything to get sex!" And she bemoans the amount of time fellow students can spend on hookups: "It can be like a full-time job."
Another student, at a small women's college in South Carolina, says the "hookup culture" is not all that pervasive, in her experience.
"I'm aware of it," said Grace Bagwell, 22, a senior at Converse College in Spartansburg, S.C.. "But it's untrue to say women aren't having meaningful relationships at this point. I've been in one for three years, and I have a lot of friends who are getting married or are engaged."
Sociologist Kathleen Bogle has also studied hooking up, which she says dates back to the '80s. She has a book, "Hooking Up," coming out this fall.
"I argue that we shouldn't look at this from a moralistic viewpoint _ as in, our youth is in decline _ and we shouldn't celebrate it either, in a 'Sex in the City' light," says Bogle, who hasn't read Stepp's book. She also believes that it's wrong to assume women aren't hoping for something more from their hookups.
"It's a system for finding relationships _ and there isn't really an alternate system," says Bogle. "It feels like it's the only game in town, and if you don't do it, you're left out." She did find that after college, there was a transition back to traditional dating.
The debate over hooking up _ how prevalent, how harmful _ was neatly displayed not long ago in a high school classroom in Maclean, Va. Nancy Schnog, who teaches a course in adolescence to 12th-graders, was discussing Stepp's findings.
"She hit the nail on the head," one girl said, according to Schnog. "She perfectly described our social climate." Many agreed, but an equally vocal faction argued the opposite. "This is totally overblown," said another girl. "Why do adults always stereotype our generation so negatively?"
At the University of Maryland, Robin Sawyer, who teaches a course on sexuality, finds Stepp's book pretty much on target.
"Men have always hooked up," says Sawyer. "What you are seeing now is a desire of women to act in a masculine way, without being judged a whore." He also finds that the "hookup" vocabulary softens the impact of the behavior. "'I hooked up with someone' sounds a lot better than 'I had oral sex with someone whose name I don't even know,'" says Sawyer, who is mentioned in Stepp's book.
"Can you generalize from a few women? If you can find a criticism, it is probably that," Sawyer said. "But her thesis is pretty accurate. This is not your grandparents' generation."
I actually like Vegas -- other than NYC -- it's the best place in the country to do business. But a lot of folks arrive there with some very strange ideas in their head.
Truthfully, I don't see a lot of inappropriate behavior on a day to day basis. I see people in business acting very businesslike and professional and folks in bars acting as if they've had a few drinks.
Although, truth be told, recently I've gotten a couple prim little smiles, and even once a barely audible mumbled thank you
Chivalry isn't dead in Texas.
Here, women are appreciative of opened doors and most men are gentlemen.
What does "behaving better" mean, exactly?
That's a great question. I was reading some Mark Steyn on another thread, and found this fascinating bit:
"But, in fact, 'the people' were a large part of the problem. Then as now, citizens of advanced democracies are easily distracted. The 18th- century Church of England preached 'a tepid kind of moralism' disconnected both from any serious faith and from the great questions facing the nation. It was a sensualist culture amusing itself to death: Wilberforce goes to a performance of Don Juan, is shocked by a provocative dance, and is then further shocked to discover the rest of the audience is too blasé even to be shocked. The Paris Hilton of the age, the Prince of Wales, was celebrated for having bedded 7,000 women and snipped from each a keepsake hair. Twenty-five per cent of all unmarried females in London were whores; the average age of a prostitute was 16; and many brothels prided themselves on offering only girls under the age of 14."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1798364/posts
To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the good ol' days ain't what they used to be.
That's certainly true.
The Victorian era produced some very odd behavior.
The good ol' days?
Not so odd, when you look at human behavior over time. Unfortunately.
It's all relative. Comic book fans speak of a 'Golden Age' of comics, a 'Silver Age,' a 'Bronze Age.' etc.
One comic professional at a major convention suddenly snapped it into perspective for a lot of fans by reminding them that their own 'Golden Age' was probably when they were 12! Hahaha!
London had all of these folks flooding in from the countryside -- basically displaced by the industrial revolution. Life became very cheap and folks became numbed to the most appalling effects of poverty.
Yes, life in Victorian London was appalling for much of the population. Babies fed cheap gin in their bottles to keep them quiet, poor working men pawning the families meager possessions from week to week, whole families crammed into tiny rooms, illiteracy, out-of-wedlock births, hunger, disease, rampant prostitution, and on and on.
But for many people who didn't live in London or weren't on the bottom of the social rung, live was pretty good. And, yes, and they were the ones who wrote the histories.
And, that's why the "olden days" often look better than today. Because those who had the time, resources and interest wrote history.
Illiterate, hungry folks coughing up a lung from TB and crammed into tiny rooms with drunken kids crawling zig-zags across a cold floor tend not to sit down and write a whole lot.
Henry Mayhew wrote a good book on it that is available free online The London Poor, I believe it is called.
Not acting cheap.
ACting like your company, your affection, your love are worthy of respect.
Do you really not know?
I found it. Thanks, I'll read it.
If a thing/concept isn't carefully defined, then it can't be discussed, defended or analyzed. If it remains this vague concept or ideal, then any discussion about it is pretty meaningless.
You might want to check out this as well.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/675
Do you see how far our society has fallen? It used to be that sex outside marriage was shameful. Now, you can write a book criticizing sex outside *relationships* and be told you're a moralizing prude and butt out.
Liberals. The acid reflux of our societal digestive system.
Do you see how far our society has fallen? It used to be that sex outside marriage was shameful.
Discussing sex outside of marriage was shameful. I suspect that folks had sex outside of marriage as far back as 1940, maybe even 1939.
Some men are in a constant search for sex. It's up to the woman to tell him "no".
Just like some women are in a constant search to spend money and it's up to the man to tell her "no".
I'm not saying I support this arrangement but it seems to be the way life works, probably because some women like to treat men's money the same way some men like to treat women's bodies.
Why am I skeptical of that comment? I have seen it around here a few times, but I have never seen a woman (pretty or ugly) giving bad looks to anyone who holds a door open for her.
Speaking for myself, I am very appreciative when anyone holds a door open for me, or for holding elevator doors and waiting for me to come in. I always smile – big smile – and I thank the person for being kind to me. In return I get smiles back and “you're welcome,” and “it's my pleasure,” etc.
Such courtesy makes me feel good. I've done the same thing for guys if am the first to open the door – even waited a few seconds until they reach to the door. If am the first to reach the door and someone is behind me, (man or woman) I hold the door for them. Life is good.
I've never personally encountered it, nor ever even seen it. Strange.
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