The Hook Up Culture Analysis

For our final book, I read American Hookup by Lisa Wade. In the book, Wade shines a light on the prominent hookup culture in universities today. From exploring changing dynamic from ‘calling’ to hook up culture, the experiences of enthusiasts that participate in hookup culture, and the reality for those who decide not to participate in hookup culture. In the end, Wade make several conclusions on the process of hookup culture like the participant is typically drunk or under the influence of some type of drug, girls and guys both look at their opinions of their friends when deciding whether or not to hook up, and that it’s most important be having ‘fun’ while sticking to the many unspoken rules of hookup culture.

Of students who reported hooking up, 41 percent used words such as “regretful,” “empty,” “miserable,” “disgusted,” “ashamed,” “duped” and even “abused” to describe the experience. An additional 23 percent expressed ambivalence, and the remaining 36 percent said they were more or less “fine” with hookups — “fine” being the most common description.

The reading that interested me most was “The Decline of the Date and the Rise of the College Hook Up” by Paula England and Rueben J. Thomas. The initial motive for this research was that an undergraduate student of England’s “wanted to do a research paper on why students on campus didn’t date much anymore” (pg 69). The two researchers, England and Thomas, then began questioning students on Stanford University’s campus about what they thought about the increasing occurrence of hook ups as compared to going out on dates.

In Guyland, hooking up is seen as normal and beneficial. It is easier than having a traditional relationship because you get the benefits such as the sex and you do not have to deal with emotional attachments that come when having a relationship. Hookups are also prefered because they are easier. For example, a guy can go to a party, hook up with someone, and leave without the expectation of having a relationship. However, having constant hook ups can be harmful to a guy’s future because this stigma can stick throughout their lives leaving them to never find a permanent relationship.

I hope you have packed all your things and told your family goodbye because you are leaving for college to experience a whole new world full of different people. Studying and doing your homework will consume most of your time and energy, leaving little effort to be invested in relationships. Nonetheless, there is no need to worry for college hookups have been a solution to this dilemma for decades. Despite being a solution, there are several controversies that surround hooking up with random people during the college experience, which that became a topic of discussion and research involving different styles of writing, including various rhetorical appeals. In relation to that style, the author of the article “Gender, Agency, and Sexual Decision Making in Collegiate Hookups” effectively establishes her credibility through her resources, logic through her personal research, and emotions through her words.

Cultural dating techniques and sexual practices among youth has changed drastically over the decades. From a postmodernist perspective, this is largely due to society, the morals, values and lessons that are taught in our social institutions. Dating practices have become less formal which is now considered the new norm, “we have moved into a “late-modern society” that is increasing anomic (or less normed) in certain respects” (Cote & Allahar, 2006, p. 28). There is no more ‘traditional roles’ of dating or even clear guidelines. How girls are supposed to behave is constantly changing and reinforced by various authority figures, society and our educational institutions. Dating and sexual practices have gone from the relationship first then, sexual activity, to sexual activity and then commitment. Media and society are now telling females to explore their sexuality before settling down except continue to look down upon the females who do so. Males continue to be taught to have multiple sexual partners and look for a female partner whom has only had very few sexual partners if any. Not only has institutions and other influences taken away the standards from dating, they are sending mixed messages. Encouraging females to have the best of the

In the book, Hooking Up, the author, Kathleen Bogle, devotes most of her research to interviewing male and female undergraduates and alumni. Throughout her book, she uses various methods to expose the complexity of hookups and the actualities of the gender “rules” on college campuses. The techniques Bogle uses are: explaining the norms of the hooking up culture prior to the twentieth century, describing how the ambiguity of the term “hooking up” on college campuses creates misconstrued ideas about other college students, and comparing the difference between males and females in the hook up culture.

Hooking up has become an increasingly studied culture by many sociologists around the country. These studies have been done to understand the shift from the old culture of dating to the new culture of hooking up that we experience now. Many people find it interesting that the kids of our generation have become so sexualized and carefree compared to the college days of our parents. Many people wonder how we got to this point and how the dynamics of hookups work, and why we continue to go on with them even sometimes at cost of our mental and physical help. One of these people was Kathleen A. Bogle, who wrote an entire book on the subject called, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus, which is the focal point of this essay.

Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus was written by Kathleen Bogle in 2008. Throughout the book, Bogle examines the qualitative data set she had collected over the past four and a half years. The data set consisted of interviews from college students and recent alumni whom had attended either a large state university or a smaller faith-based university. The interviews of the aforementioned individuals enabled Bogle to study what each individual observed the current social norms underlying male and female interaction in reference to their own habits. More specifically, Bogle uses these interviews to characterize the new sexual culture of “hooking up,” noting the guidelines of the action, as well as the environment in which

In the book American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, By Lisa Wade, she addresses the issues and concerns that she sees within the “hookup culture”. Lisa Wade’s book is a mixture of important statistics and personal accounts of what happens in the hookup culture on various college campuses. To define the hookup culture that Wade is addressing, we can look to the book as Lisa defines the hookup culture as essentially casual sex with no strings attached, another sociologist Kathleen Bogle described this as a “new norm” for campuses and that this an be very harmful for women especially (Wade, 2017, p.16). Michael Kimmel a well-known sociologist of masculinity was quoted saying that hooking up is “guys-sex” and that guys run the

I do not agree that millennials are part of the "hook culture". I feel as though hooking up has been around back then and not just now. Although it is known as the college thing to do, I believe that most people want a relationship and not just some hook up all the time. Even in the article it said "both men and women reported that they would rather have a traditional dating relationship than simply a hook-up". I am not saying that everyone thinks like this, some people are into hook ups which is fine. I mean if you are both single with no kids go for it. I feel that the younger generations coming up view hooking up as the cool thing to do, they don't really understand the seriousness of a relationship (once again this is not towards every adolescent). I think a lot of this hooking up scenerio comes from social media like facebook, instagram and snapchat. A lot of individuals care more about how many followers they have than their education or just living life.

Respectable women from over fifty years ago would get to know the person they were dating before doing anything intimate. Although this may be true, the advantages are much greater than the current sexual implications. If women didn’t make the changes to the economy that we did, we would still be fighting for our basic human rights. It may be one persons opinion that hooking up rather than being in a real relationship is more emotionally stressful, however the point of hooking up is to choose someone who has the same idea of what the so called “relationship”

In his essay, “Sexism in Practice: Feminist Ethics Evaluating the Hookup Culture,” Conor Kelly argues that the hook up culture prevalent in today’s society is sexist towards females. He argues that this culture gives off the illusion of freedom, but it instead disempowers women. Kelly begins by giving the definition of hook up culture. He defines it as, “the practice of pursuing sexual activity without any expectation of a relationship.” He then states what he believes are the four main factors that contribute to the disempowerment brought on by this culture: a lack of commitment, use of ambiguous language, alcohol use, and a social pressure to conform. Kelly then gives his argument as to why hookup culture should be concerning.

In our society today a person can often look around a room of people and see nothing but the top of their heads, along with their eyes staring down at lit up screen filled with tremendous possibilities. One thing you doubtfully will view is everyone surrounding talking to each other making kinship with in their proximity. Instead, making connections through their phones. In the article written by Nancy Jo Sales “Tinder and the Dawn of the“Dating Apocalypse””, Sales speaks of the dating culture of the current twenty-first century and her views on how online dating has affected thus creating a sort of “Dating Apocalypse”. In the culture of intimacy may it be consciously or subconsciously people are seeking love and security in their lives through hookups and technological dating cites such as Tinder.

Orenstein began her quest for an honest account of today’s hook-up culture as her daughter approached adolescence. Prior to this point in her life, she had only heard from friends about how teenage girls were treated in today’s culture, now she needed to know if this type of culture really did exist. Since she had been chronicling girl’s lives for over twenty-five years, it was an obvious place to start (Orenstein, P., 2016). She interviewed girls, psychologists, sociologists, pediatricians, educators, and journalist to uncover the ugly truth.