Reading Notes for American Hookup

Reading Notes for American Hookup Citation: WADE LISA. AMERICAN HOOKUP: the new culture of sex on campus. S.l.: W W NORTON; 2018. Chapter 1- Hooking Up: A How To - Today’s students have no more sexual partners then their parents did, regardless of the myth they are having much more  goes against typical belief - The sexual atÝtudes or behaviors on religious and secular campuses are the same as public institutions  goes against typical belief - Hookups are often dictated by how one’s peers view the potential partner (we always ask our friends for approval) - Grinding is explicitly sexual, and is often a prequel to a hookup or sexual encounter in college (think frat parties lol) - Hooking up with someone attractive or hot can increase one’s popularity, just as hooking up with someone unattractive can have the opposite effect - A “hookup” is difÏcult to define. In 40 percent of hookups, “it” means sexual intercourse, while 35 percent mean no more than kissing and groping - In my opinion, most college women define hooking up as sex. - The ambiguity of “hooking up” is purposeful  it allows women to keep their status of “good girl” and allows men to keep their status of “real men”. - Sober sex is interpreted completely different then drunk sex; to college students they mean completely different things - Being drunk can even erase the implications of same-sex experiences involving people who identify as heterosexual. They can be dismissed as casual. - “One and done”: a way for students to dismiss the significance of a hookup Chapter 2- How Sex Became Fun - Fun is used to describe sex nearly 1/3 of the time by college students - Social classes divided how sex worked. Upper class women got love, poor women weren’t put on the same level of purity, seen as trashy. - Being “sexy” meant conforming to the standard of beqauty and signaling a certain amount of sexual availability. - 1950s: following GD  age of marriage dropped to 100 yr low. Sex was still given to men but in exchange for marriage - Historically, masculine traits have been valued more then feminine. Still continues today… - College women argue that hooking up is away to “reject oppressive sexism”, pursue sexual liberation and challenge the idea that “women are supposed to be passive” - 28 percent of women believe that romantic love brainwashes women - hooking up is liberating women for reliance on men in the both the short and long term - feminist progress is largely dependent on hook-up culture - Specific historical reasons for men and women coming of age in the US to believe that sex is and should be fun 3. Sex in Drunkworld - College students are primed by modern media to want to party, get drunk, be crazy and have casual sex in college (think TV shows, movies, etc) - How can we change this stereotype? - Campus life today by colleges is presented as mostly social - Early colleges (300 yrs ago) were “veritable straitjackets of petty rules” - The “frat boy’ was frequently depicted, relentlessly glamorized that it became THE way of doing college - Fraternities often corner the market for underage partying on college campuses - College parties combining sexual desire with substances can be overwhelming for young people - Hookup culture is totally institutionalized now. Colleges are expected to have it, embrace it. - “even if you aren’t hooking up, there is no escaping hookup culture” - “hookups occur at predetermined places on particular days of the week, allowing students to fit sex into their schedule in a way that is compatible with colleges needs - sex is now a part of how student do higher education” Wow. 4. Opting Out - men and women are equally likely to report zero hookups after college - casual sex doesn’t appeal to some and they choose to opt out of hookup culture - Studies show there is a hierarchy of sexual desire with white men and women, black men and Asian women being at the top. Asian men at bottom - In some ways, hookup culture is a “white thing”, seen as “acting white.” - Religious students aren’t any less likely to hook up than non-religious ones - Hookup culture is usually indifferent or unwelcoming of non-heterosexual students - Queer-friendly parties don’t attract many non-queer students - The only same-sex behavior that routinely goes on at college parties is girl on girl kissing - Sexiled: having to leave the room when your roommate is having sex or hooking up - Those who do not engage in hookup culture often feel isolated as outcasts and losers 5. Opting In - “Hookup culture is a gift from the gays to the straights” - gay men were the first in history to normalize condom use - It only takes women a few milliseconds to decide if a potential partner is disease free based on their intuition - Students believe hookup culture and having sex is a part of the “college experience” - Half of students in a survey said they engaged in hook up culture in hopes of finding a monogamous relationship - Students with the most casual sexual experience are the most likely to report that it brings them unadulterated pleasure - Casual sex is associated with high self-esteem and low anxiety and depression - Strivers: those who want to engage in hookup culture but feel shut out - Coming over to watch a movie = widely understood way to initiate a hook up 6. Careless and Carefree - It’s iimpossible to have emotionless sex, according to science - Hot sex is good sex - Many categories of hotness: people who are fucking hot, too hot, recently got hot, didn’t know they were hot, or would have been hot - Expressions of tenderness (gentle kissing, eye contact, cuddling) are to be avoided in hookups - If students accept the fact that casual sex is meaningless, then essentially everything else, no matter how small, carries more meaning - Several men say that they found holding hands more intimate than getÝng a hand job - Even not having sex is seen as more intimate than having sex  you have sex with people you don’t like, and don’t have sex with people that you do - The power of cool is in needing no one, in becoming unattached - The two worst things a guy can say to a girl is that she is fat or clingy - After a hookup, students aim to care less. They monitor each other’s level of friendliness and try to come in below the other person 7. Unequal Pleasures - Women often get shorted in hookup culture; women have 1 orgasm for every man’s 3. - The idea that the “orgasm gap” is natural is wrong - If during sex, the woman self-stimulates, a man performs oral sex, and they have intercourse, there is a 92 percent chance she will have an orgasm - Only six percent of boys 16 to 18 say they’re in favor of giving oral sex - Women have developed a sense of disgust towards their genitals - Women seemed convinced that men do not enjoy performing oral sex on them, often feel guilty asking for it - One study found that men like performing cunnilingus even more than women like receiving it - Men have more orgasms then women do in hookup culture because the culture doesn’t promote reciprocity - Women often themselves prioritize the male orgasm over anything else in bed - Men aren’t uniformly uninterested in female orgasm, they are specifically disinterested in the orgasms of women they are hooking up with 8: Wanting to be Wanted - To be sexual is to experience desire, to be sexy is to inspire it - Women who kiss women at college parties are sometimes exploring or indulging samesex attraction - Girl-on-girl kissing is seen as strictly heterosexual in hookup culture, this often pisses off lesbians - Negging: sexual compliance strategy that involves insulting women in order to undermine their confidence, leading them to seek reassurance - “when women perform for the hypothetical male gaze in exchange for validation, they’re not showing men they think theyre beautiful, theyre showing them that they care what men think of them” - Women comprise 60 percent of all college undergraduates - At frat parties, men make sure theyre in the minority so that women are forced to compete for their attention and the guys can have their pick - Being the object of men’s desire is a double-edged sword: “we are grossed out by objectification by men but also crave it - Women self-objectify by looking at themselves thru the eyes of men - During sex, when a woman takes on the perspective of her partner, it is known as spectatoring. Only seems to happen to women and not men - The more a woman worries about how she looks, the less likely she’ll experience sexual desire, pleasure or orgasm Flirting with Danger - One in five women in college and one in sixteen men will be a victim of sexual assault - Party rape: o One theory suggests that rape is committed by dangerous psychopaths: a small percentage of men who routinely exploit women o The other holds that rape is situational, that there are people who will not rape until or unless they find themselves in an environment that elicits sexual assault - Behaviors that are illegal (harassment and unwanted sexual touching) are not only tolerated, but the norm in hookup culture - Over 90 percent of men surveys admitted to engaging in non-consensual behavior at drinking establishments in college - Women have learned to live with this type of contact - If it’s men’s right to try for sexual contact, if it is the very definition of a real man, then the question isn’t whether he should try to overcome her resistance, but how - In facilitating women’s compliance or incapacitation, alcohol is the rapist’s greatest weapon - Men are 3x more likely to assault a woman who has been drinking s one who has not - Fraternity men are twice as more likely to promote homophobia, hypermasculinity and male dominance - Intervention by bystanders is one of the most effective ways we know to stop sexual assault from happening, but many students don’t realize its happening 10. Moving On - Many students said that hooking up and hooking up culture made them smarter about sex  helped them determine what they want and don’t from relationships - students struggled with the transition from hooking up to dating - Used words “weird” or “miserable” to describe dating - Rules of hooking up versus rules of casually dating seemed to apply at sme time - Few students felt they were still inside hookup culture post-graduation - People now had to work harder to find people they wrere attracted to - Now difÏcult to hookup upon first inerraction - Dating goes back to traditional style - Casual sex talk = ok for college, not ok for water cooler talk - Even fraternity men leave behind hard partying after college for more serious relationships 11. Changing the Culture - Hookup culture = mashup of the best things about sex culture over the last century - Strongly masculine - Demands carelessness Rewards callousness Punishes kindness Heterosexual men express greater comfort with hooking up then other students Majority of students prefer meaninglful connections with others Most would prefer casual relationships to be less competitive and a lot kinder “if we want to fi hookup culture we hve to fix American culture” still continue to look for men for approval, valuing womens opinion too little  goes beyond sex!