What does the short story ‘Cat Person' (Roupenian, 2017) tell us about dating and hook-up culture from a sociological perspective?
To start with, the story ‘Cat Person’, tells us about a 20-year-old woman Margot who meets a 34-year-old man, Robert, at the Artsy movie theater where Margot works at the concession stand. After some flirts and friendly banter, Robert gets her number. They proceed to text for a few weeks where she tried to keep the interest and excitement going. They ended up going on a date where she felt uncomfortable and in fear of being raped and murdered.
The date initially led Margot to go to Robert’s place where she was not in her element because of the age gaps they have between them and in fear that anything happens to her as after all she went to a stranger's house. When entering his house she realized the danger of going to a stranger. She sees that people can lie to you virtually and create a false identity to please you. For example: for her, it was by not telling her the ways he was living in his household. Also by lying about what he did not have indoors. Afterward, her dissatisfaction got worst towards him when he ended up instigating sex and peer pressured her into it. As well as being bad in bed and treating her like a sexual object in sex.
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After breaking off via text on behalf of her roommate. A month later they see each other at her local bar where she gets exited out by her friends and Robert later hurls misogynistic insults at her such as calling her a “ whore “.
Referring to the “Cat Person “short story, I will explain why dating has changed and examine the key contemporary issues about dating and the hooking-up culture from a Sociological perspective.
Modernity has transformed intimacy in crucial ways, in the great urban centers, where new practices for coupling and dating and the anonymity of city life were developed and where bohemian writers, artists, and philosophers articulated new visions of love and eroticism (Wilson 1999; Kern 1992; Seinman 1991, D’emilio and Freedman 1988; Rothman 1984). These changes that occurred alongside others in the middle of the 19th century, it has helped to free intimacy from some of its traditional tie-ups, renderings marital intimacy in particular more compassionate and based on romantic love than had been the case before ( Gay 1986; Laslett 1977; Shorter 1975 ). Because practices were changed contemporary theorists have started this present-day transformation as a moment of “detraditionalization”.
Detraditionalization explains that there is the abandonment of reconfiguration of social and cultural traditions in society. From the time when wds tied to a gendered division of labor are not what people tend to generally. sexual households tied to a gendered divine tradition of lifelong marriage as the primary locus for procreation, and the tradition of male dominance within heterosexual households tied to a gendered division of labor.
Ensuing with “LISM “, it has declined in recent decades, in the United States and elsewhere. For the reason that it is a set of cultural practices according to which family life and intimacy are organized around state or religiously sanctified commitment premises on a reproductive of an equal division of labor, power, resources, or responsibilities between genders.
Giddens (1992) argues that relationships in late modernity are increasingly reflective of the ‘pure relationship ‘it’s where a relationship is based on sexual and emotional equality and continues as long as both parties meet their mutual satisfaction. According to Giddens (1992), the development of a pure relationship is related to further changes in the personal sphere, especially the emergence of ‘plastic sexuality ‘and ‘confluent love ‘. Plastic sexuality refers to the greater sexual freedoms provided by modern society (Giddens 1992). On the other hand “confluent love “refer to the love that is active and contingent and is distinct from the ideal of ‘romantic love ‘ in that it is not seen as something that ‘ last forever ‘ but lasts for as long as both remain invested in the relationship.
Focusing on the “Hook up “culture, which emerged as early as the 1920s, with the enlargement of automobile use and novel entertainment venues throughout North America, traditional models of dating under parental supervision began to fade ( Bailey, 1988; Stinson, 2010 ). So an increase in “dating “during this period gave way to a more liberal peer influenced to social sexual script (Bailey, 1988; Stinson, 2010). With the invention of visual media, images of erotic sex began finding their way into popular culture (Black, 1994; Doherty, 1999). In disproval to this, censorship laws established during the 1930s lasted until the late 1960s limited representation of erotic life in film, including depictions of uncommitted sex (Herbert & Mc Kernan, 1996; Robertson, 2001; Vieira, 1999). But young adults became even more liberated in the 1960s, with the rise of feminism, growth of college party events, widespread availability of birth control ( condoms and oral contraceptives ), and deposing of parental expectations as central to mating and marriage ( Laumann, Gagnon, Micheal, & Micheals,1994; Stinson, 2010 ).
In 2000, researchers noticed an enormous shift in indicating and mating behaviors on the college Campus repeatedly referred to as “ Hooking up “, which is slang referring to a fleeting and uncommitted sexual encounter. As well as casual sexual encounters or casual sexual relationships (eg. Claxton & Van Dulmen, 2013; Garcia et al. 2013 Paul & Hayes, 2002). It involves kissing, oral sex, and penetrative intercourse. Nevertheless, this encounter does not promise anything serious or deserve a more traditional romantic relationship.
The first contemporary issue in Hook–up is the lack of commitment. A student from Lehigh University says that some students from her University who are attracted to each other think that it is best to “ only hang out “ when they are drunk or on drugs. Because it is evidence that anything they have done with their encounters did not mean anything. They believe that if they are being careless they won’t be held responsible for what they did either they can be held accountable for who they did it with. But at the same time, some are too paranoid about getting attached to someone that they prefer hooking up with someone that they do not particularly find attractive so they won’t have any “ string attached “ and will be able to retreat easier.
Students believe that avoiding repeat hookups will help to ensure that no one gets the idea that a relationship it’s on the table. One person insisted that it was extremely rude to hook up with someone for the second time if they were not any feelings involved. So to reduce the possibility of someone catching up on feelings and thinking that a relationship might be on the table, hookups were usually once. For this reason, the rule is to be less close after a hookup, if students were good friends, they should act like acquaintances. If they were acquaintances they should act like strangers and if they were strangers they should not acknowledge each other existence at all.
This explains that the reason why students hook up mostly once is that they do not want to get attached to the other person and start to catch feelings as they do not want to have to commit to a serious relationship where they have to deal with the boyfriend & girlfriend responsibilities, the arguments, and separation. They use sex as sexual pleasure and fun only. They call it “unattached “, unemotional crazy one-night stands,” “fast random, no strings attached “, “emotion-free sexual abandon “, or, simply “meaningless sex “.
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