Self-Destructive Behavior in the Young. Today’s college women have no time for boyfriends ...

The Times & Hookup Culture: Two Views

by Rachel Lu and Regis Martin

Sex has consequences. I realize that admitting this probably marks me as some sort of misogynist, but somehow I can’t help myself. For one thing, I have it on good authority that even in 2013, sex still has something to do with babies. Even before the babies, though, sex is morally consequential. It changes us as human beings, in ways that we are not at liberty to choose. When we allow ourselves to forget that, the fallout can be ugly.

This ugliness was on full display in Kate Taylor’s recent controversial New York Times piece, “Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too,” a wrenching account of the promiscuous sexual habits of female undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. In this piece, we are given to understand that today’s college women have no time for boyfriends. Instead they find “hookup buddies” who offer no-strings-attached sexual relationships. The social scene that results is disturbing, to put it mildly. We are treated to the tale of a college freshman who loses her virginity in a one night stand, and returns home exultant because now, having nothing left to lose, she is entirely free for further sexual exploits. Another young woman admits that she “literally can’t sit down and have coffee” with her regular hookup, because they just don’t like each other that much. Some women do confess shame or embarrassment after succumbing to hookup pressure, but in the end their priorities remain clear. Hookup culture, like fast food, enables students to service their bodies while focusing attention on their bright futures.

Before we conclude that the rising generation is entirely lost, we should bear in mind that this account may not be entirely representative. Taylor’s piece is less than ground-breaking; it mirrors themes found in Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men, Nathan Harden’s Sex and God at Yale, Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons and many other works depicting modern undergraduate life. However, there is some reason to believe that these portraits may be exaggerated, and that the researchers may have fallen prey to a kind of “Margaret Mead” effect.

......................

Read more: www.crisismagazine.com