Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
In 2010, Hanna Rosin wrote a pretty devastating feature article in The Atlantic titled The End of Men, which argued that women are outpacing and outperforming men in the postindustrial economy. That article has since been transformed into a book by Rosin that will be coming out next month.
Her most recent article in The Atlantic, Boys on the Side, is adapted from this forthcoming book. In the piece, she takes up what are, to her, the merits of the hook-up culture. That the hook-up culture is thriving on college campuses--thanks, in large part, to the women who drive it--is another sign that women are replacing men as the alphas of society. So Rosin's argument goes.
She writes:
But this analysis [Caitlin Flanagan's in Girl Land] downplays the unbelievable gains women have lately made, and, more important, it forgets how much those gains depend on sexual liberation. Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-school party—are for the first time in history more successful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
To Rosin, the hook-up culture is good because women enjoy it and it frees them from the shackles of having a relationship. So the hook-up culture, as Rosin and most feminists argue, empowers women:
At Yale I heard stories like the ones I had read in many journalistic accounts of the hookup culture. One sorority girl, a junior with a beautiful tan, long dark hair, and a great figure, whom I’ll call Tali, told me that freshman year she, like many of her peers, was high on her first taste of the hookup culture and didn’t want a boyfriend. “It was empowering, to have that kind of control,” she recalls. “Guys were texting and calling me all the time, and I was turning them down. I really enjoyed it! I had these options to hook up if I wanted them, and no one would judge me for it.”
Tali may be the exception. Occidental College sociologist Lisa Wade, who did a qualitative study of the hook-up culture among 44 of her freshman students (33 of them women), concludes that most of them "were overwhelmingly disappointed with the sex they were having in hook ups. This was true of both men and women, but was felt more intensely by women.” The psychiatrist Miriam Grossman reports that the vast majority of women who have a hook-up experience later regret it. Wade confirms that the women she interviewed felt “disempowered instead of empowered by sexual encounters. They didn’t feel like equals on the sexual playground, more like jungle gyms.”
Eventually, Tali, like these other women, came to the conclusion that she didn't like the hook-up culture after all. As Rosin writes:
But then, sometime during sophomore year, her [Tali's] feelings changed. She got tired of relationships that just faded away, “no end, no beginning.” Like many of the other college women I talked with, Tali and her friends seemed much more sexually experienced and knowing than my friends at college. They were as blasé about blow jobs and anal sex as the one girl I remember from my junior year whom we all considered destined for a tragic early marriage or an asylum. But they were also more innocent. When I asked Tali what she really wanted, she didn’t say anything about commitment or marriage or a return to a more chivalrous age. “Some guy to ask me out on a date to the frozen-yogurt place,” she said. That’s it. A $3 date.
In other words, once college women get past the initial high of freedom that coming to college and being away from home first entails, they realize that they do want a dating culture, and are willing to settle for even a vague semblance of one. At Yale, I guess that means a $3 frozen yogurt date. I know that at Dartmouth, where I went to school, a game of beer pong suffices as a “date.”
This reality--that women want a dating culture--is not a welcome one for the feminists, who have forcefully argued that the hook-up culture is empowering for women, and certainly more empowering than a dating culture, which allegedly takes time away from work and school, and relies on antiquated ideas of romance and courtship--of reliance on (god forbid) men.
Despite this contradiction, Rosin needs to connect the hook-up culture to power because her entire thesis about the "end of men" relies on the rising power of women--power that they secured through the gains of feminism. This is why she argues explicitly the progress of women relies on the hook-up culture: “The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself.”
This "depend on yourself" phrase is another way to say “feel empowered”--the gold standard of feminism. Being empowered means that everything you could ever want or need comes from you. Using that definition then, the most empowered relationship a woman could ever have is with her vibrator. Maybe for Rosin and other feminists, it is.
But most normal college-aged women are like Tali. They want relationships. I recently asked some college women whether the hook-up culture is actually empowering, and one coed told me, “The most empowered woman on campus is not the one who is hooking up, but the one who is in a stable relationship.” The flip-side of that quote is that the hook-up culture is disempowering. The HBO show Girls, which Rosin herself cites, is the perfect example of how disempowering that culture can be, as I have explained before.
It's also degrading. When the feminists cheer that the hook-up culture empowers women, the question we must ask is “empowers them to do…what, exactly?” Power has always been a means to an end. It still is. So what is the true end of the hook-up culture? The true end turns out to be something rather nasty. The reason you feel especially empowered during a hook up--more so than, say, with a vibrator--is because you are not just getting "no strings attached" sex from the hook up (as you would with a vibrator), but you are getting it from a living, breathing person.
So the real reason that someone allegedly feels empowered during a hook up is because that person is using someone else as a means to his/her own sexual pleasure. When feminists do this, it's called empowerment. When men do it, it's called sexual assault. The philosopher Immanuel Kant--who warns against using another person as a mere means to some end--was closer to the truth than the feminists when he wrote that sex “taken by itself . . . is a degradation of human nature.”
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Comments:
Jul '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
What a load of garbage. Hedonistic hormonal young adults being idiots does not justify a worldview worthy of anything but disgust and daily acyclovir. I just looked up Rosin's picture. I suspect her adulation of the hook up culture is related to it being the only way she could copulate. I teach my kids to have more self respect than that.
May '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Hookup Culture is an Empowering as adding caffeine tablets to espresso while doing an All-Nighter in college is healthy. It works only in the short term. Keep it up, and you neglect yourself, and hurt yourself.
The Kinks have a song about it, Come Dancing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2kFrGluKs
all for a cuddle and a peck on the cheek
A good enough kiss and he'll make sure he can court & win you (by proving he can do what a man is supposed to be able to do - take care of his wife and family).
Sep '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Getting back to the Euthyphro, is it wrong because its bad for you or bad for you because its wrong? Ask any priest worth his salt who spends long hours in the confessional like the Cure d'Ars and you will get the same comment:
"People are never as happy as they appear."
Human nature is not indefinitely maleable as the progressivists yearn for when channeling their inner Jean Jacques Rousseau: wait till these women get into their upper years and experience the gnawing of their consciences alone in a room deprived of the burdens they so casually tossed aside.
When you want to deceive someone into biting the poisoned fruit of sin, you have to deceive them with an enticing wrapper. Its only once you bite all the way down that you find the razor blades that slowly divide your soul and turn your conscience against itself. It won't necessarily happen right away, depending upon your personality and dispositions, but it will, and for those who've indulged the longest the price of their iniquity will be steep indeed.
Sep '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Jul '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Would somebody explain to me why women are aspiring to act as the worst of men do and why that is empowering for them?
May '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
You had me until the last paragraph:
"So the real reason that someone allegedly feels empowered during a hook up is because that person is using using someone else as a means to his/her own sexual pleasure. When feminists do this, it's called empowerment. When men do it, it's called sexual assault."
There's a wide range of using someone else as a means to sexual pleasure, and sexual assault is only at the far edge. It might be reciprocal. It might be thoughtless, narcissistic, hedonistic, irresponsible -- it can be any of these nasty things without declining to the level of sexual assault.
Thoughtful overall, though. Thanks, Emily.
Jul '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
This reality--that women want a dating culture
I think this is case of saying one thing and doing another. College co-eds can create a dating culture if they insisted on it. This would require saying NO to some guy you just met at a frat party. Obviously, enough co-eds are not saying NO. I went to college in the late 80s and this culture from my observation was already well established. I only remember two friends in a committed relationship and that was because one found his soul mate in high school and remained loyal to her. The other couple was devout Christians. The rest of my friends if they had the wherewithal fully exploited the "hook up" culture. I did not have that talent and I must confess lived my college years like a monk in a monastery. As a young unrealized man, I grew bitter that my friends who treated women like meat were successful if you want to call it that.
Jan '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Only Pseud could say, "Getting back to the Euthyphro" and make it seem perfectly normal. I might also note that the commenters so far are all men.
As others have said, this is precisely the kind of behavior that got men in jail. There's a reason why they were called shotgun weddings.
All I can say is that human beings don't stand still. If your entire philosophy is based on exploiting or taking advantage of others, sooner or later they will adapt and respond.There will be fallout and backlash, and when it happens, no feminist will have any excuse but to blame themselves.
Does anyone doubt that the hookup culture teaches women that casual sex will be used for more than entertainment? It'll be used for advancement, blackmail, or whatever comes in handy.
But will such women be happy? Frankly, after that selfish behavior, I couldn't care less.
Mar '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Men get what they think they want: cheap sex. And as a result, they never have to grow up. We have millions of Peter Pans.
Women convince themselves that they want this, too. And as a result, these women age prematurely, embittered and empty.
After too-few years, marriage is no longer even a possibility. The crazy cat lady rattling around in the attic and the selfish man-boy in the basement have no future together.
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 7:44pmDec '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
This made me really, really sad.
Sep '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Britanicus
This made me really, really sad. · 1 minute ago
When the ancients wanted to exterminate a race they killed all the men and then let nature take its course for the women and children not taken as slaves and booty (yes, that's what booty call meant to the ancient world). Now, the culture has done the hard work for them, and the men will hold open the door for the enemy.
Dec '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Pseudodionysius:
When you want to deceive someone into biting the poisoned fruit of sin, you have to deceive them with an enticing wrapper. Its only once you bite all the way down that you find the razor blades that slowly divide your soul and turn your conscience against itself. It won't necessarily happen right away, depending upon your personality and dispositions, but it will, and for those who've indulged the longest the price of their iniquity will be steep indeed. · 23 minutes ago
Well said.
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Hanna Rosin's account has one virtue. It is an accurate account of what many of the young women I knew at Cornell University in 1969 and at Yale in subsequent years had in mind when they embraced the sexual revolution. They wanted "boys on the side" because they saw wedlock (and children in particular) as an obstacle to ambition. Put simply, they wanted to be irresponsible men (who have girls on the side), and in later years -- childless, without husbands -- they paid for their folly. My sense is that young women today are a lot more skeptical about this than the highly educated women of my generation, and this is clearly driving the likes of Hanna Rosin batty.
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
iWc: It amazes me that people can fool themselves.
Men, after all, get what they think they want: cheap sex. And as a result, they never have to grow up. Millions of Peter Pans.
Women convince themselves that they want this, too. And as a result, they age prematurely, embittered and empty. · 7 minutes ago
Very nicely put. At Hillsdale, where I teach, there are a host of stunningly pretty faculty wives with three or more children. They are among the happiest women I have ever met, and they seem to be forever young. These women stand in stark contrast to the legions of unhappy women in the professoriate who sacrificed marriage and family for the dreariness of a not very distinguished career.
Mar '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Really? They may be skeptical, but the facts on the ground suggest that traditional dating and courtship are lost in the mists of time.
Women can be skeptical all they like, but as long as they give it away for free, they lose.
Jun '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
As an antidote to tripe like Rosin's article, let me suggest Mary Eberstadt's short, incisive book Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution. It's a brilliant dissection of what has been wrought by de-linking sex from love.
Some call it freedom--most feel it as deep unhappiness.
Rosin's article reminds me why I'm so grateful my Atlantic subscription ended last month.
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 7:48pmMay '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
In 2067, Sandra sits in the corner of one of the cities' many run-down "retirement communities." Here, the face of white is old and wrinkled, the face of youth is bronze or dark brown.
Sandra watches as Bill gets abused by one of the many Muslim male orderlies. They know Bill was a Marine who fought in Afghanistan and they take special delight in making his life miserable. Sandra joins in emotionally. "Frickin' Jarhead. Gets what he deserves," she says to herself.
Like most of the residents, Sandra has no visitors. She tried to have a designer baby back in the late 2020's but her fertile years had gotten away from her. So she sits and relies on the kindness of strangers.
One of the kind ones is Maria. She is young and pretty and tries to convince Sandra to convert to Catholicism. Sandra has no use for her superstitions but listens because she wants the company. Sometimes she even pretends that Maria is the daughter she never had. She imagines that Maria is the product of one of the many "hookups" she had as she was climbing the ladder of political success.
*Continued*
May '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
*From above*
"She could be mine," she muses. She took many a one-night stand from the young, good-looking Latin males that worked in her office. But it was so long ago she couldn't even remember any of their names.
Today is Maria's off day and Sandra hopes she can make it through the day without soiling herself. She hates the other nurses. She has to put up with listening about their husbands and their children. The domesticity makes her sick. She wants to "empower" them just like her feminist mother empowered her, so they, too, could end up just like her.
Just like her... sitting alone in the corner... with a tear streaming down her face...
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 7:53pmMay '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Very, very sad. I suspect that many young people of both sexes are quietly turned off by the hook-up culture, but also that they have very little in the way of support or role modeling that would encourage them in the direction of marriage and responsibility. More than once I have heard marriage described by people of college age and a little older as something "so far in the future."
Mar '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
The sad part is Rosin does not care about what this deductive behavior does to men. Whenever one it talks about bad sexual behavior by men, it is always framed or in the back of someone mind the damage it causes women. It should be the same for men.
A song I still love by Blindside from the 90's talks about the impact this hook-up culture has on men trying to do relationships right, called "Cute Boring Love".
"She said what I was supposed to think
Thank God for freedom
Thank God for liberation
(she said) now we are allowed to think
Now we are allowed to feel lust without cute boring love
But don't you ever just like me
Long for purity
Don't you ever
Get sick of our territories
What are you so scared of sister
What made you so afraid to feel
To chose a stone cold liberation
The one thing I hate most about me
Is the one thing you want to make your trademark
To feel lust without cute boring love”
This liberation behavior in reality is animalistic, uncivilized, and psychologically destructive, as the song says, not enlightenment or progress.