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:
Apr '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
As Dennis Prager is so much more apt to say that when parents and the like, have raised a generation venerating one's self-esteem over one's character what you left with is the desacralizing of life and society's most important foundations.
Your faith is now secularized and privatized, marriage commitment is relegated to our feelings not duty and purpose, a baby can be reduced to a fetus and relationships have no meaning other than mere sexual pleasure.
I agree with Fake John Galt that it is ludicrous for feminists to wage battle all these years fighting to be equal with men whom they abhor.
By solely focusing on the alleged abuses of men to proclaim victimhood, instead of developing one's inward qualities, what you are left with is your transformation to the very object which has been your focus.
Apr '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Getting generations of women to kick men to the curb is the goal if the older feminists who hated the Hugh Hefner, Don Draper and now, this generations' Prince Harry stereotype.
Feminists wanted women to have a job, make money, be independent of a man. Then they could leave a bad marriage.
The final piece was Britney Spears teaching girls to dress and behave like hookers, and as the one woman in this article described, she was empowered by having men want her. I have seen many Dads staring at the bare legs of teenage girls at their son's party and girls learn what gets attention. Girls get empowered about how to manipulate male brains.
Girls try and believe they want the physical time shown in the media. The feminist manifesto encouraged women not to want the enjoyable chat over a $3 ice cream cone. These girls/women are copying the worst behaviour of males.
Does Prince Harry make you sad? Did you think he was using the Vegas girls? These girls and the ones in this article are being Harry.
Most men know empowerment is not easy to achieve. Cheap thrills are cheap, better left to Harry.
May '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
I live on the corner, and my window faces the avenue.
Last summer, around this time of year, at around 11:30 or later, I was having trouble sleeping. The situation was not helped by having a well-dressed young woman having a loud cell phone conversation with her boyfriend across the street. She complained that she had been sleeping with him repeatedly, and he had given her nary a necklace as a gift.
My reaction was twofold:
one, pipe down, honey, I'm trying to get some sleep;
and two, why in the world would he spend a penny on you when you're giving away so many free samples.
I know, I should have been more compassionate, but I was in a grumpus mood.
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 8:53pmMay '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Because Feminists, particularly the 2nd & 3rd wave variety seek to legitimize female promiscuity. Don't believe me? Just read Boston based feminist Jaclyn Friedman's article My Sluthood, Myself which is about affirmation of her behavior;
The reason so many Feminists freaked out and vigorously protested Rush implying that Sandra Fluke was a 'Slut' was that he unwittingly challenged one of the sacred pillars of Feminism;
The social legitimization of female promiscuity.
A similar reaction was seen in the Slutwalks that took place around the world over the comments of a minor Toronto cop.
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 9:30pmMay '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Quite to the contrary, feminists love high status males eg Alpha's like Hugh Hefner, Don Draper, Bill Clinton, the Kennedy's, and Prince Harry. What Feminists hate are working class and middle class males eg Beta's like Joe the Plumber.
Hypergamy is what the status quo is of the Dating Marketplace nowadays.
I also think men are adapting to these changes in the sexual, dating, and marriage marketplace by adopting 'Game' and the strategies of the 'Pick-up Artist' (PUA) community, and 'Men Going Their Own Way' (MGTOW). Perhaps it is another explanation for declining marriage rates. In a previous post I referenced a vblog by Girlwriteswhat who aptly described the problem in her vblog 'Men not marrying? How Deep Does The 'Problem Go'?;
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 9:47pmMay '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
The sexual revolution passed me by many years ago so I don't have anything to add to this conversation. There were some pretty funny comments left on this topic at Althouse last week that you can read here.
Nov '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Since men compete for sex with women who choose when and with whom they will consent, the sort of men available for women to choose from is largely of their own making. Men default to the lowest level of behavior demanded by women.
When women settle for hook-ups over relationships, men don’t lose power they just become men who are no longer interested in relationships. When men can get “money for nothing and the chicks are free,” that’s power.
Women might try to convince themselves that they, like the men they have allowed to become jerks, are no longer interested in relationships, but it’s contrary to their nature and will soon enough make them unhappy. That’s not power.
The jerks may not be very happy either, but they will think they are so it won’t matter so much.
Sep '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Aristotle "the master of those who know" wrote that those who let their passions rule them eventually become slaves. That's power: the power of that which controls and rules you. The ring of power comes in many shades.
Dec '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
I dont know about anybody elses experience but mine. Anyway I lived a short lived fratire life and I have been married awhile now. I prefer being married.
May '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Edited on August 28, 2012 at 11:26pmApr '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
I think the logic went something like:
men are all pigs
men have all the power
so if you act like a pig, you'll be as powerful as them.
Apr '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Jim Ixtian
Quite to the contrary, feminists love high status males eg Alpha's like Hugh Hefner, Don Draper, Bill Clinton, the Kennedy's, and Prince Harry. What Feminists hate are working class and middle class males eg Beta's like Joe the Plumber.· 41 minutes ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
Yes, their hypocrisy runs deep and Feminists like the Bill Clinton (who took advantage of an intern but look away, that does not count). I agree they do not like men who go against their narrow stereotype of men. They would not appreciate the men on Ricochet who astound me daily with their thoughtfulness and understanding of the sexes.
Men are interested in having a $3 ice cream cone with their wife and mother of their children. Somehow, feminists do not believe this man exists.
A friend of mine was proud that her daughter organized a Slut Walk in Ontario. She is divorced so the cynical attitude is already being bred into the bone.
Dec '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
I'm thrilled that the hookup culture is thriving on college campuses, and that women see this as empowering. I'd be even more thrilled if they felt empowered enough to pay for their own contraceptives instead of expecting me to support their journeys of self-discovery.
Jun '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Fr. Barron comments on "Eat Pray Love"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbYPObpyLaE
(An example of missing the forest for the trees.)
Apr '11
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
MichaelC19fan: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 totally agree with your sentiments, MichaelC19fan...and this isn't the only case of women saying one thing and doing another: Women supposedly want "nice guys", but when given a choice, they almost always choose "bad boys" because they are more exciting. This is why I've given up on dating American women. I prefer to date women from other cultures (e.g., Asian or Eastern European) whose minds haven't been corrupted by Western feminism...they have a much more traditional view of relationships and the roles of men and women. Oh, and as an added bonus, they look a heck of a lot better than most American women!! =)
Edited on August 29, 2012 at 2:59amAug '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
How can young women and men learn that hook ups don't lead to lasting happiness without actually hooking up themselves? I think they can't. Going through the hook up phase is a normal part of growing up. How to be happy, like everything else, needs to be learned.
Jun '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Never underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion.
Apr '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Girls screw up by falling into either the power trip, or "it's better than being alone."
Guys fall into either manipulating women-- always justified by how they were hurt, first-- or mistaking "being nice" as meaning "don't have any sort of drive or make the first move, ever." (I still get incredibly annoyed with the "I don't know, what do you want?" game.)
Everybody gets hurt, gets bitter, and doubles down on what got them in trouble in the first place.
Research: my facebook page, with people that I know aren't bad, but eternally talk about how they can't find any good men/women. Well, if you can't find 'em, maybe you're looking in the wrong place.....
Nov '10
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
The choice of words might be hyperbolic, but the sentiment is valid; women are considered "empowered" for doing things that are labeled "misogynistic" when done by men.
Jun '12
Re: Is the Hook-Up Culture "Empowering"?
Yet another example of how the fruit of the sexual revolution has not been better (more meaningful, more rewarding, more intimate) sexual relationship, but rather, merely a vehicle by which people masturbate through the use of someone else's body.