Hooking up and campus gender imbalances: A combustible combination
Readers may recall the commentary I wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education profiling Virginia’s James Madison University, one of many public universities where the gender imbalances have reached the critical 60/40 threshold. There’s real interest in this topic: On a single day I had more than 14,000 downloads of that commentary from this site (art courtesy of the Chronicle).
Here, NYTimes columnist Charles Blow weighs in on the hooking up culture with a reference to the role played by gender imbalances:
To help me understand this phenomenon, I called Kathleen Bogle, a professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia who has studied hooking up among college students and is the author of the 2008 book, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus.”
It turns out that everything is the opposite of what I remember. Under the old model, you dated a few times and, if you really liked the person, you might consider having sex. Under the new model, you hook up a few times and, if you really like the person, you might consider going on a date.
I asked her to explain the pros and cons of this strange culture. According to her, the pros are that hooking up emphasizes group friendships over the one-pair model of dating, and, therefore, removes the negative stigma from those who can’t get a date. As she put it, “It used to be that if you couldn’t get a date, you were a loser.” Now, she said, you just hang out with your friends and hope that something happens.
The cons center on the issues of gender inequity. Girls get tired of hooking up because they want it to lead to a relationship (the guys don’t), and, as they get older, they start to realize that it’s not a good way to find a spouse. Also, there’s an increased likelihood of sexual assaults because hooking up is often fueled by alcohol.
That’s not good. So why is there an increase in hooking up? According to Professor Bogle, it’s: the collapse of advanced planning, lopsided gender ratios on campus, delaying marriage, relaxing values and sheer momentum.
It used to be that “you were trained your whole life to date,” said Ms. Bogle. “Now we’ve lost that ability - the ability to just ask someone out and get to know them.”
Now that’s sad.
December 13th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Parents and adults of my generation (boomer) have been extremely slow to wake up to the pervasiveness of the hookup culture. Professor Bogle’s book is an excellent piece of work on this topic, and demonstrates how dissatisfied young women are with the status quo. Consider the following statistics (not all from Bogle):
• 91% of students reported that hooking up was very common or fairly common on their campuses.
• 87% of college students report having hooked up.
• 73% of girls wish dating was more common.
• 12% of hookups eventually lead to relationships.
• 60% of sexually active teenagers will at some point have sex with someone they are not dating.
• 49% of students who had intercourse during a hookup never saw the other person again.
• 61% of women who say hooking up makes them feel desirable also say it makes them feel awkward.
• During hookups, guys have orgasms 44% of the time. Girls have orgasms 19% of the time.
• 12% of women say that it is sometimes easier to have sex with a guy they don’t know than to make conversation.
What will be the long-term effect on marriage when so few young people are getting any practice at relationships?
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