Getting with, hooking up, getting some, smashing, smooshing, getting laid—whatever you and your group of friends choose to call it, any number of these phrases litter the conversation of a weekend morning. Its no wonder how Lisa Wade, sociologist at Occidental College, has been able to develop an entire study on who, how, and why young adults enter into casual sexual relationships in college. Wade took it upon herself to discover if college is the alcohol-fueled orgy that contemporary culture makes it out to be and presented her findings to a large crowd of F&M students and faculty at last week’s Common Hour.
Wade started her study out with a perplexing discovery: although students in college today are having more and more sexual contact with more and more people, they are having less sexual intercourse than the previous generation. There is a generally accepted timeline of events that occur in a single hook up or in successive hook ups over a period of time; usually kissing comes before other performances of the mouth and kids usually don’t immediately jump into bed naked. Steps are followed. Our generation has switched the placement of oral sex in this progressive code; even though hooking up has become an engrained facet of the college culture, sexual intercourse itself has become less casual.
Based off students in a class she taught at Occidental College, Wade compiled data that points to the problem that seems to be fueling the hook up culture: it is not that students are having too much sex, it’s that we’re having too much bad sex. Further, we ladies seem to be more disappointed than the gentlemen whom we’re getting ourselves into bed with. It appeared to Wade that young women are disappointed with their sexual encounters because they are looking for one of three things: pleasure, a meaningful experience, and empowerment. Girls are left feeling that they need to please the guy while disregarding their own interests. Instead of being empowered by sex, girls end up being the “jungle gyms of the sexual playground.”
Wade also dispelled the widely held belief that no one is looking for commitment or a relationship of any sort in college, and if you do, you are either a girl, or strange. Turns out these assumptions are examples of pluralistic ignorance. The percentages of women and men interested in developing intimate relationships with those of the opposite sex in college are very similar. The culture that has flourished amongst this ignorance is one of hooking up: hooking up is seen as the only way to socialize.
What compels Wade to report the findings of this study is the effect that the hook up culture seems to be having on young adults in college. This sexual culture is not being challenged by any other cultures, something necessary for healthy participation in a culture. Sexual encounters can teach us things about ourselves that we were not previously aware of: sexuality, the role sex plays in our lives, and the development of sexual experience (which hopefully leads to better sex as opposed to the bad sex we all seem to be having). The problems with the dominant hook up culture are numerous; hooking up has become an obligation, it is in no way empowering, and it is relentlessly heterosexual. As in any culture, going against the norm leaves individuals vulnerable. Communication and the verbal discussion of hook up culture issues are the groundwork for defeating this culture that dominates the sexual relationships of college students.
Although it is arguable that some of Wade’s student’s stories were a bit extreme and can be hard to imagine occurring at F&M, a hook up culture of sorts has developed. Simply talking about the big “it” can challenge the miscommunication and ignorance that pervades sexual encounters amongst students. Wade reached a diverse crowd at Thursday’s Common Hour. Although her talk made some audience members squirm, it certainly made the majority think about their weekend adventures and the fuel they provide for the blooming hook up culture.