A story on the hazards of “hookups” in this week's Science Times was impressive for, if nothing else, the synthesis of unsurprising findings into something resembling a story.
I wondered whether it was just a coincidence or part of a new emphasis that this was the second Science Times piece on human sexuality in a space of four weeks. The last one I read, My Body Changed, So Did Intimacy, was an uplifting tale of sex between two middle-aged adults who were not necessarily in a committed relationship. The author, Joyce Wadler, is a breast cancer survivor. She wrote of having sex with an “old boyfriend” who needed an erectile dysfunction drug that had to be refrigerated. It was all very sex positive, as Dan Savage would say.
In contrast, Tuesday’s piece, In Hookups, Inequality Still Reigns, amounted to a dour look at short-term sex among college students, pointing out the danger that many young women will be left unsatisfied by college boys. No big surprise there.
(It would seem the mainstream media now approves of sex for fun but only if you’re both eligible for AARP and at least one partner has survived cancer.)
The news peg consisted of research showing that college women are more likely to experience orgasms in the context of serious relationships than short-term flings. The question of whether this comparison holds true for that vast stretch of post-college adult life went untouched.
The story went on to quote young people on their less-than-ecstatic college sexual encounters. Women complained of men who didn’t seem to care, didn’t know what they were doing, or men who satisfied themselves and then fell asleep. One of the men might have been identifiable to his peers since the piece gave the name of his university and the woman who was accusing him of not pleasing her.
Conspicuously absent was any mention of STDs or whether these men were willing to use condoms or participate in decisions about birth control. Lack of concern for a partner’s health still seems like a much more serious complaint than the predictable tales of ineptitude and incompatibility.
The focus of this piece was entirely on the hazard of leaving an encounter unsatisfied, and here, the science presented didn’t support the anti-hookup message without some dubious assumptions and far-fetched interpretations of data.
One strange assumption was that having an orgasm was a major goal for young people deciding to have sex. Historically, young men in many cultures have had the opportunity to experience flings as a way to learn about sex, women and themselves, to figure out what they want and need in life and learn how to be a good partner at some later date. It’s only been in relatively recent times, and only in some cultures, that young women can do the same without the risk of being shamed, shunned, thrown out on the street, or stoned.
We would seem to be on the right track with this trend.
And if, as the piece argues, women’s sexual needs are more complex than men’s, then perhaps we are even more in need of the chance for some trial and error without paying a devastating cost.
The Times piece also rested on the assumption that short-term relationships caused unsatisfying sex, and gave no consideration to the possibility that unsatisfying sex might cause relationships to be short-term. Yes, it’s understood that in so-called hookup culture people go in expecting a short term thing, but is that really always the case? Those who had good sex and went on to form relationships may forget that they started with low expectations and instead recall that it was love at first sight. Those who had bad experiences may also forget that they had pinned hopes on Mr. or Ms. wrong.
As an analogy, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that more people had unsatisfying driving experiences in cars they chose not to buy. The key difference here is that once you find the right car, it can’t decide to reject you.
That gets to the other assumption – that somehow young women are perversely and foolishly choosing short term relationships when they could just as easily choose long-term ones – much as we can choose to eat regular or low-fat dairy products.
You’d think from the way the hookup piece is written that college women all have the choice of settling down with a handsome prince who is a caring lover, supportive partner, scintillating conversationalist and willing to make the bed. And of course he will be conveniently labeled as such to avoid confusion and unnecessary kissing of frogs.
That may be true somewhere – perhaps on one of those eight million other habitable planets we now know exist in the galaxy. Here on Earth, the alternative to short-term flings is more likely to amount to celibacy and Netflix or Phys 260 homework. (The homework is always the wisest choice for science majors, but we are human.)
There is surely a case to be made that women have yet to achieve full equality. And yet, this piece took the fraught nature of human relationships and the imperfections of the human body and seemed to blame them on women’s increased sexual freedom – as if we’d be better off living under the corseted morality of the Downton Abbey era or the blatant double standard of the Mad Men days.
The important question may not be whether hookups are better for men than women, but whether young women are happier and healthier now that they have more latitude to experiment, experience life and walk away from unpromising situations without shame or stigma. It would be unfortunate if anyone used this story to make a case against women's hard-won freedoms.
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