Hook-up culture harmful to men, women

We've all heard about it or experienced it. The "it" in this case is casual sex, or the college hook-up, and according to the recently released Vassar Cultural Audit, the hook-up is a point of concern for Vassar students, specifically straight female students. The audit said "Some students, especially (straight) female students, voiced concern with the ‘hook-up' culture on campus, a culture of casual commitment-free sexual encounters with acquaintances or strangers, and the lack of dating. There is recognition that there is little modeling of healthy, sustaining, intimate relationships."

Male and female students are just as responsible and willing to engage in drive-by sexual encounters. I do think, however, that straight women allow straight men to rule the straight scene. A picture is painted of men as quasi-predators who go around using female students; there is particularly the image of male upperclassmen who seek out freshman females under the received wisdom that freshman students will be easier hook-ups. And while all that may be entirely true, it takes two people to make it happen. The male is not forcing the female student to hook up with him; if he did, that would be considered sexual assault and should be dealt with in the appropriate manner. But why do some people expect more from casual hook-ups? How can one expect anything substantive when the two partners immediately engage in sex with one another? Strong relationships are not based on casual sex. Male students, though, can be selfish and assume, because of our male-to-female ratio, they can do whatever they wish. The female students nevertheless are willing to go along. The hook-up also says something else about us as college students and the sexual inequality that exists. Following hook-ups there can be feelings of embarrassment and of being used and, in some cases, sexual diseases, since a lot of hook-ups involve oral sex. It seems, from observation, that a lot of people inexplicably don't use any sort of contraception during oral sex with new partners whose sexual history they are more likely than not unaware of.

What fuels this hook-up culture? Our campus, like most campuses, is filled with alcohol and drugs—there's a straight line of causality from drinking and drug use to hooking up. But besides the drugs and alcohol, the hook-up harms men and women both. It harms both women and men both in the emotional scarring some may experience from casual sex, and the dispassionate, shallow attitude it fosters toward sex.

Vassar, for all our talk of liberation and sexual feminism, has a straight socio-sexual environment dominated, for the most part, by men, which is why straight women in the Cultural Audit was the group most alarmed about our campus's hook-up culture. How did a campus with such a rich feminist history come to let a male hierarchy dictate the dating and hooking-up scenes? And how could Vassar's female students, many of whom consider themselves to be feminists, be so willing to participate in a hook-up culture that leaves them as unhappy as the audit states? Sexual feminism and liberation is a huge part of our campus culture, yet a lot of the hook-ups that occur often involve one-sided sexual activity. In a study from the book Families As They Are, published by W.W. Norton in 2009, researchers from Stanford and Indiana University concluded that men are twice as likely to orgasm during casual hook-ups because in 80 percent of the cases the hook-up has the woman giving oral sex to the man without reciprocation. Of course, there are some women who may get pleasure from giving pleasure, but the difference between giving and receiving is too vast to ignore. And the reciprocal gap doesn't strike me as sexual feminism; it strikes me as the same male-dominated sexual paradigm that's existed for years that we all are committed, supposedly, to dismantling.

There are two plans that come to mind for attacking Vassar's sexist hook-up culture. During New Student Orientation week there should be a greater emphasis on the hook-up culture and the troubles that can arise from casual sex; there are already presentations dealing with LGBTQ issues and sexual consent, so this would make a perfect addition. Second, I think Vassar should have an internal discussion. We have to ask ourselves whether we are truly committed to sexual equality. Or is that something we only talk about in Women's Studies classes and then forget when we head off to the Town Houses or Matthew's Mug? The disparity between what we profess to believe when it comes equality and the reality of what our hook-up culture actually says about us has to be addressed, or another Cultural Audit in another year will be published with the same complaints.

—Juan Thompson '13 is Opinions Editor of The Miscellany News.