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Hookup scenarios may include feelings of pressure and performance anxiety
feelings differed during compared to after hookups: during a typical hookup, 65% of participants reported feeling good, aroused, or excited, 17% desirable or wanted, 17% nothing in particular or were focused on the hookup, 8% embarrassed or regretful, 7% nervous or scared, 6% confused, and 5% proud
after a typical hookup, 35% reported feeling regretful or disappointed, 27% good or happy, 20% satisfied, 11% confused, 9% proud, 7% excited or nervous, 5% uncomfortable, and 2% desirable or wanted
Hookups can result in guilt and negative feelings.
The percentage of women expressing guilt was more than twice that of men.
women had more thoughts of worry and vulnerability than men
Qualitative descriptions of hookups reveal relative gender differences in terms of feelings afterward, with women displaying more negative reactions than men
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surrogacy, statutory rape laws, sex education, contraception, coverture, social security, family medical leave act, maternity leave, alimony, age restrictions on marriage, state encouragement for marriage, restricted fertility, second parent adoption laws, incest taboo, anti-miscegenation laws, no-fault divorce, gay marriage, marriage rape exemption, anti-abortion laws, adoption policies/restrictions, formal procedure for obtaining a divorce, custody laws, child support legislation and regulations
Far more frequent, however, were pseudo-relationships, the mutant children of meaningless sex and loving partnerships. Two students consistently hook up with one another—and typically, only each other—for weeks, months, even years. Yet per unspoken social code, neither party is permitted emotional involvement, commitment, or vulnerability. To call them exclusive would be "clingy," or even "crazy."
The idea that sexual liberation is fundamental to female agency dominates progressive media. True feminists, I believed, not only wanted but also thrived on emotionless, non-committal sexual engagements.
Hanna Rosin epitomizes this perspective in her article for The Atlantic, "Boys on the Side":
"To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of a 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 as 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."
They wanted to be like men who had taken advantage of for years their sexual prowess and be praised for it. They wanted the same rights to not be shamed.
Kate Taylor, a New York Times reporter, makes a similar claim in the 2013 article "Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game, Too." She opens her story with the tale of a University of Pennsylvania woman who approaches non-committal sex as a "cost-benefit" analysis with "low risk and low investment cost."
True feminists, I believed, not only wanted but also thrived on emotionless, non-committal sexual engagements.
While various academic studies tout the damaging effects of hookup culture, I came across them much more infrequently. Besides, the alternative seemed to me to be abstinence—an equally unfulfilling option. I decided it was time to ditch my antiquated desire for monogamy. As Taylor's article suggested, I would "play the game, too."
When Ben fell asleep, I'd pretend to doze off as well. During the night, I'd pull the covers or brush his toes, craving an arm around my waist. I'd analyze snippets of our conversation.
Sometimes I'd leave an earring on his bedside table when I left, before he woke up. A reason to come back.
With time, inevitably, came attachment. And with attachment came shame, anxiety, and emptiness. My girlfriends and I were top students, scientists, artists, and leaders. We could advocate for anything—except for our own bodies. We won accolades from our professors, but the men we were sleeping with wouldn't even eat breakfast with us the next morning. What's worse, we really thought of
the situation in those terms: "He didn't ask to grab breakfast, so I walked home."
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."
Women in the dorm complained to the researchers about the double standard, about being called sluts, about not being treated with respect. But what emerged from four years of research was the sense that hooking up was part of a larger romantic strategy, part of what Armstrong came to think of as a "sexual career." For an upwardly mobile, ambitious young woman, hookups were a way to dip into relationships without disrupting her self-development or schoolwork. Hookups functioned as a "delay tactic," Armstrong writes, because the immediate priority, for the privileged women at least, was setting themselves up for a career. "If I want to maintain the lifestyle that I've grown up with," one woman told Armstrong, "I have to work. I just don't see myself being someone who marries young and lives off of some boy's money." Or from another woman: "I want to get secure in a city and in a job ... I'm not in any hurry at all. As long as I'm married by 30, I'm good."
The women still had to deal with the old-fashioned burden of protecting their personal reputations, but in the long view, what they really wanted to protect was their future professional reputations. "Rather than struggling to get into relationships," Armstrong reported, women "had to work to avoid them." (One woman lied to an interested guy, portraying herself as "extremely conservative" to avoid dating him.) Many did not want a relationship to steal time away from their friendships or studying.
"The ambitious women calculate that having a relationship would be like a four-credit class, and they don't always have time for it, so instead they opt for a lighter hookup," Armstrong told me.
The women described boyfriends as "too greedy" and relationships as "too involved." One woman "with no shortage of admirers" explained, "I know this sounds really pathetic and you probably think I am lying, but there are so many other things going on right now that it's really not something high up on my list ... I know that's such a lame-ass excuse, but it's true." The women wanted to study or hang out with friends or just be "100 percent selfish," as one said. "I have the rest of my life to devote to a husband or kids or my job." Some even purposely had what one might think of as fake boyfriends, whom they considered sub-marriage quality, and weren't genuinely attached to. "He fits my needs now, because I don't want to get married now," one said. "I don't want anyone else to influence what I do after I graduate."
The most revealing parts of the study emerge from the interviews with the less privileged women. They came to college mostly with boyfriends back home and the expectation of living a life similar to their parents', piloting toward an early marriage. They were still fairly conservative and found the hookup culture initially alienating ("Those rich bitches are way slutty" is how Armstrong summarizes their attitude). They felt trapped between the choice of marrying the kind of disastrous hometown guy who never gets off the couch, and will steal their credit card—or joining a sexual culture that made them uncomfortable. The ones who chose the first option were considered the dorm tragedies, women who had succumbed to some Victorian-style delusion. "She would always talk about how she couldn't wait to get married and have babies," one woman said about her working-class friend. "It was just like, Whoa. I'm 18 ... Slow down. You know? Then she just crazy dropped out of school and wouldn't contact any of us ... The way I see it is that she's from a really small town, and that's what everyone in her town does ... [they] get married and have babies."
Most of the women considered success stories by their dormmates had a revelation and revised their plan, setting themselves on what was universally considered the path to success. "Now I'm like, I don't even need to be getting married yet [or] have kids," one of the less privileged women told the researchers in her senior year. "All of [my brother's] friends, 17-to-20-year-old girls, have their ... babies, and I'm like, Oh my God ... Now I'll be able to do something else for a couple years before I settle down ... before I worry about kids." The hookup culture opened her horizons. She could study and work and date, and live on temporary intimacy. She could find her way to professional success, and then get married.