I don’t mean to make Sessions clutch her pearls again, but a jumping-off point from the “not wanting to be humiliated” factor is that many women simply don’t want all the baggage that comes with being in a relationship. We used to call that “heterosexual oppresion”.  Being in love is fun, but beating your head against the wall of male entitlement is not - even when the wall’s owner is more or less a decent fellow who is interested in women, not just pussy. Hookups mean never having to argue about him leaving his goddamn laundry on the floor.

but a jumping-off point from the “not wanting to be humiliated” factor is that many women simply don’t want all the baggage that comes with being in a relationship. ... Hookups mean never having to argue about him leaving his goddamn laundry on the floor.

(Shrugs.)  One could say the same thing about many non-sexist men, young or old.  I’m a feminist male but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I want “the baggage that comes with being in a relationship”.  And I can pick up my own damned laundry, and always have.

Personally I think that the debate isn’t advanced by assuming that all/most young men are essentially walking dicks who don’t give a damn about who they stick it into, whether you approach it from a scold’s view or a feminist’s view. That too is a rather dated stereotype of gender essentialism, pernicious, and very familiar to any horrified prude parent of centuries past who wants to establish for women a binary world of “nice boys who want to marry you” vs. “vicious rakes who won’t remember your name”. 

The fact is that the macroculture reinforces a confusing, paradoxical mix of antiquated notions, progressive notions and just plain lying and self-serving bullshit from both genders.  People starting their dating lives now have no established-accepted frames of reference, having wisely rejected many of those nonsense frames from days gone by.  They have to make their own rules, and I have a sneaking suspicion that (a) that freedom to do so and (b) fear of what they might choose if they were free is what drives a lot of the panic merchants.

Personally, I think a starting point of “look, I’m not going to put up with that nonsense” is an excellent starting point for ANYBODY going out to fuck/date/commit/other.  If you want to get laid, fine.  Be honest around it.  Don’t surround it with lies or with false expectations.  If you want to date/commit, fine; same rules.

I’m pretty old, 48, and predate the “hook up” culture. But looking at my life as a wife and mother and reflecting back on my life as an undergraduate and graduate student I think that “hooking up” would have exactly suited who I was, and what I wanted out of life—much more so than the pressure to date the “right” kind of guy for marriage did.  Because I was busy—busy with my education and with my field work and a lot of other things that were compatible with close male and female friends but not compatible with a monogamous, passionate, all about him kind of relationship. But I didn’t know you *could* have any other relationship, so I didn’t look for it.  I could have had a lot of fun if I hadn’t regarded relationships as supremely important and inherently permanent.

Relationships take a lot of work—exclusive relationships even more.  Guys complain that they have to pretend to be interested in a woman’s ideas in order to get sex with her? Puh-leese. I’m old enough to remember when you were instructed to look interested in *every boring guy* in case he turned out to be “the one.”  (Not quite, that was for hyperbolic purposes). But I certainly knew girls (and in fact Cordelia in Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-enacted this scene word for word) who studied up on how to *fake being interested in a guy* in order to attract his attention. Incredible!  People like to have other people listen to them, and talk to them, and enjoy their company! And sometimes both sexes, in pursuit of a goal other than actually enjoying the company of another person, fake their interest/hobbies/orgasms!  This is not something that only guys have ever done. Its something women were trained to do and then, mercifully, gave up having to do.

aimai

I’m skeptical of the notion that “hook-up culture” is anything new in the first place.  At least when I was in college, “hooking up” was just what previous generations would call a one-night stand.  It was not exactly a shocking new invention.

Bluenoses like Stepp are forever going to be upset that teens and twentysomethings like sex, and the media loves to report their exaggerated alarms because sex + Our Children = hot story, whether or not it has any basis in reality.  Witness the mass media frenzy over the completely fictional “rainbow parties” a few years ago.

The young women Stepp quotes in her books and articles, holding them up as models of good old-fashioned womanhood, always depress me.  They’re all of 21, 22 years old, and they’re whining that they haven’t found husbands yet.  And they’re ready to give up on men because of it!  Dating just to get to know someone and have fun is so hard!  I know guys that age can be crummy boyfriends, but the whole shopping-for-a-husband mentality is so creepy, especially in women that young.

I find discussions of “who benefits” in the hook-up culture really interesting, actually.  I remember reading an evo psych-ish book called the Moral Animal, written by a sociologist (Robert Wright, I think), which was pretty good.  It didn’t excuse natural behavior, and in fact the appendix had a small section devoted to homosexuality (which wasn’t discussed much in the book, despite a lot of it being about sexuality) which stated that whether homosexuality was natural or not was completely irrelevant to whether it was moral (which he clearly thought it was).  He was just interested in what we’re inclined to do before we ever get born, and how that shapes society.

He talked about the rise of monogamy at some length, and who benefitted.  His line of thought was that monogamy existed as a concession to lower-status men, granted by higher-status men, within a patriarchal system.  Because polygamy creates more competition between men, it results in high-status men getting “more,” with very low-status men getting “little” or “none.”  He addresses what *women* get, despite not having proportionate power, and thinks that women were better off overall under a polygamous system, all other things being equal, because they got as much attention under either, but had more room to negotiate when it wasn’t one man, one woman.  In Wright’s view, the concession leading to monogamy required a small sacrifice from high status men, a large gain for low-status men, and a large loss for all women, at least in terms of relationship choice and garnering of resources that went with entering relationships in a strongly patriarchal system.

I think it’s a pretty decent argument.  And it’s interesting seeing the simultaneous rise of neogtiating power for women in a hook-up culture and the right-wing swing against it in the form of “WHAT ABOUT THE MEN” cries.

Seeker6079:

Personally I think that the debate isn’t advanced by assuming that all/most young men are essentially walking dicks who don’t give a damn about who they stick it into, whether you approach it from a scold’s view or a feminist’s view.

I finished reading Guyland last week, and Seeker6079, you’re going off on a tangent here. Nowhere does either Amanda nor Kimmel claim that all young men are walking dicks. What Kimmel does say is that in the social culture of the young collegiate “guy”, claiming or inferring more sex than he has actually had is a mark of status. And frankly, I don’t think that’s anything new.

Kimmel is pretty clear that not all men, young or not, exist in “Guyland” - he exempts men from most racial minorities as well as full-time employed men, as well as indicating that not all young, white, collegiate men fit the culture he writes about.

IOW, if it isn’t about you, it isn’t about you.

Amanda, to my recollection, he does point out several times that young women get something out of the “hook-up” culture as well. There’s some good quotes about the points that you and mythago both commented on. I thought he struck a very good balance between making the womens’ agency clear and making it clear also that for young women whose social lives include these guys, hooking up and abstinence might be the only things on the menu.

My big frustration with the book was in wanting a more psychological approach rather than ethnographic. But eh, that’s why I studied psych and not anthropology.

Witness the mass media frenzy over the completely fictional “rainbow parties” a few years ago.

No kidding. Around that time, I also remember reading the reactions of a bunch of *shocked* people who could not believe that many young people considered oral sex a precursor to intercourse and were more casual about it. ‘Cause I’m almost 40 and that’s how it was when I was in high school, and I’m pretty sure the people up in arms were about my age.

“Hook-up culture” isn’t new; it’s just not covered up anymore. (And some brainwave gave it a new name.) Really, didn’t any of these people watch movies in the ‘80s?

Ferox:  One of the most useful distractions about the “what about the men?” nonsense is that it serves many purposes.  The most oily and deceitful is that it distracts men from two basic realities.  First, that there’s more for you as a human being in an egalitarian culture.  Second, lifting the bullshit expectations and burdens off women is not only moral but self-interested: it frees you from your own set of crushing patriarchal bullshit expectations and traditions.  The second, admittedly more upsetting use, is a debate stopper for many people.  If you seek to create a saner, kinder, more human means of women and men interacting and try to approach it from both sides of the gender bridge then you can pretty much guarantee that some impatient person will accuse you of pulling out an MRA “oh noez what about the menz!” argument.  (Shrugs.)  You want a better world you gotta put up with shit from your friends as well as your enemies.

JoAnne, I completely agree with your comment on status, exactly as written.  Clarification sought: are you taking the position that “lower status person” is synonymous with “female”, and if so does that macro statement extend down to the micro of interpersonal relationships?

Good post, Amanda.  I think this is an issue that needs to be brought into the open more in the culture in general, because the whole situation—men wanting sex and little else from women—is so fundamentally fucked up.

  I would disagree with you, though, that abstinence is necessarily a bad option.  I know that for me, the thought of sharing something as intimate and personal as sex with someone who doesn’t give a damn about me as a person is repulsive and would completely negate any possible pleasure associated with the experience.  I would find it degrading and humiliating.  This is just one of my many reasons for celibacy, some of which may not be entirely rational.  Although it’s a decision I’ve struggled with, it hasn’t driven me mad.  Not yet anyway.

  I think choosing to opt out of the whole screwed up thing—if you’re like me and have a lot of strings attached to what you can and can’t enjoy sexually—can be a valid choice, because it’s something I just don’t want under these circumstances.  It wouldn’t do anything for me, and I’d feel taken advantage of and hurt.

I fully realize that it’s very different for many, if not most, young women.  But choosing not to have sex without intimacy isn’t necessarily a punishment or a waste of time. 

I agree with you on your last point—the mommy role is not our problem.  Men need to grow the fuck up and stop being selfish assholes, and it’s not our responsibility to look after that.  But women also have the right to insist on partners that treat them like full human beings, not a walking set of genitals.

Every time this comes up I feel like having to point out that Fastimes at Ridgemont High came out in 1982.  Yes AIDS did change things from the 1970s and early 1980s for a few years in the late 80s, early 90s.  But life doesn’t suddenly change that much.  The difference is the past before 1960 was a sort of russian roulette where the lack of birth control (or more properly knowledge) meant one accident and marriage was going to occur.

I’m pretty old, 48, and predate the “hook up” culture.

It was flourishing at least as far back as the early 70s. A fellow student complained that every time he went to a bar, some woman wanted to go to bed with him. College women spending a couple of days in the big city were very open to one night stands, not least because they were unlikely to see the guy again.

your options are limited to abstinence until that possible far-off day when you meet someone nice, hooking up, or forcing guys to pretend that they’re interested in you for a few dates before having sex with them.

That’s a rather depressing thought, since I tend to choose the first option.

I agree with One Canadian Girl. If you’re into casual sex, there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you protect yourself and don’t lead anyone on, but I myself just would not enjoy it. I wouldn’t want someone to see me as nothing more than a sexual object, and I myself would have trouble seeing a guy as just a sexual object. It’s just a way of thinking that I can’t force myself into.

I agree with Erin and One Canadian Girl.

Amanda, I like that “effortless perfection” is mentioned in this book; it’s something that you’ve mentioned before and it got me thinking then, particularly in regard to how women are expected to have perfect skin, but a woman who actually reveals that she spends time and money on skincare (and god forbid, that unnatural, terrible MAKEUP!) is shallow and obsessed with her appearance. Etc., etc.

guyland always looked like a crappy place to live.

And I can pick up my own damned laundry, and always have.

Thank you for stepping up with a fine example of the kind of male privilege I was talking about.

Okay.  I do my own laundry and that makes me privileged?  You’ve lost me.

Don’t bother to respond.  I have no desire to have my laundry engage in a dirty threadjack.

The worst thing about the hook-up culture is the apparent prevalence of getting shitfaced drunk (both sides) so as to pretend to abdicate responsibility for making choices.

I think this is right on, and at 40+ I’m well past the current culture for kids in college.  But let me tell ya, at this point I’m so sick to death of needy or emotionally abusive men that hookups are exactly perfect.  Although I prefer arrangements more like friends with benefits (stranger sex just doesn’t appeal), it’s still perfect—the care and feeding of boyfriends OR husbands is just one thing I can fucking do without right now.  But that doesn’t mean I should have to give up sex and I don’t.  Interestingly, friends with benefits come by much more easily now than they did when I was younger…don’t know what to attribute that to.  But yeah—I don’t have to clean up after them, cook for them, put up with their shit, and it’s wonderful.

As someone with an extremely low sex drive, I have to wonder how many of these people unsatisfied with hook-up culture are closet/un-self-identified asexuals.  It’s hardly discussed with people that it’s okay not only to have a homosexual or heterosexual sex drive, but no sex drive at all.  Always thinking there’s something wrong with you because you don’t get satisfaction from sexual relationships can potentially build some profound angst, perhaps leading to delusional pearl clutching.

On the asexual point, it’s very difficult to say.  The abstinence model is so widely promulgated, I should think it would be very easy to use that.

In my experience, which is fully anecdotal or course, the people I’ve known that wondered if they were asexual, low sex drive, what have you, all eventually dropped that self designation.  Most of them were just what I’d consider late bloomers—heck I was one myself, not being sexually active until I was 19 or so, when the average age back then seemed to be around 14 or 15. 

While there are asexual/low sex drive people without a doubt, I think the majority of people who have “issues” (I hate to describe it as thus, but am using the more widely recognized cultural referents) are people who would have perfectly normal sex drives (again with the cultural referents) but who have been in various ways traumatized by how this culture handles sex and sexuality (which is basically completely screwed up).  I mean that whole cultural assumption that women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex is a fucking mile high and wide still and undoubtely grinds many women down before the starting gate even opens.

So anyway.  I think there’s a lot of reasons people have discomfort with sex.  There’s a hell of a lot of negative, contradictory, messed up messages out there.

seeker- You’re privileged because YOU can volunteer to pick up your own laundry, whereas women are forced to or they receive a jolt from the chip implanted in their brains at birth by the patriarchy.

I have to wonder how many of these people unsatisfied with hook-up culture are closet/un-self-identified asexuals.

Maybe some.  Not me.

While there are asexual/low sex drive people without a doubt, I think the majority of people who have “issues” (I hate to describe it as thus, but am using the more widely recognized cultural referents) are people who would have perfectly normal sex drives (again with the cultural referents) but who have been in various ways traumatized by how this culture handles sex and sexuality (which is basically completely screwed up).  I mean that whole cultural assumption that women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex is a fucking mile high and wide still and undoubtely grinds many women down before the starting gate even opens.

Whoa.  How did we make the leap from “doesn’t like casual hookups” to “asexual” to “sexually traumatized”?

The racing metaphor is telling.  I don’t want to sleep with men I don’t really like; if that means I end up sleeping with fewer men, so what?  It’s not a competition.

Amanda,

But certainly there’s 100%, absolutely nothing wrong with women who won’t abstain because they like sex too much and don’t have your negative feelings about casual sex, right?

  Of course.  I believe there’s nothing wrong with doing whatever is best for you, provided you don’t hurt anyone.  I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear earlier.  It’s not fair that women should have to carry all this cultural baggage, and I’m sick of the double standard.  If one wants to abstain, it should be because of one’s own standards, not some externally imposed crap about what all women are supposed to want.

  Casual sex is not something I could ever choose for myself, but I certainly don’t think other women who make that choice are wrong.  I would just like to see it become more of a free choice, as you describe: an option for sex but not the only one available, not something that one has to accept because it’s that or abstinence. 

  I want us all to be free to be ourselves, and I think the hook-up culture is not conducive to that.

Saying someone is a late bloomer, you might as well tell a gay guy he just hasn’t found the right woman.  Ridiculous!

Eric, WTF? Some people aren’t interested in sex as early on as others. Get over it.

me, I think Eric’s point is that it is insulting to asexual people to tell them that they are supposed to be sexual and that they’ll become so when they’ve just matured enough, or whatever.

I find that most guys have such a screwed up notion of what a relationship entails, that they scare themselves out of one before it even starts, and then the next thing I know they’ve found a girl that embodies all of the fears and demons that they were projecting onto me or my friends.  Guys don’t like it if you’re clingy, but they like it even less if you’re independent.  They don’t like it if you’re stupid and boring, but like it even less if you’re smart and dynamic.  And the list goes on. 

So I tried just hooking up.  I’ve tried the fuckbuddies, I’ve tried the one-night stands.  I’ve had to kick more guys out for unsatisfactory performance than I care to remember.  Once it turns into a hook-up, any notion of mutual pleasure goes out the window.  It turns into all about his penis and his orgasm and you are (literally) fucked.

I find abstinence to be a viable option.  It’s much easier than getting a guy to believe that you actually mean it when, in the middle of things, you are telling him to get his stuff and get out because his performance leaves much to be desired.  What, I’m supposed to put up with horrible sex?  Pfft.

I think if girls were taught to cherish and embrace their sexuality first instead of trying to please men or find the ‘one’, then girls would have more control or an equal share in the type of sexual interaction they wanted. Though my personal opinion is that sex is best in a relationship (because he might care about giving you want you want sexually) there have been plenty of times i wasn’t in a relationship and wanted to have sex - thus the hook up. Empowering women might mean we are more demanding about how our   partners are and it might mean demanding that pretty boy STFU because we want have sex, not blather on about some crap. Stick in it and then get out. Does it demean women or culture as a whole? Not if women are in charge of themselves. As a person with a high sex drive, I am all for women fucking however and whoever they want.

It may well be insulting to asexual people to say they are just late bloomers. However it is also not helpful to the late bloomers such as myself to be told that we’re just asexual. I went through a late puberty and it took me a very long time to ‘catch up’ in terms of both physical and mental sexual development. I’m still getting there. Add in a rather reserved and definitely not touchy-feely personality, and well…Trying to persuade myself that I was OK never having had a boyfriend because obviously I was asexual actually forced me into a rigid mould that that held back even further a perfectly normal sexual development that was simply happening at 24 rather than 14. It is great that people who are asexual can feel confident in that identity, and of course people shouldn’t be going around saying “You just haven’t met the right man yet” and assuming it cannot be a valid identiry. But some of us _haven’t_ met the right man yet, and for us the assumption that, “Hey, Anon’s just not interested in sex” is also limiting and hurtful. I am not a sworn vigin, and I _am_ interested in sex – just on the terms of a shy 16 year old.

I hear you, Anon!.

Kind of off-topic, but: I’m 29, but the sex education I got as a kid and teenager was far different from what kids are apparently getting now, in that it was assumed as a given in all the material that you would be pressured to have sex as a teenager, and you’d then have to know about and use condoms*. It’s probably warped in some way by my bias, but I remember very little about abstinence by choice or otherwise being mentioned in any context, and I was certainly left with the impression that everyone else was being pressured for sex as a teenager (pretty prevalent storyline in TV shows, of course) and the fact that I was not even close meant I was a freak, because otherwise it would have been mentioned. I didn’t exactly have involvement in the “hookup culture” as a college student, either, but I wasn’t asexual. And I have no interest in it now, for the reasons mentioned above.

*Of course, that’s still better than the “Girls, have sex and you’re a lollipop everyone’s licked and no one wants anymore, and also, condoms don’t work so don’t use them” thing kids get now….

that you would be pressured to have sex as a teenager, and you’d then have to know about and use condoms

Doh. I’m sorry, I should have included the option of saying no, which was in fact mention. My point was that the assumption was that this situation would be happening for everyone, or so it seemed at the time.

pablo, I don’t “volunteer” to do it.  It’s my responsibility, and I do it.  If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done, whether in or out of a relationship.  That’s rejection of received privilege, not indulgence of it.

These posts always make me feel a little better about how much I did not get laid in college - which was a whole lot of not getting laid, especially since I have a twice-a-day and three-times-on-Sunday type sex drive. I am fairly introverted and quail at the idea of sharing a meal or a quiet game of Scrabble with someone who I do not already know and whose company I don’t particularly enjoy - this, I think, is what made my few attempts to share sweatier and more personal activities with relative strangers such complete failures. (Also, is anything more infuriating than having to play the post-hookup Girl Game where you have to be simultaneously reassuringly and undemandingly cool and distant while being encouragingly available on the chance of a convenient repeat performance? God, I hope to never have to do that again.)

These threads also always make me feel a little doomed, because while my current relationship has its flaws, apparently it’s a huge stroke of luck that my young man is okay with feelings and doesn’t expect me to do his laundry.

Oh thank god, agreement. Because I did that exactly once, and went “this is really unrewarding.” and then jumped right to the predictable teenage-girl-in-patriarchy-response “there must be something wrong with my reaction!” Meanwhile, I have friends who, bless their hearts, have been doing the Cool Available Girl Game with the same guy for literally years. YEARS. Years of “I mean, I could hang out, I was about to go do something really cool but I guess I could reschedule it,” and never being the first to text message.

That would kill me in my soul.

Amanda, you summed it up in the last paragraph of the article. I, however, am in my early twenties, and still stuck in the highschoolish dilemma of being stuck quite literally between a rock and a hard place. The crazy batshit fundies are sounding more appealing with the abstinence hooplah, only I never plan on getting married EVER.
Here’s why:
I am loath to risk my health over an STD or potential pregnancy over hooking up, and I am also loath to lose the shredding remnants of my sanity over these idiot boychildren who demand that I play the role of LOVER and MOTHER simultaneously, and be unattached of my needs, yet perfectly devoted to his… in a non-ultimatum sort of way.
And while I do indulge in the occasional bisexual fantasy, having a relationship with a woman is far different. I wish there was another option.
Maybe I should be a MAVERICK like Palin and become an honorary man (with the fundy baby machine attached to my parts).

I find discussions of “who benefits” in the hook-up culture really interesting, actually.

In my own personal “hook-up culture,” both parties benefit!

Really, I suspect most of the boys living in Guyland aren’t having sex that’s as satisfying as it could be if they moved on up to Adultville. The reason they’re scared to make the leap is that they assume Adultville is by definition all about sex as a quid pro quo transaction and serious relationships and reproduction, all ending in a soul-destroying life in the ‘burbs. But with a different attitude toward women and sex and life in general it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

Gracchus,

Really, I suspect most of the boys living in Guyland aren’t having sex that’s as satisfying as it could be if they moved on up to Adultville.

We were having a conversation about this recently - one of the conversees was a young man who is not by any means a Dudely Jackass but rather likes promiscuity, and he was arguing that you have better sex if you’re hooking up regularly because you’re practicing with more people. The counterargument that was made was that not only are you probably having less sex if you depend on random hookups than if you have a regular partner (or partners, if that floats your boat) who you like, the low level of trust present in a hookup, along with the greater concerns about safety, mean that you’re probably going to end up doing the same two or three things over and over, kind of formulaicly, and possibly only when you’re drunk. Meanwhile, people who are having regular sex with people they trust and like have more opportunities to broaden their horizons and communicate with their partner about what exactly they prefer. And therefore, do freaky shit. And/or cuddle.

Here’s two cents from an unattached young woman who has been both miserable and happy/calm after ‘hookups’.

There are lots of kinds of men out there. When I’ve attempted to ‘use’ men who were trapped in the “therefore women, with their own desires and demands, are considered obstacles between guys and the pussy” mindset, I have been miserable afterwards. NOT because I wanted a relationship I didn’t get, NOT because I was tricked into sex, NOT because all the oxycontin in my body is giving me baby faver, but because I just spent a bunch of time with a guy who hates women. Even if I just go grocery shopping with a misogynist I feel like shit afterwards.

When I’ve had romantic-expectation-free sex with men who don’t hate women, it’s been lovely. Even though you’re not their girlfriend, they’ll still eat breakfast with you the next day, and ask about your life, and are happy to run into you at a party. It’s not about romance, it’s about friendly civility.

So my strategy has become, no matter how horny I am, a man has to first affirmatively establish that he’s a pro-woman guy. Then all sorts of nasty can ensue.

As one of my Aunts told me: there is no such thing as casual sex.

If you’re a decent person with another decent person, enjoying yourselves, things will be fine, and who knows, could lead to more later.

I like promiscuity, but i’m not very good at it.

hmm, what if you live in a house where if the male doesn’t pick up the laundry and do the housework, no does it? I guess that would be an outlier.

Oh yeah, he also works 60 hours/wk and she works 10. At least she takes the responsibility of the checkbook.

Don’t bother to respond.

More hallmarks of privilege: denial that you could possibly have it, insistence that even if you do you voluntarily give it up so you’re a Good Guy, and angry attempts to shut down discussion of privilege when you don’t like the way it’s going.

Even the best-intentioned of us don’t always understand when we’re privileged and don’t like being told we have it. (I believe Amanda has written more extensively and coherently about this subject, oh, I dunno, a bazillion times before.) You have to manage male privilege issues a lot more in an ongoing relationship than in a hook-up. In the old days, a lot of women became ‘political lesbians’ on the theory that not beating one’s head against that particular wall meant giving up men sexually and romantically. I’m glad to see that younger women are realizing they can still have male friends and male sexual partners without having to sink unnecessary energy into dealing with these issues if they don’t want to.

Amanda - interesting hearing you talk about the guys who have to convince themselves they’re running from you because the junior high “she likes me more than I like her” game is somehow masculinity-affirming to them.

Well, I’m pretty old (70, conservatively speaking), and I remember that the one-night stand was popular when I was in college, and also when I was out of college, but still relatively young.  The problem I had with this strategy was that a lot of guys wanted to keep coming back, and a lot of guys were not, shall we say, “keepers.”

I love these threads…but they always come up in the middle of my workday, and there’s so much I want to say that I’d get fired if I indulged the urge to discuss my attitudes and my own sex life (the one I only recently rediscovered, after a dry spell just short of what felt like infinity) for the next three hours.

Whatever. Good post, Amanda, and good discussion, folks!

Meanwhile, people who are having regular sex with people they trust and like have more opportunities to broaden their horizons and communicate with their partner about what exactly they prefer. And therefore, do freaky shit. And/or cuddle.

Promiscuity in order to gain experience has its place, and the name of that place is “college.” The goal, though, is to learn that women aren’t aliens or living sex dolls, but (surprise!) people.

The result (and this applies to both parties) is what Carrie describes:

When I’ve had romantic-expectation-free sex with men who don’t hate women, it’s been lovely. Even though you’re not their girlfriend, they’ll still eat breakfast with you the next day, and ask about your life, and are happy to run into you at a party. It’s not about romance, it’s about friendly civility.

Which might be the end of the story, except for narrow societal expectations and the wave of supportive memes that pummel us day-in and day-out, and the fact that most people give into them. It’s what used to cause my sex-positive feminism and friendly civility to be misinterpreted as romantic intent, until I learned that part of the process of getting to know a potential Gracchus-appropriate sex partner was making sure she wasn’t locked into that mindset and understood the ground rules. A little more effort, but worth it.

Promiscuity in order to gain experience has its place, and the name of that place is “college.”

Now there’s a narrow societal expectation for you.

Now there’s a narrow societal expectation for you.

Let me guess: you need a smiley to know when someone’s kidding.

I learned a lot, and one thing I’ve learned is that a guy gets about 36 hours after a date or a hook-up where you are cool but available.  If an enthusiastic follow-up phone call or email isn’t produced, I write him off 100%, every time.  He’s either not into me or his allegiance to toxic masculinity overrides his self interest.  Either way, bad news and I want no part of him.  It’s worked out well for me.

I always thought calling the next day was basic courtesy, failing to to so rather rude.  But on this board I have to ask—is it the role of the man to call/text/email first in that 36 hours?

Reminds me of the old joke:  Q.  Why did Catherine the Great have her lovers killed the morning after bedding them?  A.  Because she hated them not calling the next day.

I find that most guys have such a screwed up notion of what a relationship entails, that they scare themselves out of one before it even starts, and then the next thing I know they’ve found a girl that embodies all of the fears and demons that they were projecting onto me or my friends.  Guys don’t like it if you’re clingy, but they like it even less if you’re independent.  They don’t like it if you’re stupid and boring, but like it even less if you’re smart and dynamic.  And the list goes on.

Can I just say amen?  I completely agree with you on this.  I’m very tired of the projection/avoidance/defensive posturing I seem to meet a lot of these days.  The guy I thought was working out just pulled the emotional ripcord a few weeks ago.  It was great being told to “just deal”.

As for fuckbuddies/one-night stands, etc., I can’t do it.  Now that’s not to say I don’t mind the casual relationship along with the casual sex, but I’m not into bringing strange men to my house or going over to his, sight unseen.  For me it’s much more of a security/safety issue than anything else.  Of course just because I go out on a few dates with the guy before flinging him in my bed doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be free and clear, but I will have a much better idea.  Hopefully red flags will have been raised at some point during the courting process to determine whether or not I’ll end up dead, lying in a ditch somewhere.

And there’s the whole sexual object vs. sexual subject of course which comes second to my safety.

I have to wonder how many of these people unsatisfied with hook-up culture are closet/un-self-identified asexuals.

Screw you, seriously.  A huge part of what makes sex satisfying for me is intimacy.  In my experience, men never offer up any intimacy until well into a relationship, and frequently not even then.  Add into the fact that I simply don’t find most men attractive.

I had roommates in college who would pretty much sleep with anyone, with men who treated them like shit, with men who were sleazy and grossly unattractive.  If my roommates were satisfied with that, then more power to them, but I’m not and I’m neither asexual nor wracked with sexual insecurities or trauma.

And I think the hook-up scene is yet another example of two steps forward, one step back.  It can be a great thing for many women, but for many men it also feeds their expectation that they should be able to have sex with any woman they want, and to hell with what her desires actually are.  For example, those guys might accuse a woman who turns them down of being asexual or a sexually traumatized prude.

I would just like to see it become more of a free choice, as you describe: an option for sex but not the only one available, not something that one has to accept because it’s that or abstinence.

Amen. 

The toxic masculinity shit makes it harder for women like me.  I’m not saying that absent toxic masculinity, people wouldn’t be into one-night stands, but I do believe more men would be into having real relationships with women if not for the social pressure from other men.

And I think the hook-up scene is yet another example of two steps forward, one step back.  It can be a great thing for many women, but for many men it also feeds their expectation that they should be able to have sex with any woman they want, and to hell with what her desires actually are.  For example, those guys might accuse a woman who turns them down of being asexual or a sexually traumatized prude.

I agree!

I highly recommend the mid-coitus kickout in order to get over any fears a woman might have about being “manless.”  Believe me, it is such a rush.  I mean, you’re laying there, some dude is doing…something, and you’re so conditioned to just take it, to just put up with it, to not hurt his feelings, and then you start wondering, what about my feelings?  What about my needs?  What about the fact that this dude is just flat-out horrible in bed and we’re supposed to be just having sex, and if it’s not good, what am I doing?  Seriously, the first time I kicked a guy out (my fuckbuddy, actually, so I knew him, we were friendly) it got me over any need I might have had to keep a guy around and try to play the morning after cool game.

You know what?  You need to get your shit and get out.  This is no fun for me, you’re dialing it in, and you’re expecting me to just take it?  Get your shit and get out.

And that goes, too, for the assholes that try to play that “I’m not going to call for 36 hours” or whatever magic made up cutoff they come out with.  I say the same thing to them.  Take your crap, and get out.  I don’t have time for this shit.  I don’t have time to be treated like some doll who’s just supposed to take it from you just because you’re some guy.  I’m single and I love every second of it because I don’t have to worry about some guy’s hurt feelings and sense of entitlement and when is he going to call and why didn’t he invite me.

I have to wonder why more guys don’t want a companion.  That’s really what I’m looking for, is a companion.  A buddy.  A partner.  Someone who is on my side as much as I’m on his.  Which freaks them right the hell out.  They cannot compute.  And I’m not the only one.  All my girlfriends have the same history.  My brother told me I was giving guys too long a leash.  I’m like, what leash?  I’m not his mom.  What is wrong with guys today?  Where are all the pro-woman men?  That’s really what I need, a pro-woman guy.

I’m sorry this is long, I’m just so frustrated by the state of “dating” today that I could punch somebody right in the tooth.

Like someone else above, these always hit in the middle of the work day, which frustrates me.

Amanda, I think you do have something there with the advantages of hook-up culture. I am personally all for people having options that work for them, and I can see that working for some people. I’m like some others here in that hook-up never really worked for me. I’ve often drawn a line between “casual sex” and “disposable sex”.  Hook-up culture tends to bring the latter, which I find boring. I define “casual” as more what Carrie brought up as “romantic-expectation-free-sex”, that’s often been lovely.

The 36-hour thing bugs me, personally, because I have heard more than one woman opine how anyone contacting them that quickly is obviously too needy and should be ignored. (It’s happened to me. Maybe I was too needy, or not very good, who knows?) It is one of those arbitrary lines that people seem to draw in different ways and it sucks when the way you draw it and the way someone else draws it results in a missed connection. (Most people have these lines drawn up over time out of experience, though, so the occasional mismatch is probably worth it for the amount of good screening it provides.)

I’m not going to dispute that there are asexual people out there, but I think it is a mistake to assume that those who dislike the hookup culture fall into that category. I wondered about that very thing when I was younger, because I was so repelled by the attitudes of so many of the guys I met in college and later. All they seemed to care about was looks and getting laid, and I hated being a convenient hole and nothing else. Their one-dimensionality and blatant misogyny were huge turnoffs, no matter how attractive their faces and bodies.
So, I figured I’d rather have no sex than bad sex, and obviously that made me a non-sexual person. But then, I was fortunate enough to have a few partners who liked talking to me and spending time with me AS WELL as having sex with me. And it was like discovering a side I never thought existed; I wanted to screw their brains out, and try everything, legal or illegal. So the harmful thing here, as I see it, is assuming everyone’s sexuality is the same; that unless you want to do anyone, you’re a prude or messed up. And that is what the hookup culture does; it makes everyone conform to one kind of sexuality.

It hasn’t failed me yet.  It’s pretty much an acid test.  Non-assholes who are genuinely interested don’t need 36 hours to get back, not once in my experience.  Not even 24 hours.  It’s always been by dinnertime the next day.  They realize that they’re playing ball in a sexual market where other guys try to push their male privilege, and to signal interest, they reject that privilege and refuse to play games.

I imagine any man who spends a couple of hours with you realizes pushing male privilege would not go over well with you.  Your test isn’t a bad one and fine if it serves you well.  I’m not whining about the burden; it’s pretty trivial.  Being the first to call for a date (or whatever) is a pretty trivial burden also, and I never much complained about it. 

I’ve personally been out of the dating/relationship market for awhile, but having a son and a daughter in it I’ve tried to observe and (rarely) advise.  Fortunately I have seen little evidence of my son exhibiting fratboy tendencies, but unfortunately he does have a stereotypical college male tendency not to communicate much with his parents. (His mother claims her cross examination skills as a lawyer obtains more information than my open ended queries, but the methods retrieve different kinds of information.) 

I do find it interesting that even among the reasonably liberated the role of initiator in hetero relationships is still assigned to men.

“When I’ve had romantic-expectation-free sex with men who don’t hate women, it’s been lovely. Even though you’re not their girlfriend, they’ll still eat breakfast with you the next day, and ask about your life, and are happy to run into you at a party. It’s not about romance, it’s about friendly civility.”

I never had much casual sex, though I have a healthy sex drive.  Part of my issue is I never knew that it was possible to be a genuine, decent man and want casual sex with a friend or acquaintance.  Part was also self-fulling prophecies of being undesirable.  Like other, sex with a random person rarely really felt that great to me.  It took a long time to gain the social confidence to communicate my emotional and sexual wants as well as to not make assumptions about another person’s.

Speedbudget - I wanted a companion, but I had some effed up notions that to be in a relationship I should be so in love that I would have no desire for another person at all.  Since I might simply like a person and enjoy hanging out with them meant they were just friends.

Perhaps it’s partly because I was raised catholic and so never had sex education in any meaningful way.  Also I know for sure my dad was a virgin when he married.  Probably mom too, though she never volunteer that information.  They didn’t have any guidance for me in this regard.  Anyway, the older I get the less I blame my own social incompetence and the more I wish I was better taught by my parents and teachers how to evaluate and communicate my emotional and sexual experiences so i could be both a decent person and a sexual one.

keshmeshi said:

Screw you, seriously.

Give me a break.  I was talking, pretty explicitly, about the people who feel it’s immoral—And I’ll restate that lots of angst can accumulate if you’re someone that society doesn’t even acknowledge, and that angst can manifest itself in a myriad of ways.  Your reaction seems, uh… incommensurate with my actual statement.  Note the “how many"s and the “perhaps"s, and the rhetorical questioning style, in service to advocating for a group of people who are not only underrepresented in the left, but pretty much told they don’t really exist.  -_-;

anon! said,

However it is also not helpful to the late bloomers such as myself to be told that we’re just asexual.

The idea with any sexual identity is that you self-identify.  If you feel society is pressuring you into a certain role, well, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.  I’m not saying there’s no such thing as late bloomers, but there are also “non-bloomers”, self-identified as such..

It’s wrong to make women feel like they’re not allowed to enjoy sex for sex’s sake, but society is also pressuring some people (I’ve only met MEN who cop to this) into faking enjoying sexual relationships when they don’t.  I’m just pointing out that it’s not as simple as “everyone wants to fuck so people who don’t are just conservative douchebags/late bloomers/not doing it right/have not found the right person or gender/molestation victims/oppressed sexually”, or some other unfounded assumption.

With all the talk about who likes what kind of sex and how much, it seems to get lost in the debate that there are people who genuinely have a behavioral repertoire that neither requires nor craves sex—and obviously from the posts here it seems that lots of people still consider it an abnormality, in a vein analogous to how many Americans view a certain other contemporary civil rights issue.  Childhood sexual abuse or trauma, lifestyle choice, late-blooming, not finding the right other person, group pressure.. These are all the same old canards thrown out about both types of people.

My brother told me I was giving guys too long a leash.  I’m like, what leash?  I’m not his mom.

Exactly.  I really don’t understand this mentality either.  I am the same way: he has his life, I have mine and occasionally they meet at the same place.  I don’t need to be up some guys ass nor do I expect him to be up mine.  So leash?  I have an actual kid already, I do not need a grown up version by any means.

The last guy I dated wanted me to be “proud” of him because he announced to his friends and all those around that he was not going to an after-party and instead home with me because we had stuff to do the next day.  I was like, You don’t get a gold star because that is what you are supposed to do!

Either way, he freaked out and pulled his ripcord later that night so no worries anymore, lol.

I have the same point to make as BEE, although I can’t tell whether s/he was being snarky.

I do the laundry and the dishes because I like the puttery, low-energy jobs—but the grass could grow to the moon and the bathroom could develop intelligent life and I still wouldn’t feel obliged to deal with them, or even feel particularly offended by their state. Maybe my socialization wasn’t sufficiently feminine (i.e. I wasn’t raised right)?

And my husband will crack and do the dishes after about a week of me being too busy with my job to deal with my own chores—but he was raised by southern belles, so there ya go.

Point being, I really don’t think that the arguments I see on these threads re male privilege and female socialization to domestic labor take into account the diversity of people’s preferences and influences.

You have nailed it with the idea of toxic masculinity. I had very little sex in my twenties, because I wouldn´t sleep with a man who wasn´t at least friendly and relaxed about it. I couldn´t stand the assumption that came with sex, that I now had to want a serious commitment (Actually I´ve seen girls going through the motions of wanting the relationship, simply not to seem too slutty.)

Thankfully men mature, and the dating pool clears (Through a lot of men getting “pressured” and “trapped” into marrying, and most loving every minute of it), and now there´s casual friendly sex to be had. Sometimes it grows into a romantic relationship, and sometimes it doesn´t, but it makes me happy in a way lowering my standards never did. I guess it gets better with age.

I am impressed and intrigued with his theory that sex differentiation is maximized for a lot of people in this 16-26 age range—-which means that guys are pressured to be promiscuous and girls are pressured to want to settle down.  And those pressure fade over time, and people feel more free to be themselves.  That’s certainly been my experience.

It’s my experience, too.  I think you and Kimmel are on to something here.  It makes perfect sense because your late teens and early twenties are the period when sex, in one form or another, becomes a regular part of your life, and that can be scary.  Rather than honestly working out a sexual identity for yourself, it can be comforting to retreat into rigid gender roles and a kindergarten us-versus-them mentality about the opposite sex.

That guy saying he prefers porn to real relationships because you don’t have to talk to a woman on a TV screen is scared: scared of talking to women, scared of rejection, scared of maneuvering in an adult world he doesn’t yet understand.  And so are the women Laura Sessions Stepp writes about, feeling angry and betrayed because the none of the guys in their college sophomore class have ponied up a Disney Princess Dream Wedding for them.  Actually getting to know guys as people is scary; it’s much easier to retreat into fantasies about being rescued from reality by a handsome prince (and to imagine that if you can wheedle a reluctant chivalrous gesture out of a guy by withholding sex, he’ll magically turn into that prince).

The good news is that the vast majority of people get over this crap by 30, and the ones who don’t can be avoided with minimal effort.

Let me guess: you need a smiley to know when someone’s kidding.

Oh, shoot, if we’re going to play the “I’m retroactively inserting a smiley so I can call you a clueless asshole with no sense of humor” game, you can put a retroactive smiley in my comment, too.

arielibra, I’m glad it works for you and your husband, but that doesn’t really negate the fact that in the US, there is an expectation that housekeeping chores (particularly tedious ones related to cleaning are seen as women’s responsibility, with men expected to handle only chores that are occasional, out-of-doors or repair work (cf: every thread in Pandagon where some Nice Guy (tm) replies to discussions about housework by saying that HE mows the goddamn LAWN, poor fellow). Good Housekeeping is not marketed to men. Floor cleaner is not marketed to men. That’s not because the marketers have failed to note the tide of social change represented by your household.

now now, mythago, we both know working-class people with no college fund don’t get four free years of sexual experimentation. That’s for their betters!

Amanda- I was only having a little fun because Seeker casually mentioned that he is capable of doing his own laundry and was immediately accused of asserting his male privilege.  No where did i see him asking for a medal for taking care of his own shit.  I could’ve sympathized with this argument in 1975, but c’mon! Most of us don’t go directly from mom to a wife anymore. Most of us live alone for an extensive period of time and we learn to take care of ourselves pretty well.

I’m an old married guy at this point, so maybe my perspective is warped, but I would never even consider hooking up just to have some sex, with both people just going their separate ways afterwards, hopefully amicably, perhaps callously.  Isn’t that what masturbation is for?  I must have some combination of a lack of imagination and too-high expectations.

The amount of housework a guy does is inversely proportional to the number of obstacles a woman has to overcome to leave.

Wow.  That really does say a lot, doesn’t it?  Talk about privilege…

The idea of hooking up scares me. Let some random guy into my house, and my bedroom, and my pants? Not happening.
I’ve been lucky enough to meet a man who is not only nice, but grown-up. I am his maturation project in some ways. I got to discover what I like and want with no expectations, no requirements, and no hurry. I think I prefer growing into my sexuality with time and emotional support. I also have trust issues and if it took me six weeks to forget to be afraid he would hurt me, hook-ups are probably not for me.

Hmph.  I completely missed the fact that pablo was simply teasing me.

I blame the effect of Tide on my brain.

Amanda-Well, most of my experience is with gay men and we do tend to live up to the stereotype of being fastidious.

Seeker casually mentioned that he is capable of doing his own laundry and was immediately accused of asserting his male privilege

Oh, bullshit, Pablo. There was no reason whatsoever for seeker to brag about - oh, sorry, “causally mention” as an irrelevant aside - what an enlightened, laundry-doing fellow he was, since I wasn’t talking about him in my original post. But it is pretty funny to see you rush to a bro’s side to defend him against charges that, because we live in a patriarchal culture, as a man he might actually have some male privilege.

Amanda, it’s also that people are comfortable in gender roles because that’s what they learn - so contrary to Pablo’s assertion that all that women’s work nonsense went away thirty years ago, people tend to slip into these things even with the best of intentions. That’s when you hear bizarroworld comments like “well, I’m better at doing dishes than he is.”

He talked about the rise of monogamy at some length, and who benefitted.  His line of thought was that monogamy existed as a concession to lower-status men, granted by higher-status men, within a patriarchal system.  Because polygamy creates more competition between men, it results in high-status men getting “more,” with very low-status men getting “little” or “none.” He addresses what *women* get, despite not having proportionate power, and thinks that women were better off overall under a polygamous system, all other things being equal, because they got as much attention under either, but had more room to negotiate when it wasn’t one man, one woman.

Are women in modern polygamous societies doing especially well?

And there are problems with Wright’s assertion that polygamy is the original state of humans, although it has recently been confirmed through genetics that humans have had a “effectively polygynous” mating system. But it would be a mistake to interpret this as social polygamy (multiple “wives”) having been necessarily the most common system. It means that men have more variance in reproductive success than women. There has probably always been some social polygyny, but serial monogamy and “cheating” can contribute as well, if some men are more successful at these.

Amanda:  *nod* I think we’re talking a bit at cross-purposes. I think of the 36 as arbitrary because I’ve heard 24, 36, 48, and 72 as the cut off.  I think the basic concept (“do not play this stupid waiting game”) is pretty straightforward, I just think what appears to people to be the time frame where it is obvious they are playing this game is different for different people.

As you put it, they should be capable of making it quite clear that they dig you. (Generic forms of “they” and “you”.)  I’m with you on this as well - if they can’t make it clear they dig me, I move on.  I am objecting purely to the 36 hours, not the underlying concept.  (Personally, I think 36-48 is probably where my line is.)