In yesterday’s NextDraft, Dave Pell included the following item:
The Week kindly provides six ways of looking at the college hookup culture. I actually looked at it a seventh way: From afar.
I kinda agree with Mr. Pell here, but maybe that’s because I didn’t really see a lot of action in college, haha. And I completely agree with David Masciotra at The Atlantic that kids should learn how to have GOOD sex. Sex being something intimate and enjoyable and pleasurable will totally change your standards and self-respect and help you make relationship choices down the road that meet your own needs, in my opinion, even if it sometimes means you hold on to bad relationships because the sex is good.
Regardless, The Week’s summary of multiple perspectives was interesting to me. I don’t think the hookup culture is inherently harmful, necessarily, but I do think that people who get left out of it can wind up harmed.
Think about it: if all your friends are going at it all around you, but you just don’t feel ready, it’s probably kind of an intimidating scene to dive into. And it probably feels weird to hook up without more of a relationship or romantic attachment if romance is what you grew up envisioning. I suspect nervousness around that whole hookup culture might delay your getting into sexual/romantic relationships in general, which might sort of stunt your adult dating life and make it a little scary to launch. And the older you delay diving into that, the harder it becomes because you start to feel like this:
This is all just speculation, but it seems TOTALLY plausible to me; I’m betting I would’ve been one of the kids who was a little freaked out by hookup culture. In fact, I think I kind of was a bit freaked out of my own college’s take on that culture, as well as the club hookup culture when I lived abroad in Spain. As badly as I wanted to find people to date and hook up with in theory, I could never actually bring myself to dress slutty, binge drink, and throw myself at people I barely knew. It just wasn’t my thing! (Instead I dressed like a confused lumberjack and binge-drank with friends, and developed wild crushes on unattainable but hot acquaintances I felt like I knew, and pined over them sloppily. A much safer strategy, heh. I will never show you pictures ever so don’t ask.)
Anyway, it’s an interesting read and possibly a bit scary if you’re the parent of a college-aged kid! But hey, baby’s gotta grow up sometime. 🙂 If you enjoyed Dave’s little pull quote and want to be delivered other cool tidbits of news from him, sign up for his newsletter, Next Draft. I recently signed up and I love it!