If you’ve been anywhere near an airport bookstore in the last five years, you’ve probably seen the face of Tucker Max leering out at you from one of his two uber-bestselling books. ...

The books recount Tucker’s endlessly repetitive nights throughout his twenties (he’s 35 now), drinking extreme amounts of alcohol, having utterly drunken, meaningless, uninspired (and uninspiring) sex with a parade of random strangers, acting in a cocky, testosterone-fueled, belligerent way to those who come across his drunken glare, and saying the most insulting, vile, vicious, mean, sexually-degrading things you could possibly imagine to everyone around him, both men and women.

The narrator seems to be doing everything possible to ensure that his photo appears not only in mugshots, but under the dictionary definition of the word “prick.”

But, love Tucker Max or hate him—it is very likely someone you know has paid money for his writing. His books have sold a staggering 2 million copies combined—around 1.6 million for the first one, and around 400,000 for the second. ...

Perhaps more interesting, Tucker is not just retiring from writing about his hard-drinking, hard-partying, and hard-womanizing, whose recounting made him famous and earned him millions. He is also retiring entirely from that lifestyle of his twenties.

Or, I should say, he already has. Unbeknownst to his legions of fans, his legions of critics, or the legions of publishing professionals who want a piece of him, this most public of “I-don’t-wanna-grow-up” males is in fact now in the midst of a serious, intentional and devoted period of cleaning up and growing up.

He is changing his ways of the past, and—gasp!—becoming a mature adult male, one is who seeking a committed, long-term relationship, leading to marriage, with an intelligent, substantive, accomplished woman.

What you are about to read is the most in-depth and personal profile of this bestselling and infamous author ever written, based on the most access he has ever given a fellow writer.

It should be abundantly clear from what follows that I’m not a fan of Tucker Max’s writing, nor of his behavior in his twenties.

So why am I writing this? I felt Tucker had an interesting story to tell here, and I wanted to help tell it (no, it’s not another drinking story.) I also have my own personal interest in this story, having to do with how I spent my own twenties. I’ll reveal that towards the end.

Labels: "emerging adulthood", childhood, culture, divorce, gender, heterosexual couples, hooking up, Marriage, men, mental health, parenting, premarital sex, sex, women

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In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered. I was bewildered. To account for my behavior, all I had were two intangible yet undeniable convictions: something was missing; I wasn’t ready to settle down.

The period that followed was awful. I barely ate for sobbing all the time. (A friend who suffered my company a lot that summer sent me a birthday text this past July: “A decade ago you and I were reuniting, and you were crying a lot.”) I missed Allan desperately—his calm, sure voice; the sweetly fastidious way he folded his shirts. On good days, I felt secure that I’d done the right thing. Learning to be alone would make me a better person, and eventually a better partner. On bad days, I feared I would be alone forever. Had I made the biggest mistake of my life?

Ten years later, I occasionally ask myself the same question. Today I am 39, with too many ex-boyfriends to count and, I am told, two grim-seeming options to face down: either stay single or settle for a “good enough” mate. At this point, certainly, falling in love and getting married may be less a matter of choice than a stroke of wild great luck. A decade ago, luck didn’t even cross my mind. I’d been in love before, and I’d be in love again. This wasn’t hubris so much as naïveté; I’d had serious, long-term boyfriends since my freshman year of high school, and simply couldn’t envision my life any differently.

Well, there was a lot I didn’t know 10 years ago. The decision to end a stable relationship for abstract rather than concrete reasons (“something was missing”), I see now, is in keeping with a post-Boomer ideology that values emotional fulfillment above all else. And the elevation of independence over coupling (“I wasn’t ready to settle down”) is a second-wave feminist idea I’d acquired from my mother, who had embraced it, in part, I suspect, to correct for her own choices.

I was her first and only recruit, marching off to third grade in tiny green or blue T-shirts declaring: A Woman Without a Man Is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle, or: A Woman’s Place Is in the House—and the Senate, and bellowing along to Gloria Steinem & Co.’s feminist-minded children’s album, Free to Be … You and Me (released the same year Title IX was passed, also the year of my birth). Marlo Thomas and Alan Alda’s retelling of “Atalanta,” the ancient Greek myth about a fleet-footed princess who longs to travel the world before finding her prince, became the theme song of my life. Once, in high school, driving home from a family vacation, my mother turned to my boyfriend and me cuddling in the backseat and said, “Isn’t it time you two started seeing other people?” She adored Brian—he was invited on family vacations! But my future was to be one of limitless possibilities, where getting married was something I’d do when I was ready, to a man who was in every way my equal, and she didn’t want me to get tied down just yet.

This unfettered future was the promise of my time and place. I spent many a golden afternoon at my small New England liberal-arts college debating with friends the merits of leg-shaving and whether or not we’d take our husband’s surname. (Even then, our concerns struck me as retro; hadn’t the women’s libbers tackled all this stuff already?) We took for granted that we’d spend our 20s finding ourselves, whatever that meant, and save marriage for after we’d finished graduate school and launched our careers, which of course would happen at the magical age of 30.

That we would marry, and that there would always be men we wanted to marry, we took on faith. How could we not? One of the many ways in which our lives differed from our mothers’ was in the variety of our interactions with the opposite sex. Men were our classmates and colleagues, our bosses and professors, as well as, in time, our students and employees and subordinates—an entire universe of prospective friends, boyfriends, friends with benefits, and even ex-boyfriends-turned-friends. In this brave new world, boundaries were fluid, and roles constantly changing. ...

Of course, between the diminishing external pressure to have children and the common misperception that our biology is ours to control, some of us don’t deal with the matter in a timely fashion. Like me, for instance. Do I want children? My answer is: I don’t know. But somewhere along the way, I decided to not let my biology dictate my romantic life. If I find someone I really like being with, and if he and I decide we want a child together, and it’s too late for me to conceive naturally, I’ll consider whatever technological aid is currently available, or adopt (and if he’s not open to adoption, he’s not the kind of man I want to be with).

Do I realize that this further narrows my pool of prospects? Yes. Just as I am fully aware that with each passing year, I become less attractive to the men in my peer group, who have plenty of younger, more fertile women to pick from. But what can I possibly do about that? Sure, my stance here could be read as a feint, or even self-deception. By blithely deeming biology a nonissue, I’m conveniently removing myself from arguably the most significant decision a woman has to make. But that’s only if you regard motherhood as the defining feature of womanhood—and I happen not to. ...

In their 1983 book, Too Many Women? The Sex Ratio Question, two psychologists developed what has become known as the Guttentag-Secord theory, which holds that members of the gender in shorter supply are less dependent on their partners, because they have a greater number of alternative relationships available to them; that is, they have greater “dyadic power” than members of the sex in oversupply. How this plays out, however, varies drastically between genders.

In societies where men heavily outnumber women—in what’s known as a “high-sex-ratio society”—women are valued and treated with deference and respect and use their high dyadic power to create loving, committed bonds with their partners and raise families. Rates of illegitimacy and divorce are low. Women’s traditional roles as mothers and homemakers are held in high esteem. In such situations, however, men also use the power of their greater numbers to limit women’s economic and political strength, and female literacy and labor-force participation drop.

One might hope that in low-sex-ratio societies—where women outnumber men—women would have the social and sexual advantage. (After all, didn’t the mythical all-female nation of Amazons capture men and keep them as their sex slaves?) But that’s not what happens: instead, when confronted with a surplus of women, men become promiscuous and unwilling to commit to a monogamous relationship.

Labels: age at first marriage, children, culture, dating, gender, heterosexual couples, hooking up, Marriage, men, motherhood, premarital sex, race, women

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Last spring, the editors of the News wrote that “the project of reforming Yale’s sexual culture is a formidable one.” This challenge followed upon an academic year punctuated by a number of events that drew attention to Yale’s sexual culture and the problems that mar it: rape, harassment, objectification of women and the ways in which the expectation of sexual gratification easily boils over into ugly disrespect and denigration. The formidable project has yet to find an adequate vision. ...

It was several months later that a group of students filed a complaint against the University under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, citing a “sexually hostile environment” for women. If Yale had hit the snooze button following the first alarm, here was the second one to wake us up. By the end of the year, attentive observers could not deny that Yale had a failed culture; nevertheless, the basis of the University’s reaction was not much different. Once again, it was assumed that the response should be more of the same: bureaucratic bodies to dissect the “campus climate,” recruiting students to act as “communication and consent educators,” and tasking freshman counselors with imparting a legalistic and unwieldy definition of “consent.”

We, as members of Undergraduates for a Better Yale College, would like to propose an alternative approach. Loving our University and recognizing that her culture is in need of renewal, we seek to look behind the surface and strike at the root causes of our sexual maladies. We believe that these maladies are at once simpler and yet more profound than has been hitherto acknowledged. Simply put, we believe that the heart of the problem is the very attitude toward sexuality that prevails on campus, a paradoxical attitude that both trivializes sex and is obsessed with it. It is trivializing to treat sex as nothing more than a casual weekend pastime. It is obsessive — and pathetic — to be as consumed with sexual curiosity as our campus so frequently is.

We believe that the hook-up culture is fertile ground for acts of sexual selfishness, insensitivity, cruelty and malice, for the simple reason that selfishness provides the whole premise of that culture.

As a co-founder of the Undergraduates for a Better Yale College (UBYC), I am delighted at the overwhelmingly positive response we have received so far. Students, alumni, faculty and parents have signed our petition, sent us emails and called us to encourage our efforts and ask how they could help. Freshmen and sophomores have shown particular enthusiasm; I am glad that those who will be here after I am gone are taking action about the future Yale they will inherit.

Amidst so many positive developments, we are not much fazed by the relatively scant criticism we have received. With the exception of one or two kind, patient e-mails seeking to explain a point of view and then understand where we are coming from, most criticism has taken the form of straw man arguments, mischaracterization and exaggeration. Keeping this in mind, then, and understanding that I, too, am capable of misunderstanding people’s words, I want to clarify UBYC’s aims by responding to the pair of op-eds that have been leveled against us.

In a column harshly titled “Exacerbating Yale’s rape culture” (Sept. 21), four Title IX complainants made the case that by “seeking silence” on sexual issues, “the Undergraduates for a Better Yale College (UBYC) create a culture of violence.” We are accused of “suppressing dialogue around intimacy.” But it is abundantly clear on our website, and in all of our materials, how eager we actually are to talk about intimacy — it is the key element, along with respect, responsibility and, above all, interpersonal love, in any healthy relationship, and it is what we find so conspicuously lacking in Yale’s romantic culture, especially in Sex Week. If the column’s authors have misunderstood our point, we apologize and rephrase: We are not seeking to stop discussion on sex and intimacy. Rather, we are seeking to improve that discussion.

It was heartening to see Ted Lee’s ’12 column grace the op-ed page of Friday’s paper (“Love, sex and intimacy,” Sept. 22). Lee offered a sincere reflection on the intricate relationship between sex and love, the physical and the emotional. He encouraged us to consider the fundamental question that must underlie any proposed reform of our sexual culture, something that the back-and-forth about “rape culture,” in my opinion, has only obliquely touched upon. We cannot envision a better sexual culture until we have settled the meaning of sex.

Nevertheless, Lee’s conclusions rest on a number of crucial confusions, some of them dramatic. I was particularly taken aback by these sentences: “To follow UBYC’s logic … requires some sort of separation between the mind and body. My experience suggests emotional and physical intimacy are inextricably linked.”

As an active member of Undergraduates for a Better Yale College, I am somewhat distressed that there has arisen so fundamental a misunderstanding of our advocacy. I can only conclude that we have not been clear enough in articulating exactly what we stand for.

We do not advocate a separation of mind and body. On the contrary, we oppose hook-up culture precisely because it seeks to divorce the physical pleasure of sex from the mental, spiritual, and interpersonal dimensions of sexuality. In so doing, it reduces sex from an experience of total intimacy with another human being to the mere relief of a simple bodily appetite. We are against Sex Week because it reinforces this mindset and the culture that exists around it.

Labels: culture, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, universities

VOTE

Last spring, the editors of the News wrote that “the project of reforming Yale’s sexual culture is a formidable one.” This challenge followed upon an academic year punctuated by a number of events that drew attention to Yale’s sexual culture and the problems that mar it: rape, harassment, objectification of women and the ways in which the expectation of sexual gratification easily boils over into ugly disrespect and denigration. The formidable project has yet to find an adequate vision.

In the fall, frat pledges marched around Old Campus shouting chants that openly glorified rape and graphically joked about necrophilia. In response, this op-ed page was flooded with commentary on the incident, which, for the most part, condemned the pledges’ mentality but shied away from asking what underlying cultural deficiencies made it possible.

A few days before Halloween, Dean of Student Affairs Marichal Gentry emailed the student body to emphasize the wonders of “glorious consensual sex,” subtly but unmistakably assuming that the hook-up enriches students’ lives provided only that the right verbal signs are given. The comfortable consensus opinion was that the fundamentals of Yale’s sexual culture were sound. All that was lacking was their proper implementation in a few specific cases, and that chasm could be bridged in a few relatively simple steps. As then-YCC President Jeff Gordon ’12 advised: “Ask someone to dance before grabbing her hips.” ...

We, as members of Undergraduates for a Better Yale College, would like to propose an alternative approach. Loving our University and recognizing that her culture is in need of renewal, we seek to look behind the surface and strike at the root causes of our sexual maladies. We believe that these maladies are at once simpler and yet more profound than has been hitherto acknowledged. Simply put, we believe that the heart of the problem is the very attitude toward sexuality that prevails on campus, a paradoxical attitude that both trivializes sex and is obsessed with it. It is trivializing to treat sex as nothing more than a casual weekend pastime. It is obsessive — and pathetic — to be as consumed with sexual curiosity as our campus so frequently is.

Labels: culture, hooking up, sex, sexual assault, universities

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When Catholic University President John Garvey announced in June that the university would be reverting to same-sex dorms for on-campus students, he probably didn't expect much of a legal challenge.

Well, he got one.

Yesterday the university was forced to explain to the D.C. Office of Human Rights how the new policy doesn't violate the city's Human Rights Act, a claim made by public interest law professor John Banzhaf in a lawsuit. According to Banzhaf, who teaches at The George Washington University Law School, the District's statute prohibits discrimination unless it is a "business necessity" without which an institution could not function. He adds:

Unfortunately for [Garvey], he cannot rely upon religion, because the D.C. Court of Appeals has held -- in a case in which Georgetown University tried to justify discrimination based upon sexual orientation because of fundamental and strongly held Catholic teachings about homosexuality -- that religious motivations were irrelevant, and no defense, under the statute.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, DC, discrimination law, gender, hooking up, men, premarital sex, religion, religious liberty, sex, universities, women

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AT Duke University last fall, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity e-mailed 300 of their female classmates about an off-campus Halloween party. “Hey Ladies,” the invitation leered, complete with a misspelling, “Whether your dressing up as a slutty nurse, a slutty doctor, a slutty schoolgirl or just a total slut, we invite you...”

Yes, there was outrage: in the form of fliers plastered around the Duke campus reprinting the offending e-mail and asking, “Is this why you came to Duke?” And there was official indignation: The recently formed Greek Women’s Initiative will be tackling the subject of gender relations.

But a less-noted fact remains: hundreds of Duke women went to that Halloween party and many dressed as they had been asked.

As parents around the country send their children to campuses for the start of another academic year, what are we to make of the fact that lessons of equality, respect and self-worth have been heard when it comes to the classroom, but lost somewhere on the way to the clubs? Why has the pendulum swung back to a feeling that sexualization of women is fun and funny rather than insulting and uncomfortable? Why are so many women O.K. with that? Odds are that the women dancing at that Duke party had mothers who attended more than one Take Back the Night march in their college days. What has changed? ...

I wasn’t surprised by the progress, though. The male-female ratio is essentially equal now, and the message of female achievement comes from the top: the university’s president is just one of many powerful women on campus.

What stunned me was what was happening outside class, where women seemed not to have budged in decades. In social settings and in relationships, men set the pace, made the rules and acted as they had in the days when women were still “less than.” It might as well have been the 1950s, but with skimpier clothing, fewer inhibitions and better birth control. ...

Whichever way they thought the balance tipped, the students interviewed essentially believed the “he chases, she submits” paradigm was no big deal. Boys will be boys, said Nora Taranto, 20, a history of science major at Princeton, who is particularly interested in neuroscience. “It’s just the way that drunk frat guys act,” she said of the antics of pledges on her campus and others. “Well, besides the naked runs through lectures, which I guess could be offensive to some people but weren’t offensive to me, not really.”

They all get to the generational card eventually, believing that parents are too uptight; being free to flaunt your assets as you do your intellect is a new kind of empowerment, they say. “When I talked about it with my mom, she didn’t understand that there were in-betweens between friends and relationships,” said a female junior at the University of Virginia. “That you could be unofficial. So I think it’s just a generational difference. It really just depends on the girl. Some girls just really like to have sex.”

Labels: culture, dating, heterosexual couples, hooking up, men, premarital sex, sex, universities, women

VOTE

Among young, single Americans, men still want sex and women still want love and commitment. But the rules of engagement have changed dramatically since the birth-control pill and these rules “clearly favor men,” sociology professor Mark Regnerus told a think tank Tuesday.

There is collateral damage in this modern paradigm, added Mr. Regnerus, co-author of “Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying.”

More than a few women who plan to marry and have children before age 40 will not be able to fulfill those plans, he said. And men are becoming obsolete to women, especially those who were taught to rely only on themselves. ...

The changes in sexual norms happened largely because of the birth-control pill, Mr. Regnerus told the “Sexual Economics” forum at the Heritage Foundation.

Before the pill, the University of Texas professor said, sex and marriage were closely linked. If a young man wanted to have sex with a young woman, he had to “pay an elevated price” for it, with a marriage proposal, if not marriage. The young woman, in turn, got a serious commitment from the young man in exchange for her sexual favors.

But the pill ended that exchange rate, he said. Now sex is conducted without marriage, and “the price of sex is pretty low” — low-commitment or no-commitment sexual hookups are common, while high-commitment marriage is postponed, sometimes for decades.

Labels: beyond marriage, contraception, culture, hooking up, Mark Regnerus, Marriage, men, premarital sex, sex, women

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It wasn't until the second semester of her senior year at Fordham University in New York that Kathleen Adams had a college boyfriend.

"You just don't date at colleges," says Adams, 23, now a Fordham graduate student in urban studies.

But there's no shortage of casual sex on campus, she says — in part because Fordham, like many colleges, has significantly more women than men. Adams says that means guys have the upper hand when it comes to intimacy.

"It's kind of like a competition," she says. "The guys have their choice of whoever they want. So they think, 'Why would I date?' "

The relationship game among college-age adults today is a muddle of seemingly contradictory trends. Recent studies indicate that traditional dating on campuses has taken a back seat to no-strings relationships in which bonds between young men and women are increasingly brief and sexual. (A new website to arrange these encounters that began at the University of Chicago last month now is expanding to other campuses.)

But even as casual sex — often called "hookups" or "friends with benefits" — is a dominant part of campus life, a new report by the National Center for Health Statistics indicates the percentages of men and women 18-24 who say they are virgins also are increasing.

It all reflects an emerging paradigm that is altering the nature of sex and relationships among young adults: fewer men than women on campuses; a more openly sexual society that often takes cues from media, and a declining desire to make relationship commitments early in life.

Labels: culture, dating, heterosexual couples, hooking up, men, pornography, premarital sex, sex, universities, women

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It's not a new theory: As women progress in educational and professional opportunities, their odds of finding a committed man appear to go down. Women in their 40s and 50s have long heard this, but new research finds it's true for women just entering adulthood as well.

That's one of the findings in the new book "Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying," by researchers Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker at the University of Texas at Austin.

They looked at the results from a number of national studies including the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the National Study of Youth and Religion, in addition to interviews with young people ages 18 to 23.

Researchers found that since women in the 18- to 23-year-old group feel they don't need men for financial dependence, many of them feel they can play around with multiple partners without consequence, and that the early 20s isn't the time to have a serious relationship. But eventually, they do come to want a real, lasting relationship. The problem is that there will still be women who will have sex readily without commitment, and since men know this, fewer of them are willing to go steady.

"Women have plenty of freedom, but freedom does not translate easily into getting what you want," Regnerus said.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, divorce, heterosexual couples, hooking up, Mark Regnerus, Marriage, men, premarital sex, virginity, women

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Finally, two sociologists with a new book make the case for something I've been encouraging my female friends to do: hold out, ladies!

I often feel like an amateur sociologist myself, conducting interviews about the amorous exploits of friends and acquaintances – and occasionally sacrificing my own body for the social sciences. My data leads me to conclude that casual sex leaves plenty of women feeling awkward or dissatisfied – if not downright miserable – whereas most men don't experience a similar psychological hangover.

Legit research backs me up on this: an April report from James Madison University found women are more likely than men to prefer dating to hooking up, and are more likely to want to be in a relationship. A 2008 study out of England's Durham University found that most men enjoyed one night stands, reporting improved self-confidence and a greater sense of wellbeing afterward; if they expressed any regret, it was primarily about undesirable partners.

Roughly half the women, however, had negative feelings after their one night stands; they said they felt "used", or that they'd let themselves down. Lead researcher Anne Campbell, professor of psychology, explained the difference in evolutionary terms, saying that, historically, a man had the best chance of passing on his DNA if he put as much sperm out there as possible, whereas, through the centuries, women who remained faithful to carefully chosen ways fared best, by Darwinian standards – and we have evolved to act in ways that have helped our ancestors.

Nonetheless, young women today seem to think they should deny their instincts and behave, sexually, like men, say Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jeremy Uecker, a fellow with the Carolina Population Centre, co-authors of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying. "It's bizarre to watch women challenging each other to act – sexually – like men," says Regnerus.

Labels: gender, gender differences, hooking up, Mark Regnerus, men, premarital sex, sex, women

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In an email to the entire Yale student body, Dean of Student Marichal Gentry reminded students that “consensual sex can be glorious”. We’re used to getting emails about staying safe, saving the Yale Police phone number in our phones, and to always call for help, especially around the biggest drinking weekends of the year. The past two years we have received very standard emails about Spring Fling, Harvard-Yale, and Halloween, but this one definitely caught the eye.

Labels: culture, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, sexual assault, universities

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Belief in the success of marriage now requires a faith reserved in times past for religion. As a result, cohabitation and serial monogamy are at an all-time high. People are applying the mutated companionate courtship values of sexual attraction and contrived compatibility in choosing cohabitation partners. In an interview with television and movie star George Clooney on his 1980s decision to move in with actress Kelly Preston on their first date, Clooney concluded, “I was always Mr. Full-On Spontaneous . . . then as you get older, you start to go, ‘you know what? Maybe we should go out a little bit first’” (quoted in Rochlin, 56). What—go out and get to know each other before moving in together? For many mirage men that is an unthinkable idea. But the results of this deceitful cohabitation trend have been anything but encouraging, with a break up rate for couples who cohabitate twice as high as for married couples (Jayson 3A).

Washington State University researcher Jan Stets reported that women who cohabitate are more than twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence than married women and data from the National Institute of Mental Health show that cohabitating women have three times the rate of depression as married women and twice as much as non-cohabitating single women (Popenoe: smartmarriage.com/cohabit.html)

Why isn’t cohabitation working? The problem is that the male partner is often pretending to be emotionally compatible to achieve immediate sexual results and uses cohabitation to subvert the dating process altogether (Wetzstein:1). By living together, the female partner often sees the real man behind the phony act and realizes she has been deceived by her man way before marriage. Thus, any cohabitation that limps into marriage is already weakened before the wedding ceremony by the already jaded bride. ...

Ladies, this is the poisonous fruit of Tiger Woods Syndrome. Becoming joined at the hip with a stranger is not the way to an intelligent, long-term, committed relationship that might some day lead to marriage. It isn't even the way to a short-term romance based on mutual respect. An errant baseball revealed to the world the shallowness of love based on artifical intimacy and approval seeking.

Labels: cohabitation, committed relationships, hooking up, sex

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“Girls can’t be guys in matters of the heart, even though they think they can,” says Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, published in 2007.

In her view, “hooking up”—casual sexual activity ranging from kissing to intercourse—places women at risk of “low self-esteem, depression, alcoholism, and eating disorders.” Stepp is only one of half a dozen journalists currently engaged in the business of detailing the dangers of casual sex.

On the other side, pop culture feminists such as Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (2010), argue that the problem isn’t casual sex, but a “moral panic” over casual sex. And still a third set of writers like Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005), questions whether it’s empowering for young women to show up at parties dressed to imitate porn stars or to strip in “Girls Gone Wild” fashion. Levy’s concern isn’t necessarily moral, but rather that these young women seem less focused on their own sexual pleasure and more worried about being seen as “hot” by men.

Following on the heels of the mass media obsession, sociologists and psychologists have begun to investigate adolescent and young adult hookups more systematically. In this essay, we draw on systematic data and studies of youth sexual practices over time to counter claims that hooking up represents a sudden and alarming change in youth sexual culture. The research shows that there is some truth to popular claims that hookups are bad for women. However, it also demonstrates that women’s hookup experiences are quite varied and far from uniformly negative and that monogamous, long-term relationships are not an ideal alternative. Scholarship suggests that pop culture feminists have correctly zeroed in on sexual double standards as a key source of gender inequality in sexuality. ...

The pervasiveness of casual sexual activity among today’s youth may be at the heart of Boomers’ concerns. England surveyed more than 14,000 students from 19 universities and colleges about their hookup, dating, and relationship experiences. Seventy-two percent of both men and women participating in the survey reported at least one hookup by their senior year in college. What the Boomer panic may gloss over, however, is the fact that college students don’t, on average, hook up that much. By senior year, roughly 40 percent of those who ever hooked up had engaged in three or fewer hookups, 40 percent between four and nine hookups, and only 20 percent in ten or more hookups. About 80 percent of students hook up, on average, less than once per semester over the course of college.

In addition, the sexual activity in hookups is often relatively light. Only about one third engaged in intercourse in their most recent hookup. Another third had engaged in oral sex or manual stimulation of the genitals. The other third of hookups only involved kissing and non-genital touching. A full 20 percent of survey respondents in their fourth year of college had never had vaginal intercourse. In addition, hookups between total strangers are relatively uncommon, while hooking up with the same person multiple times is common. Ongoing sexual relationships without commitment are labeled as “repeat,” “regular,” or “continuing” hookups, and sometimes as “friends with benefits.” Often there is friendship or socializing both before and after the hookup. ...

Contemporary hookup culture among adolescents and young adults may rework aspects of the Sexual Revolution to get some of its pleasures while reducing its physical and emotional risks. Young people today—particularly young whites from affluent families—are expected to delay the commitments of adulthood while they invest in careers. They get the message that sex is okay, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize their futures; STDs and early pregnancies are to be avoided. This generates a sort of limited liability hedonism. For instance, friendship is prioritized a bit more than romance, and oral sex appeals because of its relative safety. Hookups may be the most explicit example of a calculating approach to sexual exploration. They make it possible to be sexually active while avoiding behaviors with the highest physical and emotional risks (e.g., intercourse, intense relationships). Media panic over hooking up may be at least in part a result of adult confusion about youth sexual culture—that is, not understanding that oral sex and sexual experimentation with friends are actually some young people’s ways of balancing fun and risk.

Labels: culture, feminism, gender, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, universities, women

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...Chen doesn't apologize for her old blog, but she acknowledges that the early posts "reflected a painful desire to be liked" and that she's lost a lot because of it. Her experience echoes that of other female bloggers who have written about their intimate lives. Emily Gould also does not apologize for her former antics in her new book, And the Heart Says Whatever. In a New York Times Magazine article, she wrote about the panic attacks she experienced as a result of the public vitriol she received after an unfortunate appearance on Larry King Live. Chen admits that she didn't understand the potential repercussions when she started blogging.

Now, Chen seems dedicated to making sure no one else goes through what she had to endure. In theory, the Rethinking Virginity conference was supposed to create a utopian space in which no one is judged for any kind of sexual behavior—whether it be Jesse James' mistress Michelle "Bombshell" McGee or someone who chooses to be abstinent. But the conference-goers didn't exhibit much tolerance for unusual or hedonistic behavior. I asked the panel called "The Feminist Response to Slut-Shaming & Sexual Scare Tactics" what they thought of adults having nonmonogamous unprotected sex, and the response was uniformly, well, shaming. "They're doing something damaging, and careless, and it's not a choice I personally approve of," said one panelist.

The final panel of the day, moderated by Chen, was called "Toward a Sex Positive Vision of Abstinence." The panelists all concurred that abstinence should be taught to high schoolers as part of an arsenal of ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs. The only real debate seemed to be about whether the government should continue to push the abstinence message past high school and make sure that adults knew it was an option as well, by, for example, mandating that abstinence be discussed as part of comprehensive sex education programs in colleges across the country.

While the one middle-aged sex educator on the panel seemed horrified by that idea ("I wouldn't presume to teach abstinence to adults," she said), Chen was intrigued. "What if an 18-year-old virgin needs to learn how to talk to his partner about how he's never had sex before?" Chen inquired. It was striking to hear young adults call for a government-mandated safe area to save a hypothetical virgin from the risks—and the joys—of youthful trial and error. That abstinence was even being considered as a solution to the young adult sexual minefield is a surprisingly conservative shift.

Labels: abstinence, culture, feminism, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, sex education, virginity

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...Since my academic research centers on attitudes about sex in relation to faith on college campuses, I'll tackle part two of this week's question: Is religion a useful tool for helping young people navigate the treacherous world of sex, love and relationships?

In my survey work and interviews with college students across the U.S. at Catholic, evangelical, private-secular, and public universities, and subsequent campus lecture visits to discuss this very topic, I found three very different attitudes among young adults about whether religion is useful in navigating hookup culture, sexual decision-making and identity formation, romance, and love:

1) For the committed, evangelical college student, it is impossible to separate your religious affiliation and commitments from anything to do with sexual decision-making, activity, and identity. Your faith is at the core of who you are, and everything you think and do flows from there. With regard to navigating dating, sex, and romantic relationships, the Christian tradition can portray this task as overwhelming dangerous--as a series of extremely important don'ts--which adds enormous stress to an already stressful journey during adolescence. That's the not so good news participants offered in my study. But most evangelical college students want their faith to speak to them about everything, including sex and relationships, so even if they are struggling with what their religion teaches on this (the many don'ts), they are committed to that struggle and they are in it for the long hall because they love their faith tradition. Period.

2) Your average college students at Catholic, private-secular, and public institutions generally laugh at the possibility that religious tradition might have anything to say to them in light of the world they live in: hookup culture, where sex is perceived as simply a casual thing, and they feel pressured to go right along with this attitude, even though for most young women and men, privately they don't like this situation at all. Catholic students especially spoke with great sarcasm about the "don'ts" with regard to sex in the Catholic tradition, which make them feel alienated, and which make them think that Catholicism is utterly out of touch with the realities of what they face in navigating sex and hookup culture today.

3) There is another type of student from across the four institution types who also might fit one of the other two categories as well, who is either really stressed about what religion tells them about sex, or thinks it's useless, but who has a feeling that in the realm of spirituality, there is a lot of possibility, flexibility, and exciting potential for them in the way of making their sex, dating, and romantic lives more fulfilling, meaningful, and generally, might offer more livable rules and is far more inclusive of same-sex relationships and sexually active histories. So spirituality--not institutional, organizational religion, but spirituality--is an exciting space where students suspect they might actually find useful tools for navigation. They just aren't sure how to find them or pursue these suspicions they have.

Labels: Catholic Church, Christianity, culture, Donna Freitas, hooking up, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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Almost every weekend, there is a tradition called raging at Vanderbilt University.

It's a recurring, drunken activity that isn't the proudest moment for student Frannie Boyle. After consuming large quantities of alcohol before a party, her night would sometimes end in making out with a stranger or acquaintance.

Casual hook ups fueled by alcohol may be the norm across college campuses, but Boyle, now a 21-year-old junior at the school, chose to stop. Her reasons to quit hooking up echo the emotional devastation of many college students, particularly girls whose hearts are broken by the hook-up scene.

"I saw it [hooking up] as a way to be recognized and get satisfaction," said Boyle, shaking her blond ponytail. "I felt so empty then."

The hook-up culture on campuses may seem more pervasive than ever, especially as media outlets, books and documentaries rush to dissect the subject, but some college women and men are saying no.

Some, like Boyle, experimented with hooking up and quit. Though she is Catholic, she says her reason for disengaging herself from the hook-up culture had more to do with the unhappiness she experienced afterward. Others influenced by religion have abstained from casual physical activity from the moment they set foot on campus.

The idea of rejecting hook-ups may not be as strange as it sounds in a generation surrounded by sex. Pop star Lady Gaga recently announced she was celibate and encouraged others to follow. In Kelly Clarkson's song "I Don't Hook Up," she addresses the dominant hook-up culture: "I do not hook up, up I go slow, so if you want me I don't come cheap." ...

Evidence of the backlash on hooking up on campuses can be seen in the growing popularity of the Love and Fidelity Network, a secular, nonprofit group dedicated to helping college students open the discussion for a lifestyle that doesn't involve casual sexual activity with anonymous or uncommitted partners.

Labels: culture, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, universities

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More social science research findings regarding Catholic colleges and universities are being reported and discussed. The focus has been on an article in the peer-reviewed Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called, “‘Hooking Up’ at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?”

The study concluded that Catholic women attending non-Catholic and Catholic colleges “display roughly a 72 percent increase in the odds of ‘hooking up’ compared to those women with no religious affiliation” (p. 544). The study also finds that women [Catholic and non-Catholic] at Catholic colleges and universities “are almost four times as likely to have participated in ‘hooking up’ compared to women in secular schools” (p. 544). Thus, there are results regarding Catholic women at all colleges and for all women at Catholic colleges and universities.

There are some important methodological issues to consider:

* A “hook up” is very widely defined as “when a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don’ necessarily expect anything further” (p. 540). As the authors caution, “‘Hooking up’ may refer to a broad range of physical acts ranging from kissing to sexual intercourse” (p. 548). It is difficult to know just what respondents are reporting in responding “yes.” ...

* Thus, there are only interviews with 39 Catholic women attending Catholic colleges in the study. A conservative estimate of the number of Catholic women attending Catholic college at the time is 85,000. The margin of sampling error for 39 interviews generalizing to a population of 85,000 is +/- 15.7 percentage points.
* Furthermore, these large margins of error are compounded by the small number of Catholic colleges these women attended at the institutional level. ...

The authors have made no mistakes—what they have produced is rather standard practice in academic social science survey research (although I would have strongly recommended controlling for household income which is related to college enrollment and choice). They have identified a compelling statistical association in the data. Rightfully, they note the limitations of the exploratory analysis and welcome additional research. This is what is needed. Replication with a larger sample would tell us if this is an anomaly of small sample size or a real effect (for both religious identity and college affiliation).

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, premarital sex, universities

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It was not so long ago, when singer Billy Joel's chiding plea to "Come Out, Virginia" resonated with thousands of young people born into the Sexual Revolution, many of them reveling in American society's defiance of the Catholic Church and traditional sexual mores.

According to a new study, Virginia may not be so reluctant anymore.

Researchers from Mississippi State University considered a survey of 1,000 college students nationwide and were surprised to find that "women attending colleges and universities affiliated with the Catholic Church are almost four times as likely to have participated in 'hooking up' compared to women at secular schools."

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, religion, universities

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Even the Yale College Dean’s Office is interested in Yale’s sex scene.

With the overhaul of its Web site this coming summer, the Dean’s Office will post a new student-generated essay collection under the title “sex@yale.” The site will include 500- to 1,000-word essays by current undergraduates, allowing them to reflect anonymously on their sexual experiences at Yale and their impressions of the sexual culture here.

The Web site will not be password protected, so anyone can read it, said Melanie Boyd, director of undergraduate studies in Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies and the new special advisor to the dean of Yale College on gender issues. ...

Student organizers said the initiative will attempt to change Yale’s sex culture and overturn the perception that it is dominated by casual hook-ups. But Gottesdiener was careful to emphasize that the initiative is not against hook-ups per se; rather, it will elaborate on it by showing that sexual encounters at Yale go far beyond the hook-up scene, she said.

Boyd added that the content of the site will reflect core values of consent, desire and “being thoughtful.”

Labels: culture, hooking up, sex, universities

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...North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges. Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000, according to a recent report by the American Council on Education. Researchers there cite several reasons: women tend to have higher grades; men tend to drop out in disproportionate numbers; and female enrollment skews higher among older students, low-income students, and black and Hispanic students. ...

Students interviewed here said they believed their mating rituals reflected those of college students anywhere. But many of them — men and women alike — said that the lopsided population tends to skew behavior.

“A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” Ms. Lynch said. “They’ll text them and say: ‘I had a great time. Want to hang out next week?’ And they don’t respond.”

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

Labels: culture, gender, heterosexual couples, hooking up, men, universities, women

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