Matt points us to Jessica's awesome post on "hook-up culture." Never has a phrase more deserved air quotes. I'll leave the gender politicking to my betters. Here's what I know--Every five years, or so, newspapers discover some cultural trend like this, seemingly expressly concocted to scare the crap out of people. Of course said cultural trend is usually just humans being humans, but rebranded.
The idea that twenty years ago, people weren't having one night stands, or that young people today simply never go out on dates, again, simply doesn't smell right. It amazes me that people buy this claptrap. I deeply suspect that at the bottom of it all lay the sexual insecurities of people who wish they'd been a little more carefree in college. I strongly suspect that they don't resent hook-up culture--they resent that they didn't get hooked-up. Wouldn't be the first time. Hell if I knew in college, what I know about the opposite sex now, I'd have been Denzeling fools. Alright probably not. Wait, what was I saying?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Kinda reminds me of when I go to my alma mater's football games and tailgates. Every guy over 25 looks at all the college girls, and swears, "if I was only in college, I would crush so much..."
Heh, you said claptrap. Not swearing is hard, huh?
"I deeply suspect that at the bottom of it all lay the sexual insecurities of people who wish they'd been a little more carefree in college. I strongly suspect that they don't resent hook-up culture--they resent that they didn't get hooked-up"
Ah, tell me about it. (Deep, deep sigh) I went blank on college. And man, do I regret it. The only thing that prevents me from resenting the kids is my social liberalism.
This was particularly infuriating to read:
'Similarly, emergency contraception - also known as the morning after pill or Plan B - was held up in the FDA for years for over-the-counter status (meaning, you would be able to get it without a prescription) because of fears that young women would go all slutty.
It later came to light that an FDA medical official wrote in an internal memo that over-the-counter status for emergency contraception could cause "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B."'
I did a fellowship in adolescent medicine at Mt. Sinai, and my research project was aimed at exactly this kind of idiocy. We looked at prospective use patterns for Plan B across the age range of adolescent girls, and found neither an intent to overuse the medication, or increased likelihood of overuse by younger girls. But this was the party line for years, and it kept a benign, highly effective method of contraception away from women based solely on dogma and ridiculous fear-mongering.
That something so moronic was actually in an FDA memo makes me hold my head in my hands.
I like the tetanus metaphor, and am as dismayed as Jessica that it's so awesome and yet from Bill Maher.
TNC... when you're right, you're right.
This comes up at least once a year in my university. It's brought up by students who see the current culture at school as a historical anomaly. These are the same people who are confused that out school's health services would provide (at cost) Plan B and give out free condoms.
They also don't really want to talk about sex; instead, they prefer to use metaphors and vagaries.
I doubt your reasoning is universal. I'm sure there are some who are "jealous" of those hooking up. Others have actively made the choice not to.
I think the bigger to-do about discussing the "hook-up culture" is the continued taboo on sex outside of marriage. It's demonized. If anything, college students should be having all the sex and holding back on the booze. If everyone was selective and safe, lots of people would be happier.
Is the meaning of the verb "Denzeling" obvious, or are there specifics that would distinguish it from, say, "Bradpitting"?
I think the only difference is that, at Howard University circa 1996, Denzeling would go over a little better.
Jingo,
I think if our host was white he might have used "Bradpitting."
I could be wrong though.
A post that used both "claptrap" and "Denzeling" -- I believe some kind of award is in order.
Maybe the coveted "Vernacular Boomerang."
Dont know if im tired or not...but this was hilarious. Claptrap? Denzeling?? We need to have a top-10 post's list...
ahahahaha! "denzeling fools"...funny! back at the mecca denzel snatched a few of my 11 (11:1 ratio circa 1991). and that was before the oscar!
Since young men seem to be encouraged to "hook up," the only thing I can make of all this is that conservatives and prudes want young men to hook up with Palin-aged women; a sort of "handmaid's tale" in reverse. (Please forgive me, Margaret Atwood.)
Many things she says are pretty much wrong. One of the biggest objections I found to the cervical cancer vaccine, even if the news stations ignored it, was several doctors groups who felt it was in fact too expensive and new. They encourage it start out restricted to girls at "high risk." This would be more like priotorizing tetanus boosters for people in occupations where the risk is greater. (Rescue workers, farmers, etc)
Granted I do recognize that idea was probably politically impossible. The conservative side might have some who feel "high risk" girls would either be getting what they deserve or a larger group of conservatives who'd feel the vaccine would reward their behavior. The more "liberal" side, and many parents, would object to any girl being "branded" as high risk. Still it was a plausible objection that she seems to dismiss as nearly non-existent. Which is kind-of what she does throughout. Objections that don't fit her thesis, even if they were major ones, get ignored in favor of even minor ones that do.
I'd just like to point out that the people I know who use the phrase "prostitot" are not referring to actual children. They're referring to young girls (generally high school through early post-college) who LOOK like young girls that go out decked out in heavy makeup and slutty outfits. The key is that they generally look too young to either pull of what they're wearing or to look like they actually belong where they are spotted.
When I was a kid, during the disco era, my church was making great hay of the driving beat and the great amount of promiscuity being caused by the music. Before that, right around the time I was born, it was the Summer of Love and the hippies. I was a teenager during the great Puritan revival, which just meant that people were lying about how much they were getting, and by the time I went to college in the mid to late 90s, it was the hook up culture--this is at least the second iteration of that phrase, I'm convinced. Yeah, Ta-Nehisi, I'd say this is another case of "just humans being humans, but rebranded."
Jamilah: I'll rephrase my question: Does "Denzeling" just mean "use my good looks and my charm and my mysterious-depthiness to hook up with as many females as I can", or is it a specific set of techniques unique to Denzel?
For those of us old enough to remember the late 80's and early 90's, and who actually liked to read books, we've heard this all before. In the mid-eighties Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" talked non-stop (presumably while Bloom was having affairs with male students-- he railed against homosexuality but practiced in private) about this kind of hook-up culture where no one went on any dates anymore. It was a scandal that young men and women could just hang out together in groups.
Twenty years later, more illiterate journalists are cranking up the Sex Trend Wurlitzer and offering old product. This, I suppose, is one of the few silver linings to getting old. It's not just not new. its laughably not-new.
I was in college during the Reagan administration. Everyone I hung out with was hooking up, but we called it flinging, as in "I had a fling with him last weekend". Quaint term, I know. Likewise, I really don't know anyone who went out on dates, with the exception of the occasional formal dance or if they were already "with" someone (i.e. a boy or girl friend) and decided to go out on a date as a quaint throwback kind of thing, maybe for a special occasion. But people calling and asking someone to go to the movies? Never happened.
"But people calling and asking someone to go to the movies? Never happened."
I read this all the time, and I don't get it. I was in high school in the early 90s and college in the mid-late 90s, and it's true, "dates" weren't all that common. But to say they "never happened"? I asked girls on dates. I knew people who went on dates. Since it wasn't terribly common, just taking a girl to dinner was a great way to impress her. Anyway, from what I've heard from the crazy kids these days, it hasn't changed much. People still go on dates, it's just a bigger deal when they do.
Denzeling but not Denzelizing, eh? Ah the regrets of a mispent youth one way or the other. Isn't that from some Howling Wolf or Sonny Boy Williamson song--if I knew then, what I know now; ah but you didn't and therein lies the rub, or lack thereof.
Young people having casual sex, hmmn. Dancing in the dark on the mystery train, one generation after another. Reminds me of Henry Miller's comment about the socalled free love days of my own youth--not so much more now than then, he said, though maybe a little more love then than now (sure!) when--well you can read his books--scandalous.
I had a very different collegiate experience from touhy, during roughly the same time (1981-85). I went on dates, and so did my friends. One-on-one dates.
I've been under the impression -- maybe I'm wrong -- that dating has faded away. From touhy's description, it was disappearing from some campuses while I was in college. It bothers me, but not from a sexual-insecurity standpoint. (Ta-Nehisi, are you projecting?)
Nah, what bugs me about it is our culture's relentless pressure to do everything in groups. It seems it started right around Reagan's election, although I don't posit a causal relationship. When I was in elementary and high school, we didn't hear a whole lot about teamwork, the value of teamwork, and how a good employee is a team player. No, a good employee was someone who did a good job and didn't have to be supervised all the time. Hard work was valued more than teamwork. Not so anymore.
I've been under the impression that this weird fixation on teamwork has seeped into dating -- that now people go out in groups and there are few one-on-one dates. That form of courtship seems small and pathetic to me. Young people fearfully grasping the safety of the group. When I think about it, I envision a toddler wearing a helmet while riding a tricycle.
I'm a loner and not much of a team player, and I was much better on a two-person date than in a group of people. In countless ways, our culture tells me, and people like me, that something is wrong with preferring to be alone or to be intimate with one person instead of always being with a group.
When I was in college I think we called it a "one night stand". We used the phrase "hook up" but it meant something different - I think it was just meeting or getting together with someone. The word "fling" would have meant something a slight bit longer than just one instance - perhaps a few days, a weekend, maybe even a week or two.
I wonder if there's also a regional component to what people call this phenomenon - like different parts of the country use the different words/phrases soft drinks, soda, or pop, to mean the same thing.
There have always been people who have sex and people who don't. The reasons for that may have changed, but those are all that have.
The guy I knew in college who scored the most?
He was the only straight ballet dancer in a room full of extremely flexible women. Man scored like Pinball Wizard.
Why are people surprised that people fuck casually? Most primates ( oooh nooo...not the evolution crap again) and animals of higher intelligence do this. It's always been the norm, even though powerful societal forces have tried to undermine and quench them, this is why i have a problem with "conservatism". It's not that promisquity is the norm, it's that there is no such thing as "chastity". It's an artificial construct that has led to terrible things in societies all over the world.
That does it. I'm enrolling my 12-year-old son in ballet classes.
Make sure his ballet classes are one on one lessons, Holdie. I'd hate for your son to be part of some disgusting group.
I was a late bloomer; just a skinny kid-looking thing until it was too late for college. But I did my best to make up for it later!
Oh, and Holdie, how do you feel about group sex?
I am glad I'm not alone. Whenever I read these articles I'm never like "The outrage!" I'm always like "I wasted college!" and then felt like a douche.
@Holdie
I'm right there with you. There's a tremendous indirect pressure to never be alone-as though peace and quiet is some horrible hardship to be avoided at all costs. I think it's a weakness in our culture as a whole-which, when applied to dating, I believe, can create a weakness in individual pair-bonds.
I respect the choices of highly social, obnoxiously extroverted people. What I don't respect is the fact that our society is bent so firmly in their favor
Have you read Caring for Your Introvert? http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch
(Oddly enough, I didn't realize it was The Atlantic until I just googled the link)
Didn't we already have this debate just last year?
http://www.culture11.com/diary/34058
"Ta-Nehisi, are you projecting?"
I'm sorry, was I not clear?
As someone who teaches college, I can't help but giggle at all of this. People are hooking up and dating and hanging out in their rooms all alone. Same as it ever was.
I don't know if there are major differences from the time I was an undergrad (late '80s-early '90s). But, I was coming out at the time and pretty much separate from my colleagues' lives. But, they were going out on dates, and getting engaged, and whoring with whomever they could. Imagine that--college as a time when people are experimenting, and a space where lots of different practices are taking place.
@Jess: Caring for your Introvert is one of the greatest essays ever; I believe the cocktail party and its kin to be a form of hideous torture.
(Though that said I did hang with a regular group of friends in college, and my boyfriend and I had been together for months before we went on what could really be termed a date--planned ahead, only the two of us, etc. Late 80s; add it to your data pools. And certainly people were hooking up even in that ancient time. You can read about hooking up in memoirs from the 50s, too.)
Since young men seem to be encouraged to "hook up," the only thing I can make of all this is that conservatives and prudes want young men to hook up with Palin-aged women; a sort of "handmaid's tale" in reverse.
There was an entire late-1800s sex cult that worked this way, as a form of birth control. (The Oneidans, who went on to make teapots.) The idea was that older women initiate young men who are still mastering withdrawal, thus letting the older women get laid, and older men got the young girls. (You will never guess the gender and age of the cult leaders.) This section is the highlight of Assassination Vacation, the best book about touring old houses and graveyards that highlight presidential assassination history ever.
Ah college! "Do you wanna go back to my dorm and watch a movie?"
It was always super duper awesome when the girl asked YOU this question!
k1
ryanculver.blogspot.com
"Hell if I knew in college, what I know about the opposite sex now, I'd have been Denzeling fools."
If you had learned in college where to place and not place commas, I could read you without vomiting.
I'm in college right now, and think Jessica is spot on with her comments regarding hook-up cultures of colleges. I asked a girl out on a date less than a week ago, these things still happen.
Maybe not as often as before, I have no idea, but dates still happen.
the only reason a "hook-up" culture exists is because you are putting lots of 18-22 year olds in the same place, away from home for the first time, sometimes with heavy drinking.
It starts out crazy freshman year and generally calms down by senior year, helped by being able to legally drink in bars.
@Pop Trunk
Chill. I think we can forgive a few typographical errors without losing dinner.
On a broader note, I'll admit that hooking up is something that I've never done and at this point doubt I'll ever do. I'm just not wired up to make connections that quickly. But with that said, it's not something for people to be getting their panties in a bunch. It does seem like territory that's rife for emotional fallout, but that's ultimately a risk for people to weigh on their own.
Also, since when have people stopped going on dates? I can't say that mine have been the most successful in history, but I'd much rather get to know someone one-on-one than as part of a big, messy group. But maybe that's just because I fall under the heading of people who would love if more people took the advice from the "Care and Handling of Introverts" guide to heart.
People here and elsewhere seem to be genuinely surprised that Bill Maher weighed in on this in such a satisfying way. Are we talking about the same Bill Maher?
@ Poptrunk and all the other people who think that commas and such are a mark of intelligence.
Writing is hard work, and crafting coherent sentences takes effort. Creating coherent insightfull thoughts that are also relevant to a situation and communicate nuance are even harder. The place of a comma is irrelevant to the insight provided. If you really have issue with the man and his comma placement use the hugh jazz E-mail Ta-nehisi button.
"Outside the gates the barbarians are waiting while the theologians inside debate the colour of Mary's eyes."
Although there were several things about her essay that annoyed me I agree this isn't really new. Casual sex among college students is something that was around in older generations.
I differ in where my skepticism comes from though. I'm not coming at this as "the patriarchy wants to oppress women's sexual freedom" or whatever. I just think some of this is kind of dishonest, selacious, and encourages the idea only certain kinds of college students are worth writing about. I knew college kids who lived varied kinds of life. The thing that shocked me my freshman year was not so much the sex-crazy ones, with one *exception, but the guy who talked about his wife and going to ball games with his Dad. Many other students I knew were engaged or in a long-term relationship or did want a real relationship. Granted I live in a very conservative state, but this was a secular college where few people seemed to be particularly religious and most everyone drank alot.
On the conservative side it seems counterproductive to their own goals. The message might seem to be that if you're not sleeping around we're not really interested in your life. You're not a "problem", true, but you might also not be much of an anything. While also stating that if you do start sleeping around we'll give you oodles of attention, but also tell you there's no hope for you to ever be anything other than a slut or dog. Even if you "repent" you'll probably have AIDS by then and eventually die.
I might also share her disdain for "purity" movements, but again for opposite reasons. Isaac Newton managed to be celibate largely by thinking about his celibacy as little as possible. Making kids think about their virginity all the time seems unhealthy and counterproductive to whatever kind-of social conservative kind-of goal they're, or maybe we're, seeking. (Plus it might make it where if you lose your virginity "that's it" and then you can do whatever the hell)
*The one exception was the guy who said that all men, even 12 year olds, want it so bad that a male can't be molested in any way by a woman. I found that a bit disturbing and it kind of struck me as, perhaps unintentionally, anti-male.
I had dinner recently with an old high school acquaintance who was recently divorced. He was class of '77, I was class of '76. He bemoaned modern dating culture, or lack thereof. "What happened to dating, like we used to do?"
I looked at him in astonishment. I don't think I had a single date the entire time I was in high school. I had a lot of sex, but it was never structured around a "date." I mean, c'mon! It was the 1970s! We had both the Pill AND legal abortion, and no AIDS! Everybody was having indiscriminate sex!
I'm more troubled today by the age at which kids start having sex (even younger than I was, and at 15 I was extraordinarily young for my day) and by an apparent confusion as to what constitutes sex (honey, if you're giving up anal, you may be a virgin technically, but...). I'm also very put off by what appears as a kind of culture of pornography, where 12-year-old girls walk around with t-shirts that have "PORN STAR" spelled out in rhinestones, and pole-dancing is considered an appropriate life skill. Sexual freedom in my youth went hand-in-hand with second-wave feminism, while today's young girls seem to enjoy the objectification we fought so hard against.
But, geez, we had just as much sex back then as they're having today. Sounds like some hardcore old-fogeyism being spread.
Amen, TNC. I echo the other commenters who point out that it is chastity that is artificial, not promiscuity. Its universal, all right. My eyes got opened real wide when I went to India as an exchange student.
I spent 6 months there in a post-graduate school, one of the big three, and the hooking-up seemed as common as here, only more subtle and under the radar. There were also the odd shockers, such as the engaged chick who did random hook-ups, as well as the married one. There didn't seem to be much public shaming about it either - everyone seemed to respect a code of silence, ESPECIALLY when the significant others came to visit :D
Thanks for reinforcing my point, Stacy. I didn't say groups are disgusting; just that I enjoy solitude more than your average person. When you defensively interpret that as "groups are disgusting," you underscore the message that our culture ceaselessly sends out.
What do I think about group sex? What do you think about masturbation?
"I'm sorry, was I not clear?" Yeah, you were clear, TNC. I commented before reading the Jessica's article, and now I getcha.
Well, it would be one thing if Valenti even addressed dating, or the purported lack thereof (which I do buy into) - but she doesn't! I guess it's just much easier to turn this into some kind of generational issue than engage that critique.
There's obviously something to what she's getting at, but it's pretty much all received thinking about sexual freedom and the dangers of moralizing - which is really just its own form of moralizing.
The big problem here is just how bourgeois this whole way of thinking is - as if what really mattered in this world were people "owning" their bodies, experimenting, and finding themselves. Call that freedom if you want, but if you do that's the only kind of freedom you're gonna get.
Hell if I knew in college, what I know about the opposite sex now, I'd have been Denzeling fools.
Truth.
Alright probably not.
(sigh) ... truth.
Wait, what was I saying?
Truth!
Holdie,
I was just joking with you. Lighten up. I'm all for masturbation AND group sex. And certainly masturbating while watching group sex.
CitizenE, ooh la la. that's the song you're looking for.
"The idea that twenty years ago, people weren't having one night stands, or that young people today simply never go out on dates, again, simply doesn't smell right. It amazes me that people buy this claptrap. I deeply suspect that at the bottom of it all lay the sexual insecurities of people who wish they'd been a little more carefree in college. I strongly suspect that they don't resent hook-up culture--they resent that they didn't get hooked-up."
CHURCH!!!
Paging Mr. Douthat....
Did anyone read the comments that followed the linked article? Several young women who are currently in college or recent grads responded, and commented that there is a hook-up culture at many colleges, and women are often damaged by it. Women are expected to be sexually available even if they don't want to, or maybe don't want to with a particular person or in certain circumstances, and the opportunities for more respectful and mutual relationships and sexual experiences with men are few and far between.
Some of the comments went on to say that there has to be a way to address this issue without shaming women or advocating chastity as the answer.
If women are being pressured that's bad, but don't women still have the option of weapons? My Mom fended off some athlete using a skillet. She also had friends who were cops or protective.
Thomas,
The way I read the comments is that young women aren't being pressured in the sense of physically forced; rather, if you're unwilling to hook up with a guy, you have no social life at all. It's more of a reluctant acceptance of the playing field they're dealing with.
"The way I read the comments is that young women aren't being pressured in the sense of physically forced; rather, if you're unwilling to hook up with a guy, you have no social life at all. It's more of a reluctant acceptance of the playing field they're dealing with."
Daughter,
In order for a young woman to have no social life at all because she refused to go along with the hook-up culture, she would have to be socially ostracized by OTHER WOMEN for not being "cool". If that is the case, the reason why youmg women on college campuses are being damaged by hook-up culture is peer pressure from other women. If that is the case, then we need to talk to our daughters about not playing by the rules of a Mean Girls' culture.
Here's what I know--Every five years, or so, newspapers discover some cultural trend like this, seemingly expressly concocted to scare the crap out of people. Of course said cultural trend is usually just humans being humans, but rebranded.
Steve Sailer noticed this, too, five years ago (copy a few words and do a "find" to see the blog entry on the page):
It reminds me of that article on underage prostitutes that was a big deal awhile ago. The newsweekly couldn't just say: "Hey, we figured you'd like to read an article about underage prostitutes ... so, here it is!" No, they had to put together a big song and dance about how it's your civic duty to read this alarming article about a growing problem affecting ever larger numbers of America's hot young babes. Of course, they didn't have any real evidence one way or another about the numbers.
"you're unwilling to hook up with a guy, you have no social life at all."
TR: The problem I have here is I don't know if that's literally true or if it's something that merely "feels true" to them because kids 18-22 are a bit overdramatic and maybe even feel "lonely in a crowd."
I think it's plausible that if you don't "hook up" you don't go to the really great parties. But you know what? Big deal. Okay that might be a bit too glib. I just don't know if going to "great parties" is really what makes even a college student happy or fulfilled. To some extent college should be when you start trying to be or assert your own person. For some that may involve partying, but it doesn't really have to. If who you are is someone who wants something different than loveless sex and inebriation good for you. Rather than complain try to find a peer group where that can be expressed, tolerated, or even accepted. And if you can't find one then you can complain.
God, If when I was in college I knew as much about women as I do now ...
I still wouldn't have known anything.