Abstract
In a review of Lisa Wade’s American Hookup (W.W. Norton, 2017), sexuality scholar and former American Sociological Association president Paula England discusses the author’s use of original research and data from England’s studies to engage the particularities of heterosexual hookups on American college campuses.
American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus Lisa Wade W. W. Norton, 2017 288 pages
Millennials view their college years as a time when one is supposed to “have fun” as well as get a degree. What, exactly, is seen as fun? Wild parties that feature drunkenness, dancing, and flirting that sometimes leads to hooking up.
Lisa Wade’s American Hookup gives you an up-close-and-personal portrait of the contemporary college “hookup” scene. To do her research, Wade had over 100 students in her courses write weekly journals over a period of five years. In these journals, students wrote about their experiences with sex and romance, and they also discussed what they saw going on around them. Wade then conducted in-depth interviews with 21 of the students after they graduated. In an effort to broaden the representative nature of her convenience sample, Wade studied what students around the country said in articles in online student newspapers. Last, but not least, she took to the road to give talks on many campuses, learning from students along the way.
From these various sources, we are given a unique glimpse into a millennial’s “fun” night: a student drinks heavily with friends before a party (“pre-gaming”), the party features sexualized dancing (“grinding,” in which women’s buttocks rub against men’s genital areas), and the student hooks up with the “hottest” person available. “Hooking up” entails doing something sexual; intercourse occurs only about 40% of the time. For this statistic, and some others, Wade uses analysis of the Online College Social Life Survey. (I conducted this survey of over 20,000 students on 21 university and college campuses between 2005 and 2011, and I make the data available to researchers who ask for it. I’ll draw on some of its findings as I discuss Wade’s book.)
About a third of Wade’s informants had opted out of the hookup scene altogether. This finding is consistent with my data, which show that approximately 30% of college seniors around the country have never hooked up, and 20% are still virgins. Why are these students not hooking up? Some find it immoral on religious grounds. Others don’t get involved because they still live with their parents and are not on campus when the parties take place. Some aren’t wanted as partners, either because they aren’t seen as “hot” or because of bias against their race (this is especially true for black women and Asian men). And some students of color told her that they stay away from such parties because they see them as a “White thing,” although my data show that Black men hook up just as frequently as do White men. LGBTQ students can find a niche on most campuses, but mainstream hookup parties are often too heteronormative to be inviting: whereas girls kissing girls are generally assumed to be straight, thereby providing cover for some young women to explore real interests in other women, two men engaging in sexually explicit dancing at a frat party seems unimaginable.
A large majority of students hook up at some point during their college career, but, as Wade correctly points out, hookups aren’t all that frequent. Once a semester is about what’s typical. Wade claims that even if hooking up isn’t as frequent as students themselves think it is, hookup culture pervades campuses, so much so that students feel left out when they have nothing to add as peers debrief after parties, or have no pictures of “fun,” drunken party scenes to post on Instagram.
What happens after a hookup? In the most novel contribution of her book, Wade tells us about students’ efforts to tamp down any feelings they have for hookup partners. It is as if they have to avoid warmth in hookups to avoid relationships, which can mean moving too fast toward marriage. Regardless of how they really felt, students describe striking poses after a hookup in an attempt to create the impression that the encounter was emotionally meaningless. In talking about hookups, they emphasize how drunk they were, as if to put an end to any speculation that they have a romantic interest in the partner. Another strategy students described is creating some distance after the hookup—if you were friends, act like acquaintances; if acquaintances, act like strangers. As with students’ exaggerated notions of how often their peers hook up, I suspect that Wade’s informants exaggerate how often aloofness follows hookups: three-quarters of respondents in my survey said that they had since been in touch with their most recent hookup partner by text, phone call, email, or in person.
Some students told Wade that they avoided hooking up a second time with the same person for fear one of them might “catch feelings.” Their fear may be warranted: my data show that the more times students hook up with the same partner, the more interested they are in a relationship. Other students admitted some budding romantic interest in their hookup partner and felt hurt by the partner’s subsequent aloofness. Consistent with the idea that some are interested in a relationship afterward, my data show that only half of men and 40% of women claimed no interest in a relationship with their partner right after the hookup.
According to my survey data, roughly 90% of students want to marry someday, but they see it happening in their late twenties—often a decade away. Yet a succession of casual hookups is not the only possible way to spend the decade or more between first sex and finding a spouse, and I’ve often wondered why serial monogamy isn’t a competing model. and maybe, to some extent, it is. Students could pursue a series of exclusive relationships, none of which is assumed to necessarily lead to marriage, but one of which might, if it lasted long enough. My survey shows that about 70% of seniors have been in at least one relationship that lasted six months or longer during college. Over half of the women in such relationships report that they may want to eventually marry this partner. So it isn’t as if exclusive relationships are off the menu in college. But, as Wade points out, a strong majority of both men and women say they wish there were more opportunities to form relationships at their school. Something about the hookup culture is discouraging relationships in the period before one gets serious about finding a spouse.
Serial monogamy isn’t the “missing model” that most interests Wade. Instead, she champions another alternative to the prevailing hookup model: casual sex that is respectful and warm. Today’s hookups may be “hot,” she argues, but they are almost never warm. Wade does not believe that casual sex is inherently bad for women, but she thinks that the coldness of the hookup scene takes an emotional toll on both men and women.
Wade shows us that many millennials see a “warm hookup” as an oxymoron. But why isn’t a warm, respectful hookup in their cultural tool kit? It is certainly logically possible. As one explanation, Wade proposes what I call the asymmetry of gender change: we have come to accept women doing things and having traits formerly reserved for men much more than the reverse. So when men are warm, it may be construed as femininity, and femininity in men is seen as weakness. This may be an impediment to warm, respectful hookups. But we accept men’s warmth in relationships and marriage, so why not in hookups too? I wonder if there is a more generic issue about cultural models: Is the blunt instrument of informal social construction of a new social form only capable of producing a simple model of hookups in which they are distinguished cleanly from long-term relationships?
Today’s hookups may be “hot,” Wade argues, but they are almost never warm. But why isn’t a warm, respectful hookup in millennials’ cultural toolkit?
A related, unresolved issue is why gender inequality is so pervasive in hookups. Hookups feature a huge gender gap in orgasms and men’s frequent disrespect for their partners, both of which are much worse in hookups than in relationships. Why? We often think that women’s economic dependence on men gives men the upper hand in relationships, but surely this is mostly irrelevant in college. Male hookup partners are not supporting the women—they aren’t usually even paying for their dinner! One can blame fraternity brothers, who run many of the popular drunken parties, but this begs the question of why women see frat parties as the places to be. Why don’t college women throw their own parties that nudge behavior in directions that they prefer? Wade suggests that women’s desire to be wanted is an important factor. They work hard to be sexy and to please men sexually, but show little sexual agency in the service of their own sexual pleasure. I agree, while also wondering why women manage to summon up just enough “masculinity” to keep things casual, but not nearly enough to push for their own pleasure. Wade also points to men’s relentless judging and grading of women’s bodies, and how they score points with other men if they can have sex with the “hottest” women on campus. These, too, are important factors, as is the endurance of the double standard by which women are judged more harshly for casual sex. But what determines which pieces of gender ideology recede and which are intractable? And what is the source of male students’ power on campuses? I wish I knew. There are many unresolved questions and issues, clearly, but you will understand the hookup culture much better if you read Wade’s book.