Another article where they pretend new slang means new behavior

And it's all just a weak excuse to write an article about young people having sex. Oh yeah, and passing judgement on young women under the auspice of worrying about their mental health. Yep, it's another article about this worrying new practice of college kids screwing around, and calling it "hooking up". (Isn't the term dead yet? I want to say I'm "hooking up with my friends downtown" again without some middle-aged reader of Newsweek thinking something much, much different.)

The first step in one of these articles is trying to determine how the hell the new term means something different than the old terms.

The hooking-up phenomenon does appear to differ in some important respects from past eras. In the pre-hookup world of campus life, casual petting or sex with a friend or acquaintance was less common. Sex usually involved one of two alternatives: relations between lovers on the one hand, and a go-all-the-way one-night-stand on the other.

The hookup, however, appears to be more random and casual than past practices. Yet, since a hookup often doesn't involve real sex, it's not necessarily as potentially consequential as traditional campus sex.

So, it's somehow more random and casual than a one-night stand? And kids messing around without "going all the way" is a new thing? And it's a bad thing? Anyway, we know this is bullshit, so let's get onto the meat of this--talking about kids having sex like they invented it, and shaming young women for enjoying it. Oh, and calling old things by new words, of course. Turns out "hooking up" does, in fact, conceal a number of older terms.

A FEMALE STUDENT SAID THAT although she has hooked up with lots of guys and girls since she has been at OU, she remains a virgin.... One male student said that he had a partner whom he hooked up with frequently for more than a year. Neither had the intention of ever having a relationship, he said, noting that in fact he was in a serious relationship with someone else for part of the time.

Gosh, I feel old. We used to call the former a "technical virgin". The latter I still call "cheating". Nothing new about either.

Some OU students report that they often regretted a hookup the next morning because they were too drunk the night before to make a responsible decision. One student said she has stopped hooking up because of a bad experience. The student said she woke up and couldn't remember what she had done the night before.

Used to call that "a mistake" and hopefully "learning from experience". One of the most irritating things about these articles is the alarmist tone they take about legal adults making common, common mistakes. (Excepting of course those situations where there might be date rape--but drinking too much and consenting is a different thing.) I did stupid stuff, my boyfriend did stupid stuff, my friends did stupid stuff, and most of us learned and grew up and made conscious decisions not to repeat our mistakes. Better, in my mind, to learn the hard way when you're young, because after you get a steady job and a steady partner and then start screwing up you have a lot more to lose.

And of course, one does have to wonder if these things would be easier for these young people to get under control if they had better sex ed in high school.

Having to do the "Walk of Shame" is one negative consequence that students, particularly females, often mention. One does the "walk" the morning after a hookup, on the way home. Female students report that they often feel extremely self-conscious.

"When you're walking home, in the clothes you had on the night before with your makeup smeared, you get the feeling that everyone knows what you did last night," said one female OU student. "I've seen girls walking across campus early in the morning in skimpy clothing, and you just have to feel embarrassed for them."

My friends and I called it the "Walk of Shame", too, but with a wink and a smile. After watching a friend flirt all night with a boy, if she showed up the next day and said, "Yeah, I did the 'Walk of Shame' this morning," we would get all happy for her. Of course, we were sex-positive feminist relics or something, I guess, because we also called it the "Walk of Shame" for the guy if it was the other way around. Not so in this article.

For the most part, OU male students do not appear to share this problem with their female counterparts. "You can't really tell when a guy's walking home after a hook up," said one male student. "Lots of guys I know refer to it as a 'walk of pride,' not a walk of shame."

If some guy called it the "Walk of Pride" when I was in college, we would have laughed in his face. Because it would be breaking the cardinal rule of my generation--at all points in time, you must be joking. And to call it the "Walk of Pride" would have made our term "Walk of Shame" seem actually shameful. And that would deserve a kick in the shins.

"Catching a feeling" or "getting emotionally attached" is another negative effect of hookups that seems to disproportionately affect women. Female students say they often feel "confused" and "used" after a hookup. "You think this guy must like me if he wanted to hook up with me," said one female student. "You think maybe he'll call and we'll start dating or something, but then he doesn't and you feel stupid."

It seems to me there are three likely outcomes from a casual sexual encounter--neither falls in love, one does and suffers from lovesickness, or both do. But in the world of stereotypes, #2 is the most common and only women suffer. I think there's a number of reasons for this. The big one is that scenario #2 is what those who are trying to scare/shame women into being "good" seek out to exploit. But there's a couple of other factors that need to be mentioned.

For one thing, people who experience #1 and #3 don't talk about it much. When you have a nonchalant sexual encounter, there's really nothing to talk about it so it fades into memory. If #3 happens, then the 1st sexual encounter just becomes one of many and therefore goes without mention. The only real reason that anyone worries over casual encounters is if they fall for the person without their affection being reciprocated.

Some lovesick people complain constantly; it's human nature. Even if you fall for someone who won't bother to touch you, you will complain about your pain to sympathetic friends. If you do have sex with that person, then yeah, your complaints are a little different, but the feeling is basically the same. But not all lovesick people complain--some of us are stoic sufferers. Believe me, I am really bad about suffering in silence because being lovesick embarrasses me.

If girls complain about lovesickness more than boys, it's probably due to gender training. Girls are practically expected to moon over boys, and boys are practically expected, a handful of 80's movies notwithstanding, to treat girls like disposable objects. Girls and boys, that is--mature men and women have different expectations on their behavior. The more conservative the youth subculture, the more these stereotypes hold sway. In the fraternity/sorority enviroment, you will see extreme examples of girls mooning and boys ignoring. In the punk/indie circles I ran in then (well, and now, but we're grownups), it was more acceptable for boys to moon and girls to have interests outside of pleasing boys. But it wasn't equal by any means--I suffered through relationships that I look back on and realize that the boys probably did have deep feeling but were afraid of getting judged unmanly for admitting it.

The cure for these woes is obvious, and it's not telling girls to treat their pussy like it was some ancient but holy artifact that boys have to accomplish heroic feats to access, all while pretending girls don't want sex so much as love. For one thing, as long as the double standard exists, all the obstacles to "access" in the world won't discourage young men to deny loving feelings if the large society teaches them that love is emasculating. All it will mean is that they will go through all the artificial hoops and then abandon and humiliate the girls afterwards anyway.

I'm afraid the only answer is to take on the double standard and deny it everywhere we see it and shame those who cling to it. For example, some more quotes from the article.

Another common rule of engagement is keeping the relationship quiet. While the chances of no one finding out are virtually impossible, considering the nature of student housing in small-town Athens, students say keeping the incident secret is important.

"I think girls feel like they'll be called a whore if it gets out," said one male student.

If I heard some young man say this, I'd probably start busting on his ass. "Who calls girls 'whores'? Do you? Why? Do your friends? Do you correct them?" There's a way to do it with some humor, of course, but these double standards only get challenged if people are willing to challenge them.

And articles like this really do reinforce the problem, painting girls as victims of male lust. It can do a world of good for a young woman to get her hands on an article or two that speaks the truth about their own experiences, talks about women giving into lust, admires our sexual capacity.