Bill Clinton, it now appears, was ahead of his time.
His encounter with White House intern Monica Lewinsky would fit perfectly in today’s “hooking up” culture of commitment-free sexual contact that’s described in a provocative new book.
What is hooking up? Sometimes, it’s what Grandma called promiscuous sex. Sometimes it’s just making out. Sometimes it’s oral sex, which many young people don’t even think of as “having sex.”
Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post reporter, studied hooking up and explains how it has changed boy-girl relationships in her book, “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both” (Riverhead Books, $24.95).
Her research focused on young women. For an academic year she followed three groups of girls. One group was at Duke University in Durham and one was at George Washington University in Washington. She also followed three D.C.-area high school students. She interviewed dozens of other people, too, including young men and parents.
What she found was plenty of sex _ oral sex, no-strings-attached sex, friends-with-benefits sex _ and not much traditional boyfriend-girlfriend courtship.
WHY `HOOKING UP’ IS DIFFERENT
“Sex is just something you should experience, like drugs.” That’s how Carmela, 15, described her expectations. Sure, plenty of kids have always been sexually active. But today, hooking up isn’t perceived as negative, the way “sleeping around” used to be.
As Stepp said in an interview with the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families, “It’s different from the `one night stand’ of the past; few young people actually grew up having sex that way. But today, hooking up is common.”
In part, that’s because the term isn’t precise. “Sometimes, in a conversation, you have to clarify,” Duke sophomore Sarah Howell, 19, of Charlotte said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer.
But its key characteristic is that it implies the absence of any relationship or commitment. “Hooking up’s defining characteristic,” Stepp writes, “is the ability to unhook from a partner at any time.”
This commitment-free attitude is attractive to many women. It gives them a sense of power over men, that they’re avoiding stereotypes of women as helpless victims.
As a high school sophomore tells Stepp: “Who says girls can’t play guys just like guys have always played girls?”
Stepp questions whether hooking up is as empowering as many believe. “Guys have no doubt that they’re the winners in the hookup culture,” she writes. ” `Because girls are more assertive, it’s easy for us to be a——s,’ a senior man at GW told me.”
One young woman at Duke whom Stepp followed prided herself on being sexually liberated. But, the girl eventually concluded, “There exists a very fine line between being sexually liberated and being sexually used.”
TOO BUSY FOR BOYFRIENDS
For many young women already under pressure to make good grades, play sports, build resumes and earn professional degrees, the idea of trying to find time for a boyfriend is too much. In a jammed schedule, getting to know someone takes time.
Hooking up is quick.
“At Duke people are so busy, hooking up is sort of a substitute,” Howell said. “People sometimes find it more convenient not to commit. A lot of times people will hook up regularly but people don’t want to expend the time to make it a relationship.”
“Convenience and time-efficiency is a really big thing.”
THE RISK OF DISEASE
Hooking up carries risks, Stepp writes, particularly sexually transmitted diseases and rape. Several women Stepp followed were being treated for sexually related infections. One contracted a dangerous strain of human papillomavirus, which can lead to cervical cancer.
While public attention has focused on declining teen pregnancy rates, the rate of STDs remains high _ higher in the U.S. than any other developed country. More young women than young men now contract STDs.
SEXUAL ASSAULT: `GRAY RAPE’
Some have coined a term for what can happen when hooking up becomes sexual assault: “gray rape.” Several of the women Stepp interviewed experienced date rape in circumstances they called “the gray area.” They had been drinking or were undressed with a man, and though the girl said “no,” he didn’t stop.
One Duke sophomore described an incident during the 2004-05 year, with a Duke athlete. She had one drink at a bar, and they went to her dorm room. She told him she didn’t want to have sex, but they began making out, taking off underwear. She told him again she didn’t want sex. He didn’t stop.
She didn’t report it, or even think of it as rape. Months later, after she told the story publicly (not using his name) at a rally against sexual assault, the man denied it was assault, saying she was drunk. Stepp points out that wouldn’t have excused assault.
A Justice Department study found one in five college women will be raped on campus, and 85 percent to 90 percent of the time, the victim knows the assailant.
Alcohol plays a big role, especially in “gray rape.” A Harvard study of campus rapes found three out of four women were too drunk to either give consent or resist. Some researchers say sexual assault is the biggest risk to young women while drinking.
Stepp also found that women who perceive that hooking up gives them power over men may be particularly reluctant to view themselves as victims of rape.
BYE-BYE, LOVE
Maybe the saddest part of the hook-up way of life is the loss of romance, Stepp found. The young women she followed typically ended up feeling dispirited, dissatisfied, even depressed. “I have not met one girl who if you press them … is happy about hooking up,” Stepp said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer. “I’ve heard too many sad stories.”
Stepp, who says she’s a feminist, is quick to say she doesn’t think male-female relationships should revert to the old, unequal days. She thinks women should pay attention to what makes them happy.
“I think there were some good things about the past,” she said. “Some of it was fun. There were games, sure. Maybe as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate the courtesies.”
Is hooking up truly as relationship-free as it’s depicted?
Georgia Ringle, Davidson College health educator, suspects that often “an attachment is found.” Some hook-up behavior she sees is what in another era would be called boyfriend-girlfriend behavior, though students are reluctant to use those terms.
One reason she’s skeptical that all the hooking up at Davidson is truly relationship-free: “We have this huge percentage of alumni marrying each other.”
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WHAT, EXACTLY, IS `HOOKING UP’?
It can mean any physical contact from a kiss to intercourse. “Partners may know each other well, only slightly or not at all, even after they have hooked up regularly. … It is frequently unplanned, though it need not be. It can mean the start of something, the end of something or the whole something.”
_ From “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both”
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