Life Explained by An Amateur Sociologist: Hookup Culture

I am a sociologist. Okay, fine. I’m a sociologist-in-training. Okay, fine, I’m concentrating in Literary Arts and I’ve taken two sociology classes. Okay fine, one-and-a-half. But those one-and-a-half classes have taught me a little about life, a little about love, and a lot about how to observe, analyze, and explain human interaction. Now, I’m hoping to share my deep, expansive knowledge of sociology with you.

Today we’re going to be talking about “hookup culture.” What is hookup culture, you ask? Well, dear, innocent reader, hookup culture is the grain of the very fabric of our social mating process. What do those words mean, you ask? Hookup culture is how many sociologists, including myself, define the state of the mating process for today’s youth, particularly for college students across America. Hookup culture encompasses the minimal-commitment casual sex that has come to replace dating for many college students.

Think about it: have you been on, or do you know a single person who has been on an actual ~date~ recently? I’m talking about a coffee-drinks-dinner-bowling-or-movie date. Anyone? I didn’t think so. Dating is dead. But don’t fear: hooking up has risen like a phoenix from its ashes to fill its shoes. So maybe fear, actually, because this is a pretty big change.

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Here’s why the emergence of hookup culture is a big deal:

  1. Based on centuries of social conditioning, we’ve been brought up to understand sex as something significant, and something that ought to be accompanied by some kind of emotional attachment or commitment. Was this the way the cavemen operated? Who knows? Not me, that’s for sure. But somewhere in the development of the monogamous relationship, sex and exclusivity, ~sexclusivity~ if you will, became a big deal. And now, people are just having sex randomly all the time! What?!
  2. Most college students very unofficially surveyed agreed that they expected to be married by age 30. BUT so far, few of them have experience being in a legit long-term relationship. And no, by long-term I do not mean that you’ve made it through an entire series on Netflix together.
  3. On a totally serious note: there has been many a study conducted about whether or not hookup culture is bad for women. I will not take a stance on this either way. I think that women should be able to do whatever the f*ck we want, and f*ck whomever we want. That being said, hookup culture can be a Petri dish for social and cultural norms that continue not only to perpetuate heteronormative standards for romantic interaction, but that also support a system in which men have more power and control when it comes to the mating process. In this way, hookup culture might not be that much better than dating in terms of breaking traditional male-dominated mating norms.

Here’s why hookup culture isn’t a big deal:

  1. Hooking up for our generation is basically dating for our parents’ generation. Back in the day, our parents, sporting bad eighties perms, went on date after date. There was the same air of freedom, independence, and youth associated with dating that is now associated with hooking up. There’s nothing crazy or excessive about hookup culture—it’s just dating evolved.
  2. People have sex at about the same age today as they did waayy back in the day. Yeah, today people are having sex in their late teens and early twenties. Guess what? People were having sex in their early twenties back in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, too. Here’s the big difference: people got married v early back then, and so they were having sex as married couples (or if they were having sex out of wedlock, they were planning to get married real quick). Today, people get married pretty late, so premarital sex is much more common, but not really that wild.
  3. People are still eventually getting married, or at least cohabiting, or living together in a nonmarital partnership. Sure, marriage is on the decline since like the 1950s, but it’s definitely still happening. Hooking up might seem like this apocalyptic force that’s drastically altering the way love and sex work in America, but it’s not really. It’s a blip on the radar. Trends still overwhelmingly favor marriage and long-term partnership. It’ll just take us a little longer to get there.

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Well, this has been fun. We’ve learned a little, we’ve laughed a little, and we all feel a little more informed about the ever-changing culture of meeting and mating on college campuses. Just remember: we all interact with hookup culture in different ways. You can take part in it or you can not. You can enjoy it, ignore it, give it side-eye, or pretend it doesn’t exist. This is the number one rule of being an amateur sociologist: you do you. And remember to keep your eyes open. Amateur sociology is all about observing, dissecting, and then pretending you know how to explain the crazy things humans do. Stay tuned, I’m gonna try and fail again next week.

Amateur Sociologist, signing off.

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