Monsoon Season Diversions
I’m playing hooky from a leaking ceiling and a flooded basement, after three days of the heaviest rain in years.
I. She’s Out of My League
Of course I had to run right out and see this quirky, lovable film where the nerd gets the girl. The movie isn’t perfect, and requires a suspension of disbelief that even my geek-loving self couldn’t quite manage, but one happily goes along for the ride anyway. For the record, what I find unbelievable is not that Molly, a “hard 10,” could fall for the goofy looks and nasal voice of Kirk, who’s really quite delightful. I just wish they’d given Kirk a little more to work with – he’s an airport security guard with no ambition. Still, when put directly up against Molly’s lunkhead ex, I knew which guy I’d pick for the long haul, and Molly makes us believe it too.
Bill Gibron of PopMatters makes a comparison that also occurred to me:
If you combined Knocked Up with There’s Something About Mary and merged both into the scatterbrained strategies of Sex Drive writers Sean Anders and John Morris, you’d have some idea of how oddly disjointed yet ultimately satisfying She’s Out of My League is.
There’s a lot of good Game stuff in here — I actually stuck around for the credits, just to see if Mystery had consulted on the film (apparently not). Four guys rating themselves on the 1-10 scale, deducting half points here and there for shitty car, being in a Hall & Oates cover band, etc. was hilarious. Molly’s ex makes all the annoying AMOG gestures to Kirk that Mystery Method prepares guys for. Throughout, Kirk remains earnest and polite, but when it counts most he stands up for himself with Molly and we cheer him.
The four guy friends are winning and funny – there was lots of loud male laughter in the theater. An unlikely group that works at the airport, they include a natural Alpha, a couple of lovable Betas including Kirk, and one married guy who defies characterization as someone who adores Disney animated films and believes in fairy tales.
Again, Gibron:
It’s rare when a movie wants to champion the decent and demean the smug and smarmy. It’s also infrequent that this storyline lets the genuine triumph over the joke. Inside Kirk and Molly’s impossible relationship, within their obvious affection and special sense of self, there’s a little hope for all of us.
This genre of Nerd Gets the Girl romantic comedy is hardly new. To the extent that pop culture influences the hopes and expectations of young people, especially women, I think movies like this are good entertainment, and they may even do a bit of good.
II. NASA Scientists Plan to Approach Girl by 2018
In honor of reader vera44, who works at The Onion, I’ll share a recent favorite video of mine.
NASA Scientists Plan To Approach Girl By 2018
III. Figures of Speech
Miss Conduct of the Boston Globe, aka Robin Abrahams, received this letter yesterday (link here):
I recently met an attractive and intelligent woman at an art-gallery party. We talked for half an hour and seemed to be hitting it off, even making tentative plans for coffee. Then things went downhill. I commented that she had a “nice, full, hourglass figure.” She snapped, “Oh, really, well, perhaps I should do some plus-size modeling!” I tried to clarify my comments but only exacerbated things when I used the term “healthy.” With a look of disgust, she slapped my face and departed. I will never forget those agonizing moments standing there alone, drawing judgmental stares from onlookers. When I told a female friend, she said it was never a good idea to comment on a woman’s figure. What do you think? K.M.
Miss Conduct focused on the total inappropriateness of the slap, which I agree with.
First and foremost, she hit you. There is only one situation in which it is acceptable to hit another person, and that is in the physical defense of one’s own property or person, or in defense of another.
Who knows what she was thinking. The point is, regardless of what you said, her action was beyond the bounds of civilized behavior, and Miss Conduct does not condone blaming the victim: you.
But she does address the point that is likely to serve KM well in his future minglings:
But since you are questioning your own behavior, I must agree with your female friend. Comments about a woman’s body, no matter how elegantly phrased, should be reserved until intimacy has been established. Far too many men treat women’s bodies as public property, to be commented on as though we exist only for their viewing pleasure. So don’t do this. At a first meeting, or even a first date, keep the comments confined to a woman’s clothing, her hairstyle, her smile — all aspects that can reflect on her good taste or character, not her body parts. (Women aren’t stupid, K.M. If a man is talking to us for half an hour and making plans for a coffee date — we kind of know you like our figures.)
GUYS: This is very important. Guys often use “compliments” about a woman’s body as pickup lines, and if they work, then you’re talking to an undiscriminating woman, which may actually be your goal. If it’s not, then please know that asking a woman, “Are those real?” will not fly. Don’t even think of negging a woman about her body. If you do, I might back her decision to smack you.
GIRLS: If a guy is clearly interested, and has been making conversation for half an hour, he’s not calling you fat. He’s telling you that he finds your nice, full, hourglass figure hot. Don’t make the mistake of falling into the trap of what other women and gay men find attractive.
IV. The Ten Biggest Dating Mistakes People Make on Facebook (link here):
Jeremy at The Zone, 100.5 (wherever that is!) wrote a very good and funny article about what NOT to do on Facebook. We need a lot more of these – Facebook behavior is out of control. I’m being deluged with crazy Farmville requests (What is that about?) and recently it popped up on my feed that Sharon saw an owl. An owl! Who cares, geez. I don’t even know Sharon. I mean does she live on Central Park West or in Montana? Everything is relative! But I digress. From Jeremy:
Facebook abuse is rampant! We all know at least one person whose status updates never cease to annoy or bewilder. Or how about that chick who is constantly inviting you to engage in a mafia war or ask for a nail to help them build a barn in Farmville? But Facebook abusers aren’t just hurting the innocent—they’re also seriously ruining their own dating game.
Click on the link, it’s worth a look especially if you’re dating and using Facebook.
V. Unhappy With Your Birth Control? 10 Methods You May Want to Try (link here):
I found this after I displayed my own ignorance in the recent Contraception post, and after reassuring myself that the Pullout Method was not one of the recommended ten, I read it through and learned a few new things. An excellent summary of options, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Passion and Frustration
I need to do some housekeeping here quickly about the comment threads. (Gotcha! If I had titled this post Comment Policy, no one would have read it!) There’s been some passion and frustration in the comment threads recently, and I’d like to address it.
First, let me say that I am really thrilled with the level of conversation, and how many of you are participating. I am learning a ton by reading the discussions and asking questions of the commenters. It’s been a great mix of men and women, from college age through middle age, and generally a lively, intelligent group. I sincerely appreciate the time and energy that you invest when you leave a thoughtful comment. Debate is great, and I don’t want HUS to be an echo chamber – that’s boring.
For those of you (> 90%) who read Hooking Up Smart, but don’t comment, I urge you to do so when you feel inclined. If you generally don’t read the comment threads, that’s a good place to start. I always find with a new blog that it’s helpful to listen and watch for a while. Just click on the post-it note to the right of a post title to get to the Comments section.
I am aware that there are readers who are frustrated with their lives, frustrated with the dating scene in general, frustrated with me, and with each other. That is understandable, but it is very important to me that civility be maintained at all times. There is never a reason to call someone names or impugn their character. Communicating online makes it very easy to abandon the normal rules of polite conversation, but my rule of thumb is “Don’t say anything here that you wouldn’t say to my face if I invited you to my home.” That’s how I feel about Hooking Up Smart. It’s my home in a way, and I won’t tolerate misogyny, misandry or any other unproductive, insulting remarks here. I have never put comments into moderation, and I don’t want to start now. However, I will start deleting comments that I don’t believe meet a standard of decency.
Finally, I know that several readers have been having trouble with the DISQUS comment system. For the past two days, one of my best and brightest commenters has been unable to comment at all. Obviously, this is unacceptable, so I’ve changed to a new system. It will take several hours for comments to look normal, and any new ones will be held up briefly while the new system installs. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope that the new system will work better. Feel free to shoot me an email through the Contact page with any questions or feedback.
And now I’ll get back to regularly scheduled programming.
Scheherazade Goes to College
In the year or so that I’ve been blogging, I’ve heard a lot of stories. Many of the them have recurring themes. Even Shakespeare stole his stories from the Greeks; there just aren’t that many different variations on human behavior. A few weeks ago, though, I got an email from a reader that astounded me. I fired back a response and thought I was done with it, but it’s been on my mind quite a bit, so I thought we could discuss it here.
Dear Susan,
I need your help! I am in such a complicated situation, and I desperately need some advice. The past two weekends I have hooked up with a super hot guy that I’ve been crushing on forever. He was just really flirty one night so we went back to his place and he was really sweet. I knew that he had been hooking up for a few weeks with another girl, but she’s totally haggard and a slut, so I figured he’d be happy to ditch her. The second weekend we hooked up again on Friday night, but then someone saw that other girl walking home Sunday morning, so she was probably with him Saturday night.
Here’s where it gets really complicated. Last night I was out and the other girl was there too. He was there and being pretty friendly to everyone, not singling either of us out. So I’m in the bathroom and there’s this girl crying and talking to her friend. And I’m in the stall and I can hear what they’re saying. She likes the exact same guy, and she’s just found out about him hooking up with the other girl. She’s really upset, and she obviously doesn’t even know about me. I can’t believe that he has something going already with two other girls!
So my question is, how can I get him to make me his #1? I just want to get these other girls out of the way! I would appreciate any advice you can give me.
Katherine
Can you see why this letter has haunted me? Holy hell.
I’d like to think that this is a description of something very rare, but I know that it’s not. Katherine obviously hadn’t read any of my posts before writing – or she would have known that I would not be the person to give her the advice she seeks. In that sense, a letter slipped through here unlike most of the ones I get, and I’m glad it did. Though it may sound extreme, there is only one possible conclusion:
Katherine aspires to membership in a harem.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. Katherine aspires to membership is something not nearly as beneficial as a harem. The word harem first appeared in English in 1634, and comes from the Arabic word haram, meaning forbidden, specifically with respect to women’s quarters. From Wikipedia: “The Imperial Harem of the Ottoman sultan, which was also called seraglio in the West, typically housed several dozen women, including wives.” Because the women were forbidden to other men, they were served only by eunuchs and slave girls. One Persian harem is believed to have contained over 3,000 women.
1001 Arabian Nights, thought to have originally been a Persian book of folk tales, featured the story of Scheherazade. She literally kept her head by thinking up a new and exciting story to tell the King every night.
And so the King kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of last night’s story. At the end of one thousand and one nights, and one thousand stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him. During these one thousand and one nights, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen.
This is the fairy tale that Katherine is trying to live. She wants to be made Queen, having made her master a wiser and kinder man.
There’s a lot of talk in the blogosphere, especially around the topics of Game and Men’s Rights, about women increasingly living in “de facto harems” as a result of the declining marriage rate. Obsidian predicts that they’ll become a lot more common (link here). Blogger Butterfly Squash mentions harems in a recent piece as well (link here). And of course, when Tiger Woods got caught with 12 pairs of pants down, there was much talk of his having a harem (photos here).
Stuart Schneiderman of Had Enough Therapy? wrote a post called Welcome to the Harem (link here):
“If the ratio of women to men [on college campuses] is 60%/40% this will obviously have an effect on dating and relationship behavior. One effect…is that with men in such short supply those few remaining men have become empowered.
They can do what they want, when they want, with whom they want… and women, unhappy about being alone, go along because they feel that they have no other choice. If the choice is between hooking up with an anonymous male and going home alone, no small number of women are choosing the former, on the grounds that something is better than nothing.”
For the most part, I’ve always considered this to mean that women will have sex outside of relationships, even if they want a relationship, because holding out doesn’t really get women anywhere, and it’s hard to spend four years in the romance desert. Now it appears that women have found a way to be brought into the harem tent, no longer left to wander across the endless sands. Sharing the man is the price many women seem willing to pay.
Schneiderman continues:
“The gender disparity has granted men so much power that women’s voices, their needs, their interests become trivial psychocultural excrescences.”
He then goes on to make a point that is usually overlooked in articles about hookup culture:
“As Charlotte Allen points out [in her recent article in The Weekly Standard, girls] are not hooking up with just anyone. Not just any man is going to succeed at the hook-up game. A group of ersatz alpha males seems to have garnered a disproportionate number of women, while the beta and gamma males, nice guys, guys who would make good husbands or boy friends, are left out of the game.”
And here’s the apt harem analogy:
“The interesting part of all this is that a woman who engages in a casual sexual encounter with an ersatz alpha male, only to return to the comfort of the sisterhood, is acting like she is part of a harem.
- Women are attracted to men who seem to have had many women, because that is a sign of being an alpha male. Inexperienced men, who who are awkward and shy around women, need not apply for pick-up artist or alpha male status.
- Many of these men are not especially good lovers. This also becomes a sign of alpha maledom. If you are a pasha and can have any woman you want you do not need to be especially attentive to the woman’s needs. You are not going to see her in the morning anyway.
- Women learn to tolerate men who never call them again, because that too is a sign that he’s an alpha male, that he is never going to be hers, but that she belongs to his harem.”
In thinking about harems, it occurs to me that we also have our modern-day equivalents of those who guard the women forbidden to nearly all the males. The guy BFF, the guy who’s always hearing, “Let’s just be friends.” We have forced those guys into playing the role of the eunuch. Except that today’s eunuchs still have their balls, and they too want a shot at one of those 3,000 women.
The slave girls are the ones who flutter around the Queen Bee, happy to be in her sphere of influence, waiting on her hand and foot, constantly demonstrating loyalty. They hook up with sidekicks of the sultan if they can, happy to be on the fringe of his court.
Hundreds of years ago, women selected for the harem did not have a choice. Today they do. Signing up voluntarily for sexual slavery to the nearest alpha sultan strikes me as a puzzling, poor life choice. At least in those days, a woman got clean sheets. Katherine is sleeping on sheets probably not yet changed this semester, containing the bodily excretions of many other women. Ew.
Needless to say, I didn’t advise Katherine on how to become girl #1. In fact, I hope she fails miserably and gets kicked out on her bottom right away. She doesn’t sound like she’s anywhere near ready to face reality, which is that she is just one vagina among many, destined for the trash heap of regrets.
Katherine, your hookup is no sultan, and you are no Scheherazade. Step out of the fairy tale and into the real world before it’s too late, while men with a genuine pair are still willing to give you a shot.
Contraception Surprises
Amanda Hess writes The Sexist, a column about local sex and gender issues, for Washington D.C.’s alt-weekly, the Washington City Paper. She’s a feisty feminist, and I’m still suffering from that feminism hangover, so I won’t be getting into any intense debates with her. She’s got a good sense of humor, though.
A little pleased then, majorly bummed now
She had a recent column about guys and their ignorance of how contraception actually works. It’s funny enough that I had to share it with you. To be honest, I don’t think most women understand much of this either. We may know how to use it, but I think most of us are pretty weak on the science.
I recently overheard a group of young women having lunch together all trying to figure out how the Nuva ring works, and they expressed their amazement at how it just kind of “stays there.” I also read one account by a guy who pulled out during sex and found the Nuva Ring snugly positioned at the base of his penis. He didn’t even know his hookup or what it was, so he was more than a little puzzled. I guess if you’re riding the vag carousel you run the risk of catching the plastic ring from time to time.
From Amanda Hess:
Last week, I cornered some men into explaining their understanding of how birth control works, on camera. Results were mixed. Bonus: Guess which one is gay?
A recent study of unmarried men and women aged 18-29 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy turned up some very odd findings about peoples’ attitudes towards contraception:
1. 30% say they know little or nothing about condoms. (Um, it’s not rocket science.)
2. 63% say they know little or nothing about birth control pills. (This means that some women taking them are in this group. Yikes.)
3. 56% say they have not heard of the birth control implant. (OK, I really don’t know what that is.)
4. 42% of men and 40% of women believe that the chance of getting pregnant within a year while using the birth control pill is 50% or greater (despite research suggesting that the pill is typically 92% effective). (Taking it every day might help.)
5. 38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.” (Because Zoltar says so?)
And here’s the real kicker:
6. 53% of men and 52% of women say they would like to be parents now “if things in their life were different.” For those 25 and older, it was 66%.
7. Even among those who say it is important to them to avoid pregnancy right now, 20% of women and 43% of men say they would be at least a little pleased if they found out today that they or their partner were pregnant.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that?
Back to Amanda Hess at The Sexist:
In order to gauge the “surprise fetus” reaction, NCPTUP researchers first isolated survey respondents who claimed it was “very important or somewhat important for them to avoid pregnancy right now.” Then, researchers asked them how they would feel about an unplanned pregnancy:
If you found out today that (you were/your partner was) pregnant, how would you feel: Very upset, a little upset, a little pleased, very pleased, wouldn’t care.
Results: Staggeringly gendered!
Forty-three percent of young men responded that they would be “a little pleased” or “very pleased” by the news; only 20 percent of women answered the same. Men also proved more comfortable with an unplanned pregnancy at an earlier age: Thirty-four percent of men 18-19 said they would be pleased. By the time they reach age 20-24, 42 percent of men said they would be pleased. And over 50 percent of men aged 25-29 would be pleased by the news. Remember: this is only among men who deemed it “important” that a pregnancy not occur at this junction.
Meanwhile, the percentage of women who would be “pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy stays steady at a low 16 percent all the way from age 18 to 24. By the time women reach the 25-29 age range, the percentage of “pleased” women soars to 29 percent. Despite the jump, women in their late 20s still lag behind their male counterparts by 22 percentage points.
Freya Sonenstein, a research professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies adolescent males, says:
Men and women are not that different. There’s a high value given to having children. That’s one reason why using contraception consistently is a hard job.
Color me very surprised by these findings! They don’t say anything about marriage, but they do say some pretty interesting things about the desire to procreate. Your thoughts?
My Exotic Destination Theory of Relationships
Things have been a little heavy around here lately. I’ve been writing quite a bit about the reality of today’s sexual marketplace, which is important. But I’ve overindulged on the feminism angle and I’m feeling a bit hungover. So today it’s back to basics, with a letter I received last week.
Dear Susan,
I’ve gotten myself into a bad situation and I know I have only myself to blame. About six months ago I started hooking up with Ryan, and it was clear from the beginning that we weren’t heading into a relationship. I think after we’d hooked up a couple of times, I got mad at him for ignoring me at a bar when we were out with our friends, and he said straight out that he wasn’t looking to be in any kind of relationship, with me or anyone else. I said fine, and figured I’d play it by ear. For about three months we had a lot of sex and it was great. We started hanging out more, too. We went on runs, made meals together, that kind of stuff. Sometimes we were together from Friday night till Sunday night. We still never talked about feelings, or anything like that. We didn’t talk about other people either, though, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t hooking up with anyone else. I certainly wasn’t.
After a while I started to fall for him. I don’t know if I’d been in denial, or if it was from all the sex, but I really started wanting more. I was pretty sure he felt the same way – we were just so close, and there was a lot of sexual attraction, as I said. He is really everything I want, and I think I’m a good catch, so I just figured it would come up at the right time. I wanted it to happen naturally, though, not because I brought it up awkwardly.
I guess you can see where this is going. Last weekend, a friend of his teased him about some girl I’d never heard of. It was clear that something was starting there. I felt sick, and I knew I had to ask him about it, so I told him how I felt about him. To his credit, he didn’t act surprised and innocent, I think he knew it was coming. He admitted that he was interested in someone new, and he pointed out that we’d been friends with benefits from the start, which is true. He said that he thinks I’m great, but he hasn’t changed his mind about wanting to remain single.
I just don’t understand how I could have misread everything. It felt like a real relationship, we were so connected in every way. I often read where men say that a guy is always ready for a relationship with the right person. Obviously, I’m not that person, and now I’ll have to watch him bring this other girl around. I feel brokenhearted. I’ll never do FWB again.
How can guys be so involved and not get attached? I know men and women are different, but don’t guys ever fall for someone they’re hooking up with? Why am I never the right person?
Lizzie
Dear Lizzie,
I confess, of all the questions I get asked regularly, this is the one I have the greatest difficulty answering. I’ve written about this dilemma before, both here and here, and I still don’t have a solid understanding. It really comes down to the way men think, and that’s not a favorite topic of theirs. Even when a guy wants to explain his emotions, he often finds himself unable to express exactly what he’s feeling, especially if he’s conflicted. This leaves women overanalyzing and developing theories, all supported enthusiastically by their friends, but probably of little value in shedding any light on what’s really happening.
There’s the science piece, of course, the whole oxytocin thing, but I don’t think that explains it entirely. Not when you spent all that time together hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. I’ll give you my theory and we’ll see what other readers have to say. I may be all wrong here, and I’m interested to hear what the guys think.
My Exotic Destination Theory of Relationships
Imagine that Ryan has a great desire to travel, and finds himself the recipient of a six month fellowship to somewhere really exotic and unusual. Istanbul, for instance. He would never have planned such a trip at this point, with all the expense and time taken out of his regular life. But the opportunity presented itself, and he is very psyched to go, though he knows that he will be well outside his comfort zone in such a place.
When Ryan arrives in Istanbul, he can’t believe how easy the transition is at first. He has a great place to stay, it’s beautiful there, and so interesting! He is enjoying learning a lot about the local culture, and he is very glad he decided to come. In fact, he has never felt so alive. The colors are different, the flavors are different, and of course the language is different. After a few weeks, he settles into a routine, and is so infatuated that he begins to wonder if perhaps he should move there. He could definitely see himself happy in such a place, and though he’s always assumed he would spend his 20s living in NY, DC or Boston, he wonders whether he should grab onto this opportunity and hang on. It really does feel that special, and you’re only young once!
About halfway through Ryan’s extended stay, he begins to feel frustrated about his inability to speak the language. He can get by, many people speak some English, but these are not his people. He attends group gatherings, feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the customs. Here people do not ever offer a left hand. Hugs means something else entirely. In a room full of people, he stands in the corner, realizing that he can’t really understand much of the conversation. He misses the social routines that he was used to at home, where belching, farting and heavy drinking were all fairly acceptable behavior.
The food takes some getting used to as well. He attends banquets of delicacies never before tried, and he can’t believe how wonderful everything tastes. Still, it’s unfamiliar. He feels as if he’s always being watched, he feels like he’s performing, and he hopes he is holding his own at the table. What he wouldn’t give for a burger and fries right now!
Ryan misses his friends. He’s having a great experience, but it’s hard for him to just let his hair down and be himself. He is, after all, away from home, the place where they have to take you in when you knock at the door. And he keeps hearing stories from home about how much fun he’s missing out on! He knows that Istanbul is special, that he is lucky, but damn, his friends just took a road trip to Mardis Gras and he missed it. He’s a little worried that they’re starting to forget about him.
Finally, here he is in Istanbul, so close to so many other beautiful and wondrous places! He’d love to explore the coast, see the Greek islands, travel to other exotic locales. But the rules of the fellowship do not permit this. Ryan must be content with all of the wonders that Istanbul has to offer, and if he leaves he cannot return. His Turkish hosts do not understand his desire to see these other sights, as they know perfectly well that he will decide in the end that Istanbul is best. Still, he can’t help but feel curious, and he begins to look forward to the end of his stay, thinking of ways to travel home through another cool city. He can hardly believe that he ever considered moving here! He plans to return to the U.S. as soon as possible to join old friends and enjoy the familiar comforts of home. He’ll take a few weekend trips here and there, and he’ll begin saving up for a trip to another exotic destination, one that could not be more different from Istanbul.
Lizzie, I’m afraid that you’re Istanbul. And Ryan has booked his return flight through Marrakesh. Who knows, maybe Ryan will get sick of Marrakesh very quickly. Maybe he will miss Istanbul.
The bottom line is that Ryan really wants to go home right now, carefree and comfortable. He wants to speak bro and eat fast food and drink vast quantities of beer. He’ll enjoy going out for ethnic food once in a while, though. Just a quick visit to that exotic place before he returns to his regular life, the life he has chosen, at least for now.
A Flurry of Flustered Feminists, Finally
I am a post-baby boomer who has been handed a sort of Spice Girls’ version of feminism. We’re supposed to be wearing half-shirts and jumping around. And, you know, maybe that’s not panning out.
Tina Fey, Vogue, March 2010
Recently I wrote about feminist Rachel Simmons’ criticism of hookup culture, and how it produced a flurry of flustered feminists. I believe this may be a watershed moment, the point at which feminists begin to question (finally!) the full impact of the Sexual Revolution on the sociosexual marketplace. I hope this marks the beginning of a conversation that sex-positive feminists have been previously unwilling to have.
(For the record, Naomi Wolf has been voicing concern about the impact of hooking up on young women for years, but as an alum of a prior “wave” of feminism she was considered too old, uncool, and irrelevant to engage. Those who didn’t ignore her just said PFFFFT.)
Jessica Grose of Slate has weighed in with The Shame Cycle: The new backlash against casual sex. She’s surprised and puzzled by this new criticism of the random hookup. She begins by quoting Julie Klausner, author of the recently published book I Don’t Care About Your Band:
When you cry about things not working out, you’re crying not only because a guy you slept with now doesn’t seem to care you’re alive, but also because you’re ashamed of yourself for crying.
Life coach and psychoanalyst Stuart Schneiderman, who writes a blog called Had Enough Therapy? (Welcome him to the Blogroll!) writes helpfully about the nature, and purpose, of shame. He observes that [Grose] is really surprised that this woman can feel shame. Grose’s friend feels badly for having had sex with a man who: “now doesn’t seem to care you’re alive.” Does Grose feel that her friend should feel good or indifferent about what she did with the man who doesn’t care about whether or not she is still breathing?
He continues about the nature of shame:
Shame, of course, concerns how you look to others, how others see you. The salient term that was invented for the aftermath of hook ups was “the walk of shame.” When a women is making the walk of shame the fact that she does not think that she did anything wrong is not likely to be a great consolation.
But what happens when your shame is telling you one thing and your feminism is telling you something else? Grose seems agitated that young women would listen to what their shame, that is, their own feelings, is telling them and ignoring what their feminism is saying.
If you have made a mistake your shame is telling you not to repeat the experience. It is telling you to mend your ways and to esteem yourself sufficiently to refrain from having sex with men who do not care if you are alive the next morning.
Grose, oblivious to the significance of shame, continues:
From whence this confusing, shame-feedback loop? Compelling research shows that hooking up is not psychologically damaging.
I’m so glad she brought that up. Let’s talk about the compelling research in question. I want to address this constantly touted recent finding that hooking up is not psychologically damaging. This has been trumpeted by the casual sex crowd ceaselessly, so naturally I spent some time looking over the study by researchers at the University of Minnesota when it came out late last year. Here are the facts:
- The sample size was 1311, 44% male, 56% female.
- The age range was 18-24, with a mean age of 20.5.
- The survey asked about the respondent’s most recent sexual ENCOUNTER, and who it was with:
Fiancee/spouse/life partner: 55%
Exclusive dating partner: 25%
Close but not exclusive: 12%
Casual acquaintance: 8%
- The researchers evaluated the self-esteem of each of the respondents, considering the bottom two categories as representative of casual sex.
- There were twice as many males as females in the casual groups.
I’m no scientist, but I have designed surveys and projects. Here are my reservations about the study:
- It makes no sense to include marrieds in a study on the impact of hookup culture. These long-terms monogamists represent over half the sample. The relevant comparison would be between singles hooking up and singles not hooking up.
- The study asks only about the single most recent encounter. In the casual groups, we have no way of knowing if the respondent just had sex with an ex, their first random encounter, a drunken hookup they can’t remember or their best friend. We don’t know if they’ve been hooking up for years with 50 people, or one month with one person.
- The study did not differentiate between the self-esteem levels of males and females. Although the sample was 56% female, the casual groups were only 33% female. It is hardly surprising that males would not suffer a loss of self-esteem after a casual sexual encounter. In fact, they were probably downright elated in their responses!
- The findings were extrapolated from a study on nutrition, not the result of a study designed to ask this question.
I mean, come on! Case closed, Ms. Grose. In her defense, every media outlet has reported this as proof that hooking up is not psychologically harmful.
Back to Grose:
There seems to be something else at play in the culture that’s making Klausner and [others] regretful, some new wave of anti-orgasmic sexual conservatism that makes you hate yourself for what you did last night.
Cue the spinster panic articles…At the start of this decade, we have thoroughly internalized these recent conservative cultural messages about the importance of marriage: “73 percent of women born between 1977 and 1989 place a high priority on marriage,” writes Hannah Seligson in the Wall Street Journal.
Actually, 73% strikes me as a rather low number. I believe that number has been considerably higher in the past.
Schneiderman concludes:
Grose seems to be suggesting that feminism favors hook ups. If that is so, the reason must be that feminism is pathologically repelled by the notion that male and female sexuality are fundamentally different. If so, feminism must believe that if men can engage in hook ups without feeling any shame or guilt, then women should be able to do so too.
Shame is telling women that the feminist view is a bunch of bunk. Women who hook up feel shame because their actions belie their being as women. A woman who is forcing herself to behave as though she were a man does not know who or what she is. Her shame is trying to remind her.
Casual sex fan Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon, apparently alarmed at this turn of events in the femosphere, fired back at Grose with Sexual Shame is So Hot Right Now.
The casual sex backlash is here. Even so-called sex-positive feminists are starting to express their shame and regret over past one-night stands, says Jessica Grose in Slate. This is sure to cause many conservatives to rejoice, but I suspect the report of hookup culture’s death has been greatly exaggerated.
Rest assured ladies, there will be plenty more opportunities for you walk that walk of shame, and many years yet before you may succumb to spinster panic!
As I see it, young women have fully proved that we can have one-night stands, hear us roar –
Did she really just say that? Now I’m filled with shame and embarrassment on her behalf.
…and maybe we’re beginning to also allow ourselves more nuanced feelings about our hookups. …We can now acknowledge regret over a one-night stand, without being considered, or seeing ourselves as, forever ruined women; if there’s been a recent change in my generation’s relationship to casual sex, I suspect it’s that we’re relaxing our defensive posturing.
Maybe instead of signaling a backlash, these are actually signs that we’re slowly inching toward a world where a woman isn’t either good or bad, a wife or whore, a virgin or slut.
Now I’m pissed. I just kicked a chair and scared the dog.
The world we’re living in? It’s not about whether women are good or bad, virgins or sluts. Good girls, bad girls, celibate girls, promiscuous girls? All of them are affected by this miserable wackness. Where are the happy girls? Where are the girls filled with pride instead of shame? And what about the guys? Who’s doing a survey of the guys who are not sexually active and taking note of their self-esteem levels? Because that’s also a direct result of our casual sex culture.
Still, I’ll take it. I’ll take this discussion as a sign that within the fortress of feminism, some women are looking within and acknowledging their unhappiness and shame. They’re looking out and acknowledging the pain of the women around them. It’s a start.
Come Chat With Me On the Radio
Lovely Neely
This Sunday evening I’ll be doing an hour-long segment on Neely Steinberg’s weekly online radio show. Neely is a freelance writer living in Boston. I first became a fan of hers when she wrote some pieces about dating for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine. She’s also written for many other publications, including New York Magazine and Boston Magazine. She first heard me on Curtis Sliwa’s radio show, and we’ve had a little mutual admiration thing going ever since. I’m proud to say she’s a regular reader of HUS.
Here are the deets:
The Love Hangover with Neely Steinberg
Sunday, 8 p.m., Eastern Standard Time
www.unregularradio.com (Click the link to listen)
We’ll be discussing various dating books, hookup culture and Yale sex week. I expect to have a serious conversation, but I can guarantee plenty of laughs as well. You’ll also have an opportunity to call in, so please join me!
Andy Pemberton Cannot Abide Lady Gaga’s Celibacy
Andy Pemberton, a music industry gossip columnist, has his boxer briefs in a twist in a piece at Huffington Post. He claims that Lady Gaga is telling her fans to be celibate, essentially shoving a pro-abstinence agenda down their throats. He questions how a woman who performs without pants could warn against the dangers of casual sex.
From the article:
Speaking at a function for AIDs charities in London yesterday she said that young women should be careful choosing partners to have sex with.
” If you can’t get to know them, you shouldn’t have sex with them, ” she said.
She also urged girls to carry condoms and get regular AIDs checks.
“You are not invincible,” she added.
Fair enough, you might say. It seems like decent advice.
SW: Um, yes. Yes it does sound like decent, reasonable and sensible advice.
Well yes it does, but that is an accident.
SW: An accident? What do you mean? How could her advice be an accident?
What Lady GaGa is really saying is: I am celibate so you must be too.
SW: Really? She is? Where does she imply it’s important for others to model her celibacy?
“I’m single because I don’t have the time,” she explained. “You know what? It’s OK. Even Lady GaGa can be celibate.”
SW: AHA! There it is right there. It is simply not acceptable for a woman to choose to abstain from sex, even if she doesn’t have time!
Andy Pemberton demands, nay insists, that Lady Gaga begin hooking up with randoms after her shows, before the bus pulls out of the parking lot. How dare she wear all those weird outfits and show us her legs, and then refuse to follow through with no-strings debauchery?
This is in fact simply meglomania disguised as social concern. If Lady GaGa decides to resume her bisexual habits would she recommend that too?
What, no spell check at HuffPo? Lady Gaga may be guilty of megalomania, but that’s something we reward with great enthusiasm in our culture, and it’s also irrelevant.
I’m studying the quote here, and honestly, the only recommendation I can find is encouraging women to have safe sex.
Hmmm, sounds like perhaps Andy relies heavily on drunk women who don’t make him wear a raincoat.
For anyone who wants to read more of this guy’s drek, in his piece today he accuses Leona Lewis of trying to turn herself white. Now excuse me, please, I need to take a shower.
How Feminism Got Drunk and Hooked Up With a Loser
Rachel Simmons set the under-40 femosphere back on its heels last week with a column on her blog:
Is Hooking Up Good For Girls? (click here)
Ms. Simmons is an interesting hybrid – she is the advice columnist for Teen Vogue, but she is also a scholar (Rhodes) on the subject of female aggression and has strong feminist cred. In her post she expressed strong concern about the way young women are experiencing mating norms, especially in college. She relies heavily on Kathleen Bogle’s book Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus, just as I did when I decided to begin blogging about relationships in the Hookup Era. From her post (emphasis mine):
“As a relationship advice columnist for Teen Vogue, I get a lot of mail from girls in “no strings attached” relationships. The girls describe themselves as “kind of” with a guy, “sort of” seeing him, or “hanging out” with him. The guy may be noncommittal, or worse, in another no-strings relationship. In the meantime, the girls have “fallen” for him or plead with me for advice on how to make him come around and be a real boyfriend.
…So what’s the deal here? Is a world in which guys rule the result of the so-called man shortage on campus? Fat chance. More likely, we’re enjoying some unintended spoils of the sexual revolution. As authors like Ariel Levy and Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin have shown, the sexualization of girls and young women has been repackaged as girl power. Sexual freedom was supposed to be good for women, but somewhere along the way, the right to be responsible for your own orgasm became the privilege of being responsible for someone else’s.
…Does that make me a right-winger? Can I still be a feminist and say that I’m against this brand of sexual freedom? I fear feminism has been backed into a corner here. What, and who, are we losing to the new sexual freedom? Is this progress? Or did feminism get really drunk, go home with the wrong person, wake up in a strange bed and gasp, “Oh, God?”
…These letters worry me. They signify a growing trend in girls’ sexual lives where they are giving themselves to guys on guys’ terms. They hook up first and ask later. The girls are expected to “be cool” about not formalizing the relationship. They repress their needs and feelings in order to maintain the connection. And they’re letting guys call the shots about when it gets serious.”
I cannot overemphasize how significant a development this is. Not only because Ms. Simmons has stepped on the third rail of female empowerment, but because the feminist response to her, while mostly negative, is far more thoughtful and measured than it would have been just a year ago. I’ve tussled with sex-positive feminists before, most notably in these posts:
Why Do Feminists Find Abstinence Intolerable?
Have Women Been Screwed By the Sexual Revolution?
In fact, it was exactly a year ago that Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com claimed that hookup culture doesn’t even exist: Speechifying: So-called hook up culture and the anti-feminists who love it:
I actually don’t believe that hook [sic] culture exists. What I do think is cause for worry is the way that conservative and anti-women organizations, writers, and media makers are using this myth of a hook up culture to promote regressive values surrounding gender and to roll back women’s rights.
And in August, 2008, after Donna Frietas’ book Sex and the Soul was published, Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon wrote In Defense of Casual Sex:
Perhaps young women are putting feminist ideals of equality into sex by refusing shame and claiming the traditionally male side of the stud/slut double standard.
Ms. Clark-Flory, who attended a women’s college and admittedly never hooked up while there, plants herself firmly in the I can have sex like a man! school of sex-positive feminism. Aside from the fact that I don’t think women can or do have sex like men, mostly I just don’t understand why we would want to. What’s in it for us? Quite a bit of heartache, it would seem.
Now a whole year has passed, and the cry of miserable college-aged (and beyond) women is being heard by the mainstream media. Claiming that hookup culture doesn’t exist puts you in the world is flat camp. Responses to Simmons’ coming out against no-strings sex as the only viable or acceptable relationship model are more varied, and temperate this time around. Let’s have a look:
Jessica Valenti of Feministing has apparently been too busy to weigh in, but did write a quick sentence saying that Simmons has some super valid points! This served as sort of a smoke signal to other feminist bloggers that Simmons should not be dismissed out of hand.
First out of the box was Kate Harding at Salon:
From where I’m sitting, the problem that needs solving isn’t hook-up culture, but the intense pressure on girls and women to focus on getting and keeping a guy, rather than on getting and keeping whatever they want. Media aimed at the female of the species from adolescence on up hammers on a few simple messages. 1) If you’re not heterosexual — or for some other reason don’t see landing a boyfriend as your primary purpose in life — you don’t exist. 2) Landing a boyfriend is about understanding What Guys Want and doing whatever it takes to become that. 3) Keeping a boyfriend is about continuing to be What Guys Want, and if your relationship fails, it’s probably because you did something Guys Hate.
Newsflash: Most girls and women want guys. They want sex and relationships. They don’t always want both at the same time, it’s true. The problem is that there is a giant sex dispenser on every college campus, but the relationship dispenser is OUT OF ORDER. And if a relationship is what a woman wants, then she’s SOL. Furthermore, for the record, let’s just leave gay folks out of this discussion. Gay men have always had to deal with hookup culture, and they always will, due to the male preference for sexual variety. Gay women don’t have to deal with it because they prefer relationships, for the most part. There are times when issues are heteronormative. Deal with it.
If we encouraged girls and women to place real value on their own desires, then instead of hand-waving about kids these days, we could trust them to seek out what they want and need, and to end relationships, casual or serious, that are unsatisfying or damaging to them, regardless of whether they’d work for anyone else. (While acknowledging, of course, that to some extent, heartbreak and romantic regrets are an inevitable part of growing up.)
Feminists’ knee-jerk response to concerns about rampant casual sex is to claim that a bunch of old fogeys (like me) are waving our hands in the air saying, “Something is wrong with kids these days!” They believe that we want to roll back the calendar and turn all of our young women into Betty Draper. Instead, what I see going on is real concern on the part of parents and educators (like Simmons) observing and responding to the pain that young women are feeling. That was certainly what motivated me to jump into the fray.
The thing is, if only one kind of dating “culture” is acceptable at any given time — whether it’s hooking up or old-fashioned courtship — then anyone whose desires don’t fit the mold will be left out. But if we teach all kids that there’s a wide range of potentially healthy sexual and emotional relationships, and the only real trick (granted, it’s a doozy) is finding partners who are enthusiastic about the same things you want, then there’s room for a lot more people to pursue something personally satisfying at no one else’s expense.
A doozy indeed! What might that trick be? As we know, guys having sex in college want multiple sexual partners. Guys not having sex in college are disenfranchised, shut out, virtually invisible to women. Women having sex in college are all gunning for Alpha, bemoaning his unwillingness to commit. Women not having sex in college are shut out, virtually invisible to men.
As Simmons said so well, we are enjoying the unintended spoils of the Sexual Revolution.
Next Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon weighs in:
I reject the sex-obsessed interpretation of how this struggle came to be. When I see such a large scale power struggle between men and women, I tend to think the reason is rarely biology, and usually socially constructed sexism. Experimenting with this starting point, I think I have a much better explanation for what’s going on: Boys have power over girls in the “hook-up culture” because boys have power over girls in a male-dominated society.
Patriarchy is not the problem here! Women are outpacing men in school and at work. Boys have power over girls in the hookup culture because they dangle the carrot of a relationship as they hammer away with their sticks.
Men’s social status comes from men, and women’s social status comes from men. As someone who does remember college pretty well as it drifted into this hook-up culture, I can say firmly that getting a capital-B boyfriend was a huge source of social validation and status. But for men doing the validating, there’s not actually much value in monogamy (outside of Twu Wuv). They give something—validation—and instead of getting anything for it, they end up having to pay the price of not having their options open. Who wants that?
What Marcotte says about the derivation of social status is true. What has changed is the way men define status. What she fails to see is that two generations ago, a guy derived social status by having a steady girlfriend. That meant he was a guy with a regular supply of sex, and that was really the only way he could get it. Today, a regular supply with one woman just doesn’t cut it. Today’s male mantra is “I want multiple!”
Critics of the “hook-up culture” quietly tend to accept that while these dynamics dominate the college years, even most of them accept that something shifts when people hit their 20s, and suddenly dating and commitment become the norm. As women mature, we gain jobs and homes of our own, and become more sure in our tastes and our friendships. For women, this is an enormous power grab. The amount of our social value derived from male attention shrinks as more of our social value comes from our jobs and the image we project in the world. And as soon as one guy abandons the immature “girls and dating are GROSS” thing, the stigma loses its grip and they start to fall like dominoes.
Fall like dominoes? Everything I’m hearing tells me that hooking up is continuing as the norm well into the mid to late 20s. As kids weaned on hookup culture graduate from college, they export it directly into the professional and dating world they enter. This trend will continue and be magnified in coming years.
The girls are lurching in the right direction, but what needs to happen now is more attention paid to the boys. How can we discourage young men from validating each other based on displays of misogyny? How can we get boys to appreciate girls more as human beings? How can we dismantle a system where social status in youth cultures is controlled strictly by young men?
Blaming men is 100% ineffective. Men are responding to hard-wired cues that give them an advantage in the reproduction sweepstakes. You might as well suggest that we tame lions into house cats. It is not in their nature, and it does not mean they are misogynist. “Lurching” doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, either.
Nona Willis Aronowitz writes on GirlDrive:
“I knew how it felt to agonize over a text message. I knew how much it hurt to hear that the guy I’d been hooking up with “didn’t do relationships.” And I knew what it was like to use sexuality to coax a guy into being with me, only to have it fail miserably.
Feminist or not, that shit sucks. And it happens a lot, to women and girls everywhere. And yet, if you consider me and the vast majority of America who eventually couple up, it seems to end up okay. What to make of all this?
…We need to admit as a culture that teens are sexual beings, and that more often than not, sexual maturity has a completely different timeline than emotional maturity. This is, to be sure, skewed by sexism and restrictive gender roles to make sexual coming-of-age worse for girls. But beyond that, maybe discovering what you want sexually and emotionally is just part of growing up–and that’s okay.
…For that matter, what’s with this still-dominant narrative that all teen girls should want a monogamous, snuggly, worshipping boyfriend? I wanted relationships from fantastic fucks all through high school and college, but something tells me that I repeatedly confused lust for love and convinced myself that I wanted a boyfriend, when really I just wanted a screwfest (although I can’t be sure).
Hmmm, just a bit of backwards rationalization going on here…
We never consider the power of cultural messages amid the mysterious phenomenon of girls wanting relationships more often than boys. I don’t think it’s biological–there are societal patterns at work here. If we’re told that casual sex is unfulfilling and that we’re going to want relationships, chances are we’ll end up wanting them.
Nona, meet Helen Fisher, noted biological anthropologist. Helen can tell you, citing dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies, and with absolutely no political agenda whatsoever, that it is indeed biological.
The stubborn insistence on the part of feminists that the sexes do not differ biologically has done much to repress women and make them miserable, as the recent Wharton study on the gender happiness gap illustrates. We wanted to have sex like men and that’s just what we got. It turns out we don’t like it much, and we probably need to make some changes.
The women’s movement ushered in today’s sexual norms. The pendulum will swing back when women fight back by making sexual choices that coincide with their long-term interests.
This is not about going back to the 1950s, or any other time when women did not enjoy equal rights.
As women, we do have a choice. And sometimes, it probably ought to involve keeping our legs together.
Readers Find the Best Links!
I. Woman Gets Busted for Cheating On the Radio
Thanks to Natalie (again!) for sending along something interesting and entertaining. This is a couple of weeks old, and you may have heard it. It’s hilarious and well worth a listen when you’ve got 12 minutes:
Do you feel sorry for Ashley? I don’t. Ashley had it coming. What I find really interesting, though, is how differently Chris and Ashley handle themselves. Chris is calm, cool, collected. He has a problem, and he’s solving it in a very practical and effective way. Ashley is hysterical, hedging her bets, and lying. Because we know what’s coming, we can’t help but resent her simpering self-congratulation before the shoe drops. This is a rather good, albeit extreme example of the differences in communication style between the sexes.
Really? Doubt it!
II. The Types Women Secretly Lust After (click here)
Thanks to Caroline for sharing this interesting tidbit. A recent poll conducted by London-based onepoll.com asked women what they find sexiest in a man. A spokesman said:
Publically, girls will claim they want a muscly guy, who is hair free and manly enough not to show his emotional side.
However, the results speak otherwise:
1. Stubble, the unshaven look
2. A geeky personality, guys who know a lot about tech
3. Soft and cuddly over toned and muscly
4. Hairy chest (
My heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest…)
5. A man who loves to read
6. A man who cries at films
7. Gray hair
8. Wearing glasses
9. Passionate support for a sports team
10. Not counting calories or watching food intake
11. Getting ready quickly, no fussing over appearance
Lemondrop asked 26 women staffers to come up with a list of their secret crush types and the results are both amusing and a bit puzzling. Check it out here. Regular readers probably won’t be surprised to hear I am partial to skinny hipsters, The Fey Guy and Woody Allen brainy neurotic types. Have a look, there’s something for everyone!
BTW, onepoll.com has had some other interesting finds:
The World’s Best Looking People (The U.S. beat Brazil – who cares about soccer?)
The World’s Worst Lovers (Germans are smelly, ew! Americans are dominating–wait, that’s sexy!)
III. Another interesting article from the Yale Daily News, this time from student Claire Gordon; Digital Damage Control (click here):
So it’s the day after a random hook-up with a new someone, and you want to make contact. Your goal: express interest while keeping your self-esteem protected from the sting of rebuff. Your hope: a date maybe, a repeat hook-up or the establishment of tap-able back-burner ass.
There are many different technological possibilities, from texting to Gchat, and each of these has a different potential for flirtation, emotional disclosure or creepiness.
It’s the best review I’ve seen of all the digital options available if you want to pursue Round 2 with someone.
IV. True Stories: Lunch in Paris (click here)
Thanks to Synthesis for this rather charming story of a couple’s meeting and follow-up. Major bonus points to author Elizabeth Bard for going after what she wanted, even though it meant flying across the Atlantic:
I slept with my French husband halfway through our first date…
Happy endings happen in real life, not just rom coms!
