Thursday, February 22, 2007

Sex in the Campus Bar

In the cyclical world that is the issue of the romantic and sexual climate in the US, another entry -- and perhaps just another (attempted) swing of the pendulum: WaPo staff writer Laura Sessions Stepp, whose name unfortunately already has an Emily Post-ish schoolmarm ring, has written an alarm-sounding book about the "hookup culture" of kids today called "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both." Stepp sees college students hanging out in packs, forgoing the intimacy of dates or one-on-one conversations, and then hopping in the sack, usually after a night of drinking.

Meghan O'Rourke has written a mostly negative piece for Slate on the book called, edgily but also charmingly, "In Defense of 'Loose' Women." O'Rourke has a subtle analysis, but you could reduce her thesis to "what's wrong with hooking up?" She sees a generation that finally views work and achievement as more important than romance, and therefore more likely to keep a hookup or a sexual hang-up in perspective.

Ezra Klein picks out this quote from Stepp:

Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible. Some girls can handle this; others … are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually by it.

Klein's riposte: "Doesn't that also describe...relationships?" One of his commenters clearly isn't hip to Stepp's tsk tsks, either: "Is there really a pervasive 'hook up culture'? I guess I missed it by 10 years. Damn '90s...."

Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:34 PM

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