
Many students across most college campuses take part in what has popularly become-known as "hookup culture," the act of only "hooking up" with others without any emotional attachment or connection. It has become a hot topic in today's society due to the prominence and taboo of sex in our culture. But, what most people are so obsessed with, is how detrimental it supposedly can be to one's self-esteem and emotional capacity. But is it really? As young people who are in the process of "finding ourselves" I think that sexual exploration is a necessary part of how we determine what is best for us in our lives.

The idea of "hookup culture" has come into the limelight in the last four to six years because of its growing prominence on college campuses and in popular culture. I am currently eighteen years old so the issue has been on my radar for the last four to five years. Hookup culture, as I've come to understand it, is the pattern of young men and women in today's society choosing sex over love. But, in my personal opinion, I do not believe that this definition tells the whole story. I recently became more aware of this issue when my aunt sent me an article from Elite Daily entitled, "How Accepting the Hookup Culture is getting 20-somethings nowhere." She told me to read the article because it made some great points. I read it and, quite honestly, it was insulting. The made this generation of sixteen-twenty-four year olds seem like one of the dumbest and most helpless group of people walking the earth today. This is not to say that my generation does not have its share of entitled morons or slacker degenerates, but what generation doesn't? I read the article probably five times in the whole week after she sent it to me and really started to see both sides of the coin. On one side, we have the supporters of "hookup culture" and their points about how it benefits the sexual revolution brought about from feminism and developing research in sexual exploration. While on the other side, we have the skeptics who believe that sex comes after a whole relationship has been built and there is love and loyalty present. But here is something that all of the skeptics and supporters, most who are not actually experiencing "hookup culture", have not called into question, is it actually beneficial or not?

Now, to find my answer to this question, I had to find out some more outside information other than just my personal experience and the things I'd gathered from my interaction with this topic. I found an article titled, ""Young adults and a hookup culture," from CNN written in 2013. This article explains that through data and research it has been determined that "hookups" are exponentially more popular among young, college-age students. They give reasoning to this based on a survey stating that students are longing for romantic relationships to flourish from these physical connections but they typically do not. But, instead of not hooking up when the next chance arises, they do the same trial and error without finding love. They continue to do this so, hookup culture has become a popular situation for many young people. The focus of the article is primarily on the idea of how hookup culture has become so popular and why people are continuing to do it. They ultimately focus on the negative aspects of hookup culture without focusing at all on how it can benefit people. The article is clearly trying to make hookup culture seem like this seemingly destructive force that will ruin lives. The author of the article, Ian Kerner is an expert in sex psychology for CNN, with a PhD and is a practicing sex counselor. There is not a lot of bias in this article because it is an informative article and the author is a practicing doctor with expertise in this area of study. However, I wanted to look at where the idea of hooking up and finding love came from. Although people are continuing to play this trial and error game with their hearts and bodies, what makes them think it will actually work out? All signs point to one thing, media. In the last five or so years, there has been a very obvious increase in the glamorization of loveless sex-based relationships leading to "the real thing," in films, on television, and even in music. I think that in the nineties and early two-thousands television shows such as Sex and the City and Friends made casual sex one thing, casual. But, as time went on it became apparent that sometimes we, as human beings, crave more than just a sex-based situation so screenwriters started adding in this concept that casual sex can result in your one great love story. Occasionally this does work out for couples but, as found by Dr. Kerner, it typically does not. 

My next piece of evidence was an article in defense of hookup culture. This article is titled, "Breathless: In Defense of Hookup Culture." In this article, author Karley Sciortino, analyzes a viral article written about why "hooking up" is like a romance apocalypse and she comes to the conclusion, with help from a TEDtalk  about if casual sex is actually bad for you, that casual sex doesn't have to be bad for us and that it can actually be very rewarding. The article's main claims are that people take hookup culture way too seriously, and that if we stop and look at the bigger picture it can actually save a lot of time and energy to get to exactly what some people want in the first place. Karley Sciortino is the author and she is a columnist for Vogue magazine, who also happens to have a blog about sex and relationships. Ultimately, I agree with Sciortino's idea that we can gain more from sexual experimentation, rather than lose. One of the top 10 causes of divorce is lack of intimacy or hidden desires. People are choosing love over sex, when they can have both. Recently, I had a friend who got into a relationship with a lovely young lady who all of our friends adored. After dating for a few months, this male friend of mine realized he did have hidden desires and oats that he needed to sow, however, he refused to break up with this girl and chose to instead cheat on her. To this day, she has no clue and he has no intention of telling her, but instead has begun to discuss marriage with this girl. To me, this is an exact example of why we need hookup culture. My friend, had he chosen to break up and take the time for himself may have found an even better life partner or had developed an even stronger relationship with his soon-to-be fiance. But, now not only is her hiding things from the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, he is also not being honest with himself. This is a compromise I do not find appealing or acceptable at all. Human beings have always been creatures that cannot really be contained. We all have desires that eventually get the best of us and I feel that hookup culture allows us to explore our sexual desires. Should we do this in a healthy way rather than a detrimental one? Certainly. Should we force ourselves to forget these desires out of fear that we may lose our one great love? Hell no. 

Now I'd like to discuss the article mentioned earlier about 20-somethings accepting hookup culture is getting them nowhere. The article makes several points that I completely agree with but I do not agree with is the direction these points they make take. It is mentioned in the article how we use words nowadays such as "maybe" and "at some point" to make us less vulnerable by making us seem less eager. I admit myself that I have done things like this and I understand why others do it. People feel safer when they don't put themselves out there and have hope just to be let down. Although I would say that many millennials do this, I believe you would find an at least equal portion who are not afraid to say what they really mean and put themselves out there. Other points this article makes such as how human communication has broken down, how dating has died out a lot, and how the availability of men and women alike who are willing to have casual sexual relationships has made it easier to forget how to commit and date others. Things that the article highlights that I do not agree with at all are the idea that we live in a post-dating world and how all hooking-up leads to heartbreak. Some young adults choose these sort of relationships not because they are emotionally-inept or because they find it to be "easier." Some choose these types of relationships because they do not have the time to be emotionally and physically committed to someone so they find someone with a similar situation as theirs so that they can at least be sexually satisfied, which can sometimes be exactly what is healthy for both parties involved. While this is not always the case, we cannot place every single person who takes part in these sort of relationships in boxes like this. 

In my source "Students, the hookup culture and the wasted life," Dianne Scharper reviews the book, "The End of Sex," by Donna Freitas. The review calls Freitas' book disturbing because of the way it makes all students seem like they are consistently wasted and are practically peer-pressured into it by the idea of "everyone doing it." Yes, on college campuses there is *gasp* drinking and sex. The inaccuracy of these ideas come in the form of peer pressure. I have never once felt the pressure of someone expecting a hookup from me and I have quite honestly never heard that any of my friends have either. I go to an SEC school with over 30,000 students, which based on this stereotype I should've been pressured to drink and have casual sex at least 5 times by now. Of course, I cannot speak for every college student across the US but I can say in my personal experience, this stereotype is not something I, or anyone I am in close contact with, has ever really had to deal with. 

My last piece of evidence is an honest look at the past and the present to see if millennials actually have gone down this dark path that has never been seen before. But, Eliana Dockterman writes in her article "Another study shows that hookup culture is a myth" that the millennials currently in college have not been having more or less sex than their parental counterparts of the older generations. She defends that the "hookup culture" that has been analyzed recently is not actually a thing. There is only a small marginal difference in how many people have sex with a significant other or spouse versus an acquaintance and that mostly has to do with people getting married later in life and worrying about themselves before a family. The article proves its claims of millennials having the same amount of casual sex as their parents with studies done during older generations and studies done within the last two years. Eliana Dockterman is a graduate of Yale University with a BA in Humanities and is a seasoned-writer who has worked with Time magazine since she was an intern and is now a writer for the major magazine. She performed a similar study to the one mentioned in her article so she does have a basic background in "hookup culture." Dockterman has no major bias. It doesn't address any gender issues so her bias as a woman is irrelevant. The only bias she really has is that she does not believe that "hookup culture" is real.

I read another interesting article about hookup culture and how it affects both genders and their emotional capacities. While most of my sources claim to represent both genders, I feel that their information favors mostly females. In regards to males, this article offered some startling information about why men find hookups more appealing and how it completely changes them in the process. First let's start with why. Why men want to hookup and not commit. Well, hookups guarantee sex. Men don't have to put in effort because the woman isn't putting in effort either. They don't have to really pursue her, they don't have to take her on a date, they don't even have to really care about her as long as she's ready and willing, right? Wrong. Men prefer guaranteed sex not because they don't have to put in any effort but more because they don't have to bear the brunt of ridicule they will receive if they do put in effort and aim to find a relationship. We live in a society today that discourages male honesty about hopes, dreams, fears, and emotions. When puberty and sexual development are discussed, most people focus on how it affects women and less on how it affects men. The truth is, men go through just as many changes and ups and downs as women do. Due to the growing change in sexual liberation and empowerment for women, men are often left on the backburner when it comes to changing with the times and learning how to behave in response to societal changes. The performance aspect of masculinity and the homophobic undertones that plague are society often affect straight men just as much as gay men. A major pattern that this article highlights is that of young men just hitting puberty and finding their first love, getting their hearts broken and proceeding to have mixed feelings and major confusion as to how they are supposed to progress from there on. As they continue into adulthood, the growing focus on sex and all its repercussions/benefits, their confusion leads them to thinking with a different sort of head. In a study done in this article, as males made their way through puberty, the leading causes of depression changed from thing such as home life and school problems to relationship issues and inadequacy.    

All in all, I think this question goes a lot deeper than most realize. There are so many layers and perspectives on this one thing, and the possibilities of the conclusion are endless. On one hand, there is a lot of proof of how hookup culture can be demeaning and heartbreaking, but on the other hand there is also loads of proof to back up the claim that hooking up and not getting attached can be beneficial to both parties. There is also the idea of how it is affecting both sexes in this generation and also how the sexual patterns of today can relate to the sexual patterns of the past. To edit my question, I would like to also investigate what is good and bad about hookup culture, not just if it is overall good or bad. What I have come to find is that, if not executed correctly, hookup culture can seriously destroy someone's confidence and belief in themselves. BUT, when executed correctly hookup culture is a powerful tool to grow and explore as a young person and really tune-in to what you need out of a relationship and, quite honestly, life. Now, you may be wondering the differences between executed incorrectly and correctly so let me fill you in. When two people choose to hookup or enter into a "friends with benefits" situation, they both need to be completely honest with each other and themselves about this being the type of relationship they want at this point in time. If there isn't complete honesty and trust, people lose faith in themselves and things can get very messy, very fast.

 
